Punctuation Saves Lives

I remembered this image when I was searching for a title to start writing today’s post. I was going to call it:

Jesus Christ. What Happened?

and then I realized I could also call it:

Jesus Christ (what happened).

And then I giggled uncontrollably because I’m doing production on a show that has Jesus in it and it’s the reason I’ve been posting so sparsely and sporadically since December. I would like to say that everyone here at work in the theater turned around and asked me what I was laughing at but the truth is they’re all so used to me being on auto-giggle by now that no one paid any attention and even if they had, they wouldn’t laugh anyway.

We’re at that point.

One of my favorite places in New York is the Westerly Market. It’s a small natural foods grocery store that I love mostly because it has tasty snacks and my favorite chocolate. They have healthy things too, including a juice bar.

We had a strangely-timed lunch break today because we’re shooting B-roll (video to be used for publicity) so I went to Westerly and hit the juice bar. I got a shot of wheatgrass while I was waiting for my drink.

I dig wheatgrass. Sue me. And yes it does, in fact, taste like grass. I’m pretty sure when I was an infant I spent a significant portion of my crawling months eating grass. It’s just that good to me.

The drink I got today is called a Maca Firecracker. It’s coconut, cinnamon, agave, cayenne, and maca. It’s divine. Heavy on the cayenne, easy on the agave, as per my request.

It was perfect.

I paid at the juice bar ($12.50. No, I’m not making that up) and then grabbed my tasty snacks and went to the front counter to pay for them. You have to do that separately because making drinks that involve pressing wheatgrass and hacking open coconuts is quite time-consuming, and they can’t mess around with ringing up your tasty snacks back there at the juice bar.

At the front counter, I pay for my tasty snacks and then watch, like it’s in slow motion: My sleeve catching my Maca Firecracker and knocking it off the counter. The cup flipping upside down. Me screaming “nooooo!” in a very Wookieish voice. Half of my nectar of the gods rushing out of the broken lid.

Here’s the thing about a Maca Firecracker. When it’s spilled on the floor, it looks like vomit. I’ve never had so much personal space anywhere in New York City. I’m considering carrying around rubber vomit with me just to get everyone out of my hula hoop.

Oh, so back to the Jesus Christ (what happened) thing. I’m in production, blah blah blah. The hours are long, yadda yadda yadda. Also, there a lot of screens. It looks like this:

By the end of the first week of tech rehearsals I had the worst case of screen-related eye strain I’ve ever had (even worse than the case I got when I stayed up all night and wrote this post over the summer). When we finally reached the day off I had to lay around with my eyes shut. I didn’t even make it to yoga.

I had to read analogue books for a whole week (I read Sara Zarr’s How To Save A Life and Ree Drummond (aka The Pioneer Woman)’s Black Heels To Tractor Wheels)

Even now, ten days later, I can feel my retinas singeing. It’s still bad enough that I’m not even going to attempt to fix the alignment of these pictures.

Speaking of wheatgrass (and we were, earlier, I swear), there’s a guy I work with who is friends with a guy who started a wheatgrass company out of his apartment back in the day . The mice kept getting into and eating the wheatgrass. And the more they got into it, the harder they were to exterminate.

I feel like the wheatgrass people could make a motto out of that somehow.

I guess none of that really had anything to do with punctuation.

Oh Yes I’m Hot

The town I grew up in got cable when I was eight years old. It consisted of three channels: WTBS-Atlanta, WGN-Chicago, and USA. Plus you got a free month’s trial of HBO and I remember straining to listen through the family room door while my father watched Bo Derek in Ten, which was deemed inappropriate for my sister and I.

I still haven’t seen that movie. But I remember a bunch of the dialogue.

MTV hit the air in 1981 but we didn’t get that in my town. On Friday nights, if we could stay up late, we could catch some videos on USA’s Night Flight or WTBS’s Night Tracks.

We had the same three channels up until my parents got divorced and I moved to the “city” with my mom and my sister.

And then, holy crap: there was MTV.

Between the summer we moved and the summer my grandma died from cancer, she came to visit us at our new apartment. That was my eighth grade year, highlights of which included seven Jennifers in my class (none of whom would speak to me), my locker number (666), getting mono, and wearing out the grooves on Duran Duran’s Rio and Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil. My sister and I introduced Grandma to MTV, and her favorite video, inexplicably, was Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher.

This was the first thing to ever indicate to me that old people could be cool. It’s one of the reasons I’m staring down the barrel of 40 with anticipation rather than trepidation.

CC has a theory that you can’t be depressed while listening to Van Halen (and by “Van Halen” I mean everything up to and including MCMLXXXIV and not anything after that). I’ve tested this theory numerous times over the years and it appears to be true. Also, I have found that you cannot drive the speed limit while listening to Van Halen, and it is compulsory to ~~scream~~ sing along.

