The Party and the Pregnant Alien

Mike: Have you met Claire?
Me: No.
Mike: Oh, okay.  I'll introduce you.  So Claire, you've met Jessica?
Claire: No.

This was how my evening started at a party at which I didn't really belong.  I'm not good at parties.  I hate crowds, I hate loud noises, I prefer silence to small talk, and I don't watch Orange Is the New Black or whatever Serial is.  Nevertheless, on this particular night, I dragged myself away from my usual Friday night activities of bar hopping and clubbing reading, board games, and watching a movie or Red Wings game to go be social with a bunch of people I didn't know and a few people and a cat I do.

The above exchange happened about 30 seconds after I'd walked in.  It was of course followed by Mike saying, "Oh, okay!" and walking away, leaving Claire and me, neither of whom had any idea who the other was or why we were being (sort of) introduced, to make small talk.  (Her first question? To ask me about my religion.)

As I deflected Claire's hi-how-are-you-tell-me-your-religious-philosophy line of questioning, which she asked with such incessant grinning and nodding that I wanted to stabilize her head for fear she'd tweak her neck, I realized this was the only party I'd ever been to with every light (and I do mean every light -- including a clip-on book light on a side table) in the house lit up (resulting in glaringly bright florescent light filling the rooms), no music, and for some reason everyone hanging out in the foyer and the kitchen.  As 20 people stuffed themselves into the foyer, fighting to be heard over the other conversations happening 2 inches from them, my fiancé and I escaped to the couch in the living room, trying to figure out why no one wanted to use that room (and my fiancé also tried to figure out what in the world he was drinking, and, as I learned later, several people tried to figure out from the foyer why we were being so anti-social as to hang out in the living room, and one person tried to figure out if I was from a foreign country -- but he didn't dare cross the magical line into the living room to find out).   Though the host moved the alcohol to the living room to try to disperse the foyer crowd, apparently stuffing yourself into the foyer was just the hip thing to do.

As the host walked into the living room with the wine, I asked him about the painting above the fireplace, which was of someone I was sure looked extremely familiar but whom I couldn't quite place.  He explained that it was a portrait of him done by a friend.  I wanted to reply that no, that wasn't it.  It didn't look like him.  It looked like somebody, but I couldn't put my finger on who it was.  As I sat staring at it, I felt eyes boring into the back of my head and turned to see a girl I know (let's call her Velma) staring at me.  Velma and I only recently met, but she had clearly taken an instant dislike to me the day of our meeting and had felt the necessity to emphasize that she has a masters degree and I do not and that my job is not cerebral. (The dislike obviously quickly became mutual.)  Velma is a pretty girl who doesn't need much makeup; a pleasant disposition and a smile is all her face would need to light up any party, but instead, she had caked on blue eyeshadow and sparkly blue eyeliner to the point that it was hard to look at her eyes rather than at her makeup.  When we made eye contact, she immediately looked away, walked over towards me, sat a few feet away on the opposite couch, took out her makeup, and starting adding more.  In the middle of a party.  Just sat there staring into her mirror and adding black eyeliner.  As I debated whether to say anything to her or if I would be interrupting her devout concentration on her makeup application, the orange suburban porch lion known as Mr. Tabby brushed up against my legs.  Picking him up and noticing a scratch on his cheek, I found the hostess of the party and asked her about it in one of my favorite exchanges of the evening:

Me: Why does Mr. Tabby have a scratch on his cheek? What happened to him?
Her: What?
Me: Mr. Tabby has a scratch on his cheek.
Her: Oh. (shrug) (staring blankly for a few beats) Do you know what that's about?
Me: .....No.
Her: Oh.  Neither do I.

Wondering if between that and the Claire not-quite-introduction there was some conversation format rule in place at the party where you had to ask a question back that you knew the answer to would be no, I returned to the couch, passing Velma (who broke eye contact the instant it was made) on the way, noticing that she had now added some red rouge to her cheeks.  By this point, some people had gravitated away from the foyer towards the couches in the living room, and the TV was on, showing a hockey game that a group of men on the couch, including my fiancé, was watching.  There was of course a lot of couch coaching, debating various players' skills, and talking to the players on TV… numerous times mispronouncing the players' names.  As the subject of a proposed change to NHL rules next year came up, I chimed in, offering my opinion.  The boisterous chatter came to a sudden halt, and the men all turned to look at me.  I smiled and said, "I like hockey."   "Really?" one of the guys doubtfully questioned.  "Yeah," my fiancé said.  "She's a bigger fan than I am."   There were a couple more beats of unsure silence, and then the man-chatter resumed.  Wanting to clear up a misunderstanding they had about the effect of the proposed rule change, I piped up, "The rule's actually already in effect in the AHL -- it's having exactly the intended effect, and players and coaches love it.  They --"  

"No way," dismissed one of the men.  "I'm sure they don't.  They don't want it.  It's a crappy idea."

