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.
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.
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.
Alright, now that the trees are off my house–at least for the time being– I can get back to milking my 40th birthday.
This is the list of items Michelle said I must bring with me for my secret birthday outing:
Multi Tool
Yoga Clothes
Paper and Pen
Money
Something to Sleep in
Bath Salts
1 outfit that is not fancy but a step up from yoga clothes
Advil
Toilet Paper
Metro Card
1 can of Tuna
Bus/train pass to get back to New Jersey
An Open Mind.
I had no idea what she was up to and was a little concerned. There were also exact instructions for my arrival: I had to be dressed up and call a specific phone number before being allowed entry to the building.
Sunday morning, my first day off after opening the new show. I’d stayed up late the night before playing Scramble online with my sister in Indiana. CC let me sleep in. When he went to pick up the kids from Sunday school he told me he was going to take them shopping to get them outfitted for their spring sports.
I was sitting at the table having breakfast when they came home. All of a sudden, my sister called out from the bottom of the stairs and then walked up into the living room.
I thought to myself, man, I know I haven’t been home much but I swear she went back to Indiana. She’d come and stayed to help with the kids while we were in the long hours of production. In that moment, I thought that she’d been there all along and I’d forgotten. In reality, she went back home about a month prior.
And then I realized she was one of my birthday presents. She’d flown in just for this weekend. I’m pretty sure I swore in front of my children. I was quite happy about it.
Beth helped me pick out something to wear and then I started assembling my items. I naturally assumed that she also needed to bring the same items and figured they were in her suitcase.
I discovered I’d left my multi tool at work. Likewise, my bank card (production kind of fries your brain). I had to borrow those things from CC.
We were inexplicably out of tuna. Also I had no bath salts. At the time, I had no idea there was a drug by the same name, but no matter- I didn’t have any of that kind either.
In discussing, I discovered that Beth hadn’t brought toilet paper, bath salts, or tuna because she didn’t have room in her suitcase, so we had to stop by the store on the way out to the city.
Finally at the stage door in New York, I called the number which connected me to our door person Christine. She allowed me entry but then went over the list of items with me before I could go any farther. She had a copy of the list. We checked off every item.
Christine: What about a paperclip?
Me: Crap! I totally forgot. It was a late add. It’s not on the original list.
Christine: I have to see if you can still come in.
Christine then paged Michelle over the paging system and informed her, and everyone else, that I had no paperclip.
Permission was granted for me to come in anyway.
We took the subway up to Harlem. We got hit up by some breakdancing kids in the subway car. There are all kinds of subway performers and you tend to get desensitized to the ones you see all the time on the route you take every day. However, this wasn’t my normal train, and I was impressed as hell.
Three guys were breakdancing, one at a time, in the middle of the subway car. It’s not very wide. They did backflips and spins and handsprings without ever once hitting a seat or a commuter. The air from their handsprings moved my hair. They climbed the pole too- one kid held himself out from it completely horizontally for several seconds. I gave them a wad of cash and later hoped it was my ones, and not my twenties by accident.
When we dropped our stuff at Michelle’s I pulled out my items from the list. That’s when I found out the entire list was bullshit. All those subsequent phone calls (“the tuna has to be dolphin safe” and “make sure it’s the kind packed in oil” and “you also need to bring a paperclip”) served only to mess with me.
100% unnecessary
Well done, friends, well done.
Michelle had made us dinner reservations at Red Rooster in Harlem. It’s hard to get into, and well worth it. Here’s a picture of us that our cute actor/waiter who didn’t protest nearly enough when they told him it was my 40th birthday took:
It’s a little dark, but in the one with the flash we all look either insane or satanic. I also like this picture because it’s a good boob shot of Michelle.
We had corn bread with honey butter and tomato jam which was amazing, and I had the Mac & Greens- the best mac & cheese you’ve ever had, with a side of greens. Seriously good mac & cheese, even better than The Eatery’s mac & jack, which is my other favorite. For dessert we split an order of Sweet Potato Donuts and the Warm Semi-Melted Chocolate Tart with Red Velvet Ice Cream.
To die for. Wow.
Then we trekked back to Michelle’s apartment and somehow ended up watching Shrek 4 and enjoying it an awful lot more that is probably reasonable. I’m serious, I totally loved that movie. I ought to get out more.
I did end up using my newly-purchased, non-hallucinagenic bath salts. She has a great bath tub and I don’t have one at home. Well, there’s a bath tub in the kids’ bathroom but, ah, I don’t go in there.
For the next day, something was planned at night but I had a choice of what we could do in the morning/afternoon. My choices were Zumba, Yoga, mani/pedi, or walking the loop in Central Park. I picked Zumba.
But then when we got right down to it in the morning, I picked sleep.
Michelle’s apartment, even though it’s in Manhattan, is very quiet. In no small part because she does not have five children.
We we ended up walking the loop, which I’d never done before. I tend to see the same teeny-tiny bit of Central Park when I do go there, which is not often. The loop is 6.1 miles. It was a beautiful day; perfect weather, and a massive, welcome change from spending all the daylight hours indoors in a dark theater. Somewhere after we passed the halfway point, I felt it: I was exhausted and my hamstrings were angry, angry rocks. And we weren’t even running.
It was very cool though. I got to see the city and things blooming and got to exercise while having conversations. Normally when I work out that’s not an option because I’m too busy trying to breathe, and not pass out.
I told Michelle that she could have strung me along longer with the list of items. She could have had me schlepping tuna and toilet paper through the park for six miles.
It was a whole day of hanging with girls and good conversation, a rare and unique experience for me which I greatly appreciated.
The grand finale of my secret outing was still yet to come.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. What was the deal with the paperclip? That was my sister’s contribution to the list. You can read about it here. If I were making the list for my sister, I would include something relating to Santa.
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 