Grandma loved Hot For Teacher’s itty-bitty Van Halens, the ridiculous four-man choreography performed by a band containing only one member who could actually dance, and even the stripping teachers, but most of all she loved Waldo. Waldo in all his nervous, nerdy glory.

I love Waldo too. I feel like Waldo inside probably more often than not.

Grandma just howled every time Hot For Teacher came on- which at the time was approximately every 22 minutes.

I guess I have an extra reason to not be depressed while listening to Van Halen.

Every time I’m driving by myself, listening to Van Halen, blowing my voice out and shaving twenty minutes off my commute, I think of my grandma.

Love Letters and Cheap Applause Lines- a guest post by CC

JM’s note: This was totally unsolicited but CC asked if he could do a guest post, and then he actually wrote it and sent it to me, and I may have cried a little bit when I read it and had to pretend I had just jabbed a mascara wand in my eye. It wasn’t intended as a Valentine’s Day post (I mostly hate that holiday) but it seemed appropriate that I post it today, to call out to that grimy, blackened, decaying romantic that lives in all of us. I don’t deserve his praise but what the hell, I’m leaving it in there.

Love Letters and Cheap Applause Lines by CC

Those of you that are lucky enough to know my wife JM in the actual world know- and those that are readers of this blog get a glimpse of what a lovely and exceptional woman she is. One of her favorite words is “badass” and believe me, she is. I thank god for every day she shares my life.

Don’t worry, this is not an obituary, she is fine. We are just both working two jobs at the moment, and she is too exhausted at the end of the day to write, so I am hijacking her site to give you all a story and an update.

We have all watched a comic, or a celebrity on television and heard them say something like “so I just got married” or “we just had our first baby” “I stopped drinking”…and the audience applauds and “WOOOO’s” obligatorily and the world dims a little for the effort. It is a cheap applause line, and I always find it a bit tacky. But I digress….

Hey, look. A puppy:

Last week was busy. Not in itself unusual around here, but at one point JM realized that there was a document that she needed THAT DAY (JM’s note: umm, it was my union card), so I found it, and after my production meetings were done I headed uptown to deliver it to her. I slipped into the theater, and sat in the back as the crew worked on loading in the show. I know many of them-it is a small community- but they were busy and I was content to sit in back, watch and wait for the end of the call to chat and catch up. JM was onstage wearing her favorite new black work boots and a white hard hat while they all moved the heavy main speaker arrays into position to rig and fly. This is the glamorous part of theater, folks.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was the department head on a tour of Aida for the Walt Disney Company, and AK, one of my dearest friends and at the time my assistant, was leaving the tour for greater glory. I needed to replace him quickly. In our world, for contractual reasons positions cannot go unfilled for long and everyone I knew and didn’t hate was working. I was at a loss and started asking for resumes online from people in the industry. Someone passed me JM’s name. We spoke on the phone, and she joined the tour in Kansas City. She did a terrific job learning the gig and –just as importantly- fitting in with the company.

Several months passed and we found ourselves taking the show into Los Angeles, the land of all things Disney Corporate, and for the show, A VERY BIG DEAL.

Slamming a million bucks worth of sound gear into and out of trucks week after week is hard work in the best of circumstances, but sometimes the theater gods conspire and scheme, and when they do, little good comes of it. We had a rough week.

The set didn’t fit through the loading doors.

The band didn’t fit in the pit.

Disney scheduled press events around and during the load in.

The choreographer arrived for a “brush up rehearsal” and spent the week making our lives……interesting.

We adapted, we persevered, and we made it to the opening night.

My last image of JM before that show started was of her in a black polo shirt and jeans and Doc Martens with her hair in a ponytail, holding a screw gun, ready to replace yet another piece of equipment that had chosen that moment to commit suicide, while I walked to the front of house to start the show.

What I came back to after the show was breathtaking. The jeans, polo and ponytail were gone and in their place were a midnight blue dress, heels and hair perfectly done. It was stunning. It was magic. It was like something out of a Disney movie. I was done for. The theater gods laughed.

All these years.

All these years, dozens of cities, thousands of shows, 10 or so new productions, 4 apartments, a couple lawsuits, five kids, a wedding, a house, 2 puppies, more midnight grocery runs than I can count, a few more shows. More than a little good has come of it.

The word “soul mate” is deadened by overuse. But damn is it true here. JM is my best friend and I am a better man for her love. The theater gods are still laughing, but I think it is because they are happy for us.

Now for the cheap applause lines:

#1? Started University

#2? Honor Roll

#3? Honor Roll

#4? Honor Roll

#5? Straight A’s

That’s right, folks, we got ourselves a house full of freaking geniuses. And puppies.