old tymes not forgotten

So here we are

I’m not a Luddite. I just want to make that clear. I love my way-too-many gadgets that start with “i.”

But I still keep an old-school weekly/monthly planner. Complete with a no-longer-manufactured Pilot V-Ball pen jammed in the spiral binding for handy storage. 

Yes, I know what year it is. Yes, I have iCal on my laptop and phone. Before that, I had a Palm Pilot. Before that, it was Outlook. But all attempts to use them day-to-day were absolute disasters. Maybe it’s because I’m a freelancer, maybe it’s because I don’t have a big office network, or maybe it’s because I tend to remember things better when I physically write them down. In any case, I’ve been using paper planners since college; and before that, those little checkbook-sized, grandma-friendly, 2-year wallet calendars (which were surprisingly handy and effective, and I always knew what birthstone was in play at any given time). 

christmas in july

So here we are.

Let’s see... what to write about today... Golly. I got nothing. Feeling lazy and disjointed. It’s quiet outside. Quiet and hot. 

The mass Independence Day Weekend exodus from the city has begun, and the residential, non-touristy neighborhoods of New York City are that special kind of dead that I so enjoy. You don’t have to wait for the “walk” sign because there’s hardly any traffic barreling at you. That brunch place with the long Sunday lines? This weekend, you can walk right in. It’s a sweet little reward for staying in the sweltering city while everyone else is having a holiday among water and sand, trees and grass. 

Sometimes I wonder why so many New Yorkers leave the city for the country in the summertime, especially when equal or greater numbers of tourists flock here and leave their quiet front porches behind in favor of the concrete hustle. Sure, it’s hot here, but it’s hot everywhere. 

change of plan

So here we are.

I was all set to write a post about a dear friend of mine. The plan has shifted a bit to include another.

Regular readers will recognize the handle Ironmom (a.k.a. Julie), as she has been my most frequent commenter here. She’s also been a dear friend since college, and she still likes me even though I’m not on Facebook. She’s been in training for the better part of a year for her first Ironman triathlon, and yesterday was her big day. Armed with her bib number, I’d planned to dial up the race site and track her progress, hoping that the fact that she was going to spend more than 15 hours - you read me, 15 hours - pushing her body to the limit would inspire me to do my simple little tasks, including, but not limited to, prepping for some auditions and cleaning the bathroom and other chores I’d been putting off. If she could run a damn marathon on top of swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles, I could banish some damned mildew. And I’d write all about how proud I was of her and how this humble woman both inspires me and puts me to shame.

Then I came home from running errands to the news that Alice Playten had died suddenly - to me, anyway - at the age of 63.

pomp

So here we are.

This past Saturday, my alma mater, Northwestern University, held its commencement. I know this because their graduation speaker was esteemed alumnus Stephen Colbert, and his fabulous speech was all over the web within hours. 

My husband (also NU) and I watched this speech online with a great deal of jealousy. It was such a pretty ceremony, with regal purple robes set beautifully in front of bright blue Chicagoland skies. It had rained on our respective graduations, and my final college memory is sitting in a dull, black robe in the bleachers of a dimly lit sports arena, listening to a speaker who was very much not Stephen Colbert in all the worst possible ways. In a word: bleak.

Maybe it’s the YouTube effect, but it seems as though all the major universities are really stepping up their games when it comes to commencement speakers these days. Mine was best known for having a sitcom character loosely based on her, but that hardly meant she was as entertaining as a sitcom character. When asked, my husband couldn’t remember who his speaker was. This is a big deal, seeing as whenever we’re watching old TV shows, he can rattle off the résumés of the second and/or third guest stars with ease, or at least say something like:

future's so bright

So here we are.

Today we’re going to go to 1932. Things are bad there. Kind of like now, but without the iPods and cell phones. Let’s climb in our rented Wayback Machine and give people some hope for the future, shall we?

US: Hey there, pal, buck up, huh? It’s not going to be like this forever. It’s going to get better.

THEM: Sure doesn’t seem like it right now.

US: Trust us. It will. It’ll get way better. Then it will get worse, then better again, then really worse, but you’ll probably be dead by then, so you won’t have to worry about that.

THEM: How the heck you think things are going to get better?

US: Well, you’ve heard of Mickey Mouse, right?

notes session

So here we are.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the creative process, it’s that every show or film or artistic venture needs a hard-ass; meaning, someone who will look at the project with an outside eye and give a special kind of good, hard constructive criticism that can make the difference between producing something that is genius and something that is sheer ego run amok.

Today, in the harsh post-Tony light of day, I am forced to be my own hard-ass. And it’s time for my notes session on web...blah...log: the musical! I know, you all thought it was perfect... but Spielberg thought A.I. was perfect, too, and we all know how that turned out. So here goes:

web...blah...log: the musical!

So here we are.

In honor of the upcoming Tony Awards, I was planning on making this post into a Broadway musical, but since there aren’t more than 500 of you out there*, this will have to be more of an Off-Off Broadway musical. It’s a brief show, but there’s no intermission, and our tiny theatre only has a couple of bathroom stalls, so plan accordingly. Also, please silence all electronic devices at this time.

If there was a curtain in the theatre, it would rise (most Off-Off spaces don’t have one). A chorus enters and begins to sing:

ludicrousness

So here we are.

Someday I should write a book. It’ll be about my time as a Muppet Performer, and specifically about all of the famous people who have worked with the characters and how all of us puppeteers have to sit on the floor or work in a pit beneath them. It will be called I Have Laid at the Feet of Legends and will be the first crotch-centric book about children’s television that has no overt sex in it whatsoever. Since other Muppet Performers have worked many more years with far more stars than I, the book will no doubt be followed by copycats: When My Head Bumped His Ass, and Lord of the Flies: A View From Below. All will be tastefully illustrated. 

Or maybe I’ll never get around to it. Probably that. Or...