One and Done Sunday #19

Hey, Happy Fathers Day!

Welcome to One and Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

First, your picture, from the what-the-hell-happened-to-me category:

How many things can you find wrong here?

1) mini van

2) with paving stones

3) and flowers; flowers that are still alive in spite of me owning them for an entire hour already.

The only two things in this picture I ever could have predicted are the zombie stickers in the window and the packing blanket underneath everything.

You know, minivans get a bad rap. Lots of people are all like, “Oh, I’ll never own a minivan. NEVER!” Whatever. I get it, stigma schmigma, your life is over when you get a minivan, you get stupider when you buy one, they’re so unsexy for God’s sake.

You know what else they are? They’re really goddamn convenient. We whipped that puppy from an 8-passengers-can-sit-comfortably-and-smack-each-other-while-listening-to-their-iPods vehicle to one ready to receive stone, cement and dirt in like 45 seconds. Bam, bam, bam.

But I don’t have a whole lot of my identity wrapped up in the car I drive every day like it seems most of America does.

Because no matter who curses my minivan for either going the speed limit in my neighborhood or cutting them off on the Turnpike, or what names they think as they judge me with a van full of kids making the school rounds, or if people automatically (and hilariously, knowing both my kids’ soccer skills and my own cupcake making track record) categorize me as a cupcake-making-soccer-mom, there are two things they can’t change:

– I dig the minivan

-I also have a ’66 Mustang convertible.

Here are your links.

A hilarious article from down under about mums: Mother Bashing- It’s All the Rage! (thanks Team Oyenyi for the link!)

You can’t hate a baby elephant playing in the ocean. I dare you to look at these pictures and try not to smile. Karyn at Kloppenmum Because Play is the Work of Childhood.

One very specific use for a dead cat.

I don’t drink, so this guy could actually be full of crap, but he has been great to me and writes this wine blog and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Since there are a lot of moms here, and since a lot of moms drink wine, you should check out JVB Uncorked. If you’re a mom who prefers to drink bourbon, you should crack open another bottle of Baker’s and click his link.

Elizabeth Reep is a kickass stepmom who created Camp C.O.P.E. for children of deployed, injured, or fallen US service members. I started reading this article in my doctor’s office and had to stop and get tissues because I was openly weeping, and I had to finish reading it at home. I wish I was half the stepmom she is.

Oh, and one extra, because this is really frickin’ cool. 32,000-Year-Old Plant Reborn From Ancient Fruit Found In Siberian Ice.

Happy Sunday, and do something awesome for your dad today.

Black Thumb.

In an entirely unwarranted fit of optimism, I planted some stuff this year.

You must know that I have killed every plant I’ve ever tried to own. My mom is a master gardner.

I’m not.

But hey, some of my best friends have green thumbs, I can respect that.

We don’t have much flat ground at our house to begin with, and even less that gets any sunlight. I had my eye on a space behind the shed, thinking that since we lost so many trees there would be enough sunlight to plant pumpkins there– because how cool would that be? Having our own pumpkins to carve at Halloween and all. Then all the leaves on the remaining trees came in, blocked out the sun, and it was not to be.

So I picked another spot, and I planted, from seed: peas, arugula, spinach, and mesclun lettuce. I transplanted hostas in order to make this happen. The hostas survived, surprising me, CC and themselves. I believed that in our terraced “back yard” the particular terrace that I had cleared and planted in was inaccessible to the ~~few~~ millions of deer in our neighborhood.

Turns out this was an erroneous belief.

The deer loved my peas, spinach, and mesclun lettuce. They had no love for the arugula. They also refuse to eat dandelions, which are currently the only thing truly thriving in my garden. I wish I ate dandelions, or at least could find someone to sell them to, cause you pay like twenty bucks in New York for a frickin’ dandelion salad. Because, you know, they’re like, microgreens.

I don’t eat dandelion anything because my sister made me suck the milk out of a dandelion stem one time while our mother was picking strawberries and not properly supervising us. I can’t remember if this was before or after I tried to kill her by slipping the paperclip into her milk (My sister’s milk, not my mother’s. My mother doesn’t drink milk. And I would never attempt physical harm against the Bringer of Strawberries.)

From the dietary preferences of the deer, I draw the conclusion that deer are nothing but sugar-sucking whores who won’t touch anything that is bitter (it was baby spinach).

I watched a deer the other night while I was walking Casey. Casey was doing her I-really-have-to-go-but-I-can’t-until-I-find-the-exact-right-place-because-I-am-a-girl-dog-and-also-neurotic dance and did not notice the deer standing ten feet from her. Hell, I could smell the deer from there. She’d been eating my roses, then went across the street to have some of their roses, and then continued on with her moveable feast to each house in order, sampling all the flowers.