Sighing, I spotted Velma across the room.  She was facing a wall mirror, applying bright red lipstick.  She made eye contact in the mirror, quickly averted her eyes, and pulled out some mascara as I realized that watching Velma had ceased to be amusing and was now making me uncomfortable with a twinge of pity.  Returning my attention to the no-girls-allowed name-mangling hockey discussion, I smiled to my fiancé at my inability to get in to the one conversation in the room I actually had something to say about and wanted to be part of (I could hear conversations happening nearby about shoe designers, the merits and drawbacks of A-line dress styles, and how to tell if you have the right size bra…. I prefer the girl-ignoring men).  And that's when my fiancé smiled and turned to the men and reiterated exactly what I had said, word-for-word.  The response?  "Oh, really? They like it? Huh…. Well, I guess it will be fun to watch.".......

After a momentary lull as they considered what to debate next now that that had been settled, one guy popped in with how bad a certain player is whose stats this season are the best of his career, and I excused myself to go chat with a recently arrived friend.  On the way, I passed Velma.  Her lips were now orange, not red, and she had added think black lines under her eyes.

The rest of the night was a mix of short conversations and people-watching.  Velma continued to apply more makeup and at one point cornered a married man against the mirrored wall, arms outstretched, leaning on the wall, alternating her attention between him and her face (which now had little red clown circles on the cheeks and black eyeliner covering the entire eyelids).  She reminded me of the lady at Holly Golightly's party in Breakfast at Tiffany's who is crying at herself in the mirror as mascara streams down her face.  No crying for Velma, but I still felt sad looking at her and wondering why she felt the need to cover her face so much.  After the man-pinning moment, she suddenly mysteriously escaped for a bit to the bedroom where all the bags and coats had been dropped off, emerging looking much the same except for perhaps some more under-eye eyeliner (which now reached nearly to the tops of her cheekbones).

As my fiancé and I gathered up our belongings and said our goodbyes, I suddenly figured out the painting in the living room.  The friend hadn't drawn the host.  He'd drawn the album cover of Piano Man.

It seemed a fitting end to the evening that when we got off the LIRR train at our stop, we realized we'd picked up a hitchhiker from their house caught in the zipper of my laptop bag.  It looked like a giant cockroach, except that it had dragonfly wings and looked like it probably crawled up from Hell.  Though definitely already dead, our repeated attempts to scrape it out of the zipper with a stick were futile.  It seemed to have been glued on.  Eventually we scraped it out, it went flying through the air, and it landed upside down on the train platform.  As we tried to turn it over so we could see what in the world it was, not only wouldn't it turn over, but it seemed to keep jumping and moving. This thing was long dead.  And from a horror movie.  I ran away from the possessed alien bug, thinking about Velma, how simultaneously funny and sad her behavior had been, and wondered about that trip she'd made to the bag room where my once-bugless laptop had been….

In the middle of the night, I woke up to see a giant 2-inch cockroach directly above my head on the ceiling.  In 5 years in our apartment, we have never had a single cockroach.  I have come to the logical conclusion that the cockroach-dragonfly-possessed-alien bug was in fact a hex.  And pregnant.

And that satisfies my party quota for the year.

Sometimes your day just goes up, down, and all around

Unintentionally offended the locations P.A. at work 30 minutes before my day had officially begun (I absentmindedly said only "hi" in response to his "hi how are you."  This was perhaps the most damage I have ever done with a single two-letter word), made up with P.A. and had a friendly do-over (everyone who hasn't had coffee should be allowed a do-over), had a woman ask me if she was correct in her assessment that her hands were not "nice hands" as she shoved her hands in my face for inspection (and then kept pressing when I said I really didn't know what that meant, and then asked to look at my hands for comparison), got yelled at by 1st AD for dancing between takes (what, is this Footloose?), had a man offer me his seat on the crowded train on the way home, had a woman at the grocery store offer to let me go ahead of her since I only had a few things, was offered a last minute TV dance gig with a megastar for tomorrow, had to turn down TV dance gig with megastar because I have three pairs of tan dance heels yet NOT A SINGLE BLACK PAIR and can't get to LaDuca Shoes before my call-time, Sharpied one pair of tan dance heels to see if it was worth calling casting back to say I found a pair, and now have two pairs of tan dance heels and one pair that looks like someone took a Sharpie to it.

Tomorrow is a new day....  One that will begin at the dance shoe store.

