we reach!

finally.
back home in sweet trini.
plenty posts sooncome...
walk good.

evidence

i maintained for years that nothing happens in american football- every time i sat through that shit with grims, it was just a bunch of dudes in tights, only about half of whom should be wearing tights in the 1st damn place, doing very little for 3hours. they occasionally run, occasionally jump on each other in some sort of unattractive homoerotic pigpile, but mostly stand around, scratching their asses. they do this for 3hours+change, for a game that only has 4 15minute quarters. even with breaks, that's @ least an hour lost to their waste. every time.
finally, i read in the may2004 playboy: "broadcast time of the 2004 [sponsor] sugar bowl telecast: 3hours, 43minutes. live game action when the ball was actually in play: 16minutes, 28seconds."
nuff said.
walk good.

woe (next day edit)

carnival monday and not only am i still (living) in dc, in winter, i've found myself somewhat incapacitated and working tonight, for free. i suppose i should just be glad it's a reading where we'll sit the whole time.
walk good.
[edit: not woeful, per se, but weird, to leave home and return to find a "for sale" sign planted in one's front yard by somebody else- not that we didn't know we're selling our house, but without even a warning, coming home to the sign was a little freaky...]

technically too tired to blog

not just tired; lame. literally. but how could i not deliver the perfect follow-up to poking cadavers...
i been on my ass with my feet in the air for over 13hours now. lame.
thursday morning @ roughly 10.50am, a 6'-long 2x6 accidentally fell (i suppose that's obvious; it swung downward from about 6feet) onto the bridge of my foot, narrow edge 1st, just to make sure it hurt.
grims thought it was broken pretty immediately, but i wasn't trying to go to the hospital for them to charge my uninsured ass plenty $ to wait around, grumpy and in pain, to tell me what i already knew- it's hurt because a 2x6 fell on it and it's swollen like overripe fruit; rest, ice, elevation- right?
so i fought the hospital hard, but when 6hours later the golf ball that'd appeared on my foot instantly upon impact still hadn't dissipated, and i still couldn't walk on it (not that i expected to; i mean, a 2x6 fell on it) or really move my toes enough to call it moving them, i had to give in and go. i was almost convinced it was broken (the closest i came to being fully convinced was shortly thereafter when medical dude poked around, announced that shit was moving that shouldn't be so i'd be x-rayed because he was pretty sure my foot was broken).
but we'd been packing frantically so i had to drag my broko-ass upstairs and navigate bathing 1st. i mean, i couldn't let strangers touch me in that condition (because it's too much to ask to fuck oneself up hospital-grade after finishing the chores and bathing, to avoid adding embarrassment to physical pain)- my mother would've been appalled. i won't go into details- sufficeth to say that bathing was difficult+dangerous- but i must commend grims for helping. he's amazing.
we finally left for the emergency room, choosing gw instead of washington hospital center or howard, both of which we've waited ridiculous lengths of time @ in the past (er @ er). good choice, even if the 1st dude to speak to me while getting me into the wheelchair didn't look old enough to work- we've never made it home from the er on the same night we went in, before. i think it took about 2hours, total, but, of course, it wasn't broken. i have a contusion and crutches and have to stay off it completely for @ least 24hours. it was my good foot, too...
but more importantly, i found out (while in radiology, which felt a little like waking up in the 28days later hospital, waiting all alone in a huge, echoey-empty green-lit room in a wheelchair) what happens when patients are too big for hospital machines:
i'm sitting in the radiology foyer, which is technically a hallway way too big to be a hallway- it looks like it had cubicles along the wall i was facing that'd been ripped out, leaving a big hole not fashioned into a purposeful room that just makes the hallway much more than a hallway in spite of simply being the area between 2 opposing double doors, with the radiology lab door behind me. anyway, i'm sitting in my wheelchair alone in this creepy green empty room and this chick walks by me looking all disturbed. she gets around the corner where i can't see, but stops close enough that i hear her approach the dude in another lab down the perpendicular hallway with, "um. i have a big patient...a patient who's really big. really really big. and i was wondering...um...what's the weight limit on these machines?"
dude says it's not actually about weight, it's more about girth, since dude has to fit in the machine. she says he's about something-i-can't-catch-inches around, and dude comes back, "including elbows?"; "uh...no." pause, pause, pause, "so. what should i do?"
radiology dude sticks his head out the door behind me and speaks out of turn from where i can't see, scaring the shit outta me and interrupting my maco* to tell me he'll be out to get me in a minute. i tune back in in time for the disgruntled sigh, the "sorry, and footsteps announcing her imminent return. so as she comes back past me, i ask, "will he have to go to the zoo?"
because that's what i heard happens if someone can't fit in hospital machines, and i wasn't about to pass up the chance to ask for professional confirmation. she slows her stride, looks confused, then intrigued, then thoughtful, then smiles and says, "i'm not sure yet, but maybe that's the answer..." as she picks up pace toward the other double doors back to white light and people (i assume; it's tough to remember, in radiology).
but that's not enough. so when radiology dude finally comes to get me after an interminable wait for the zombies, i tell him what i heard, and ask what really happens...
he said the zoo's an option they use occasionally (x-ray gurney's only rated for about 300lbs; grims said the mri was tight around the shoulders and he's nowhere near obese) but it's resource+financially costly so can never be the 1st choice, immediate decision, and it takes days to work through to the zoo option so what can happen instead is that the morbidly obese person dies 1st from lack of treatment...
talk about fucking incentive...
walk good.
*trini dictionary on sidebar.
ps: in addition to being so helpful, grims hooked us up with exciting posts including his upcoming tattoo (yay british ink; check portfolio if you missed it the other day) and setanta's jose mourinho muppet parody...

