Day 100: B11

A slight ode to B11 seemed to be a fitting topic for Awesome-Cambridge-Thing-#100.

Upon reflection, I felt it would behoove me to estimate the number of times the crew has been to Asgard in the last half year or so since the glory of live-band-karaoke was unveiled to me.  The first time was before the creation of this blog -- end of February -- when I went for a friend's birthday party and was shocked find the venue was across the street from my house.

The second time was the following week, when I couldn't resist and stopped by (by myself, mind you) on the way home after drinks for a friend who was going away.  Never underestimate the siren song of karaoke.

Since I really avoid doing estimation when exact count can be done (this is probably something that hinders me drastically in many walks of life, particularly in doing science), I have counted, and the exact number is actually 18 -- I'm pretty darn sure about that, too.  No error bars required.

That mean 18 nights spent with Boyan and the B11 crew.  They were in fine, fine form this evening -- and so were we!  Huge crew amassed for it -- out-of-town folks, folks from the cast of Rumors, regulars, irregulars, many!  Even ran into some long-lost friends.  The combo of rehearsing for Neil Simon's brilliance and then following it up with crooning Sting (well, tonight it was Sting) to Boyan's groovy guitar is something I'm really going to miss... What a perform-y summer -- And cheers to B11.

Day 96: Plum Island

Broken record alert -- I've said it before, I'll say it again.


Cambridge is great.

But so is getting out of it to, oh, you know, other, greener places that are nearby.

Today began early for a Sunday, with me leaving my house (coffee in tow, obviously) just before 9am to pick up D. and E. for our first Sunday-in-Georgetown practice for Rumors (Act 2 only, today).  We had almost the full cast there today and honestly, it went pretty well.  The blocking for Act 2 seems pretty darn straightforward and natural.  Funnily, most people (including my character, Chris) are on-stage for nearly all of Act 2 (Chris is there for the whole she-bang) -- but only something like a fifth of my lines are in Act 2, meaning there is a lot of downtime.  WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MY HANDS?  Honestly, there is so much going on to react to that I don't think it will really be a problem. As long as I hold back on the coffee on performance days.

Georgetown is about a 45-50 minute drive from Cambridge, and it is pretty darling in and of itself -- but another plus is that it's about 25 minutes or so from the beach.  Given that no one had brought any beach gear, this seemed like a pipe dream until D. suggested Plum Island, which I had never heard of but which apparently a) has 11 miles of beach which involve lots of beach plums in most summers; b) was long ago featured in a map drawn by Captain John Smith and described by him as having "many sands"; c) has oodles of walking paths and observation towers and some "hellcat interpretive" trails and lots of poison ivy and loads of honeysuckle; and also some black cherries and D. even found one stray blackberry (not for Sal).

Other adventures on Plum Island involved some not-skinny-dipping (totally jumped in with my clothes on) and visiting some sort of soap shop attached to a private residence that smelled magical -- seriously. Soap-making seems to me to be a whole lot like potion-making.  Plum swell day (get it?....).




Sorry.

Day 86: The Importance of Being A Local

Nothing makes you feel more like a local than coming back and feeling more comfortable in your own skin in the city you live in than in the place you came from.  This happens to me whether I'm coming back from my home town in Indiana, my family's stomping grounds in West Virginia, or (in this case), a mountain in New Hampshire.  Was so tired after the trip yesterday that I managed to spend the entire afternoon in bed finishing the second season of Downton Abbey followed by crashing pre-midnight through to the next morning.