The Ambiguous English Language

What happens when straight guys don't know the use of the world "girlfriend" as meaning platonic female friends:

P.A., dropping me and two other girls off at hair and makeup, to the hair and makeup crew: "Harper's girlfriend (pointing at one of the other girls), Harper's girlfriend (pointing at me), Harper's girlfriend (pointing at the third girl)."

 

Crew guy: ".....He gets three girlfriends?" 

 

P.A., as he walks away: "Yeah, he's busy!"

 

Makeup girl, smiling, to crew guy: "Harper's a girl."

 

Crew guy, mouth open, clearly envisioning things: "..........Lucky girl."

Escape

Escape can be a beautiful and wonderful thing.  Escape takes us to a world where life's everyday stresses, large or small, are absent.  Even when life is grand, a world of riches can be found in escape.  As a kid, we escaped into a fort or up a tree with a book. We escaped with sports, with dress-up and make-believe, or by putting on puppet shows, or taking the family video recorder and shooting stories we wrote.  We escaped by throwing ourselves into the musical bubble of piano practice or ballet class or band rehearsal.   

And then we grew up.

In some industries, as in theatre and film, we're fortunate enough to continue to play every day and escape into alternate realities without anyone telling us to grow up and act like an adult.  No matter what's going on in our lives, the lights come up on stage and we're absorbed into a different world with different characters' problems for a few hours.  No break-ups, no health problems, no carpet-beetle infestations eating our closets (not that I have first-hand experience with that last one or anything...).  But for many adults, "escape" becomes a wish, a word uttered when talking about a planned vacation, or the need to move to a different city or different job, rather than something to indulge in daily.  As the responsibilities of adulthood and the burden of reality become greater, I think we too frequently stop giving ourselves permission to play.  And isn't that just when we need escape more than ever?

Today I saw a little girl clinging to her escape, ignoring the reality around her, which seemed to be headed into far rockier terrain than that in which any child should live.  As I settled into my seat on the Long Island Rail Road, I watched the following interaction take place among a father, mother, and two little girls -- one perhaps two, asleep on her mother's lap, and the other around five, awake on her dad's lap, staring out the window.

Wife/Mother, gesticulating histrionically, voice reeking with condescension, disgust, and derision, loud enough for the whole car to hear, to her husband as if chastising a child: "It's your fault.  I'm just going to sit back.  You said the train that's pulling in."

Husband (quietly): "There were two trains pulling in."

Wife (very slowly, the way people speak to old people whom they apparently think are not only deaf but don't speak English either): "Either you're going to take the ownership or you're not going to take the ownership."

Husband: [muffled, clearly trying not to have this fight then and there]

5 seconds of silence

Wife (adding new levels of condescension that I didn't know existed): "Oh, so you're not going to take the ownership?  You don't want to take ownership for your mistakes?"

Husband: [muffled]

15 seconds of silence

Wife: "I'm not giving you credit for this."

….Umm, if they're on the wrong train, get up and get on the right one. If they're on the right train, who cares who "gets credit" for it?

There was some more criticizing, blaming, and condescending that went unanswered, and then she exasperatedly sighed and told the daughter on her lap to wake up as we were pulling out of the station, at least 15 minutes away from our first stop.  Yes, heaven forbid your daughter sleeps on a train and misses you publicly filleting her dad.  Wouldn't want that.

Dad: "She can sleep."

Mom (snapping loudly): "I want her to wake up. This isn't fun. That's reality. She should get used to it."

And so the mom woke her daughter, only to snap at her for being restless and squirmy once awake, which then in turn made the girl irritable, which gave the mother another reason to shoot vitriolic venom at the girls' dad, in front of them, in public, as she consciously chose to bring the sleeping daughter into this hate-filled "reality" of their relationship.

....But then there was the older daughter on the dad's lap, who seemed to know the secret to escaping her mom's reality.  Dressed in a well-loved Elsa "Frozen" costume that appeared to be worn far too frequently for the washing machine to keep up with it, along with a bunny rabbit hat that looked about as shabby as the Velveteen Rabbit must have, she clutched an Elsa cup in one hand, running her thumb back and forth over an engraved snowflake, clutched her dad's shirt in the other, and fixedly stared out the window, mesmerized by the scenery whizzing past, ignoring the reality around her.

Hold on to that world of escape, kid.  Life's about to get rocky.

