Of Meerkats and Lemurs

Birthday goodness continued yesterday with the appearance of items fresh from the dewy fingers of far-off friends. HEL sent a deliciously horrific musical card featuring the Wicked Witch of the West and her inimitable theme tune. Enchanting! And dock_leaf sent, in addition to a Wizard of Oz bookmark, a framed memento of her all-to-brief time in my neighborhood -- a photo of herself, myself, brigantine, and my good buddy Dan at a Napa Valley winery. So sweet! I will cherish both. Many thanks, my dears!

What a way to start a birthday week! I just received a stupendous birthday gift box from my beloved wife, the gorgeous genius Eremir. It's all about Moomins -- who, for the uninitiated, are the main characters in a brilliant series of kids' books by Finnish/Swedish Tove Jansson (one of the books is quite simply my favorite book in the history of the universe -- so profoundly great that it almost hurts to think about).

The first thing I came across in the gift box was a bottle of Moomin shampoo -- or rather "Mumin Dusch & Schampo, Milt och doftar persika," since it comes from Sweden. Peach scented, mmm! Next was a heart box, featuring Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden on top, looking very affectionate -- and inside, a deliciously wicked Little My and a seriously scary Groke, who will NOT be allowed to sit on the local vegetation. In fact, I think it will be safest for everyone if the Groke is suspended permanently from her key chain.

Wonderful stuff! Big thanks, and even bigger hugs and snogs, to the one and only Mrs. Lemur!

Today is my last day of work before a vacation of such utter wonderfulness that the mind boggles.  Well, my mind does, anyway.  On Monday it will be my delirious privilege to scoop up dock_leaf and brigantine at SF Int'l Airport, and whisk them both to the City By The Bay for three days of fun and frolic.  This adventure has been in the works for months and months, and now the time is almost here!  I am beside myself with glee.  Highlights will include:  a walking tour of Chinatown and North Beach (paths lately trodden by Nienna and family); a day in the Wine Country courtesy of my very good friend Dan and his trusty Prius, followed by dinner at Berkeley's world-famous Chez Panisse; a visit to SF's Academy of Sciences; and opening night of American Conservatory Theater's season.   But the biggest highlight by far will be the ladies themselves.  SF's socks will be knocked RIGHT OFF!

By comparison, tonight's opera season opener will be a mere appetizer.  But it's something to do before the real fun starts.  The opera is Il Trovatore, which is famous not only for its great music but for the single most nonsensical opera plot of them all.  We look forward to these great lines:
"I threw the wrong baby into the fire!"
"Wait a minute, YOU'RE not my boyfriend!"
"So, you're telling me I'm not really your son?"  "Did I just say that?  Pay no attention, you know how I get."
"That was my brother I just sent to the executioner?  Yikes!"

And on and on.

Take care of yourselves, and I'll see you all in a week and a half!

Last night I rented a Japanese anime film called Pom Poko (from the same studio as favorites Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, but not the same director), and was surprised to find my self watching a story about shape-shifting raccoons who do very unusual things with their balls.  Yes, I do mean their testicles, plus the handy little sacs they come in.  How strange does it get?  Well, there's an early scene in which the whole raccoon clan is having a meeting on a great big meadow-size mat -- and it turns out that the mat they're all standing around on is the leader's ball sac!  When the party is over, we see him rolling it back up between his little legs.  Yowza!  Later on, a particularly warlike group of raccoons stretch their ball sacs back over their heads and use them like hang-gliders -- then turn them into enormous heavy globs with which they crush their human enemies.  Bizarre enough yet?  Who's idea was this?

http://lovelys.com/photos/jenphotos/pompoko.jpg

I love Nienna and her family!  It was my astounding good fortune to meet them in crazy ol' SF on Saturday, and I'm here to tell you that they couldn't be more wonderful -- adventurous, smart, funny, silly, generous, and above all loving.  Same goes for family friend Susan, who helped see us through the wilds of Chinatown, North Beach, Ghirardelli Square and Fishermans Wharf (which finally wore us out).  I don't know how these folks did it, but they immediately made me feel like part of the family.  You're sure to hear more about what we did and what we saw when Nienna posts her pics, but for now I will tell you that the sweetest moment for me was getting a goodbye hug from Becky.  Becky is an all round treat, and when it comes to hugs she's a star.  I think she gets it from her mom and dad.  So I'm feeling very, very lucky right now.

Lots and lots of birthday lovin' to our own Fawsley!  You're in my thoughts, in my heart and in my arms, right where you belong.

I'm just re-reading HP and the Half-Blood Prince and I've run into an absolutely filthy bit that I'd somehow forgotten -- the song sung on the radio by Celestina Warbeck.  It's called "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love," and the following verse is quoted:

Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
And if you do it right,
I'll boil you up some hot strong love
To keep you warm tonight!

Lord have mercy, how on earth did she finagle that into a young adult novel?  Just one more reason to love J.K.  Now, if only she'd had Dumbledore singing it . . .