Today was simple: work, rehearse for play with E. at S's place (director-on-two-of-us so that we could do scene focus), at then meet up with my roommate and a friend of ours who had also been up for the weekend in NH at a bar/restaurant near my place (Miracle of Science).  This now makes the 4th or 5th time in a row that I did not get carded at MoS.  For some reason, I have an irrational hatred of being carded.  At worst, it means that if you forgot your ID (which I don't), you have to go get it or talk someone into just letting you in -- and at best, it's a compliment that you look young.  But I hate it.  Typically if I'm there with older folks (than me), not getting carded is the norm, but recently it's been because I _am_ the older folk -- and I like it.  Was there a few days ago w/ J. and M. and arrived early, ordered beer, no carding.  Then when J. and M. arrive and order food in addition to beer -- they get carded.  Tonight, I arrived to meet V. and G-Dog after they were eating.  V's passport was out on the table -- but still no carding for me.  And that, friends, is the importance of being local.

All of this is still a diversion to say that I am going to miss this place a ton.

Day 83: Fireworks on the Charles

Happy Fourth.  To celebrate, I skimmed about three hours off my work day, attended a Neil-Simon-themed bbq (which involved quite a bit more rehearsing than I had anticipated), and then moved on to the night's entertainment -- watching fireworks drunk.

First stop was All-Asia -- on the way to this fine drinking establishment, I happened to run into a woman I hadn't spoken to since freshman year of college, when she lived across the hall from me in my honors-college-floor freshman dorm.  Nuts.  She's apparently doing a music PhD in NYC and is in town for the summer to accompany the Boston Ballet School.  Pretty sweet, eh?  More on that later.

Upon arrival at AA (ironic), there was no live music of yet (always a plus for All Asia), but by the time T. arrived to join Bnap and me, they had arrived in full ska-terrible form.  Such terrible form that it caused a) Bnap and I to become rather drunk and b) T. to leave.  No matter!  B and I headed to a friend's house (she's a graduate student RA for the MIT undergrad dorms, lives right on the river), played with a really cute baby, and then eventually rejoined with T. in time to watch the lightning-storm-esque fireworks from Mem Drive.  Brilliant.

After, I was coerced (my words, not theirs) by both Bnap and M. to walk down to the hotel down the street to sit outside and chat about life.  Which ended up being mostly chatting about abortion and psychiatric disorders.  Go figure.  Yay America, Yay Boston, Yay fireworks. EOM.

Day 73: Rumors -- A Farce

As I have previously mentioned, it has come to pass recently that I have some pretty great friends who are truly going to make this play thing happen.  The play is called Rumors, and it's a farce by the lovely Neil Simon.  Today marked the final night of try-outs, again at S's house, and might I say that there is so much talent involved in this!  I was blown away by so many performances over the course of both nights.

For me, today was a bit of a farce in itself.  I had some tasks that one would think might be simple -- go to the doctor's office because my eye seemed to be acting up, pick up some cat food, pick up a prescription.  But for various reasons, any simple task I engaged in seemed to have about a thousand barriers keeping me from accomplishing.  I'll take the cat food for example.  As many readers may know, my cat (Jack) is obese.  Not mildly chubby, not just kind of fluffy -- utterly obese.  Therefore I do my best to keep him on a strict diet of just over half a cup of diet cat food per day, fed to him over the course of the day by my wonderful roommates and me.  However, it is rather difficult to procure this cat food, and I don't like the idea of switching up on him briefly, so I try to carefully plan to stop by the vet the weekend before he's about to run out.

Needless to say, I didn't get around to that this time, and he needed cat food NOW.  So I found a pet store near my work that has a vet in-house (which, apparently, is required for the sale of "prescription cat food").  This cat food is seriously just like all other cat foods except that it's a little harder to chew (supposed to be great for the teeth), is higher proteins, and is lower in carbs.  Sigh.  I am getting frustrated just re-telling this story so I will abridge.

