Spring Sprang!!!

A tree blooms in SoHo...

...as a synagogue gets demolished slowly on Rivington.

Caveman Robot -- On the Verge!

It's totally getting to crunch time with the show... people are coming next week! There's a little part of me that feels like it's ten minutes before the party and I'm still in sweatpants making the dip, but I have faith that everything will come together and a good time will be had by all.

My pal Raven Snook, diva and writer extraordinaire, included us in her Theater in the City column in the L Magazine (a publication for which I occasionally write reviews). If you're in NYC, you can find the L on just about every street corner in the bright orange box. If you rely solely on the internet for tidbits about my career, you can read it here.

Voiceover Update

Upon my agent's suggestion, I started work with a new coach and recently recorded a promo reel. Promos are the little interstitial soundbytes before TV shows, like "Next Up on Lifetime, Television for Women" etc.

Have a listen:

Wow. Caveman Robot Just Keeps Getting Better!

So I did some funny makeup and got in front of the camera to record the Mater Vox character for our upcoming show. She is a computer created by Professor Tuttlewell, much in the vein of Synergy from Jem and the Holograms (if you watched girl cartoons in the 80s)... or, if this makes for a better reference, a fusion of a Kitt (the car from Knight Rider) and Max Headroom.

Thanks to the editing genius that is Jason Robert Bell and a lot of Nars black powdered eyeliner, we have the beginnings of Mater Vox.

Intrigued? We open soon, so mark your calendars!!!

Thursdays through Saturdays starting April 6th
At the Brick.

Caveman Robot on TV on the Internet!

Well, if I knew we were gonna be filmed I might have put a little thought into my hair before rehearsal!

Click above for a little taste (in the serious beginner stages) of Caveman Robot the Musical!

Temp: The Lunchtime Report*

time spent doing "actual" work today: a whopping 20 minutes!! (and that was before noon!)
trips to the loo for business: 1
trips to the loo for fun: 0
people I've spoken to: 2 (the usuals, but longer conversations)
blog posts read: only in the 30s (still early)
sudoku puzzles: 2.5
emails sent: 14
hours of IM: just a few so far
auditions: 0
yawns: just the one
naps: zero so far, but considering the pod place.

Apparently, I'll get to stuff some binders later... fingers crossed!!

*listening to this song while you're reading this post will help you understand where we're at here.

Temp

time spent doing "actual" work today: 6 minutes
trips to the loo for business: 2
trips to the loo for fun: 3
people I've spoken to: 2.5 (one was merely a grunt hello)
blog posts read: stopped counting at 243
sudoku puzzles: 2
emails sent: countless
hours of IM: 8
auditions: 1 (for three spots!)
yawns: 5 trillion
naps: zero, surprisingly!

Rocky Mountain Oysters are One Thing...

Frank Bruni's New York Times review of Del Posto, the new love child in the Batali/Bastianich clan, came out today. It was an interesting read overall, but I'm writing here, because this little number caught my eye:

Mr. Batali's love of offal finds expression in pici, a sort of fat Tuscan spaghetti, with coxcombs, chicken livers, duck testicles and, for conventional decadence, black truffles. Less predictably, agnolotti of veal, pancetta, chicken, mortadella and Parmesan are served slightly crunchy and unsauced, to be plucked and eaten with your fingers.

Sorry. Was that duck testicles? And coxcombs?

I'm thinking back to my days of waiting tables. One night at An American Place the chef served up frog legs as a special. People questioned me.

diner: Did you just say "Frog Legs"?
me: Yes, sir.
diner: Like, legs? From a frog? Like, ribbit?
me: Yes. Sir.

Frog. Legs. Big in France. Looks like canned tuna, tastes (surprise!) like chicken. Maybe a little risky for your average diner, but nothing too crazy.

But testicles? Those poor waiters. Mario Balali, you're kind of a bastard for this one. Did it ever cross your mind that the waiters are going to have to field jokes about DUCK BALLS from your customers?! And COXcombs? Ok, I'm taking it to the locker room on this one, but I can smell the annoying Foodie chortles from here, their piggish pink fingers pointing and laughing.


That's just cruel.

Another Reason NOT to Read the News

I'm currently reading John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman. It's an interesting and fairly addictive tale of Mr. Perkins' role in screwing a bunch of underdeveloped countries in Latin America and the Middle East by inflating economic growth projections and saddling them with debt to American contractors (the kind of shit that made Dick Cheney rich and also made him the devil).