facebook is stalking me!

many facebook proponents have tried to convince me of its goodness+usefulness with the argument that it offers more privacy+control than myspace (not that i care about the latter, either) so you can keep in touch while being choosy. still not interested in joining, as a privacy freak, i was willing to believe that facebook was superior because of this. thus it's very disturbing to find in my inbox (especially since they shouldn't have my email address since i'm not a fucking member!) this email from facebook, that i was tagged in somebody else's facebook photo album:
Hi "sweet trini",
Sara tagged a photo of you in the album "Cast Party for WSC's
Contemporary Play Repertory @1360 D".
To see the photo, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=655816351&k=S5D2Z2U3WYTOYBA1TC6Z
Everyone can join Facebook. To register, go to:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=655816351&k=S5D2Z2U3WYTOYBA1TC6Z&r
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
when i clicked this link to see the photo, the top of the page contained links that claim to go to my "profile" and "other photos" of which there are none. so if i didn't give them my email address and all she posted was a photo, how the hell is facebook emailing me? i feel a little dirty...
walk good.
ps: sooncome, adventures in british ink- grims and that crazyfool are about to get inked by this dude who appears to be a master- plus, walking distance from home, very affordable, amazing portfolio, ridiculously encouraging consultation...love this dude!

they say you can never go home again...

…but then i wouldn’t be myself if i believed that “they” know better. thus far i’ve done and continue to do much that “they” claimed wasn’t feasible…
so we purging+packing+cleaning and trying to sell house+contents and hoping timing works out to get rid of the furniture as we get the house under contract and might still live comfortable until we sign the papers, then fly while the realtor handles the rest. i already had to come to terms with missing carnival, and making this timing work will be another wuk. but say wha’. we coming.
boxes already stacking in the basement, things to give away leaving as fast as we can push them out the door, things to sell selling. the book rate no longer exists and we dread the crating of our art; for a control freak like me the thought of the journey that our books and paintings and music will make without me is the closest to a heart attack i’ve come. plus, the fact that they have to start going away when i need them keeping me company, providing the soundtrack and setting for this next life-change brings me to the verge of tears daily, it seems. i only just got my beautiful books out of years-long confinement in boxes in dark corners of basements and under stairs, thrilled to see+use them again.
of course, the questions never stop: why you going? when you leaving? what you going to do? where you going to live? how you sending your shit?
@ this point i just want the dc house on the market, thus closer to “under contract” and know we making some $ to put down on the trini one; how we know how much house we’ll afford in trini when we don’t know how much we can convince them to pay us for the one we in now…and yes, we want our own production company, but how hard that might be to get off the ground somewhere i haven’t lived in a decade and he never lived is a whole ‘nother question.
but still. say wha’. we coming.
at least, that’s what i tell myself as i read for the millionth time that successful trini writers don’t actually live in trini and hope that akashic won’t be the 1st+last publisher to ever pick up my work (trinidad noir, august, so excited!) and that the inspiration doesn’t shrivel as soon as i’m finally somewhere i want to be…
to all doubts+fears i can only answer: say wha’. we coming…
walk good.
ps: we didn't make top10 in the pom tea competition, but if you like the ads you can still vote for us, for "most original", "best comedy" or "best pom spirit"...

