Completely Unnecessary

Dowdy mom-types and aging lesbians flocked to the opera tonight. In truth, they may always be there, but usually they’re interspersed in the crowd and not all in line ahead of me for the bathroom. Tonight, October the 4th, there were more unfortunate haircuts in the Balcony women’s bathroom than have ever existed together in one place. There was also a woman who deemed herself worthy of an entire mumu of paisley - it was oceanic in size.

Fashion and hair victims aside, the production of Turandot I saw tonight was amazing. It’s the 1991 David Hockney design, and it’s incredible. What little Hockney art I’ve managed to come across in my life (read: during my two years on Academic Decathlon - don’t tell) has been met with the blandest form of interest. But apparently his opera sets are stellar! At the very end, there were all these red cutouts that emerged from a scene change that I can’t even figure out how they did it. And as the music swelled, the red lights just kept going up and up. The set looked like it was either going to expode or bleed; it was breathtaking.

But enough about that. My dog is currently attempting to attract my attention by placing her nose on the keyboard and licking my fingers as I type. Perhaps she knows how pretentious I must sound.

Here is a picture of said dog, whom we have rechristened Juniper/Junebug:

She’s adorable, but, as you can see from the photo, her vagina is the size of Delaware. She just got spayed yesterday while she was in heat, so excessive vag is understandable. But she’s obsessed with it. We were told she wasn’t allowed to lick her stitches, but as far as we can ascertain, licking the gaping maw at the base of her tail is fine.

Except she’s doing it all the time. It’s annoying.

As most mothers do these days, I checked the internet for solutions to “excessive licking vagina dog.” Um, maybe she has a UTI. Searching for more solutions, I got rid of the “excessive.”

Let me tell you that my naive “licking vagina dog” search brought up a host of links that aren’t family-friendly enough even for a blog entitled, “Turandot and Dog Gina.” Oh my.

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I have a summer cold, which is, of course, the worst kind of cold to have.

On the plus side, now I’m really glad that I didn’t bother going down to Lollapalooza volunteering this week. As it was about 110 degrees each day, I didn’t much feel like being out in it for 18 hours just for concert tickets I kind of wanted.

On another plus side, my cold has also justified the watching of both Pretty in Pink and now Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I haven’t seen the latter since I was eight, and it’s actually better than I remember; I thought it was horrible at Jenny Lefier’s birthday party. In the last scene, Bill and Ted were revered in the future to some power ballad. Strange.

On the final plus side, as always, my cold has made my voice drop conspicuously. I could sing Pretty in Pink along with Psychedelic Furs with no problem.

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Oh lord Jesus in Heaven, deliver us from atrocious scene partners.

My current affliction, man there’s just no nice way to say it, is stupid as shit. In the scene we’re doing from “Waiting for Godot,” they want to hang themselves, but they don’t have a rope. Gogo says, “What about my belt?” and then they test the strength of [something] to see if it will hold them. Miss Scenepartner says, “Okay, so we’re going to need a rope and a belt.” I stare at her for a moment, hoping that she’s putting me on, and as she stares blankly back, I realize that she doesn’t understand that they’re planning on using Gogo’s belt in place of a rope for the hanging. After I explain this, she still keeps acting like the belt isn’t on her person – indicating its presence somewhere a few feet from her every time she talks about it. My mother said, “Well maybe she’s just never read the play before; it can be difficult.” True, though I don’t think this particular moment is much of a intellectual leap, BUT Miss Scenepartner has actually done this scene before! She’s taking Adv. Scene Study for a second time!!! She also kept trying to bring chairs on stage, though the script clearly says there is only a tree and a mound. She’s also telling me how she hunched when she played Didi, my character – I think the implication was that I should hunch in a similar fashion (may I also mention that the actual statement was, “But I didn’t feel comfortable really hunching, so I just lowered my head.”) And doing things like coming up directly behind me to talk to me, meaning that I either have to completely turn my back on the audience to converse or I have to scamper away to deliver my lines; I chose the latter.

Holy Christ. How is she in this class? Not to mention, and it’s about to get even uglier, I totally saw this one coming. She is a total gamer, similar to those that populated my college, but viciously unwashed, unlike Mac gamers that looked as if they’d had a shower at least recently. I realize that it’s totally wrong to look at someone and make snap judgments, but everything about her appearance said, “I am really weird and have poor social skills.” She lived up to both statements just magnificently today. I was reminded quite forcefully of a moment in a Shakespeare class from college – Some people know the moment of which I speak. Sadly, my roommate does not remember Emily, and thus my recreation of, “And maybe it’s all stormy and Lady Macbeth is like a vampire, like a bat hovering at his window saying, “Let me in! Let me in!” and he doesn’t want to, but he has to because she’s his wife,” was lost on him.

I’m really hoping John dumped Miss Scenepartner on me now so that I won’t have to do a longer scene with her later. I really can’t hack it. I’m not amazing, not expecting an Academy Award in my lifetime, but some people just need to be told that spending $300 on an acting class is just not a good use of their hard-earned money. Anyone judging me right now: I know we’re all supposed to be nice, but in real life you wouldn’t want her either.

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I went and saw Too Much Light last night. Highlights included a girl saying to another audience member “You jackass, this tastes like cat litter,” whilst trying to eat a bowl of “Disney’s Princess” cereal. The best play, however, was “Star Crossed Sweepers,” wherein two of those new little robot vacuums tried to find each other across a crowded stage. I nearly hyperventilated.

I bought a two track cd of the musical “Wicked.” I’ve learned from this disc that buying the entire thing would have been a giant mistake. Yet, I’ve also become strangely obsessed with one of the tracks. I kind of have to fast forward thru part of the track because it makes me want to put my fist through the stereo, but Idina Menzel’s voice just keeps drawing me in. The notes this woman can belt are in the upper ranges of my falsetto. And every single tone is a bell - it’s just stunning. The rest of the bits though sound like some early 90s horrible light rock crapola. Turns out, it’s by the same guy that wrote Pocahontas. Aside from the positive choice of casting Idina instead of Vanessa Williams, not much has changed or improved.

I’m currently slogging thru this Bill Bryson book about the history of the English language in America. It’s funny and has really interesting little factoids, but I think this is seriously the longest I’ve ever spent on a book in my life. I’ve had to renew it from the library twice. But I’m bloody well determined now. Also about 100 pages of the book randomly fell out of it one day. Hope that’s not a sign.

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