I dropped out of the world of Real Estate (long story), so this week I'm doing a little temp work-- it's been over seven years since I sat behind a desk with little to nothing to do, getting paid to... well, write this.

It's a great time to catch up on the news. When I'm busy, I cut to the chase and get my "news" from here, here and here (and a little "business" info here). Call me shallow if you must, but seriously. I'm angry enough at the state of the world without immersing myself in the serious truth everyday.

But I thought I'd come down off of my dreamy candy-colored cloud and catch up on the Jill Carroll story, the US Journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq. Apparently, Al-Jazeera has released a video,without sound, of her covered hair, neck and shoulders in a scarf, weeping for the release of female Iraqi prisoners.

I came across this in a little gem from MSNBC:

A senior State Department official told NBC News that “prisoner reviews are on-going; we do them every couple of days.” A senior Pentagon official said the U.S. holds “less than 5” Iraqi women now.

Don't you think they might see fit to do these "prisoner reviews", oh, I don't know... as they come in?!

And what's still topping the news? An apology to the Cheney family.

Ooh, Pretty Colors!

What are all these pretty colors, you ask?

They speak to my apparently dark soul, trust and empathy-free. That's right! It's yet another internet personality test. This one is fun, all filled with charts and graphs and such.

It tells me that I am open, confident and extroverted, slightly more masculine than feminine. I don't, apparently, trust others very much (save for a small few) and I'm not very empathetic. Oh, and this might come as a surprise, but I prefer asthetics over function. Shocker, huh?

Funny how much we like to label ourselves... According to Meyers-Briggs, I am an ESFP. Figures.

You too can take the test here.

How I Almost Set Fire to a LOT of Money

Fireplaces. Aren't they romantic?

Well, today I almost had an accident with Will's fireplace... you see, he's closing on the apartment tomorrow. That means he hands this guy his keys and the guy hands him a big fat check. Today, in a huge effort to help out, I went down to clean up the last remaining bits. I swept and whtanot, and whatever paper I came across, I just threw in the fireplace.

It's like growing up in New England-- you rake the leaves into a pile, jump in said pile a few times, and then burn it. Ease of disposal.

I thought I'd do that with the last few papers. Only snag was that the flue, unbeknownst to me, was closed.

Next thing I knew, the apartment was flooded with smoke. Thank goodness for high ceilings! I tried to continue cleaning and pretending that nothing was wrong, but the smoke started to billow and a neighbor rang the bell, asking if I smelled smoke.

"Uh, yeah. I just had a little problem with the fireplace. All under control now."

"It happens to all of us," she said. "It actually smells like my Thanksgiving Dinner." (thankfully, Will has moved out before befriending her to the extent that we'd have to spend holidays at her place!)

Thanks to the cylindricality of an old ice cream container that happened to be lying around and the fact that Will has yet to turn off the water in the place, I was able to put the bitch out without a visit from our friendly firefighters.

Not exactly romance...

See This Show!!!

Last night I saw Les Freres Corbusier's Heddatron at here. It is very VERY good, very sharp, clever and pee-in-your-pants funny.

Basically, robots capture this unhappy pregnant Midwestern mom and force her to do Ibsen's Hedda Gabler over and over again. Real "live" robots. It's good stuff. I highly recommend you see it.

You can read my nytheatre.com review here.

*a more "what Ibsen might have intended" version will play at BAM in March.

Ladies, Who's With Me?!!?

I was glancing over Gawker this morning and came across this blurb:

The perfect singles mixer: Girls meet, get wasted, bitch about dating and men. Men show up 2 hours later and are promptly torn to shreds.

The event is a wine tasting. Women arrive at 6pm and "discuss" dating while sipping wine. "Gentlemen" arrive at 8.

I seem to remember every time I end up discussing dating with my girlfriends and there is even the slightest bit of booze involved, somebody ends up crying. I can't imagine it will be a good thing for either party that these gentlemen bear witness. The men just aren't ready for it-- it's not like anything you've ever seen on TV. No, sir, it's not pretty. Ladies, I recommend waterproof mascara.

Sounds like a hot steamy pit of tension and animosity. And it just so happens that I'm free on Friday! Who's with me?

Sign up here.

BLIZZARD!!!!

This was some serious storm!














I think there are cars under there...












Apparently, if your car is very tall, vertical and expensive, it is nearly impervious to a measly snowstorm!