our pom tea commercial (edited next morning)

so the other day this crazy fool asked me to be in his commercial. there's a competition to come up with a 90seconds-or-less spot for pom tea, to potentially win airtime and some $. he had an idea, i had time (+talent, we hope) and a bass-player friend who'd hopefully hook up an original score- luckily, the crucial musician said yes.
in the end, we made not just 1, but 2, good commercials, if i do say so myself (individually scored by bass-magician, neither longer than a minute)- i'd blog it and link up the videos here, but figure it makes more sense for the editor/idea/cameraman to blog it, including storyboards and other creative-process details, so go see...
if either makes the shortlist of 10 finalists, once the finalists are announced it's viewer voting time, so we hope you like the ad(s) too...
you can vote for us (if we make the list) from monday january21-february15...
walk good.
[edit: sorry i wasn't clearer about links to the actual videos- the last link in this post is to a post containing the storyboards and 2commercials, embedded- if you don't care about storyboards+process and just want to see the ads, scroll directly to the bottom of that post for our youtube videos...]

poking cadavers

poor grims had no idea what he was in for when i said we should "check out the lab"...
we went to collect the birth control pills mom sent up (so much cheaper in trini; over the counter) with a friend who happens to be a medical student. when she handed me my pills and black cake, then asked if i wanted to see the lab, this science geek was thrilled. grims came along, unsure why i was so excited until he asked her what she was working on in said lab, and the answer came back, "cadavers".
right up my alley. we went into a massive room full of maybe 50 cadavers and stink. she says the student teams each work on the same body for the whole school year, so these've been in use since october-ish. they started last semester by dissecting the foot+leg.
the room smelled of dead+antiseptic, thick enough to stain the inside of one's nostrils. they spray the cadavers and reclose bodybags each time (conscientious students, anyway) to keep them hydrated so they can keep using them until june, and there are catchment trays under each gurney(?) for body fluid runoff- grossest body fluids ever, collecting+sitting in metal trays, which means the bodybags don't really help with the stink. i can't imagine how they get used to it, but i stuck around for as long as grims let me. i got gloves so i could poke around and basically stick my hands into everything, like the shredded leg and neck (current project). she said it'd been her idea to cut the breasts off to access the thoracic cavity after watching others try to saw through all that fatty tissue, and showed us another team's fat guy for an idea of how much work that could be (the fat guy's runoff+stink were also in proportion to his size).
it was so cool- her dead lady still has hair+face and pink nailpolish and everything. i saw+touched everything from lymph nodes to inside the fat guy's testicles- oddly, when a body's been dead+preserved it looks+feels so much more like cooked turkey than the seemingly raw, fresh, red meat i saw @ the bodies exhibit and in my imagination, and testes, which seem so soft when not preparing to pop are the part (of those i poked, anyway) that stiffen most post-mortem...
the only truly disturbing moment for me was when she opened up the fat guy's bodybag, turned to her other friend and said, "i think the dental students stole the head..."- her class hasn't started heads yet and apparently fat guy had his head on for the entirety of that day's neck dissection, but it's not unusual for dental students to bag that particular part for their needs- i don't know fat guy's medical team, but i'd be pissed if somebody else ran off with my dead head before i got to poke around in the brain, especially after months of hefting dude's dead weight to turn+cut him, and smelling his stench...
anyway, the experience was too cool to not mention, and i figured everybody's tired of hearing about my show (closing weekend as i type; i'll miss the house of fuck yeah! as one audience member called it).
next up, once the project's primary posts the storyboards themselves, storyboards and finished product for our pom tea commercials...
walk good.

house of burlesque?

