Interesting Times

That is, incidentally, a very old Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times."

Since we last talked (well, all right, I talked, all of you listened - and wonderful listeners you are, too), interesting things have happened.

One is that my pal Philippe has written a wonderful one woman play...which he has handed over to me for acting purposes. YAHOO! It's a terrific piece of work, and I get to have a complete nervous breakdown on stage, this being the reminiscences of a bipolar woman. I'm thrilled with it. Also, there's a director in place (our old pal Ted), and things are ready to move. Gee. Now all I have to do is memorize something like 27 pages of script, God help me. I think I'll start NOW.

Also, Philippe and our friend Tracy have written a movie script - romantic comedy variety - and he sent that along to me too, with a note reading, "See what you want to play." Now THERE are words to warm any actor's heart. I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure there will be a nice batty broad or wise woman of some variety or another for me. These guys know me well enough to know that I am hardly the type to forget how old I am and want to do the 20 something lead - besides which, ingenue roles are invariably dull. Even in my teens, I was doing character work - by choice.

Philippe also took me out to a lovely dinner a couple of days ago, which was a real treat...aside from the fact that we were on his dime (for which I actually put on clothing and makeup...attention must be paid), there's something about walking into a restaurant with a guy who's 6'4" and knock your eye dead gorgeous that pleases me somehow. No, no...he's more than 20 years my junior and we're very good friends. Why screw that up?

No movie work...I'm not flavor of the month, evidently. Just wait until I can get some new pictures up on that damn site.

And now my update on the news of the day. Story in today's paper about a kid who was suspended from school and is supposed to be sent to reform school (I didn't know we even HAD reform schools any more) for 45 days. He had just become a Boy Scout, and had taken an item from his brand new Boy Scout mess kit to school with him because he was so proud to be a Boy Scout. This is an interesting little thing that combines a fork, spoon and knife in a foldout configuration, and he wanted to use it to eat lunch. We had something like it in our Girl Scout mess kits, as I recall. Anyway, the school decided this was a weapon. THE KID IS SIX YEARS OLD. Good GOD. 45 days in reform school for a six year old proud of being a Cub Scout. Have we all gone mad?

Brief break there. I'm half watching the second Star Wars (there are only three of them, you know), and we just got to Billy Dee Williams and I had to stop and drool for a bit.

Lastly, an interesting NYTimes magazine yesterday, all about food. I had a thought while I was reading it. Certainly I'm all for fresh food and local food and all the rest of it. It is, after all, what I grew up on. But I'm wondering whether any comprehensive study has ever been done to see what, if any, changes have happened to the human body after at least two generations of chemical additives and junk food - other than obesity of course. Have humans adapted to these chemicals, and will they suffer withdrawal without them? Because of course the people who are moving into totally organic and local are the people who have always espoused fresh food, like me, and used anything else very sparingly, and therefore don't have the concentration of chemicals and addititives in their bodies that mushroom soup-McDonald's-White Castle-canned food fed generations do.

Just wondering...

Meanwhile, I think I'll look at my new stage script and see what I might like in my new movie. Interesting times, indeed! WHEE!

Love, Wendy