Connectivity

This morning, the City felt good.

I don't mean a pretty girl smiled at me on the subway, or the pavement cracked open into a giant grin, or the heatwave broke. I mean when I stepped out of Port Authority, the sticky air wrapped me up and the beat in my headphones landed just as I hit the bottom stair. The buses lined up along 42nd St. with absolute clarity of purpose. The concrete resonated. The light bent. All the skirts of the women on the sidewalk swayed together, and me in my cut-off jeans finding the holes in the traffic

I have never wanted to be in my city more, and I have never wanted to be myself in my city less. I want to be a silent antenna, a lense, a wanderer.

A Boring Blog

I am now going to decide that it's ok to have a boring blog, and try to force myself to write about the nothing that I do, in hopes it will cause me to do something. Is that roundabout enough?

Currently, I'm sitting in a talkback for Falling for Eve. They've got most of the cast, the casting director, and the artistic director up on stage, and they're all talking about their own agenda, in this case racial casting. The thing is, from up in the control booth I can't hear any of it, but I have to be here until it's over.

I recently got to know a "regular person." (Hard to believe, I know!) But it always amazes me the things "regular people" don't know about my job. For instance, the boredom. There is so little glamor backstage. The highlight of my day was cleaning my apartment, actually. I scrubbed the whole bathroom, mopped the kitchen floor, washed the pots and pans, tidied the apartment generally, and vacuumed the rugs. Tomorrow, I intend to clean out the fridge. Wow.

So there it is: my thoroughly unglamorous life. They say even if you have nothing to say, force yourself to write every day, and eventually something will come out. Be prepared: this may be a whole lotta nothin' for a while.

Three Months Later, Still Cooking

Apparently, there is only one part of my life that I'm passionate enough about to write about: food.

Sidenote: Why is it that us theatrical types love food so much anyway? I know no fewer than 3 theater artists who have pursued professional cookery in some manner or other. Probably would be more if I asked around. I imagine it has something to do with the combination of simplicity and sensuality. My dinner this evening was immensely pleasurable, created inexpensively in the comfort of my own home, and -other than patience and the tiny bit of ingenuity necessary to decide to try it- required no special skill or equipment. What other activity compares?

I don't know what I would call this dish... Italian Chicken maybe? I stewed some chicken thighs (4 for about $2.50!!) in what could pretentiously be called a tomato reduction. Ready? Easiest 1 pan hearty meal ever:

Trim the fat and skin off the chicken thighs. This is the hardest part of the whole endeavor, but still, there's no reason to eat all that glop.

Coarsely chop about 1/4 of a large onion, about 1/2 a green pepper, and 4 cloves of garlic. Saute them in some olive oil for a few minutes, just to get the oil nice and flavorful.

Now the chicken goes in the pan. Season it with oregano, basil, paprika, and a little red pepper, and give it a few minutes on each side to brown.

Once the chicken has browned slightly, pour a can of crushed tomatos over the whole thing, give it a little stir, cover, and reduce the heat. Let it simmer for a good solid hour, or more, checking every once in a while (maybe every 20 min? I always have to force myself to leave these things alone and not constantly poke at them, because I get so excited... but you really don't need to bother it while it cooks.) and turning the chicken so it gets sauce on both sides.

Make some pasta and a salad, and you have a full delicious meal!

Today's Lesson in Cookery

If you buy fresh cilantro, for god's sake, do yourself a favor and buy a lime. Nearly everything you make with cilantro will be just a tiny bit better with lime.

Did I learn this lesson in time? No. Did I still manage to nearly break myself on delicious food? Yes. Did I step away from my dinner ecstatic? Yes. Do I wish I had a lime anyway? Yes.

Seriously, I am still reeling. Well, that might be the wine, but it was a damn good recipe, Oven Fried Sea Scallops with Cilantro White Wine Drizzle, and excessively easy and quick. Here is what I did (for my imaginary reader ;)):

The old red and white Good Housekeeping Cookbook turned me on to this "oven frying" thing. I had never heard of it, but since my broiler is broken, I was game. Plus, who doesn't love breading? You can do this for prepared fish or shellfish. First, lightly bread your scallops. I didn't use any sort of bonding step like milk or egg, just a quick roll in some breadcrumbs. Arrange them in a very well greased pan. Drizzle a little oil over the tops, and pop them in a 500 degree oven for 10 to 15 min. No turning or basting needed.

My local veggie stand has been taunting me lately with fresh cilantro for 50c/bunch, and since it was right by the fish market, I decided to pick some up and figure out what to do with it later. A little Google research gave me this idea, but not the recipe (mostly it just convinced me to add the wine). While the scallops were sizzling away, melted 1T butter in a small sauce pan, and sauteed about 1T each of diced garlic and scallions until they were soft. Then I added a handful of the cilantro, slightly chopped, just to bruise it really, and let the whole thing cook for a few more minutes. (What with all the chopping, the scallops were getting on towards done.) Once the cilantro had wilted a little, I poured in just a splash (enough to cover the bottom of the pan) of white wine, and turned up the heat to cook off the alcohol.

