Wednesday, March 29, 2006

walking the walk

last year i participated in the aids walk with my friend emily. together we raised over $1300 for the cause. this year, i am participating in it again, but this time with my two theater companies, new world theatre and point of you productions. now this is ambitious because, not only do we need to raise money for our upcoming shows, but we also are now trying to raise money for the aids walk. i'll try to keep you updated on our progress in reaching our goal. right now we have it set at $1,500. i think five walkers (so far) can handle that. :)
i'm excited about it...i really enjoyed it last year and it makes me feel like i'm making a difference, even if it is a small one. if any of you kind hearted people out there would like to donate to the aids walk, please click here.
your donations are tax deductible (as they also are when you donate to nwt through fractured atlas or to point of you).
thank you!

Monday, March 20, 2006

out of sight does not mean out of mind

a strange thing has happened over the last few months. more and more people from my past have started popping up. not so weird for many who don't move far from home, but i grew up in a very transient community on another continent. it felt like every year i had to make a new best friend and join a new social group because so many people were always moving away or just moving to the country. i lost touch with most people from high school and from college too. the ones i have kept in touch with have become very dear friends. i guess i never expected so many people to get in touch with me and so suddenly. was there some milestone, rite of passage, or unconscious thing that i somehow missed or skipped over?
i was used to running into someone on the street every once in a while. i mean, i'm pretty sure practically everyone visits new york at least once. and you expect it when you go home for christmas and are almost disappointed if you don't bump into anyone. actually, for the last few years i didn't know of any of my old friends who went back to bahrain for the holidays.
but it's really weird when you're two worlds, your past and your present, collide when you get an email or a message in your inbox on some online community like myspace or friendster. it actually got pretty overwhelming at one point. every day there was one or two new people who had tracked me down on myspace.
i feel pretty bad, though. most of them i never wrote back to. i just had so much going on with the day job and theater and stuff, i never got a chance to go back on and then after a while, it just seems weird if you write them back after ages have gone by. and then if you do, are you expected to strike up that friendship that fizzled out almost 10 years ago? i admit it. i am terrible at keeping in touch. i can't even keep my own life straight, let alone be a penpal to someone i haven't seen in a decade. it doesn't mean i feel any less for them. there are people i still miss years later, but us being so far apart, i just can't keep dwelling on it. i simply don't have time.
there were people finding me that i hadn't seen or conversed with since the 8th grade!
a boy i had a crush on in 8th grade sent me an email. i never would have thought he would have remembered me. he never gave me the time of day or even really spoke to me. now he's studying marine biology in scotland and getting his masters degree. what would i say to him? another boy who made my life miserable for a better part of a year found me on my space. i was shocked when i saw his picture. i couldn't answer him for fear of bringing up all that old hurt. best to leave all of that buried. did that asshole really think we were friends and why would he ever think to contact me?
another girl i sat next to in band class for a year found me, too. i remember her mostly because of her unusual name. i guess that's why she remembered me too. maybe it's my name, maybe it's because my mother was a teacher in my school, or it's because i'm probably easier to find than most on the internet. if you do a google search for me, you'll get a whole list of reviews and websites that have my name on them.
i must confess for googling many an old friend's name, trying to find out what they're up to. many people who meant a lot to me, i couldn't find a trace of or their name was so common that it'd be impossible to sift through everything to figure out if it was about them or not.
i guess i just find it strange that i could have touched that many people, that they'd remember me. i know that more than twice as many people have meant the world to me and have shaped me in ways they would have never imagined. but i've been called over-sensitive more than once and i do tend to cling to the past a bit more than what is normal.
i remembered every one of the people who contacted me (well, except for the boy who claimed he rode my bus and one who was 2 or 3 grades younger than me). they've all shaped me in one way or the other. i guess i should turn over a new leaf and try to start writing these people back, if for no other reason to say thank you for thinking of me, even if we haven't seen each other in a decade.
god, i'm getting old.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

"where do thoughts come from? they just appear"

my theater company is putting on two shows in rep this summer: the first quarto of hamlet and an original play based on hamlet (but all the genders are reversed) called pricilla. i've been known to do a little costume desigining in the past, and usually with a budget of next to nothing. it was decided that i'll be designing both shows (because the director for one of the shows had someone she wanted, but we would have to fly them in...which we REALLY can't afford at this point) as well as acting in one of them. i only agreed to design both if i could act. i'm really itching to be on stage right now. and why would i be putting all of this work in to this company if i couldn't do what i want, right?
but i'm starting to get a little nervous and psych myself out about the designing...two shows at once...while acting. and i don't even know what the concept for hamlet is yet. it could be scary and complicated. do i have that much creativity??? where will i find my inspiration?
i know i'll do it and do it well (at least i hope so). i usually do. but it doesn't mean i won't stress about it before.
at least it'll all be over by august so i can at least enjoy the latter part of the summer.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

lobster bobs

since bob liked my last post so much, i was curious what i'd find if i googled "lobster bob". i found some pretty interesting sights.

