Today oddly felt like the first day of Fall. The air smelled of dry leaves, the breeze was crisp and the sky was amazing. Autumn is by far my favorite season so it's strange that today feeling like September should make me so melancholy for the want of summer. There has been no true summer here. Not that there usually is in the bay area, usually there are a few hot dry weeks in August that require skirts, popsicles and the inevitable escape to the lake. Perhaps there will be a surprise Summer before the true Fall hits, but then living by the shore in a mild climate it's hard to tell.
Technically speaking this is only a "Victrola" in the way that a copy machine is a "Xerox" or a cola is a "Coke"... but it's a beauty and it's in my next show. I sat quietly back as the props and scenic people discussed the player... and while they discussed how to safely break the box of 78's they bought for the show.
In the script there is a Caruso collection that is supposed to be destroyed and it hurts me. First off I don't think we're actually going to be able to do this safely. If anyone out there isn't familiar with 78rpm records let's just say; they're not vinyl, they're made of shellac and shatter spectacularly when broken.
They are heavy and big and provide one song per side of a ten inch disc. They crackle and hiss and sound is often mumbled a bit... but for some reason I love them. They're artifacts. They're treasure... they're usually songs and artists I've never heard of and are not available on other formats...
Tonight I bit my lip when they discussed converting vinyl into MP3s (a topic I know about but would eat up all of my time to help with) and when everyone left I found myself lured towards the bin of records... I mustn't look... I don't have the storage space... I Do have the record player though... no! step back... but I want to listen to them all!
If anyone would have entered at that point they would have seen me drooling but not touching the pile of music before me. I fear if I get too close I'll find the need to liberate a few. I'll want to save them from the destruction mill of the theater... I'll want to adopt them all.
Step away from the records...
Step away from the turn table... ... but they're all so beautiful!
Walking up to the Museum of Natural History in New York, there is a statue of Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th President. He is atop a noble steed and holds a brave daring stance... Zoom out... and you will see there is a naked er... 'man of the Afric' assisting him. Walk around his haunches and you will see a leg and some feathers and I thought "oh maybe it's an angel"... my friend who is not quite as hopefully naive as me said "oh no... that's a Native" and sure enough, on the other side; what would have been called at the time; 'a noble savage'... also nearly naked. I think this is possibly the most offensive statue I have ever seen.
Some sporadic photos from my weekend trip here... I'm afraid I was too busy having a great time and getting lost on the subway to even think about taking many photos... Times Square was as overwhealming as ever. They've cut off traffic and installed lawn furniture, it looks like they intend to make this permanent and with all of the foot traffic it seems like a good idea... I took this one because the friend I was there with lives on a kibbutz in Israel... the juxtaposition was funny to me... We went to the Museum of Natural Science (I may do a quick additional post about the museums I went to)...
Central Park; Wow it was humid and sticky... but pretty. "Emergency brake; Pray"
Great weekend... I love New York and I love New Yorkers. It was hot and humid and the weather really takes it all out of me pretty quickly but somehow the pace and the attitude of the place make up for it.
On Sunday it rained and it was delightful warm rain that helped pull a lot of the humidity down. People on the street were selling umbrellas but I just chose to get wet. At a certain point the wetness of rain sure beats the wetness of sweat. I don't know that I'll be posting a lot more from this trip but I thought I'd share the nutshell version... probably posts about the Met and the Natural Science museum to follow. Until then... caio!
For the most part I've been driving Way too much this past month. One day last week I found I was too tired to drive and didn't have a truckload of costumes to haul, so I took BART. The whole ride looked like an Edward Hopper painting...
This month I've opened three shows, I've got two to strike tomorrow... I've got a corporate design job pending... Today is the first day I can even think about being human again... laundry, CLEANING, blogging, seeing friends... oof! If you're still checking this or my other blogs I've been taking photos but have lacked the time to load or think about them. Blogging to slowly resume ( I promise)
The photo is from the show I opened tonight! Comedy of Errors at SF Shakes. ok, still exhausted, I think I had better go to bed instead of mucking about on the internet.
My car is the most expensive thing I have in my world... so I thought I'd check out this cool car-share thing that is getting popular in the city... I just filled out how many trips I make and how many hours I use a car and they'll calculate how much I'd be "saving"...
Somehow I don't think it's going to work. I need a lifestyle and a career that requires zero driving.
I haven't been posting much because I'm up to my eyeballs in theater work... today I was shopping for knee highs and found these;
Ok so my headline was a little misleading, since it's three pair to the order these socks are *only* $80 each... I assume that on top of being regular socks they also cure baldness, make you look ten pounds lighter and emit a soft musk that makes everyone around you like you just a little more. Who buys these things?
A great grey haze hovers about San Francisco throughout May. A June gloom that I am always in denial of waits around the corner. For some reason the morning fog seems to last all day until just before the sun sets during early summer. When you work in the bowels of the theater even small glimpses of light count for a lot. I ride to outdoor train stations to wait for the right train to come along. Look... how pretty.
The third Wednesday of every month is the free day at the Academy of Science in San Francisco. In an attempt to get my brain off of crazy operas and work for an hour or two, I went to check it out. This is a brand new museum with all sorts of innovative green technologies used. Everything from the insulation (scrap denim), the water systems, the heating, the light and the roof are built with eco-sustainability in mind. The lay out was very impressive. There are lots of interactive booths that teach about ecology and carbon footprints, endangered species, Darwin, Dinosaurs, conservation... and so on and so forth (somewhere in Kansas there is a school board member vomiting at the thought of so much science in one place)
They have two big domes inside; one is a planetarium and the other is a spiral rainforest. After waiting in the line to get in to the building at all I was disinclined to wait in another line, so I missed both. Plus the planetarium has limited passes. In the lower levels they have many different aquariums. They have a swamp with a white alligator. They have a tropical "coral reef", a California coast, jelly fish domes et cetera, et cetera. The aquariums were in good health and interesting but somehow lacked a certain finesse that the Monterey Aquarium has. The lay out seemed a little frenetic on a scientific storyline level, but aesthetically it was all very pretty.
The South African Penguins were neat;
It surprised me that there was a lot of it that was just basically a natural history museum with dioramas and taxidermy. One interesting part was that the room that the taxidermy happens is in full view, there's a big glass window for the public to watch dead things get groomed and stuffed. I loved the living roof they've got. It's covered with native plants and acts as a temperature regulator for the entire building. Also it helps bring down the carbon footprint of the entire facility. All of the science here was mostly geared at elementary level scientists (ages 5-13ish) and it was very well laid out. I honestly was a little underwhealmed and can't see paying the $25 admission fee for myself. However it would be a fun afternoon trip to take kids on.
