Just told my yard guy that I’ll be inside while he works, but that he should feel free to “knock me up” if he needs anything.
Obviously I meant he should knock on the door and I would come down. That was clear, right?
Tale as old as time?
So…it turns out that my copy of Beauty and the Beast includes a whole new song I have never seen before, plus a new scene wherein it is revealed that the Beast is basically illiterate. Both scene and song are fairly terrible.
Where did this come from, though? Is it possible my films have been writing themselves new scenes, because they have minds of their own, because they’re actually humans who have been enchanted to look like DVDs? I guess that makes me a horrible monster with anger-management issues. Which, considering I just complained about adding more Disney magic to a Disney movie, seems like an explanation that might fit.
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The next project
All three of you readers might remember that Gene and I had three projects planned when we moved in: replacing the windows, remodeling the kitchen and remodeling the yard. We’ve finished the first one, and now we’re getting ready to start work on the yard. Not a minute too soon, either — yesterday we were roaming around outside trying to picture the final product and noticed that the fig tree has crept a little closer to the house. It keeps doing this while we sleep. Some would call it “growing,” but I call it “creepily plant-walking inch by inch until it gets close enough to eat us.” So it’s high time that business was chopped down and replaced by plants that know their place.
Not just the fig is at stake, of course. Nearly every plant out there is coming down, to be replaced by beautiful tidy plants that will grow exactly the way they’re supposed to and not try to kill us in our sleep. I’m no gardener but I feel sure about this — every single new plant will be completely perfect forever. Mind you I’ve only seen pictures of most of the plants on our list, so when I picture it I imagine the yard filled with cardboard cutouts of plants. It will be so beautiful until the rains come.
The eventual increase in privacy when our fence-side plants grow up is also going to be welcome. Gene came into my library to chat with me the other day and kind of choked on a word midway through, glancing out the window over my shoulder. “Um…did you know…” he started awkwardly, in the cadence of a man who’s just seen a spider crawling on his phobic wife.
“That the old lady in the apartment building next door can — and does — see right into my library window from her balcony?” I finished, in the resigned tone of a phobic wife who has experienced this particular spider so many times — and has indeed carried this spider’s mail to the mailbox and listened patiently to a horrifying story about this spider’s medical issues — that it has ceased to hold any horror for her. Yes, those privacy plants cannot come too soon for me.
With any luck, we’ll be starting work next week! Stay tuned for pictures. Shit is about to get epic, or as epic as things get for a suburban housewife re-doing her yard.
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Pillar of the community
I went to the library recently to get the children’s book we were reading for this month’s Finer Things Club, but before I went looking for it I first picked up some books about anxiety disorders.*
Here’s what I know now: nothing says “trustworthy adult” like browsing the children’s section while clutching a stack of books about mental health issues. I think I made some real friends that day.
*There’s really no believable way to say this, but I’m not reading about these disorders because I have one; I’m reading about them because I thought I might want to write about them. Also, they’re for a friend. Also, my boyfriend goes to another school. In Canada. You wouldn’t know him.
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Pop quiz
If you are having mild stomach cramps, you should:
A. Eat half a cheese pizza and watch Speed.
B. Eat half a cheese pizza and watch Doctor Who.
C. Eat half a cheese pizza and watch every episode of Very Mary Kate.
I’m thinking B? Only one way to find out, I guess.
Hoes!
Driving on the freeway yesterday, I saw this graffiti:
HOES HOES HOES
HOES!
HOES! HOES!
HOES!!!
Is this a call to arms, an appeal to the sisterhood? Is it an exultant poem celebrating the world’s abundance of loose ladies? Is it about garden tools? Regardless of your motivations, brother, you said a mouthful.
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The Worm Turns
Got some lettuce from the little farmer’s market produce stand on the corner. There was a teeny tiny worm in it.
A WORM.
Honest to god, I do not see the point of organic produce.
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To See or Not To See
Gene and I saw Hamlet at Cal Shakes last night. I give it a solid sideways thumb.
Obviously, nothing was going to live up to the last production of Hamlet that I saw, so I’m trying to add grains of salt to my review, but here are some issues I had:
- Claudius delivered all his lines as though he was really proud of having memorized them — just shot them out at top speed with very little inflection or apparent understanding of their meaning.
