CURRY UP AND CLEAN!!

So my friend Abanti from India got her visa! So I guess I better clean the place up. Time to do the dishes and write the last five scenes of the script. Now if that isn't a deadline.Today was productive.Sending out scripts. Heah baby! Then there is Facebook. Goobergosh. All these people from my past. Funniest thing said last week.
Dad: Didn't we go to Mohegan Sun and win a lot of money ?
Sean: Dad went to Mohegan Sun,got drunk and invented a good time.
Well it was funny live. Ah yes-Sean. Back to Italy. He drew that hammer image for me in high school when I did stage crew all the time. The black and white painting was done when I was having a bad day. I like it.

LOLA HAD BITE LAST MARCH

It was once said that you shouldn't send letters. They are a record of your life,a gift that shouldn't be given to others.Odd. Some thread of truth in that.Some thread. Speaking of threads...who found a cool yarn sale ?Speaking of cats...my cat has a friend. They sit and stare and meow. No aggression. No Animal Planet Gone Wild. Just this howling thing. What are they saying ? If you were a cat and had to stare at one other person-cat for the rest of your life which cat-person would you choose ? Wait.Hold the line.My cat has close to NO contact with other cats. That is kinda sad. Not as sad as talking about cat people at eight o'clock on a Saturday night. Well I put myself here. This is a blog break between the scene I just wrote for Moral Garbage, chapter for Unicorn Club and a monologue for Womkey.
What are these things ? Glad you asked.
Moral Garbage is an urban morality tale about a park keeper who has to save all lost souls of the Bronx in the face of Satan while in line blading. Unicorn Club-need a better title- is inspired by years of being the underdog that's all I can say. Womkey. That's the Indian play.
While doing research about the fashion industry,I found an article about Jezebel Jagger and her company. She was babysat by Andy Warhol and goes to India for inspiration. What a great find this article was!!!
Yeah-yeah now I remember. LOLA GOT BITE. This blog now has a picture from the production. Last March it was done at Gene Frankel. My good friend Melissa Fendell directed the production. I was inspired by the pit bulls I saw on the way to work at Marblehill. They were on choke chains and looked like they were ready for battle and breeding. So I did some homework and discovered the world of pit bull fighting. The topic isn't really explored on stage so we went for it...fight scene and all. Old dog turns in her title,wanting the end to a cruel world. Melissa's brain is connected to mine so she just knows what to do with my work. Some people were offended by the work b**** in the script. But hey,they are female dogs. What do you want from me ? Plus one of my students,Julia Rivera did the costumes. They rocked. Glad the photo is now up on this thing. Week of the show was the best week. I was so stoked to be picking up fake blood and knee pads in the West Village. I smile each time I hear "Superstar",first sound cue from the piece. Yeah-people were scared of those pit bull girls! You could sense it. Think that is a lot to handle,fighting dogs ? Try looking at children falling asleep on card board boxes in Kolkata. We live in the United Egg Crate of America. The shell is starting to break.

PICTURE THIS PABLO

So-yes. There is art on this blog. Where did it come from ?Well the red head with the blue backdrop is my work done after the Spoletto LaMaMa trip in 2006. I did Tai-Chi on this hill every morning and it overlooked the Umbra. The second work is Ophelia and the Mermaids. I like comic book art so that is why they look that way. By the way-people do read this stuff even if there are no comments. I get nice e-mail. Clara likes my art. Don't you Clara ?Our friendship has outlasted our pet lives. We first met in first grade. She invited me to her birthday party at Nathan's. We shared a desk at lunch. Lunch was in Sr.Hillary's classroom. You were allowed to share a desk and eat with someone. It was a big deal to buy ziti or pizza or candy from upstairs. The round table in second grade was donated by the electrical company. It was a giant wooden spool that once had wire on it. In third grade we wrote a story a week. Rough draft due Thursday,then after gym you got the corrections. Friday was the good draft and presentation. I wrote about space rocks and brought in a garden stone to represent my space rock. It is so sad that so many students can't write a story a week. Thank you Ms.Emmanuel. She had a Bon Jovi poster in her closet. That was kinda cool. For Halloween we dressed up like saints. I was Agnes. Brought a lamb to school. It was stuffed.So I hope to post another painting. I am working on a Mary painting. Like a cool-comic book Mary. We will see. By the way they closed down both my grammar schools. ICS and Holy Rosary. Some of my ICS classmates work for Diesel and Teen Vogue. Cool beans. But we all had rough drafts due Thursday.And we all had classroom chores. I use to clean the offices with Johannes Weber. I think he went on to Yale. He played tennis.
Someone had to clean the boards and dust the shelves. Someone watered the plants. Chores in school. Those were the days.