i know i said i was walking prepared for anything the rest of the run, but going into the last days of 2007 we planned to see some burlesque; i didn't count on being burlesque.
the weekend's shows began with receiving freshly laundered costumes in the dressing room- i was there plenty early, well before half-hour for a speed-through. i put on blue eyeliner (soon to become "runny mascara"), jeans, socks, sneakers, sweater and jacket, got soaked and entered scene1, and shortly realised that i'd forgotten the bra- it hadn't been in my pile of clean costume, and having not worn one since high school, i didn't think of it in its absence.
in the "livingroom" i debated my few options: i don't exit to the dressing rooms once i enter and didn't know where the bra was or have time to look anyway (i'm mostly on); the light-fade that ends my sex-scene goes with me removing my shirt, so it was a choice between baring my boobs or having the lights potentially not go out for awhile, requiring major improvisation, on a night when i knew for a fact that we had teens in the audience for a show that doesn't post a nudity notice next to the live-firearm/adult-content/language warning. i figured i'd lose the shirt like i'm blocked and use the added "danger" to the following scene's advantage (i don't get redressed for awhile).
the one thing i didn't count on was, after rolling off "anthony" in the blackout and stepping away from my clothing in time for lights-up, the realisation that what i'm usually doing while facing the audience in those 1st solo moments is rebuckling the bra i wasn't wearing. so there was a second of deer/headlights, but then i did what i'd planned as he entered, groped for my clothes, used it to our advantage, and we were cool. the audience didn't know they got a special show, but i'm letting my boobs take credit for the fact that our next show was sold out and we had to turn 25 away @ the door. and i found out that the light cue actually goes off my dropping my pants, which i lose 1st...
old years night, me+stiles("marty") did our "seduction of lady anne" from richard3 (which we love) for the new years benefit and it went over so well people came up in the lobby saying they had to come see us in the house of yes (which just extended, yay)...me+grims did the reception then a friend's party, and for people who usually stay in for old years, had quite a time, even came back to the house for champagne+smoke+movies to round out the morning. i napped for about an hour and a half on the couch, and woke to a lazy new years day off with grims.
plus, we saw a very fun+funny cabaret-style burlesque show @ palace of wonders- a good time was had by all, especially some youth named adam experiencing burlesque for the 1st time- the ladies loved adam and adam loved them, ecstatically. i'm trying to catch @ least 1 more show there before we fly.
our realtor's seeing the house of yes this weekend; we'll see how soon after closing (now january19) i can make my way to sweet trini...
walk good.

house of i'll give you something to cry about

going into this weekend's shows fresh off various nightmares of ingeniously disastrous failure, i realise i never mentioned last weekend.
we giggled when a finial of the 4-poster-bed in the "guestroom" broke off mid-scene as "anthony" was about to divulge his (lie about a) suspected brain tumor, but the following night i learned what happens when you leave 1-too-many drawers open in a dresser on a rake while frantically packing your shit (lingerie en l'air) to escape the horrible nightmare- the dresser fell over as i was packing the suitcase, luckily, considering the size of said "guestroom", not onto either myself or "anthony". we picked it and its drawers up the way anybody would, keeping the dialogue going, and it was mostly fine except for the brief break of "omygod that dresser's falling...oh, ok..." but i still feel like i fucked up on the candle- they switch on/off and look really good, flicker and everything- but i feel like when it fell (off the falling dresser) i shoulda turned it off like it "went out"- grims points out that then the lights woulda made no sense because the room should go black without it (power outage)- but i don't know...
i shoulda known shit would be weird when on thursday night we had an audience member dressed (in drag, "melissa") as jackie-o (unbloodied).
i thought it'd bother me least since my character hasn't built an entire reality around that pink chanel suit, and was feeling bad for "jackie" and "marty" until shortly after curtain when i was shown to the "guestroom" (where i spend most of my time) to find the pink chanel suit staring directly @ me in a "room" too small to escape it. i spent half the play thinking "i don't know anything i don't know anything" and trying not to see it before i was told the secret. it was awful.
i walking prepared for anything, the rest of this run...
walk good.