How to buy prescription cat food in 25 steps or less

1. Call store;
2. They will tell you to fax the prescription;
3. Call your cat's vet;
4. The vet will fax the prescription;
5. Go to store;
6. They will give you a prescription card;
7. They will point you to the prescription cat food;
8. The woman might start to say to say "it's in a turquoise bag" and you will tell her "oh, yeah, I buy it all the time, thanks";
9. You could even get two bags;
10. You go to the cash register;
11. They check the prescription card;
12. You leave;
13. You get home;
14. You open the bag. It's dog food that was mixed in the with cat food and in a nearly identical bag.;
15. You look dumbly at your cat who is starving.;
16. You call the pet store;
17. The pet stores says you can exchange, no worries;
18. Your house is far from the pet store, but the pet store is on your way to your play auditions;
19. You pick up your friends from their house in Somerville, and then you drive to the pet store in north Cambridge by where you work;
20. You bring in the dog food;
21. You go get the cat food;
22. You un-pay for the dog food;
23. You pay for the cat food;
24. Eventually you get rid of the friends; (:))
25. You give your cat the cat food.

Addendum: Then you go sing your usual live-band-karaoke song.

Day 72: Solstice Acrobatics

The summer solstice certainly let us know when she came this year.  After weird weather all winter and beautiful, clear days randomly placed through early spring, summer finally hit hard on her arrival day, with Bostonians and Cantabrigians practically swimming through the humid, 97-degree air.  Tonight was night 1 of try-outs for Rumors (more than after tomorrow), and thankfully S. (director who was hosting at his place) had access to two window-unit ACs and a fan.  At least when it's that hot, even the non-sweaters amongst us are in no luck and we can all be gross together.

After try-outs, I joined up with a friend whose girlfriend is an acrobat -- more precisely, she is fantastic silks and trapeze artist.  Somehow she was supposed to be performing at the Plough and Stars -- a bar I go to occasionally, and which often has live bands, but in which I could not imagine a whole acrobatic troupe performing.  Particularly in 97-degree swampy heat.  But -- there was!  Including a bar-dancing clown (terrifying to me to dance on a slippery bar... but was fantastic to watch!).

At the end of the acrobatics, I had a text from B.Nap (who had been at the auditions earlier) to come join up for karaoke at Highland Kitchen.  I really like Highland Kitchen.  It has a great feel, adult spelling bees on Tuesdays, and apparently the light fixtures look like sex toys, according to E. (I have never even attempted to verify this myself, nor do I ever remember to check when I'm there, and I'm pretty happy with that state of things!).  However, it is located atop Winter Hill, and I am not typically located atop Winter Hill.  That said, I was already so icky at this point of the night, and since I had biked from home to the Plough, I decided a quick nip up a silly hill for karaoke would be worth it.  Which... I *think* it was.  Right?  Song of choice was "Walking on Sunshine" - which yes, have done many times, but seemed so very appropriate for the evening.

Day 70: The charm of the Thirsty Ear

This is the day when the idea of putting on a play with friends this summer became real, rather than just (very) wishful thinking!  After going back and forth with S. (who will act as director), it finally came to light that everything seemed a go with running the play in Georgetown, MA, where the Georgetown Theater Workshop S. has long been affiliated with is located, rather than somewhere in Cambridge. Pros: real lights and sets and things; cons: no AC, 45 min away; guess which won out?  As we had no prospects in Cambridge, it was quite easy to decide that Georgetown was a winner and that we had better act fast (groaning here; this one's for Ed) if this were to happen.  And after I finally got my hands on a copy of the script (Rumors, by Neil Simon) and read it through -- I was sold.

After work I planned to head to the Thirsty Ear to read through the script quietly.  [Aside: I tend to give the Thirsty more of a bad rap than I should, as it's a perfectly lovely venue to gather and has great beers.  This is pretty much only because my affinity lies with the only other MIT on-campus pub.  I like the more ruffian-looking crew gathered at the much more charming Muddy Charles, which has the additional perks of being both located in beautiful Morss hall on the Charles River and also the primary drinking site of the illustrious Straw Dogs.] However, the whole reason for choosing the Thirsty for this quiet evening was that a friend of mine was working tonight at the door.  It being much more fun to sit with him than on my own, and him being much more obliging than most, I was given the pleasure of reading the play in its entirety aloud to him at the door.  Our conclusion was that Neil Simon is a farcical genius and that this play must absolutely happen.