fan-fucking-tastic

Last night the Internet wasn't much help when trying to find something unique to do on a Friday night, but I got my hands on this week's Village Voice and already have something in mind for Monday:

“I want us all to remember how fucking awesome it was to see Jurassic Park for the first time,” director Donna Sellinger recalls producer Jared Paolini saying when they were planning Wham City’s theater production of Jurassic Park. But how can this little company possibly re-create stage versions of immense and scary dinosaurs? “Maybe with a fucked-up dance and some strobe lights,” she says. What Wham City lacks in Spielberg-size cash, they more than make up for through their passion for this movie: They’ve constructed a T. rex, a dilophosaur, a brontosaurus, a velociraptor (which the actors will be wearing), cardboard jeeps and palm trees, and paper Doritos. Sellinger adds that this script fleshes out the sexual undertones that existed in the movie . . . so maybe in this version Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum will let their lizard brains take over?
At 9:30, The Market Hotel, 957 Broadway, Brooklyn

It's going to be so camp, I could squee!

And Thursday is already reserved for a "mutlimedia presentation" of Forgotten Greenpoint at The Word. I'll never forget this place, which has been torn down and made condo; when I was a wee chick I thought you could go through the front door and enter China if you exited through the side. What China and Polish food have in common, I have no idea. Such is a child's imagination.

post script

I have to loosen up the writing muscles because both a reader's report on a two-hundred-fifty-page manuscript and an informal written assessment of a novel are due tomorrow, and I am freaking out.

I had an interview at Harper Collins yesterday -- hence the reader's report -- and as I was getting ready my mom said: "Take a look at your ass baggage!" What, pray tell, is "ass baggage?" I originally thought she meant I was getting more junk in the trunk, impossible because I've really sticking to Pilates; however, she commented on the excess of material in my pants around the gluteal sulcus, which is a good thing.

(Really, I think she has a penchant for the word "ass." One of her favorite sayings is: "Stick a broom up my ass!" It means: "Can't you see I'm too busy to give you my attention?" Apparently, Grammy used to say it when she was preoccupied. "Stick a broom up my ass, and I'll sweep the floor too" is the complete phrase, very appropriate when you're cooking and have a noodnik under foot.)

But really, this post is a follow-up to the previous one. Attending a high school forty minutes away and then having an hour commute to work after class gave me an odd habit: I read only on public transportation. Sure, I can flip through a newspaper or magazine anywhere, but a novel that demands full attention requires a swipe of the Metro Card.

Because of the aforementioned MS, I've been on a commute to nowhere, back and forth on the E and F lines, reading. I was on a Stillwell-bound F around noon today, sitting perpendicular to a young woman on a forward-facing seat. A hulk of a man -- not fat but big, you know the type -- takes the empty seat next to her and spreads his legs in a wide angle.

"Don't cramp me into a corner!" she orders. He ignores her, but she persists, causing him to switch cars at the next stop.

You go, girl!

race in the subway

Straphanger story time: My inner dialogue has a short time limit. If I'm not completely zoned out on the subway -- iPod playing a good commuting album, something you have to listen to all the way through, and literature -- I study my surroundings and can't help but comment on them.

My friends and family are used to my kvetches about the subway, and I have somewhat of a history of arguing with black men. Surprisingly, not only has my relationship with them (as if "they" were a separate entity) healed, but I've been welcomed into the community.

Yesterday morning, I took the F to Carroll and waited on a bench for the G. Yes, I'll admit it, I put my tote bag on the empty seat next to me. (In my upcoming subway-etiquette book, you'll learn when taking up more than one is permissible.) Though there were a few people on the platform, the bench had two empty seats between me and someone else. A guy (guess his race) does something outrageous; he places his butt on the small strip of wood that separates the bench's seats, shimmies toward me, and pushes my bag off the seat. To add insult to injury, he puts his backpack on the seat next to him!

"Excuse me, why are you allowed to take up two seats, and I'm not?" I posit.

He ignores me. I sit in silence for the G. It arrives. We both stand up. I ask again on the train, as he cannot escape my prodding once the doors close.

"You can take up as many seats as you want," he answers, not looking at me but pointing to the empty car.

"No, on the bench. Why couldn't you say 'excuse me'?"

We finally make eye contact.

"Listen, lady. I'm sorry. Just leave me alone."

An apology! And my body feels suddenly lighter. His request? Fulfilled.

***
Tonight on another G-train platform I'm sharing a bench with another guy. A Hipster doofus walks in front of us to use the pay phone. It works -- an MTA miracle!

"I need to catch the train in the other direction." Hangs up. Calls someone else.

"I just called [name]. I'll be a little late. Took the wrong train." Hangs up. Calls someone else.

Lather, rinse, and repeat phone-calling behavior a few more times.

I mumble under my breath: "Why do they always have to be on the goddamn phone? That's all they ever do is yak yak yak."

The man on the bench (guess his race) turns to me and says: "Tell me about it. I have a cell phone. My girl and my family call me. That's it. Why do I have to have something hanging off my ear every time I walk out the door?"

Acceptance! Assurance I am not a hipster! I would have hugged him if the train hadn't pulled in and a recently made acquaintance demanded attention.

call me Ado Annie

It's not every day that there exists a slight possibility of bumping into your mom while doing the walk of shame. But when he lives so close to the train, is it really a walk? It's more of a mosey, though the G complicates matters by making it a run of shame. Yet nothing shameful happened; you were too far gone because of absinthe, hadn't slept in a proper bed in two months, and only collapsed and crashed. (And then forgot to lock the doorknob on the way out. Sorry.)

***
I have been told on two separate occasions that I have a good vocabulary. Someone called me beautiful not a long time ago, and last night I was told I was attractive. Good vocabulary can be measured, I suppose, by SAT verbal scores or Scrabble games, but how is appearance quantified?

I doubt I have good vocabulary; speaking properly -- if you can get past the Brooklynese -- is more like it thanks to zealous self-study of English. And my online vocabulary is aided tremendously by OS X's Dictionary.

Appearance-wise, give me specifics; this whole body cannot be beautiful. I can accept being attractive because my body has been shaped by eons of sexual selection. The genus Pan chose inflated rears, whereas Homo's ancestors preferred an hourglass shape.

These ramblings should be chalked up to a lack of confidence, as I am still learning the ways of bars and of men.

something would have to change

A weekend or two ago the trains were messed up horribly -- the G ran from Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Bedford-Nostrand, then switch to the one that ran to Court Square; the uptown F skipped 14th and 23rd Streets; the L ran from Union Square to Bedford Avenue, skipping Third Avenue, and then switch to one going to Canarsie -- so I was a homebody, watching the third season of House.

I maintain that House is the most brilliant show on television: the writing is superb, and who doesn't fall in love immediately with Hugh Laurie? The level of honesty is shocking. House is probably a bigger atheist than Richard Dawkins and promotes abortion.

In one episode, in a rare moment when he's working in the clinic House tells a girl she has an STD, and when she overreacts he realizes she's been raped. The remainder of the episode is the hospital staff trying to get her to talk, and she'll talk only to House -- after he shares a horrible story. He says his grandmother abused him, yet he continued calling her Oma, Dutch for grandmother, because she was still his grandmother and didn't cease to be Dutch. The girl accuses him of lying because "something would have to change"; an abusive Dutch grandmother can't still be "Oma."

She's right, which is why an abusive alcoholic is a "sperm donor" and not the more familiar euphemism.