the house of no

during our 1st preview (thus 1st audience) an actor was recorking the glass decanter and the bottle's neck+body separated- she was holding the neck and the stopper, and the bottom just fell out, spilling the "liquor" all over the "living room". she had to invent lines and others had to grab towels and clean up during the scene- i spend a chunk of the show barefoot and there was broken glass cleverly disguised by shiny slippery puddles onstage.
then there was the no-warning last-minute addition of dried macaroni to a costume piece that's been shedding onstage every night since. i found out (literally) the hard way when i walked barefoot (painfully) on hard-as-rocks macaroni elbows onstage during the show, then and almost every night since.
but the house of yes opening last week went pretty well, up until the final scene. we got mostly through our no-intermission 90minute play, major emotional breakdowns peppered with (hopefully) comic timing and shitload of actor business, i entered for the confrontation+climax, started the fight which my "fiance" tried to diffuse with nursery rhyme as scripted, he said his "hey diddle diddle" and asked about the involvement of silverware in said rhyme, and then nobody entered to bring the conversation back to the issues @ hand or get the other character still onstage off so me+"fiance" could have it out.
i'm told the whole thing, from unexpected pause to "fiance" covering with more nursery rhyming to overhearing another actor in the wings debate entering unscripted so things'd get rolling to trying to determine what lines i could deliver with an unexpected character onstage while not ruining the climax, took 20-25seconds. not that long in the larger scheme of things, but onstage with shit fucked up, it was the longest half-minute of my life, not counting the last of waiting for medical test results.
it was opening night; we knew we had press in the house. we hemmed+hawed and repeated ourselves, saying a lot of nothing so we wouldn't give shit away too early (while i tried to maintain my character's upset rather than my own) until the anticipated entrance happened and things could proceed as planned. terrifying in the moment, but after, all i could think was that reviews would say i went up on lines, not realising it wasn't me since "fiance" spoke and i didn't answer immediately- vanity, i know. but i knew the show'd been good and was devastated that it might look like i fucked it up for everybody. i mean, i was the one who suggested this show to the company a year ago in the 1st place, if that gives any idea of my personal investment in this production...i almost went to the lobby for the reception in tears.
anyway, i've only seen 2reviews- 1 very positive, 1 that clearly didn't get it (dislikes the premise of the script to start with so production+performances are irrelevant)- neither mentioned the hiccup, so i'm over it, except as a theatre-horror-story. and keeping with that theme, here i share 2 best theatre-horrors witnessed by theatre professionals i trust enough to repeat:
westside story- a friend was in the audience when the gun accidentally went off in the final scene while pointed @ maria (who doesn't get shot in the show)- he said he watched the actor realise (horrified) what happened and consciously make the choice to 'keep it real' and drop dead, script+finale be damned!
and wizard of oz stupidly decided to use a live dog where possible although they hadn't in rehearsal, and blocked dorothy to enter with toto via the audience centre-aisle; dorothy and her new live toto were having some trouble and she had to yank+drag him by the leash for the 1st part of her entrance. she got to the edge of the stage wondering why the audience was reacting strangely then realised she'd yanked the leash too vigourously and broken toto's neck, and had just dragged a dead dog behind her the last few feet up the aisle...top of the show...and if i'm not getting old stories mixed up, later in the run with the fake dog the flying monkeys accidentally dropped(+killed?) toto...plus, this production gets extra horror points for fucking up a creature feature- the mental scarring of those students...
makes me feel better about the house of yes- even with good review, that half-minute-memory still scares the shit outta me. as if i needed any more to be scared about (see previously-linked-post) @ curtain each night...
walk good.

so good i missed hitchcock's denoument

catching up on defective yeti (sidebar); his top model spoof is too good to not share.
last night was the house of yes opening night. when i can think i'll type.
walk good.

publication and other noteworthies...