Many Hats, Only One Head

Back when I was a bartender, people used to ask me what I "really" did. After a while, I perfected the answer of "I'm a cliche". You know, like everyone who serves you dinner probably has a very large stack of headshots at their tiny apartment.

So now that we're gearing up to be going full blast on Caveman Robot, I've realized that:

1. scheduling is a bitch
   
2. restaurant work was really great when it was flexible
   
3. I do a lot of different things that might clash more than actually go together...
   

goofy character actor (seen here in Carolyn Raship's Antarctica at the San Francisco Fringe Festival with Maggie Cino).

commercial gal and writer/theater reviewer here and here.

NYC real estate schlepper.

If I'm not dead by May 13th, I'm going to take a big fat vacation. Check back for updates.

Living in Style

Will and I are camping out in his now nearly empty apartment. Everything went to storage the other day. We debated about whether or not to keep one of the couches, just to have someplace comfy to sit in all this vast emptiness. We decided against it, feeling that moving it into storage in a couple of weeks would just defeat the purpose of hiring the movers in the first place.

So where the hell are we sitting?

Let me introduce to you, our inflatable couch! ***Lovely "sidetables" courtesy of Manhattan Mini Storage, and yes, we cracked open a little champagne to celebrate the new arrival.






That's right, we booked us a Zipcar (we got the Eduardo-- if you don't know Zipcar, you should-- it's great!) and headed on out to sweet ass Elizabeth, New Jersey to the shining blue and yellow functional yet fashionable furniture beacon that is IKEA!

Done and DONE!

Will, seen here on the move.

We moved all of his stuff (save for a couple pairs of socks and about fourteen computer (actually, they come virtually free with six months or more at Manhattan Mini Storage-- what a deal!). We have individually learned through too many awful moves that one should never move one's own things. One should pay what some people earn in a whole week to have two men move all of your worldly possessions into a truck that sits illegally parked in front of your building manned by another guy you hardly see (because he's watching the truck). After watching these dudes breeze in and not bat an eyelash at what took us an entire weekend to box up, we realized that is was, indeed, money well spent.

Packing

Jeez, packing really sucks.

We're getting Will's whole life into boxes and heading to Storage. We have tackled the big bookshelf, and it seemed like a lot of work. Now we've got about 20 boxes full of books, but it looks like we've made nary a dent. It's gonna be a long night.

What I Do in My Spare Time

Everyone and my mother keeps asking if I'm doing another show.

The answer, my friends, is a resounding YES!

My next project, if you can believe it, is a *gasp* a musical! Seriously. I don't think I will actually be, um, singing or anything, but I'm excited about it all the same.

I am proud to announce: The Adventures of Caveman Robot! (Apparently, the whole cast and crew will be posting on the blog. In character. One of the many characters I play is a Nazi-obsessed Penguin. You might not recognize my writing. I'll be writing under the guise of a Nazi-obsessed penguin. And god. Yep, playing god too. Must be seen to be believed)

Oh, holy crap is this one gonna be a doozy! It's a big collaboration, with
Piper McKenzie Productions, Jason Robert Bell and a bunch of other really fun people. And it's all slated to go down at The Brick in April and May 2006 (exact dates TBA).

This is going to be one of the biggest projects I've been part of in a while. The Bizarre Science Fantasy Series were loads of fun. We've done so many and are so familiar with each other and the style, that by the time we got around to making The Perfect Girl it seemed nearly efforless. For those of you who didn't have a chance to catch any of them, don't fret. They'll be back. For now, you can peep some great photos (courtesy of Brian Diaz) here.


And yes, I wore a tutu and deelyboppers. Together. But come on, it was only like one of the most genious and inspired moments on stage EVER!

What Will Does in his Spare Time

So while I sit and put apartment ads on craigslist, or practice making soup (I'm getting very good), Young William goes and makes fancy things like this. I keep wondering if I didn't spend too much time rolling around on the floor in college and not enough time on a computer.

But let's remember, when I was in college I wrote papers on a Smith Corona Typewriter.

Basically, he's taken two websites that are crucial to the everyday lives of New Yorkers, Google Maps and Menu Pages and created somewhat of a bastard love child that can let you find out what and where you can eat all on one map. It's one-stop shopping. It's what the computer kids are calling a "mashup". I think it's pretty cool. And, he got something like 7000 more hits than usual on his website from sending it to just ten friends!