Here are two photos from my play.  The first one shows us two shepherds in the act of doing each other in -- I'm holding a bowl of poison to his lips and he's tightening a necklace about my throat.  As you can see, we're got up like Biblical shepherds in a nativity pageant.  I looked for a good photo of our very cute Pierrot, but none of them quite do him justice.  It's not the photographer's fault -- we just didn't have a proper photo session.  Anyway, the second one here is the best of him.

http://sffct.shutterfly.com/3034
http://sffct.shutterfly.com/3040

Well, we did our show yesterday.  We almost did two shows, but that was a saga in itself.  The theater festival management changed our schedule so many times our heads may never stop spinning.  Argh!  We started out three weeks ago with just one show at noon.  Fine.  Then they added a second one at 1, same venue.  Oh boy!  Then they changed it to 1:30, at which point it started to be a problem for my scene partner, who needed to get out and rehearse another show.  Then they changed it to an outdoor venue at 2:15.  Oh, the angst!  And last of all, as I found out on the morning of the Big Day, they changed it to 2:50.  Which was where my scene partner drew the line and said No, it cannot be.  So we blew it off and were happy with our original one show.  I was relieved.  We'd never rehearsed outdoors,and I never felt we belonged outdoors -- it just isn't that kind of show.  Besides which, the one show we did do went about as well as it possibly could and we were all thrilled, so why mess it up with something that's likely to be a big letdown?  All's well that ends early, I say.   I hugged everybody and told them how great they were (which was absolutely and utterly true) and went off with my mom for lunch and a repeat viewing of the new HP, which we liked even better the second time.  Yay!

It feels as if my last show only just ended, but another one will be happening this Sunday, crazily enough.  It's a different situaion from our usual.  The play is a one-act, just under half an hour long, and the entire run consists of two performances in a single day -- at a small theater festival in downtown SF.  Dozens of other companies will be performing the same day -- tiny little companies like ours, and a couple of great big ones too.  Every possible corner of Yerba Buena Center will have something going on in it.  Very fun!  After our show is over, we're planning to check out some of the others.

Our play is wonderful.  It's by the poet Edna St. Vincent-Millay and is called Aria da Capo.  The first and last scenes have a pair of Commedia dell'Arte characters doing their schtick, very silly and fluffy, but the real heart of the piece is sandwiched between -- a story about two shepherds who build a fateful wall.  That's my scene.  Most of my characters have been goofy guys with no story arc to speak of -- challenging in their own way, but not the kind of thing where you go on a journey and end up somewhere completely different.  This one starts out light but ends up at a really dark place -- the two shepherds literally murder each other at the end.  Sounds nasty, but it's very satisfying to perform.  And it all happens in an amazingly small time frame.  Blink and you miss it.  I hope we come close to doing it justice.

I'll try to get photos of our Pierrot.  He's a real cutie -- and he's actually studied Commedia techniques, which really shows in his performance.  Don't know whose team he bats on, but in any case he's waaaayyyyy too young and energetic for the likes of me.  Nice eye candy, though.  And a nice kid.

Here's me in costume for the current play:
http://sffct.shutterfly.com/3020

And here's me in costume doing something I do NOT do in the play, namely pole dancing:
http://sffct.shutterfly.com/3021

Actors do strange things when cameras are pointed at them.   Betcha didn't know that, didja?

Being in a play can have unexpected perks.  At our opening weekend venue -- which, like all our venues, is a Park and Rec facility -- I found a receptacle inviting contributions of used children's books.  Oh boy oh boy!  I have SO been wanting to do a good purge!  And purge I did.  Three days in a row I lugged a grocery bag full of unloved kid lit to the show and dumped it in the seemingly bottomless maw.  Oooohhhh, purging feels so good!  I love getting rid of stuff but I rarely have the energy to make it happen.  Now a whole corner of my bedroom is showing bits of floor that haven't seen daylight in years.  *swoons with the sheer bliss of it all*

Don't worry that I'll be caught with nothing to read.  I still have lots that I'm not ready to part with just yet.

The show went well too.  One weekend down, one to go.

My latest show opened last night.  It's been so long since the last time I mentioned the thing, most of you have probably forgotten all about it -- reasonably enough.  This is what happens when everything goes smoothly and there really isn't a whole lot to report.  Unlike most of the characters I play, this one isn't supposed to be funny -- I'm a more-or-less-likeable, no-nonsense wild west doctor with a small curmudgeonly streak.  My one laugh line comes right before the end:  "I just have two more babies to deliver."  The most notable thing about my part is that I wear my first ever onstage moustache -- a bushy, ash-blond thing that has to be stuck on with spirit gum.  I also get to daub some gray onto my temples and eyebrows.  If you want to know what I might look like when I'm 75, come and see this show.  Overall, though, the best thing is that there are no major weak links in the cast.  Everybody's solid and everybody's fun to work with.  It should always be like that!

One show down, seven to go.