Then she tired of that and crossed back into my yard. The steep rake and the rocky incline didn’t bother her at all. It was at this moment that I discovered the extent to which my property is the main drag that the deer take between the cemetery and the neighborhood behind us. It is both their freeway and their promenade. And, apparently, their personal snack basket.

Sometimes they also drop a baby back there.

I wish we’d gotten more pictures of this guy before it stumbled back off to its hiding place. This little one was maybe two days old, probably less. Very shaky. It was about Casey’s size, just with longer legs. Pretty damn adorable. . . for a sugar-sucking whore.

Thanks for eating my peas, Bambi.

One and Tony Sunday

It’s that time again. That night when most of America tuning in to CBS at 8pm EST is expecting to find. . . Blue Bloods (I had to go look that up, and I’m totally guessing purely based on next week’s schedule) and instead finds the full frontal song-and-dance assault of the Tony Awards.

If this is you, resist the impulse to go channel surfing for the latest public display of ineptitude of reality TV. Stay and watch. I promise, there will be no ineptitude. There are some ridiculously talented people on Broadway- like, sick! The Tony Awards are when they get to play to their largest audience ever. That’s you!

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting again, and he’s actually funny. Last year’s Best Musical winner Book of Mormon is performing, just because they’re awesome. And, at 8:45pm you’ll see Tony-Award-nominee and total badass Josh Young sing the song Jesus Christ Superstar live, with the whole damn Tony-award nominated cast of the eponymous show– if you stay tuned in, which you totally should.

If I ran the Tonys, I would give out some extra awards and they would all go to my show. Here’s my list.

-Hardest-Working, Least-Jaded, Full-Out-Every-Show, Never-Phone-It-In Ensemble.

This production of Jesus Christ Superstar originated at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The majority of this cast is making their Broadway debut. There is nothing green about their performances; their debut-ness (for lack of a better word) shows in their enthusiasm, the way they’re always smiling when they’re at work, and in the way the get maybe a little star struck when they meet people like Ben Vereen, Whoopie Goldberg, and Matthew Broderick. That’s refreshing.

They’re also mostly Canadians. This is truly the hardest working ensemble I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. Their energy is contagious and it’s like that every single show, eight times a week. I am also told they do a pretty great Broadway yell, which happens every Saturday night at the five minute call when they line up at the dressing room windows that face 52nd street and scream at Jersey Boys across the street.

-Best At Making Believers Out Of Agnostics in a Single Song

This would go to Paul Nolan, aka Jesus, for his performance of Gethsemane every night. He sings the crap out of that song. It also has my favorite guitar riff off all time in it, right after the line “I will drink this cup of poison”.

And? He looks totally hot in the loin cloth on the cross.

Yes, I said that.

-Best Band. PERIOD.

There really, really ought to be a Tony for best band. Our guitar player alone is worth the price of admission. And the other guitar player. And the reed player. And the drummer and the bassist and the organ and the french horns and. . . yeah, all of them. It’s a band full of rock stars and they blow me away eight times a week.

-Set Piece That Makes the Rest Of The Crew Happy They’re Not Carpenters

This would go to the diving board, or as I like to call it, the Nordic Track. It’s the ramp that does some pretty complicated automation moves and Jesus rides it during Superstar and it comes out over the first few rows. It’s a pain in the ass. The carpenters do a lot to it every day to make it work right.

-Best Understudy

Jeremy Kushnier, who understudies Judas, Jesus and Pontius Pilate. He may do Mary too, I’m not sure. He’s amazing and he totally owns whatever part he’s thrown into at the last minute. I loves him.

-Hell Yeah I Can Do Judas With No Rehearsal

To Nick Cartell, one of our swings who joined the company in New York. Early in previews when Josh Young was out, Jeremy Kushnier was badly injured in the matinee and couldn’t perform the evening show. Nick had never had even so much as a blocking rehearsal. He went on and knocked it the hell out of the park.

-Best Preshow Workout Partner

Matt Stokes. One of our swings, he warms up next to the sound board every day and has inspired me to work out a little bit while I’m waiting to check mics. We’re thinking of making a workout video and calling it something like “Five Feet of Floor Space: the 20-minute New York Workout”.

Your links this week are internal–did you find them? Here’s your picture:

Oh, that’s the ramp/diving board/nordic track. I found this photo uncredited online but it must be the work of the incredibly talented Joan Marcus. She’s THE Broadway show photographer and does excellent work. Check out her website here.

CC and I were invited to three Tony parties, but this year we’re heading home to the heathens. We’re doing an at-home Tony watching party with just us, complete with high calorie snacks and lots of shouting back at the TV. Think of it as a Superbowl Party, with jazz hands.

Happy Sunday.