PUT THAT ON YOUR BREAD AND SWALLOW IT

Monks make more jam when they chant. Why aren't you singing ?

The History of Objects

Beware of the Key Foods parking lot in Riverdale !! They got spies,I say. They will tow your car if you do not buy their produce as my friend Nina discovered Friday. We walked to the tow garage on Riverdale Ave. Wow what a tow place!! It Needs to be in a film. A trailer is inside of the garage and there is an arrangement of toy trucks in glass display cases. The garage is also in a ditch. It was raining. Very dark. Nina and I chalked up the whole situation to an angel, protecting us from a car accident,we "avoided" by being towed. It was all good.
Latest news: Abanti ? Will she come to New York ? Who knows ? She is producing a film about traditional Indian instruments with Nora Jones to narrate. Will the US Embassy release her to the Big Apple ? Ah yes....today was church tag sale day! What did I get ? A Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt,four glass vases for the kids in school, books for the kids in school, a sweater, printed frame art, two silver frames (1.00 each),patterns for garments, sunglasses for .50, a weird device with glasses and ear phones (it buzzes in your ears and lights up around your eyes and you are lured into a state of LSD-like sleepwalking) for 2.00, a 60's nightgown 1.00, shoes,
a chicken costume Elmo for the kids in school so that they can relive a childhood that was stolen from them too young, a plastic light up Santa (MADE IN THE USA) and an ELOISE messenger bag,so I do not drop my laptop, like I did with every walkman in the sixth grade. I like to look at old things and think about who used them and where they were when they wore a piece of clothing. When I was a little duckling I use to travel through the Berkshires to find lockers, crystal rock radios, rifles,old books and used guitars for plays at Williamstown. I loved the people I met more than the objects I found. I recall meeting a woman who owned and operated a mink farm. She raised the smelly creatures to use their furs. Those things got claws man! Then there was the guy who made art out of broken guitars. I was in his attic. He lived with his mother. One time I got fencing foils from a Community College. They were plastic-good for rehearsal. One time I picked up a steering wheel in Rutland,VT. I was at an auto body place,petting a dog. A goat walked over to my lap and wanted some TLC. For Raisin in the Sun I had to stop by the Catholic Church and borrow a cross. I promised the priest that it wouldn't be used in a Paul Rudnick play. He was afraid of Paul Rudnick plays. One Sunday "dead bodies "CPR dummies,arrived from Seattle for Olympia's Hecuba. Once I had to call up a cult and ask for literature-a prop. Yeah- I used to be a road warrior. Truth: I realized during a summer away from the job that I wanted to write about the worlds from where they objects were born.

A Monsoon in a Sari

Last summer I worked in Kolkata,India with my friend Abanti. She is a director and performer. We designed and produced "Mourning Becomes Electra". O'Neill in Bengali. It was monsoon season. Our car used to flood and I could feel the water surrounding my sneakers. One time she left me in the car and I put my feet on the seat and started to hum. Every morning she would play this loud Indian music. One song had a good beat and I thought it would fit a great fight scene in an urban,Bengali Romeo and Juliet. The other song sounded like a swan that needed to be shot in a dumpster. She knew I did not fancy the dead swan song. I usually popped some Radiohead or Coldplay into her computer. Moshe would show up to feed us each morning and move things in my room. She did not speak English. We had great conversations.Moshe use to laugh at the hoop skirts that I was sewing in my room for the play. She asked if I could take her to New York so she could be my servant. I told her if she came to New York I would be her servant. Abanti translated this and Moshe left the room. Abanti told me later that Moshe was moved by my suggestion. I never got sick in India. Sometimes people have bad stomaches. I was good. So Abanti may come to New York. I am working on a one-woman show for her about the use of Indian textiles in the Western fashion world. We might see the Lion King. Who knows ?

Pew

More than 15 years ago I was in church. I was sitting behind a large family. Seven kids. Hey-they were Irish. SO I thought of all the costumes they should wear for Halloween. It was an odd thought,to start designing costumes for these kids in my head. But I did. My mother always made my costumes. She was very good at white jumpsuits. I was a bunny for most of my life. More
"Christmas Story" not so much Playboy. My ma always did a great job of pushing me to the edge of my creative pier. "What are all the other kids doing ? Do you want your book report cover to look like everyone else's ? No ? Than eat these candies and the glue the wrappers to this cover."
I had the best Chocolate War cover. Now I write and get paid to teach kids how to make corsets.
Funny how these things begin.