The Hamlet Critique

Well, it was a very good Hamlet. Patrick Stewart was wonderful, of course, and so was David Tennant, the Hamlet, whom Sarah tells me plays Doctor Who. A bit of a departure for him, then.

I have a few little quibbles...all we Shakespearean types just love to find something annoying in ANY production that we can chew over.

My major quibble with this production was the weather. Now, it is winter, and very cold...clearly stated in Act 1, Scene 1. And much later on, when Hamlet escapes from the boat (although this being modern dress, it seemed to be an airplane - you heard machine-ish noises but didn't see it) taking him to England, he ends up in a snow covered landscape. This being the case, why did the director choose to show his madness earlier by making him run around barefoot? This is a castle, in Denmark, in winter. And you saw not a single fireplace in any scene, and frankly, I don't care how modern your dress is...castles of ANY period just aren't all that warm (high rise penthouses and Soho lofts have the same problem, I hear...something to do with heat diffusion in large high ceilinged spaces). And along the same lines, why was Ophelia running around in little sleeveless dresses, without a cardigan or anything? This also made a complete mockery of Gertrude's speech about her drowning, because Ophelia had just finished her mad scene, which she performed in her slip. That makes Gertrude's remarks total nonsense...they're something on the lines of "Awhile her garments bore her up, but then, heavy with their drink..." etc., etc. I played Gertrude, whom I found a distinctly boring broad and NEVER liked, so unusually for me, I've suppressed most of her lines. If you want all of Taming of the Shrew, I'm your gal...I LOVED playing Kate. Anyway, as I was saying, a thin slip, bra and panties are not going to bear her up in the water, nor are they going to cause her to sink, since the outfit weighed just about as much as a one piece bathing suit. And what was she doing farting around by the water in her underwear in winter? Yeah, yeah, she's nuts. OK. I get it.

However, on the whole, the production was fast paced and very, VERY well acted and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

By the by, I must apologize for two entries running in which I ran on about my birdcage notion. Put it down to (currently) frustrated interior decoration skills.

Meanwhile, I'm NOT working tomorrow or Friday...they changed the shooting dates; I think it might be the wind. Almost all of us, men and women, are wearing straw hats, and when there's the slightest bit of wind up on the Boardwalk, they start flying and everybody has to regroup and reshoot. But they texted me for two MORE days! So now I've got this coming Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the Monday after that! Yahoo!

And more people coming in and out of the house...had some today and more tomorrow. My birdcage is getting closer all the time...

Love, Wendy

A Lovely Dull Day

Wow. No house buyers, no rehearsal, no filming, no lousy receptionist jobs. What a gorgeous day.

I got out and did some grocery shopping and drugstore shopping...I am now the proud possessor of a reasonably full icebox, a nice new tube of toothpaste, and various other interesting items. Naturally I forgot a couple of things, but tomorrow I've got to go out and get a new sports bra and a couple of new pairs of black tights, so I'll fill in the gaps then. It's not that I don't make a grocery list, it's just that with (usually) only me to cook for, I kind of cruise through and just grab what looks amusing. Therefore my grocery list has things on it that I really HAVE to remember, like garbage bags and cat litter, but I just write down "food" for everything else, because I don't know what'll look good.

I used to be a real bear on grocery lists and food planning, because I had this child and this husband and this lack of money. And a full time job, naturally. So I would do this horrendously housewifely thing and sit down every Sunday with the food coupons from the paper and make menus for the week and detailed grocery lists. It was necessary at the time, but I'm really glad I don't have to do it any more because it kind of stifles creativity. I also did all the grocery shopping. Once I thought it would be very nice if Matthew would go out and do it, so I handed over the grocery list, the coupons, and the grocery money for the week. Never again. He came back with something like two artichokes, two filets mignon and a couple of other things I can't remember along the same lines. Yes, well...that was the end of that experiment. No, there was no change.

And the sports bra and the black tights I'm going to buy? More Boardwalk Empire! And my tights sprung a leak, and I really do need another sports bra so I can wash one. Yay and yahoo! I've already got Thursday and Friday of this week, and now I have Monday and Wednesday of next week, too. I tell you, this thing is my very own little money maker. I just got a check for $479.02 for the last two days I did. If I can get two days a week, I've got my basic needs well covered here. And I just heard in the Mildred Pierce holding pen that while I thought HBO had bought Boardwalk for two years, it seems they may have it under contract for FIVE years. If that's so, my fortune is made...