Yeeps!  It seems a birthday was had by the lovely and brilliant Brigantine -- and I missed it!  Best possible birthday wishes, Brig!  The rest of us are the ones who got the perfect gift, though -- namely, having you on our flists.

Same sex couples can get married in Iowa, of all places, but at 10 AM this morning the California State Supreme Court upheld the ban on gay marriage.  Has the world turned upside down?  I'm ashamed of my state -- and not for the first time.

It's me, back at work after a too-short week of sloth.  Some of that week was spent recovering from a mild but tenacious bug, and every time I coughed I imagined the whole human race pointing at me and screaming, "Swine flu!"  Sort of like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  But if anyone actually did that, it wasn't in my hearing.  Very discreet of them, I must say.  And anyway, the bug can't have been Swine Flu because my extremities have not turned into cloven hoofs.  Also, no fever.

In other news, I have a small part in another play -- the same group that managed to put up with me in Two Gents and All's Well.  This play is set in old west Texas and involves a high-powered poker game and a very elaborate scam.  I'm one of the non-poker-playing scammers, which is good because, first, I don't have a clue how to play poker, and second, the scam is wholly successful and I get to walk off in the end with a big fistful of cash.  Yes, this is one show where the bad guys win.  I love it!  It's grand to be rehearsing again.  I finally got over my disenchantment with acting, and this opportunity popped up just in time.  Besides which, the cast is full of people I'm proud to act with -- not a weak link in the bunch.  So the next six weeks should be lovely.

Meanwhile, I'm back in the tender embrace of my flist.  Bliss!

Inspired by the example of our beloved dock_leaf, I'm about to start another at-home-week-off.  Well, maybe I DID put in for it about three months ago.  But dock_leaf is an inspiring example in any case, so here's to her.  *hugs Popp*

Yes, there's going to be ballet.  But this time there's also going to be the San Francisco Film Festival, which is a very fun thing to do with a week off.  My first event, tomorrow afternoon, is a documentary about the songwriters who did the songs for Mary Poppins -- with Themselves in attendance!  For me, that's a little like seeing the Virgin Mary in that worn bit of carpet at the top of the stairs.  I mean, these are the guys who wrote "Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag!" which is one of my absolute favorite songs and always makes me sniffle.

And of course there's going to be sleeping in.  And rented movies.  And books.  And utter slothfulness, which will actually commence in just two short hours.  So take care of yourselves, dear flist, and don't go anywhere because I want you all to be here still when I get back.

Love to all!

I made my first-ever two-layer cake this weekend.    It's what I've been building up to with the muffins -- making sure the ginger recipe actually tastes good and works the way it's supposed to before trying out the Real Deal on my playreading group.  So that's what I was up to yesterday morning -- grating fresh ginger, trying to keep the molasses in the bowl rather than all over the stove, etc.  Things did not go perfectly but the damage was . . . manageable:  a small burned corner on the cake (can a circular object have a corner?), which had to be surgically removed ( corner-ectomy?) and then covered over with cream cheese icing.  Yeah, the cake was a bit lopsided.  But it tasted just fine and several people had seconds, so there wasn't much left after the dust settled.  So I guess, all in all, it was a success.  Whew!  For a non-cook I've been spending an awful lot of time in the kitchen lately.  But now I can relax and get back to normal non-cooking mode for a few months.

I confess -- I just spent nine days being a lazy slug!  Well, I did see Swan Lake five times with five different casts, which involved a fair amount of waiting in line and leaning against the rail in standing room.  Does that count as exercise?  Other than that my vacation was all books, dvds (Hollywood musicals from the 30s, chiefly) and general slothfulness.

OK, I did a little housecleaning.  And I took a second whack at cooking a moussaka, which came out considerably better than the first effort.  Still a bit too salty, but at least I solved the rubbery eggplant problem.  This is a matter of great significance because it means I now have a fun, yummy, impressive-looking dish in my repertoire -- and will no longer need to be embarrassed and apologetic at potlucks.  Yay!  Potlucks are rough when you're not much good in the kitchen.  Moussaka takes a long time and is labor-intensive, but it's not really difficult and the finished product is worth all the sweat.  Mmmmm!

Continuing the kitchen theme, I'm also getting myself up to speed with regard to ginger cupcakes.  The fruits of my experiments are here at work as we speak, and people seem actually to like them.  See, I can bake something other than pie!  And, dare I say, it, cupcakes make the dreaded return to work a bit sweeter than it might have been.

Vacation time is upon me!  The coming week is the first of this year's two ballet vacations.  SF Ballet is premiering a brand new production of Swan Lake tomorrow night -- big excitement for all of us fanatics -- and I'll spend the week seeing all six casts.  Crazy, I know.  And all that frantic ballet-going will require plenty of rest, ergo the unconventional use of vacation time.  I love this kind of vacation.  No airplanes, no hotels, no reason to run around like a madman, just long, lazy days and dance-filled nights.  The one and only disadvantage is a lengthy separation from my fabulous flist -- no small matter, as you all know.  But I'm strong and will try to bear up.

I adore all of you!