bob lobster the restaurant
http://www.boblobster.com/

you're famous, bob! you have a dvd about you! called let's go lobstering with lobster bob.
http://store.hamiltonmarine.com/browse.cfm/4,26932.htm

a fan fiction author named lobster bob. i think he writes about anime.
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/231396/

the photographic story of the boiling of a lobster named bob:
http://www.vision.caltech.edu/pmoreels/Images/Bob/index.html

the lobster institute...i'm not sure if they have a lobster bob or not.
http://www.lobsterinstitute.org/index.php?page=18

and of course this cartoon

it looks just like bob!!!!

i have a friend nicknamed lobster bob because he turns red all the time and has red hair. really, the man is unique. this news story got brought up this evening. it looks just like bob! :) well, if he got a bleach job. i bet bob is red right now reading this. hee hee





Divers discover new crustacean
Animal is covered with blond hairlike strands

Scientists have named the new crustacean "Kiwa hirsuta."

Updated: 10:54 p.m. ET March 7, 2006
PARIS - A team of American-led divers has discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French researchers said Tuesday.
Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.
The divers found the animal in waters 7,540 feet (2,300 meters) deep at a site 900 miles (1,440 kilometers) south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration.
The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches (15 centimeters) long — about the size of a salad plate.
In what Segonzac described as a “surprising characteristic,” the animal’s pincers are covered with sinuous, hairlike strands.
It is also blind. The researchers found it had only “the vestige of a membrane” in place of eyes, Segonzac said.
The researchers said that while legions of new ocean species are discovered each year, it is quite rare to find one that merits a new family.
The family was named Kiwaida, from Kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology.
The diving expedition was organized by Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

"gotta find my destiny before it gets too late"

...and it didn't happen. last week i was at a read through of a draft of a new play my theater company is commissioning and the artistic director just happens to mention that a theater company we are familiar with lost the lease on their space and the complex is for rent. of course, i go nuts. every small nyc theater company prays for a place to call their home. that would have been the easiest way for us to start living our dream. of course it'd be hard, but suddenly it seemed like there was a light at the end of my tunnel.
the complex actually had two theaters (a 99 seat and a 40 seat) and three rehearsal spaces. i knew it'd be expensive, that we couldn't use the whole thing for ourselves, but we could set up as a management company, renting out the spaces when we weren't using them ourselves. a small business loan of maybe 6 months rent could get us off the ground. but what was the rent? the real estate broker wasn't returning bob's calls. i finally found the website and the listing for the property...it was almost $23,000 a month for the space. i desperately tried to make the math work for us...if we rented out the big space at $3500/week and the small space at $2000/week and rented the rehearsal spaces at $10/hr and had 100 hours a month of rental space we would just break even...and that didn't count utilities and everything else that went with the space. and that also meant that we'd have to have the spaces rented continuously. as much as i wanted it to, there was no way it would work. we're having issues of reaching our fundraising goal of making $7500 in donations this year for our next productions. how could we manage $23,000? i did mention that we should get two other companies to enter into the undertaking with us to split the cost (and risks), but that meant we'd need more time and organization than we had at the moment.
so again, my dreams and optimism have been dashed. but for a brief moment it seemed as if all that i had been striving for would be possible. i always read about these success stories where the artist overcomes incredible odds...or just has it fall in their lap. i want to be one of those stories. i've been working for it a long time. i need to be one of those stories.
i don't know how much more of the soul sucking day job i can take. i'm not cut out to work a 9-5:30 office job on madison avenue. but when do i give in and say it just won't happen? when do i give up and realize i need to build myself a career in something else besides theater? there has to be a time when all these ex-actors, filmmakers, etc. made the choice to conform. when was that? was it a conscious decision? did they really love what they did before? if so, how do they live with themselves now?
i know that i am most at piece with myself when i am working in a theater. it doesn't have to be acting. i designed costumes for a show in january and just going to the theater and fitting the actors had a calming effect on me. when i go long periods without acting i get very, very depressed. i can't help it. i need that creative outlet. i don't need or even want fame and fortune. i just want to be able to make a living at it...to support myself. that's all.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

it may be knocking...

i can't stop thinking about it. i don't want to talk about it because i'm afraid i'll jinx it. but it may be a way for me to be able to start living my dream. i don't want to get ahead of myself but i always do. i buy a lottery ticket and on my way home before the drawing i'm already doing the math and spending the money i haven't won. i feel like i'm doing that with this situation, although this seems much, much more real. it would be amazing if it were possible. even more amazing if we could do it. and even more if we could pull it off. it all depends on a number tomorrow.

how am i going to sleep tonight?