Now with special sauce.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Little Gretl...

Okay, so the cutest kid in "The Sound of Music" is always the youngest, Gretl. The girl playing Gretl in our production is absolutely adorable. I can't possibly do her justice in words, but she is so cute you just wanna chop off her sweet little head and use it as a keychain. Big brown eyes with soft and thick black lashes, and just the slightest natural blush to her cheeks. Stick her in a white dress and she's an angel. She is just 5 years old, and already a consummate professional. She knows all her lines, and songs. Just when we thought she couldnt' get any cuter, she has taken to hugging me and a few others every time she sees you. Several hugs later I mentioned that to her and she said "I'm Gretl, I just want to be loved." That is a line Maria says in the show explaining each child to the Captain. That cute bitch is getting into character! She hands me edelweiss at one point in the show, and after working with it for the first time she asked me where I put it. I told her I put it back on the prop table. She said she wanted to check. So we both walked back to make sure I put it where it goes. She's checkin' her props! I know adults who don't check their props. She is incredible. Some of the kids take a while to warm up to, but not her. She is just unbelievable.

Friday, November 24, 2006

fuckin' walkie-talkie phones and Greyhound buses

I rode the Greyhound bus home from upstate last night so that I could spend Thanksgiving with my friends (couldn't make it to see the family). The bus ride was less than pleasant, but I was totally expecting this. At least I had my two roomies from the show to enjoy it all with me. Aside from the coughing of a wee child who refused to cover his mouth the ENTIRE way here, there was the obnoxious ghetto couple in front of us with a few kids (think Whitney and Bobby on even more crack). Upon sitting down they acknowledged that their baby just pooped his pants and it was starting to stink...within just a few seconds there was a baby's ass with poo in our face as they wiped it clean. mmm. They set the tone for the trip, but we were all in relatively good spirits. We even had some fun moments with the little baby when she was turning around to smile at us. At some point the man was suggesting that they play some music instead of trying to run the dvd, which was only playing audio and nothing on the screens. Out of nowhere he asked me if I had any Sarah Mclachlan. What? I do have a lot of her music at home, but don't have it on my ipod (damn me), so I mentioned that...asking if he liked her, to which he replied "Umm, she's okay I guess, she's a bit prudish." This makes little sense, regardless of the question of why he would even bring her up in the first place. So then he listed a few of her songs that have been played a lot on the radio as ones he liked. That was totally random. Finally they fix the dvd running and we can SEE it and sort of hear it...it's Lindsay Lohan in "Just My Luck". Not my choice, but it'll pass the time, and it turns out to be a great choice if you want to watch Ms. Lohan experiencing several misfortunes. We are all struggling to hear the movie for a bit when the people in front of us get another call on their cell phone and answer it (again) in the freakin' walkie talkie mode. I hate that fuckin' walkie-talkie phone bullshit. I don't want to hear your conversation. I don't want to hear the loud and unnecessary BEEP before each of you speak to one another. I don't want to hear you shouting into it. I don't have any idea why anyone uses these in public, let alone on a bus or subway with tons of other people. Why do you want other people to hear your entire conversation? Why are you such a fucking asshole? These always piss me off. I don't care if it doesn't use up your minutes to talk to someone that way...do that at home! So we seeth about it for a while as we learn that it's her brother calling her...and he is wasted...and she finds this incredibly amusing, and wants her man to talk to him...loudly...but, as we are having difficulty hearing the stupid movie, they must be having difficulty hearing her brother, so they turn up the volume and speak louder. Finally one of my traveling companions speaks up...sort of as I do a bit as well, though it was more her. We ask them if they could please open their phone and talk ON it, because it's too loud. It was in that moment that this woman sat straight up and turned to look at these horrible people who asked her something SO inconsiderate, and in the dark I could see that she wanted to punch us. She held her gaze a few seconds longer, in case we didn't get what she was saying, but she turned back and opened her phone and angrily explained something about what just happened...saying something about her need to physically hurt "someone". She soon was off her phone, but she steamed over this for a little while longer and I guess eventually got over it. I must say that I am surprised she didn't try to start something when we were getting off the bus later. I don't know why it surprises me when people behave this way. I don't know why this isn't the first time I sat someplace where ignorant people are completely disturbing everyone's experience as it ruined whatever I was trying to do, and all I could think was "if I say something, they are going to hurt me." It is times like that I wish I were large, and strong, and knew karate. Or something. It is those moments that I stand up, walk over to them and kick them hard in the face with my heel...in my head. So we said something, and we didn't die. Woo hoo. Everyone who speaks on the walkie-talkie feature on those phones should be palmed in the face with their own cell phone, repeatedly, while they are mid conversation, so the person on the other end might hear as well.

And yet, this was definitely not my worst experience on the Greyhound.

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

A Mexican Man and his teeth....

So I was heading out of my house yesterday...VERY early evening hours...trying to get some errands done before the Halloweeners were out and about. I walk down the end of my street and see one of the strangest things. In one of the little driveways on my quiet little street, I see a mexican man passed out flat on his back, in between his legs is his cellphone which appears to have lost it's battery. So I start to worry...is this man drunk? Did this man get mugged? Is he alive? I see his beer gut moving which means that yes, he is still breathing. He doesn't look distressed. He looks like he is having a sweet sleep there on the sidewalk. I am just baffled. This wouldn't stun me so much in midtown, or even where I used to live, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn where I know there were plenty of drunk mexicans, but here it was, like 4:30 or 5pm on a Tuesday Halloween afternoon, and nothing close to this ever happens on my street in Astoria. But the BEST part of this was, as I was still trying to process what might have happened, I noticed something else. This man's dentures from his top row of teeth were lying a few feet from his...feet. The man lost his teeth. Now I definitely thought there had to have been fowl play. But the sweet smile on the sleeping Mexican's face said otherwise. All sorts of images flooded my mind as I imagined him tripping to his sidewalk bed dropping his teeth and phone along the way...or I saw him wobbling sideways up the sidewalk with his drunk mouth agape, no longer able to control the position of his jaw, or the placement of his fake teeth...perhaps that is when they slid out, and he grabbed his phone to tell his friend how drunk he was and passed the fuck out. All I know is that a mexican man and his teeth were on the sidewalk on my street at 5pm on a Tuesday. Luckily he was gone when I returned home a few hours later. His teeth were gone too.