i know it's been forever, but we all know how life is. i'll keep the catching up as brief as i can and stick to the important points:
1. the upcoming (august2008) akashic collection trinidad noir will contain one of my stories. i'm not important enough that my name's on the cover, but i'm "and others" and so fucking excited! i can't wait to read the rest of it, too...
2. grims had surgery to deal with a herniated/fragmented/extruded disc. it was a long, tough summer, followed by a scary, but seemingly simple, fix. knock wood/bone/whatever. but as good as dr.levine was to him, i take issue with sitting for hours in the waiting room for a loved one having spinal surgery and being forced to deal with er on the damn tv- that shit is ridiculous- 2hours back to back of people dying horrible bloody deaths? so wrong.
3. chronologically #2, a respite for grims; just pre-surgery we went to a family wedding in bim, which was excellent, and i would love to say more about but i'm waiting for grims to post some damn pictures already. but it was a good time- me+grims, my parents, the gremlin, her girl ariam all stayed @ this guesthouse with some very cool friends of the bride-our-cousin. we limed, went to the beach, cruised on a catamaran, wined+dined+danced @ the wedding, went to bars and out dancing, partied with old friends+family all together again...wonderful. grims had a great time swimming with turtles and bobbing in the ocean (good for him, too) just chilling out so i was happy for him.
4. we also had a thanksgiving gremlin- when she heard dionne was coming by us, she got jealous and started looking @ ticket prices, which were crazy low. next thing we knew she was on a plane to us. grims was well enough to cook (provided i got the turkey into the cart, into the car, into the house, into the fridge, onto the counter, into the oven, back out+in+out again, and into and out of the fridge a couple more times before it was light enough for him to manage on his own) and he outdid himself. and the 2rounds of turkey tetrazini after were also most excellent. the only shitty thing about thanksgiving was waking up thursday morning (and every one after for a week) with a terrible and worsening pain in the jaw. it's good now, but it made thanksgiving and rehearsals awful- i always forget there's nothing like pain in the teeth.
5. again with the poor chronology- rehearsals for the house of yes commenced for me as soon as we got back from bim. they actually started the day we left the country and i was to return to dc off-book, so the other thing i did in b'dos was learn lines. on the beach and the catamaran and shit. i did good, though. i came back off-book. i don't think i've really talked about this show yet and tonight's our last preview, opening night tomorrow. i love this play, and it's amazing to have a chance to be in it before i leave dc. it's one of my 2 long-time-favourite american plays; i actually saw the company i'm working with (also the children's hour, equus, edward3) do my other favourite (tiny alice) years ago. the house of yes is the kind of show i'll never do in trini because part of its plot hinges on a certain fascination with the kennedy assassination, which just isn't that important @ home. not that i care about it either; i think it's a very well-written script (she calls it a "suburban jacobean play"). i assistant directed and stage managed a college production of it, and being in it now as my last dc gig is cool. we have a brilliant director+cast and it's such good work. the only shitty part of the gig is that my character gets treated like crap by everybody else for most of the play, enters dripping wet from a hurricane with smudged mascara (line comments on it) that gets cleaned up during the make-up phase of the quick-change for 'thanksgiving dinner' which entails not only getting made up in the dark backstage, but putting on evening dress+heels and letting dreadlocks down to hang dripping wet down my back for the entire scene. like equus i have to be waxed and otherwise prepared to be seen in bra+panties, and bawl, and i have a scene that involves frantically packing+unpacking a suitcase in the (relative)dark on my knees while maintaining dialogue with specific lines that revolve around what's happening with the suitcase, thus requiring the suitcase prepacking and onstage unpacking into the drawers then frantic repacking then frantic re-repacking then latching for exit on a specific line to be perfect every time. i'm tired just thinking about the scene now, so i'm guessing this one won't get easier. but i love the piece.
6. dj-friend-of-bajan-cousin-bride who was lovely company all wedding-week spun a righteous set on brap.fm while i was getting ready for rehearsal/photocall last wednesday and is on again this wednesday 10pm-midnight/gmt (5-7pm/dc)- big up evilkeg+giraffedog.net (who doesn't love "technological innovation without aggravation"?)!
i'm all typed out, and pretty much caught up with promise of photo-linkage to come and more regular blogging as things settle into performing, selling the house, packing+preparing to move...talk soon.
walk good.

litterbug

i was just infuriated by one and think i recall it also occurring in the only other example i can call to memory with any degree of accuracy- the dude in the red bull commercial pelted his empty can over his shoulder, presumably onto the ground, since we'd watched him approach from whence he threw it and had seen no garbage receptor along the way.
do they litter in other commercials?
maddening.
walk good.

under construction

the house is getting fixed up so we can get the fuck outta here, so my space is contractor+dust-filled and nonfunctional right now and blogging's tough. but i had to post this so i can find it again- before i do, though, the disclaimer: i had no prior knowledge of lolcatz- alyfromcali directed me to what i'm about to link (not lolcatz) and as hysterical as this is, i have no interest in lolcatz, with or without cheeseburgers. poor spelling+grammar frustrate me, and cats have a good grip of both.
but lolsecretz is some funny shit, and its sidebar explains.
walk good.

