Today I learned that my dear friend Gracie's wedding got written up in Offbeat Brides. This is cooler than getting in the Times! My bar for wedding awesomeness is officially set.

Offbeat Bride | Grace & Mike's hat-tastic church wedding, with a pirate cruise reception

(I am the creator of the mentioned sign-in book)


In similar news of awesomeness, my sister is in a show that just got panned by the New Yorker. Panned by the New Yorker! That's some high-profile panning right there. I couldn't be more impressed if they'd actually liked the show.
Caligula Maximus at La Mama

Chronicle of a Thanksgiving

-----

[Jenny points at a large piece of driftwood on the beach - it is a good six feet tall]

Jenny - What's that?
Mom & Dad - [simultaneous] Pizza box.

-----

[we are staying in an A-frame house. Jenny got the loft, which has five twin beds in a row]

Jenny - How come you all get bedrooms, while I have to sleep in the Tenement Museum?
Me - It's a hard knock life.

-----

[Jenny is studying abroad in Bulgaria in the spring]

Me - Are you taking Bulgarian?
Jenny - You think SUNY New Paltz offers Bulgarian? No one offers Bulgarian. Even Harvard doesn't offer Bulgarian.
Me - I bet they do.
Jenny - I bet they don't.
Me - Five dollars says Harvard offers Bulgarian.
Jenny - You're on.

[ten minutes later, from the other room]

Jenny - Son of a... There's a goddamn Bulgarian dance team!

-----

Jenny - I accidentally said one of our strange family expressions to a stranger yesterday.
Us - Uh oh.
Jenny - I told a lady in the restroom that she's a better man than I, Gunga Din. She left muttering to herself "Gunga Din?" This was at the therapist's office, by the way.

-----

Mom - I see, said the hammer.

----

Jenny - I told JRB about the time you played Mama Rose when you were 8. He said that he was writing a himself note to call Arthur Laurents tomorrow and tell him.
Me - That's awesome! I have to tell Ben.
Jenny - He'll just be pissed that Arthur Laurents knows who you are and not him.
Daddy - Not if Arthur Laurents sues you for performing Gypsy without the rights...

-----

And a re-post of the classic, from Thanksgiving 2006:

Mom: The Salvation Army is coming at noon to take the sofas.
Me: What?
Mom: The sofas in the living room. They smell like the dog, it's time to
get rid of them. So the Salvation Army's going to come get them.
Me: But... we have 14 people coming for Thanksgiving tomorrow...
Mom: Right. Can't have them sitting on smelly couches.
Me: So instead they'll stand?
Mom: We have folding chairs.

- one hour later -

Salvation Army guy: The big sofa is too stained, sorry.
Me: Mom, why don't you give them twenty bucks and ask them to carry the
sofa outside so the city can come take it?
Mom: I don't want a sofa on the front lawn when we have people coming.

- two hours later -

Me: Mom, what are you doing with the sofa?
Mom: I changed my mind.
Me: We'll never get it through the door ourselves.
Mom: Your father will be home in an hour.

- one hour later -

Dad: #$^$%&@#$%@!

- one hour later -

Dad: Wait, tilt it towards me... no tilt the top... now pull the bottom
left towards you...
Me: We're gonna die.

(Jenny: Keep it down, I'm sleeping.
Mom: It's four in the afternoon!
Me: We're gonna die.)

- one hour later -

Dad: Maybe if we saw the legs off...

- one hour later -

Buttons: ::finally notices we're taking his sofa::
Buttons: ::freaks out::
Buttons: ::goes back to sleep::

- finally -

Mom: We did it! The couch is gone!
::everyone does the "Friends" couch pile-on::

- later -

Neighbor: Do you guys know there's a couch on your lawn?

Nerdy neckwear

This fine lady is knitting me a Doctor Who scarf! Okay, well, technically I suppose she is knitting my sister a Doctor Who scarf, to use in an act. My sister is the Mama Rose of Alpha Psi Ecdysia, the SUNY New Paltz burlesque troupe (yes.) and in her nascent fandom, she has latched on to the idea of developing a Doctor Who act. Which would be understood by approximately nine people in all of New Paltz, but, whatever. Maybe they can do a tour to Old Paltz - that's probably somewhere in England, right?

