Department of Pointless Exercises

Well, this was a dull evening. I sat for two hours at my dear old alma mater, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in the very same theatre in which I played Big Mama in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof back in 1972, and listened to four agents describe in detail how none of us agentless actors were ever going to get an agent without doing a lot of extremely involved backflips. Meet this one, talk to that one, make friends with somebody else...etc., etc., etc., ad infinitem. The only bright spots in the evening were waiting in line to get in and yapping with two great gals of about my own vintage about the problems of the older actor, and the fact that I ran into one of my old castmates from the awful Richard III I did...George, who has the greatest face. He looks like an eagle smelling something rotten. His eyes are rather close together, and he has a great beak of a nose and a somewhat small mouth...and the effect is supercilious but also somehow predatorily birdlike.

I was wrong when I said that the audition which was hunting "names" for all the parts was 7/17 - it's actually tomorrow, and I'm really of two minds about going. I mean, why bother, really? If I do go, it'll be for two reasons - one is that my comic monologue hasn't been taken out for a walk in ages and needs exercise, and two is that I'm quite curious to see if anybody else will turn up at all. Anyway it's right in Union Square, so it hardly requires a huge expenditure of time and energy to get there...and I've really been lazy about auditioning for stage stuff recently. I should go, just for the sake of professional discipline.

I have been both good and bad today. I got up and did my homework - redoing my resume (much less scruffy looking now), writing a letter for a friend who's applying for citizenship and Priority Mailing same, getting my upper lip and chin waxed, and taking the old resumes off the pictures and putting the new resumes on. All very grownup and responsible, do admit. However, between the waxing and the restapling of resumes, I stopped for lunch...economically bad.

It was WONDERFUL. There is a little restaurant on the corner of West 10th and West 4th (for out of town readers, welcome to Greenwich Village, where even the streets are odd) which is just tiny, and in the summer months it's open to the street on two sides. I've been walking by it for ages - I think the name is I Tre Merli, which means (I think) Three Blackbirds, and it's the kind of place where you can just have a cheese or charcuterie plate and a glass of wine, or an actual full meal. Sarah and I and a third friend (Christina, maybe?) had dinner there one night some years back, but I think it was a different restaurant then.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day today, and it just looked right to me. I spent $38 (with tip) on lunch for myself, and it was absolutely worth every single cent. I had a lobster salad, bread with olive oil, and a glass of Cotes du Rhone rose. I LOVE rose, and no one will buy it for me or order a bottle in a restaurant and you can hardly ever find it by the glass, so I was thrilled. And wonderful bread, and flavorful oil, and a huge salad...frisee, mache, avocado, and - wonder of wonders - enough lobster. Usually when you order a lobster salad you get two chunks of lobster. I should think this one had damn near a whole chopped up lobster in it, because there were lovely chunks all through the frisee and mache and it was crowned with the avocado and two whole claws...and a beautiful balsamic vinaigrette.

Heaven. I have never been able to understand women (it's just about only women - men don't seem to care - maybe it's the culture of business trips?) who say they have trouble eating alone in restaurants. (To be fair, they probably don't understand my problem with going to the movies alone.) After years of cooking for other people, I find that there are few things lovelier than a day like today...sitting in glorious silence with my book, ordering exactly what I wanted, basking in the sun through the open sides of the place, sipping my wine, taking my time...and, just for lagniappe, an absolutely gorgeous young waiter (oh, come on...surely I'm allowed some aesthetic admiration).

You know, $38 for an hour of bliss is pretty damn cheap.

Love, Wendy