Perfectly Horrible

I just saw a horrendous performance of Cabaret last night. It was kind of a mesh of the original, revival, and movie scripts all rolled into one.

The only reason I went at all was because a friend of mine had a student playing the part of Cliff. He was actually decent, although the production was so terrible it would have been hard for Lawrence Olivier to do a good job.

I would probably just write this off as just a bad community theater experience, but this kind of crap is what gives community theater a bad name, and that makes me sad. There are plenty decent community theaters out there. Why didn't this audience patronize those theaters?

The other thing is that this theater is on Staten Island, which is a hop, skip, and a jump from Manhattan. There are plenty of Off-Broadway and even Off-Off-Broadway productions that aren't too expensive and which are really, truly good. And yet the audience there loved it. They were positively overflowing with praise for this no-good, two-bit, piece of 狗屎. I just don't get it.

Back From Vacation

I meant to write this while I was on vacation so I could do this in snippets. Now I have a couple of big long adventures to talk about. And I've got to got to work. Argh.

Just to tide you over, here's a summary: Ray and I drove to Vermont for a wedding, drove back (8 hours each way!), I came home and worked for a couple of days, then I got on a plane to California where I saw my brother graduate from high school. Now I'm back, pooped from jet lag, and I have to do transcription work every day this week, so I hope my fingers don't fall off. Whenever I type for more than 30 hours a week, my fingers start tingling, and that's a bad sign.

I hope that will hold you until I get home this afternoon. Again, assuming my fingers haven't fallen off, I'll go more in detail.

Solidarity, baby

Last night I went to a union meeting. Ray told me to bring a baseball bat. I said, "It's not that bad a part of Philly." He said, "No, I mean, to protect yourself from the union thugs."

"It's not the steelworkers' union, silly. It's just a bunch of artists," I pointed out. He said, "So?" Point taken. Unfortunately I didn't have a baseball bat to bring.

Actually, that was the first real union meeting I've ever been to, and it's about time, since I've belonged to two different unions for four years now. I'm always invited to meetings in Philly with the other union I belong to, but I'm never able to make it, and really I don't do a lot of work with that union, so I don't think I'd have much to contribute. But maybe this time I can actually make a difference. Or maybe I'm being a little naive. Either way, I got roped into one of the subcommittees. At least I have the time to commit to them.

I'm all excited for my big trip to Vermont this weekend. One of my dear friends is getting married, and I suppose I'll have to give a report to y'all when I get back. I won't have too much time to write, though, since I'll be on a plane two days later to sunny CA for my brother's graduation! I'll be clocking in more miles in than the Travelocity gnome. I guess I'd better do my laundry before I leave.

Use the Farm, Cuke

Because I feel so guilty about using those chemicals on the poison ivy, I think it is my duty to urge everyone to join the Organic Rebellion. Seriously, check it out; it's a really hilarious Star Wars parody with grocery store vegetables.

Other pop culture tidbits...I just ordered my Firefly DVD, which has the complete season on it, including some unaired episodes. I know it probably came out a while ago, but I've been busy and not with it. I'm very excited though, since I will now be able to see all episodes in order before Serenity comes out in September. There are actually some really cool fan t-shirts out there. Of course I bought one. I'm such a dork.

Poison Ivy

So I've been spending a fair amount of my free time recently out in the yard trying to get rid of poison ivy. Yes, yes, I've been safe. I've covered my body from head to toe, used disposable latex gloves, hosed myself down before going back into the house, washed my tools, and washed my clothes. I'm not even allergic to the stuff, and I'm more paranoid than Jill, who just has to see it to break out in a rash.

I've decided that poison ivy is my new archenemy. No, not like Poison Ivy was to Batman, because I'm fairly sure that it doesn't plot new ways to bring me down. But I plot new ways to bring it down, so does that make me the bad guy? It's just so prolific in the backyard. I even broke down and got that horrible systemic poison that does terrible things to plants just to get rid of it. Some of the warnings on the label were pretty serious: don't spray this near plants you want alive, don't spray this near anything you might eat at any point. It sounds like these chemicals (triclopyr, to be specific) are almost worse than the poison ivy itself.

I've been trying to use it sparingly, cutting the plants and brushing the poison onto the stump so it can be absorbed into the rest of the plant. But when I figured out that most of the poison ivy was coming from the neighbor's yard behind the fence, I surreptitiously dumped some over the fence. Maybe they'll thank me for it. I doubt it.

As a huge organic gardening activist, I've had to wrestle a lot with the use of chemical herbicides to get rid of this scourge. This has been really tough. But I guess there comes a point in life when you have to make those tough decisions...as I said, I used it sparingly. It was either that or vinegar, which I used last year, and the vinegar killed it off for a little bit, and it came back bigger and stronger (and probably madder) this year.

By the way, if you are allergic to the stuff (and apparently 85% of the population is), you should be as paranoid or even more so than I have been. Learn how to identify it (that's a big one, because Jill still can't identify it, and I think that's one reason she keeps getting it). Wash all your clothes after coming in contact with it. You don't have to use the expensive stuff that comes in tiny bottles and tells you to soak your clothes in it unless it makes you feel better. Dishwashing detergent can get it off your skin as long as you wash with it 10 to 15 minutes after contact, and laundry detergent can get it off your clothes. As long as the detergents you are using cuts grease, you're good to go, since the poison in poison ivy is an oil.

So that's my public service announcement. For those of you on the West Coast where there is no poison ivy, substitute the word "oak" for "ivy" in this post.

Episode XXX: Revenge of the Pith

Hello, all you wild and zany people I call my friends! And welcome, to those of you who are seeing this blog for the first time. Almost a year has passed since my last missive, and I’m sure many of you have wondered what in the world has happened to me since then. Where has SuperMaren’s adventures taken her? Rome? Paris? Taiwan? Or, the most exotic place in all the world: Philadelphia?

Yes, Philadelphia has been at the center of my adventures these days. I made a brief trip to Chicago for a friend’s wedding, and because that was an adventure all by itself, I thought I’d write about it in a separate document. You can download that here and read it at your leisure.

One of the reasons I've been so remiss in relaying my adventures is that I really wasn't comfortable with the "blogger" format (i.e., reading backwards in time, etc.) and when I started working with blogger.com they had just started, and their interface was funny, and I didn't like any of their templates. I tried to use the template from my website, but all that caused was confusion, because I really just don't have the HTML chops to make it look the way I wanted it to look. My cousin Mike tried to help me (thanks Mike!) but I kind of gave up and started writing again through my copy of NetObjects Fusion, which was clunky, but easier than the blogger interface...and besides, it had the templates on there that I liked.

Why am I telling you this? Because in writing this missive, I've come to realize that over the past year I've had so many adventures I can't truly write about them without the blogger format, and now that blogger.com has come up with a better interface and some pretty templates, I feel more comfortable writing this way. So I've written my adventures through compilations of emails I've sent to some of you over the past year and published them at the time when they happened (kind of like rewriting history, I guess), and if you want to read them, you're going to have to browse through the archives. Yes, it's the interactive version. You can pick and choose what you want to read about. Have fun, but remember that each entry is placed in reverse chronological order; that is, the most recent posts are on top.

So feel free to comment, critique, and even rant (although if you rant too much you might as well start your own blog) in the "comments" section down below, and we'll see what happens!