vt phone home

completely unconnected to the title of this post, i recently discovered i'm on imdb! i did a tiny role (looking a mess, too) in something still in post-production, but unexpectedly found it and myself on imdb; i'm tickled...
so i disappeared again just as i was getting back into regular posting because we drove to vermont last week (12hours each way) which required a shitload of prep (clearing of desk before deadlines that would pass whilst away) and, apparently, a shitload of recovery, since shit came up while i was gone that needed immediate attention upon return, but we'd brought back shit also needing immediate attention.
it was grims' last trip home to sort/repurpose/eliminate belongings before we leave the country for good but since he's hurt i went to halve his carrying (not at his insistence). then, midnight-ish, after the 12hour return-drive, i realised i now had to clean off shit that had sat in an outdoor storage unit for 3years so it could enter our house. i'm seriously asthmatic- no question it all had to get cleaned before it could come in my house because it's life or death for me. we'd done the full 12hour drive on sunday so grims could teach monday morning, so unless we brought it all back to leave on a dc gallery for bandits, it had to be done before i could go in for the night. by the time i finished that, come to find out about the deadline-related shit that'd come up, i got straight to work without sleep.
but i think i'm caught up, except for the last of the cleanup (dishes with 3years of gack still in the sink; multiple washings necessary) and think i can say that the trip was as painless as one could possible hope for, under the circumstances- the circumstances being 24hours driving (injured) in 4days for forced clearing of remnants of a previous life while meeting parent's new significant other and making decisions about who/what to see/do when visiting the place originally called "home" for the last time in some ways, and cold (my cross)- purge led efficiently to closure without recrimination (mostly), significant other seemed good, days were pleasantly, surprisingly warm, even if nights were abysmal.
the drive wasn't nearly as bad as i anticipated, not even for the injured grims. noticed a bunch of signs along the pa turnpike(?) using a new font, or at least a different version/spacing of the previous font- like the difference between times and arial to my eye. while reading sometimes i notice the font or letter spacing change and continue in the new font/spacing, and it drives me bananas but nobody else seems to notice. the signage made me ask grims if he ever sees that and he says no- but i can't be the only one catching this in books (spacing-change in newspapers too, sometimes)...
i learned that springfield (nj, grims?) is both dangerous and redundant- as we crossed into it, the 1st green roadsign with white letters simply listed the name of and mileage to each of the 5(?) area hospitals, apparently all within a 25mile(?) radius; the 1st building neon i noticed was for a local newspaper, proclaiming itself daily+sunday. also, quite stinky- proclaimed not by neon, but by my nose.
speaking of which, skunks are apparently much smaller than i thought, but do look exactly like pepe le peu. very endearing. but more importantly, the reason marijuana is often described as "skunky" is that diminished skunk stink smells like fresh green- i mean, i guess i kind of figured as much, but didn't think it smelled exactly like it- dude, exactly. it woulda been nice to see a live one though.
speaking of which, i thought it was a sign the trip was lost when i lost a half-spliff in the deck the 1st morning, nearly ruining the whole spliff+tea-on-the-gallery-overlooking-the-lake-on-miraculously-warm-vermont-morning but i found (and smoked) it 2days later, so even that turned out better than i thought.
all that, plus coming back 15pyrex+lids, several excellent toys, an etch-a-sketch, many books and other random treasures richer and maple syrup+sweetie stocked makes me think maybe still not seeing a live skunk (or moose) is liveable-with (the latter less so). and i did meet a cat with 5toes on each front paw. that counts for something, right?
and last "catch-up" (vt unconnected) for the record, salvia divinorum tastes like shoes. very old shoes. the effect can be briefly enlightening, and thankfully the shoe-taste+smell fade quick+clean, but beware the 1st mouthful...
walk good.
ps: american tv+movies use bells or similar sounds to signal the end of college classes- i never had bells in college here- did anybody else?

does that make me crazy?

just caught a piece of a commercial for some drug called "veramyst" for seasonal and yearlong allergy symptoms that actually needed to run on-screen (and i quote):
"the way veramyst works is not entirely understood".
ages 2 and up.

walk good.
ps: to clarify, i saw the commercial again, and it says "ages 12 and up" but the website, where i went to confirm that i'd heard+read right before blogging, says ages 2 and up...

monkey see, monkey do (edit 3.45pm)

one thing i notice the mentally unstable have in common is in not believing they're crazy. so does the near-constant worry that i'm losing my mind mean i can rest assured i'm safe?
walk good.
ps: speaking of monkeysee, while revising my noir yesterday i invented (according to spellcheck and the oxford dictionary's omission of it) a word. i went with "pruny" instead of pruney" because the former seemed to have a visual onomatopoeia...am i right?

dracular myopia

now, i know i'm not the target audience since grims is watching american football. but even for those who like this thing on tv, i'm sure the response to advertising that claims "only in l.a. could a vampire be the good guy" is: "only in your sadly limited imagination".
walk good.