Meanwhile, I have started thinking seriously about the new apartment, and I have decided that I absolutely need a Victorian birdcage. The things are huge, with wonderful curlicues in wrought iron, and I've always loved them...even though I hate birds with a passion. I am planning to put something bizarre in it...perhaps a stuffed (as in teddy bear stuffed, not taxidermy stuffed) tarantula. Octopus? God bless New York, where it should be pretty easy to find at least a nice stuffed spider...

Glee was on tonight...wow, I love that show. They were advertising the DVDs of it, and referred to the audience as Gleeks, which I just love. That's me, a proud Gleek. And next week, Olivia Newton-John! They better do Grease...

And tomorrow night Channel 13 is doing Hamlet, with Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Yes, yes, I know, Star Trek TNG, but he's Royal Shakespeare Company trained and a brilliant Shakespearean...Sarah and I saw him as Prospero in The Tempest a few years ago, and he was droolingly wonderful. It's in modern dress, damn it, which I detest, but Patrick Stewart can overcome anything. I may have to go to bed before the end, depending on my call time for Thursday, which will probably be 5:30 am as usual, but it's not like I don't know every word of Hamlet backwards and forwards, what with playing Gertrude and all. And I'll take a nap tomorrow afternoon.

So there.

Love, Wendy

Moving Right Along

It looks like I may be moving sooner than I thought...we've got FOUR offers on the house! This is exciting in many ways.

First, I'll have a decent chunk of money in the bank, which is always nice. And second, I'll have a whole new apartment to play with...and I LOVE doing up apartments. I've decided that I want a birdcage for the new place...one of those elaborate Victorian things. This may sound odd...particularly if you know me, since I am well-known to absolutely detest birds unless they are nicely sizzling in the oven, but I just love those fancy birdcages. I haven't decided what to put in it yet, but it'll be something odd and interesting.

Friday, of course, was Mildred Pierce. Really, they should get it together over there. They didn't let us know the call times until one o'clock in the damn morning, which is deeply annoying if you happen to want a good night's sleep before a shoot, and then they called us for a 10:30 report at Steiner Studios out in Brooklyn...and it was a sort of self-report...meaning we took the subway and the van picked us up there. Then we shot until 8:30 or something, which was just enough time so they didn't have to send us back to the city, but could dump us at the damn subway again (after 9 pm they have to send you back in a van). Growl. Meanwhile they sent us this long email regarding what kind of makeup to wear and what to do with our hair...and then sent us to makeup and hair anyway. I mean, why bother with the email? It essentially told us to put on light foundation, eyebrows, pinkish/raspberry lipstick, and one coat of mascara on our top lashes only. Then the makeup people went over the whole thing again with the exception of the mascara. We were also told the usual (for period work) clean hair, no product bit, and to pull it straight back into a ponytail so it would be smooth. So you got to the hair people who promptly put it all up in hot rollers. Sheesh.

Anyway, it was a pleasant shoot aside from that...although there was a lot of downtime. There were plenty of the Boardwalk people there; I guess we've become the go-to group for period work, which suits me fine as long as there's enough of it. And I was greeted by name by the background wrangler, Brendan...happiness is getting known. As I've mentioned before, this is important.

And Kate Winslet served me eggnog with her very own hands! I think this is neat. The scene was Mildred Pierce's restaurant on Christmas Eve, and she was serving eggnog to her patrons...and this means you should get a nice shot of me saying (silently, of course) thank you and oh, how lovely. In that awful outfit.

Don't ever get involved with restaurant scenes. We were served fried chicken and vegetables (oh, yeah, real food), and God only knows when that chicken was cooked...and of course you have to play with it to look as if you might actually put it in your mouth, which no one in their right mind would do. It looked petrified. We (me and the other three people at my table) also passed around a basket of biscuits...real again...which looked and weighed as if they were made out of plaster. Mmm mmm good!

But it's another credit under my belt, and Thursday and Friday I get to go back to my beloved Boardwalk. We're really becoming quite a little ensemble group there...it's getting so that it's sort of like going to the office, only it's fun and they pay better. And feed me.

Richard the real estate guy has emailed me that he wants to show the house on Thursday, when I will be trotting around out in Brooklyn. Well, on his head be it...if he wants to show the house without me around, HE can go on cat poop patrol before people arrive.

Love, Wendy

TMI

You know, I think the world as we know it has gotten completely out of hand.

What on earth has become of the notion that one's private life should be kept private? In one day sitting here playing with my computer, I have found out more about a bunch of perfect strangers than I ever want to know about anyone other than a husband or lover. And I assure you, I didn't want to know.

I am already sick and tired (as I believe I've mentioned here) of all the sightings of celebrities stopping just short of actual coitus at the dinner table in a restaurant. And of course, the endless information about who's sleeping with whom.