Anyway, Jess is knitting us a 4th Doctor scarf (season 12, for those who care about such things), which Jenny will use in an act, and which I will then get to wear.

I have decided that scarves are truly the way to go in terms of under-the-radar nerdiness displays. I already have a Gryffindor scarf (or at any rate, a red and yellow scarf that I declared a Gryffindor scarf long before "official" such things existed). And my sister has, yes, a RENT scarf. And when Madame Nostradamus is done, we will have a Doctor Who scarf. That is three nerdy-reference scarves. Three equals a collection.* So now we must accumulate other nerdy-reference scarves.

Problem is... we can't think of any other fictional characters with distinctive neck wear. Help?


*other things I have three of, and therefore constitute collections:

• times I have performed in public on instruments I do not know how to play
• recordings of great works of American literature that should not have been made into operas
• friends named Ben who play the ukulele

Well, I've written a play.

It doesn't have a title yet, and it is still at least two full rewrites away from performable. But Draft 1.5 is done enough that I made Columbia's deadline last night, by the skin of my teeth (I love you, 24-hour emergency window at the big post office by Penn Station!), and it should be a real second draft by my next deadline on the 9th.


Things I Learned About My Writing While Working On This Play:

1. I cannot write in a vacuum. This was by far the biggest project I've ever undertaken that did not involve either collaboration or feedback from a workshop. It is MUCH harder alone. And also much less fun.
   Conclusion: don't write in a vacuum. Things improved exponentially when I finally showed my sister a draft, and I should have involved her earlier.
   
   
2. I am incapable of not writing jokes.
   Conclusion: Lampshading it by having consciously joke-making characters is working so far...
   
   
3. I am very good at ending scenes. I am okay at starting scenes. I am rubbish at the middle parts.
   Conclusion: You know what has lots and lots of short scenes? Television.
   
   
4. All of my characters sound vaguely British.
   Conclusion: I watch too much British television.
   
   
5. My plots have a tendency towards the "slow reveal of a complicated backstory" style because I get too into world-building.
   Conclusion: Uhh... Work on that?
   Alternative: Become a tv show-runner.
   
   
6. I am excellent at banter (see #2) and casual or casual-seeming conversation. And pretty good at pacing big reveals. I am very self-conscious at Talking About Feelings, and generally make someone leaven it with jokes (see #2) because, well, I don't like Talking About Feelings.
   Conclusion: Get used to it.
   Alternative: Sitcoms.
   Second alternative: Musicals. The feelings are the lyricist's problem.
   
   
7. It is much, much easier to write two-person scenes than any-other-number-of-person scenes.
   
   
8. I tend to forget that in non-musical plays, you can have things like protagonists with vague motivations (no need for an "I want"!) and you don't need "finales" or any of that jazz. But that does mean you need to replace the 11 o'clock number with an 11 o'clock Scene of Awesomeness That Keeps People Awake, which is harder without dancing and trumpets. And sadly, you have to take care of the emotional stuff yourself, instead of letting it be the lyricist's problem. (see #6)
   Conclusion: The fact that I'm in a librettists' workshop and read/see far more musicals than plays probably isn't helping my effort to not default to musical format...
   
   
9. I am very good at writing my way out of corners.
   Conclusion: More corners.

I will probably add to this list as I think of more lessons learned.

Oh yes, the story! It's about two young graduate students working in a lab in the Netherlands, developing a Large Hadron Collider-style particle accelerator that, according to one guy, might accidentally invent time travel. And might also accidentally destroy the world.

Here's an impressive picture of the real Large Hadron Collider. I don't expect my set to look like this:

Resistance is Futile

My sister watched The Next Doctor with me last night [verdict: best thing ever, as long as you don't think about it too much], and was totally floored by the dreaminess of David Tennant, so this afternoon I gave her my dvds so she could give the whole shebang a try.

I walk into her bedroom just now, and she's sitting there with tears streaming down her face.

Me: Jeez, up to Father's Day already?
Sister: No, I just... I can't...
Me: What is it?
Sister: He told Dickens his books are gonna last forever! It's like "and his music just left the solar system"* all over again! Did the real Dickens know?? He knew, right? Tell me Dickens knew!! Oh god the Doctor is amazing. [::cries more::]

Conversion complete. Heehee.


*West Wing, re Blind Willie Johnson