Crew Magic

The crazy mad dash that ensues when "last looks" is announced right before a take just tickles me pink.  A guy swoops in, sticks his hand down the dress of the girl next to me to adjust her mic, sticks a hand up the dress of the girl next to her to adjust her hem as a woman lathers lotion on her legs, and another guy adjusts my bra strap (pointed out by a hair crew member who can't adjust it herself due to union rules) as another woman decides how many strands of hair should be in front of my shoulder vs. behind my shoulder (for a Steadicam shot lasting around 90 seconds as it swirls around 5 of us dancing, meaning those 50 strands of hair are probably going to stay like that for about the first 10 seconds) as another woman touches up all our lips and powder seemingly simultaneously (I don't know how much touching-up my lips could have actually needed, given that they're still slightly stained red today 12 hours after wrapping, after a shower and applying makeup remover.  I also don't want to know what that lipstick is made out of -- paint?  The makeup ladies were very excited that they got to give me bombshell red lips on a show where they normally have to give all the girls nude lips, so I suspect they might have used their entire stock of that color on me in one day....). Fortunately, the girl who needed her mic adjusted a lot had a keyhole on the front of her dress -- perfect for arms to just reach in and fix things....

My day also included witnessing first-hand why productions normally want people with actual serving experience to play waiters, when a girl portraying a waiter dropped and broke a glass on her tray not once, not twice, but three times... one of the times during a 5-person fight stunt.  Cue super-awesome-AD-dude slipping over to the mortified, almost-in-tears girl between takes to give her a lesson in how to carry a tray (leaving her both laughing and newly skilled). 

I love crews. Crews make the magic happen.

Kick up those red shoes

My Facebook newsfeed the last week has been overrun with posts by people listing their New Year's resolutions for 2015.  I see long numerical lists itemizing what they accomplished in 2014 and more long numerical lists with highly specific goals for the coming year.

I've always found such New Year's lists to be a bit constrictive and limiting because it seems to be implying that at no point for the next 364 days will we be as empowered and full of possibility and choice as we are at the beginning of January, and that's just... well... depressing.  No matter what goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year, I think the year inevitably winds up being different from what we expected it to be.  But that doesn't have to be a bad thing.  If I were to go through the next 12 months bound by my numbered list of resolutions, what if a crazy wonderful opportunity came at me, but I was so bent on accomplishing goal #7 that I missed it?  I prefer to think that my year is fullest when I go at it without any side blinders on and am able to continually reassess my circumstances and set new mini-goals under those circumstances to work towards my ultimate goal -- the ability to make my living by doing what I love and being artistically fulfilled.  And in that respect, my 2014 was pretty amazing.  In a year when I started off in a multi-month job that paid the bills but offered little in the way of artistic satisfaction, I managed to stretch outside my stage management-only streak in my most versatile year in the city yet.   I finally worked as an associate director/choreographer for the first time, booked a few music videos as a dancer (discovering a medium I love, but had never given much thought to, in the process), originated a role in a workshop of a highly original, wonderfully creative new show (as a partying Jersey Girl lipstick lesbian, to boot), danced in two choreography workshops (one as a robot), had to improvise dialogue with a principal on a feature film, PA'd a short film, stood up for the safety of myself and coworkers on multiple projects, started a blog.... and was turned into a Lego.  If I'd made a numerical list of what I was going to accomplish this past year, I wouldn't have known to put most of those things on it.  And all those things were awesome.  And a few involved turning down stage managing an off-Broadway commercial show.  So my New Year's Resolution is to be like that little girl in the photo, kick up my heels, and just keep dancing away in my red shoes.  And to keep setting and accomplishing new resolutions all year long.

Always room for Minnie

Sometimes you wind up taking a ballet class when you weren't expecting to, and the only way to get your hair in a bun is to use a hot pink Minnie-Mouse-on-a-heart hair band.  I call these moments "fashion opportunities," and I am sure that everyone in class was jealous.

Ego Man #1

Principal actor, after doing three very easy, brief takes (during which the words he was saying were actually only paraphrases of the lines in the script), when it was time for the turn around (getting the shot from the opposite side) to shoot his scene partners: "I'm not doing that whole scene again all the way through."

Director: "...Ok, you don't have to."

AD, under his breath: "Well, do you want [the other actor] to be reacting to anything?"

The actor got his way, and for the next two days, any time there was a turn around on a scene of his, the other actors reacted to the AD either narrating the action or reading his lines (while he played with his phone off to the side).  Not once did that principal stay around to help out his scene partners.

I looked up the actor afterwards. Turns out his previous roles are mostly characters identified in the credits by their function description, sometimes with a number in their title (the type of role listed in the credits as "Drunk man #2" or "Office worker #1" or "Frat boy #3") -- respectable under-5 roles, but not anywhere near the career level needed to justify never acting in turn arounds for your scene partners (if there is a career level to justify always doing that to your scene partners).

And with behavior like that, I imagine he has a long career ahead of him of numerically job-named characters.  Hopefully that includes at least one job where he has to react to an AD reading his scene partner's lines while he stares at a PA's hand as a focal point.