Random - Wilde's Last Stand

Today is the last day for Mike's Oscar Wilde show. It's pretty sad, actually, for me whenever Mike closes a show. I love getting to know a new cast and showering them with mother-hen love and cookies. Which means today is my last hurrah to bake some bad-a$$ cookies for these guys. And then after today I might not see some of these people for the rest of my life. That's sad to me after going through such an emotional rollercoaster (for all plays are, aren't they?) for the past two months or so.

Not that I know them too well. But I am excited for the day when Mike's show is extended and we have a great excuse to get to know a cast better.

But that's all sentimental. I think it's time to go make some pumpkin cheesecake bars and pecan pie bars. Maybe this was all just an excuse for me to eat goodies. Or maybe it's an excuse to put off writing a novel. I still plan on getting my 1000 words in today (which means I will be many tens of thousands of words short by the end of November if I continue this, but we chip away at these things, don't we?)

And perhaps I am new blood to the cooking world, but what in the hell is a jellyroll pan?

Random - Chicago Theater

So I went to a play that a good friend was performing in last night. I hadn't seen her perform in over two years. She is tall and regal and beautiful in her subtleties on stage.

But I couldn't get over the theater they performed in. It was a renovated funeral home. Except it wasn't that renovated. They still had the long stand that they put the caskets on for viewings. They just put some cushions on it for a bench in the lobby before the doors opened. You could totally tell it was a funeral home. One big long room pretty much made up the whole of the building.

And get this: we went backstage after the show and the dressing room is a small, narrow room in the back of the building with tile floors and a long table with a lip around the edge. And a drain that goes to the floor, where there is another drain. It's the room where they embalmed the bodies. The table they used was still there. No freaking kidding. I couldn't get over this.

For some reason, I found it more interesting and amusing than morbid or creepy. Perhaps you will find this weird, but Michael and I love to go walk through cemeteries. We do it during the day, and we love picking the cemeteries that are really beautiful (like the one across from the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie). One of the things I love about cemeteries here in Chicago is that little ways that people chose to commemorate the dead often portray the culture or demographic that they were. Asian or Spanish or Italian. We are always surrounded by life and death, and all of us together, in a mixing pot. I think it's beautiful.

I'm not your Emily Dickenson or anything, but I think acknowledging the dead and the lives they lived, even if it's summed up in one epitaph on their tombstone is important. It helps put things in perspective, and it helps me feel better about dieing myself one day.

Lastly, this past week was Day of the Dead. I really think it's a beautiful holiday. So I wanted to share some Etsy DoD works of art.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59195841/frida-kahlo-dia-de-muertos-skull-flowers

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59278008/dia-de-muertos-reproduction-from

http://www.etsy.com/listing/49249075/day-of-the-dead-still-life-with-poppies

http://www.etsy.com/listing/49031349/dia-de-los-muertos-card

Random Angle

Maybe everyone else gets tired of a play after seeing it once, but I could go every night to Mike's show, if 1) I could get a comp every night and 2) the people at the box office (and perhaps a few of the cast) wouldn't think me a tiny bit overzealous for doing this. I've gone twice since the doors opened three weeks ago and already the box office fella gave me the 'haven't you been here before, and why in the world are you here again?' look.

Live theatre changes every night, depending on the crowd, the mood or energy of the cast, the backstage crew, even the weather can affect how a show turns out. I thrive off of the different conversations brought up each time, the twists and turns a play will take, being molded differently by all involved (including the audience) and how those undulations create a reaction. It's Newton's third law, the action-reaction law. And I love it.

Since I work at a psychological center, we have different ways around the offices to help clients think positive or work with their troubles. This includes a simple Table Topics game on the kitchen tables. There's no winner, just ways to get conversation going with questions like 'What is the best and worst part about being a man or a woman.' The question we answered the other day on our lunch break was 'how would your life be different if you had no concern for what others thought?'

I would go to every single showing of Michael's and I would love it, dammit.