The scallops at 12 min had just started to brown their tops, and I popped them out and spooned the sauce mixture over them. It was fabulous. The only thing I would change was having a fresh lime wedge to squeeze over the whole thing.

Also, oh imaginary reader, If you try this at home, know that I only did 6 scallops, just enough for me, so if you're cooking for more then one, multiply the sauce recipe accordingly.

And this concludes Today's Lesson in Cookery. We now return you to your regularly uneventful blog.

Wow, my blog is dead in infancy.

See above.

I don't think I'm a daily life journal-style blogger. It doesn't seem to work. For one thing I am not motivated, and for another I'm usually too busy. I could review the theater I see, but it's not generally wise to shit where you eat, and also, unless I'm getting paid for it, I don't so much see the point of reviewing for no one's benefit. In short, I need a task, a feat if you will, like the man who bowled in all 50 states, or countless travel blogs. I do have tasks in life, but they're providing remarkably little literary fodder: get health insurance, get healthy, get into school... a veritable treasure trove. Maybe I will think of something....

Some songs are not for singing, some thoughts are not for thinking all the time.

Yep, the title says it all. I've been going through a lot, and I'm just trying not to read too much, not to self-diagnose too much, not to think "cancer," because that is step 30 and at least 2 doctors away, and I am on step 4 maybe. I realized this morning that there is nothing wrong with me today that hasn't been wrong with me for at least two months, and I've been only inconvenienced in that time. I can't let labels scare me into thinking I'm not ok. Get up, go to the gym, go to work, eat dinner, watch a movie, go to sleep. All of this, I can do. For once I'm glad no one reads this blog. I don't want to share this with you or even You, just the void.

This is the Sort of Thing that Keeps Me Up Nights (yep, big geek, and too fond of parentheses to boot).

It's hot out tonight. Sticky. I'm completely exhausted but I can't sleep. Woke up at 7 this morning, went to the gym, then spent 3 hours wandering the West Village/High Line Park with a friend. May post later on the park...

Saw a show today that makes me wonder why we put things on stage in the first place. It was definitely quality, well written, acted, directed, produced. Riveting even. And deeply disturbing. Curdled the pit of my stomach. I wanted to leave the theater, or at least look away, but I couldn't. By the moment of crisis, I was convinced I was about to see someone kill themselves quite bloodily on stage, and I really cared (to the writer's credit, he fooled me well).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some backstory:

"Whore," by Rick Viede, documents an unlikely friendship between sex workers, a novice who is increasingly haunted by a ghastly series of murdered prostitutes, and an expert who descends into kink, self-loathing and a neurotic obsession with saving money. The way Viede plays the audience off the two main characters is brilliant: you don't see the play truly through the eyes of either one (despite a couple of monologues), and only know what they tell each other about themselves. Like the characters, your footing becomes less and less certain as the play moves forward. The urgency and fear becomes more and more heightened, until, like it or hate it (and there were plenty in the audience that seemed to hate it), you're enthralled.

Right after the show, I was still too full of emotion to think about what I had just seen, but now I can't help wondering what the whole point of it was; "Whore" does the thriller genre so well that you forget to ask. Unfortunately, it doesn't end as a thriller like, for example, "Veronica's Room." The crisis resolves ambiguously, offstage somewhere, and both characters rise above their circumstances, also ambiguously, offstage somewhere. Of course, to tell you this completely spoils the entire effect, but the show closes this weekend and no one reads this blog anyway (I dare you, reader, if you're actually out there, to comment!) so I don't feel too bad about it. I don't actually remember very much about the final scene, because I was preoccupied trying to catch my breath and settle my stomach, but as far as I can tell Tim and Sara both just sort of get over it and move on. Flash forward in time, and they each monologue as well-adjusted adults. Really?

So then my question becomes, why tell this story at all? If it's for the sheer morbid novelty (valid in its own right) then the ending betrays the piece. If it's to document the character's personal evolution, then it would be better served by ending with a continuation or resolution of the immediate story, rather than just informing the audience third-person that there was one. If it's public therapy for the writer (who claims to have based it mostly on people he met while backpacking around the world, as well as some autobiographical content), then I certainly don't want to get deeper into his head than I already am, and probably won't look out for him in the future.

I don't know the answer, but it's still bugging me at 2am: why put this piece on stage?

It's also in interesting juxtaposition with another highly visceral piece I saw in Chicago, but that's probably a subject for another blog: intentional, intellectual participation vs. unintentional, emotional participation. Yep, that's a whole nother can of worms.