- Hamlet began frenzied, built to a frenzied middle and ended in a righteous frenzy. Considering his first big speech is about how dull and sad the world seems, I feel like he could have started a little more quietly. Also, as Gene put it, “I don’t like how he tries to control people with his hands in every scene. It’s cheap.” So true. This Hamlet was very grabby.
- There was very little chemistry between Hamlet and Horatio, which for my money is the richest relationship in the play. These are the only two characters who love each other completely and unselfishly, but in this production Horatio was just a sounding board for Hamlet to deliver his next frothing line. Most disappointing.
I also had trouble with the staging, which fell a little short of its own goals. For example, they created a fun conceit wherein the play begins with Horatio mourning Hamlet and saying his lines from the end, promising to tell the whole sad story. After that he appears in several scenes where he has no lines, just as a silent watcher, which would be a great idea if he’d appeared in all the scenes. He should either be onstage the entire time, chronicling the times, or he should only come on where it’s appropriate for his character to be. Pick a side, director.
And another thing: in order to emphasize the way Ophelia is ignored by everyone unless they need to use her, there are a couple of scenes where people talk over her. Again, I like the idea they’re trying to portray, but there has to be a better way to do it. You go to Shakespeare plays for the words, guys. When two people talk at once, you miss the sense of everyone’s lines. Sondheim can get away with this; you cannot.
My final problem: it was staged in an empty swimming pool. Why? By all means, directors, get creative with the location, but only if you can find something more moody and atmospheric and bleak than a freezing medieval castle in B.F., Denmark.
There were plenty of good things about the play though. Polonius was delightful; often his speeches are just boring, but this actor managed to find the funny. And the actor who played the Player King, whom I had seen before as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, always makes me giggle. I also thought Ophelia was great; Shakespeare doesn’t give her much to work with, and for my money the best thing to do with her madness scene is to get it over with as quickly as possible, but her scenes with Hamlet were actually touching in spite of Hamlet’s best efforts to make them about yelling and dragging people around the stage.
All this said, I would actually recommend this show. My complaints look more serious now that I’ve whined about them at length, but mostly they were passing irritations. Anyway, I will pretty much always recommend seeing things at Cal Shakes because it’s such a pleasure to picnic under the trees and watch the bats come out and then see a play performed in the open air with the cows and crickets moving and melodying across the distant hills.
Dinner with the Millers
“You have a very distinctive walk,” Tracy told me after I had distinctively walked from the restroom back to our table. “We were trying to figure out what song you have playing in your head, that you’re walking to.”
“Like on Ally McBeal,” I said.
“Right.”
“Think of something Ian will hate,” I suggested, because it’s fun and cool to irritate your friends.
“John Mayer,” Tracy said immediately, proving that she shares my philosophy. She poked Ian, who had been talking to Gene and not paying attention. “I know what song she walks to,” Tracy told him.
“Oh?”
“It’s ‘Wonderland,'” we both said at once.
“Oh God,” he said in profound and satisfying disgust.
Cheerocracy
A few months ago I sent Michele this email:
THERE ARE CHEERLEADERS. IN OUR DRIVEWAY.
Two middle school girls. Doing cheers. IN MY DRIVEWAY, WHY??? I assume they belong to one of the neighbors, but this is…kind of hysterical. And adorable. Heh. Bring it on!
(If you’ve never been to my house, I should mention we share our driveway with the two families next door. So this isn’t that random, but still pretty random, because until this point I was not even aware the neighbors had kids.)
Then two nights ago we were sleeping with the bedroom windows open and suddenly those girls started practicing again, this time in their front yard, very near to our windows. “Five, six, seven, eight!” Over. And. Over. I kind of wanted to yell at them (I was tired), but also I wanted to smile indulgently because it was sweet for them to be twelve years old and so earnest about getting a dance routine right. I remember how fun that used to be.
But really, who lets their twelve year olds go out at that hour on a school night to practice? Crazy drunk people walk past there, and violent teenagers and stuff! Also it’s annoying for the neighbors. It seems really unlikely that parents would be down with this, which is what makes me think these girls might actually be ghosts.
Granted, the first time I saw them they were out in the afternoon, and they were driven indoors by a homeless guy who came and yelled fake cheers at them until they went away, so someone else could definitely see them. But I am pretty sure all crazy homeless people can see ghosts, so my theory still kind of holds water.
A quick search for “cheerleader ghost” images led me to this book which Michele should probably read. And so should I, let’s be honest.