Now we have people getting all up in arms because their personal sexy messages that they sent from a work-issued cell phone or computer were read by their offices. And even better, we have a story about a teacher who freely admits that after his class, he would lock his classroom door and masturbate in there. And all the teachers having sex with their students or each other...the latter, in one case, in an empty classroom.

WHAT IN HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE?

These are adult human beings (well, supposedly adult). Why in the name of all that's holy (and you know, I think I sort of do mean holy) can't they behave like adults and suppress their bodily urges until they get home? If you have partners, do they need such constant reassurance of your love that you must necessarily send them erotic messages all day long to keep them happy? If that's true, you're doing it wrong. If you are on your way to dinner and feel that you can't control yourself at the restaurant, then why on earth don't you carve out some time to screw before dinner? IN PRIVATE. And while I admit that the notion of your boss reading your emails smacks of 1984 and Big Brother is watching you, surely you are not so stupid as to believe this doesn't go on. After all, it's HIS computer. How can anyone in this day and age (note cliche...I'm good at them) believe that ANYTHING on a computer is private? I thought we were all supposed to be so technologically sophisticated by this time.

I personally believe (because, as you will know if you read this blog with any regularity, I am a nut on the subject) that's it's all due to a complete breakdown of decent manners. Mrs. Pat Campbell, an English actress and lover of George Bernard Shaw, once remarked that one could do anything, "as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

Don't you hear the neighing of a million terrified equines?

Love, Wendy

Question

Can anyone tell me why my cat has suddenly become infatuated with my right ear? Every time I sit down at the computer he's right there, pushing his nose into my ear and making purring, snuffling, licking noises. Now, I can certainly think of people from whom this would not come amiss...George Clooney springs immediately to mind, as do Harrison Ford and Sean Connery...but frankly, the cat doesn't turn me on all that much, even though I love him dearly. To my certain knowledge, I haven't been sticking cat food in my ear. And I don't think cat spit in the ear is an aphrodisiac at all. Just one of life's little mysteries.

Meanwhile, I have been out and uptown and bought my two lamps, which will cast lots more light on the living room. I'm still not sure this is a good idea.

Love, Wendy

When We Last Left Our Heroine...

...she was busy exploding hard boiled eggs, which is what happens if you are making hard boiled eggs and forget about them. Oh, well.

So I got through my deeply dull reception day and went home and slept very fast in order to get up at 3:30 am for my 5:30 am bus to the Boardwalk. Oh, my GOD, it was cold out there. If you recall (and if you happen to be in the New York area), it was gray, and damp, and never got past the low 50s all day long. This is NOT weather during which you want to spend 12 hours outdoors in summer clothing, which is what we did. Brrr.

Wednesday we had a late call (11 am, which is REALLY late for Boardwalk), and since nobody told us any differently, we all kind of assumed that we would be having a short shooting day just to finish up what we had been doing the day before. Wrong. It was a day into night shot, and we got signed out around 1 am. The weather was a great deal better (it actually got into the 70s at one point and the sun was shining), but since we were working until way after dark, it got just as damn cold after the sun went down. I am getting DEEPLY tired of being cold.

Thursday I didn't even bother to get dressed...nice warm flannel pajamas and fuzzy bathrobe and a blanket wrapped around on top of that because I still couldn't get warm enough to suit me (note to self: install steam room in kitchen). I spent the day doing my taxes and discovering that I've done something deeply wrong with my state taxes...I don't see how by any possible stretch of the imagination I can owe New York State over $600 in taxes when my adjusted gross income was under $13,000. That doesn't make any sense. I presume they'll figure it out. I hope they do this before cashing the check I sent them, because said check was a complete flight of fantasy as concerns how much money I actually have in the bank. But given the volume of tax forms coming in right now, I think I can rest easy in the knowledge that they can't possibly get around to cashing mine before this coming Monday (I mean the 26th), at which point the money WILL be in the bank. Then Sarah came over and I did her taxes.

Friday was another mundane seminar job, but at least I was working with a guy I like very much, with whom I've worked before. And Saturday I woke up, read the papers, and immediately went back to bed (having prudently told Richard the real estate man that NOBODY was coming over to look at anything that day unless they wanted a charming view of me snoring with my mouth open).

And today we had another open house, with some repeat people who wanted another look, which is always a hopeful sign...Richard seemed stoked about it, anyway.

One of the people who turned up today was a realtor for one of the couples who had already seen the house, and I nearly killed her. Talk about a pit bull. Loud braying voice, and she kept asking the damndest questions...such as "What's above your bathroom ceiling?" How the hell would I know? It never occurred to me to take the ceiling apart to look. Frankly, she was so damned determined that I was desperately afraid she was about to take a sledgehammer out of her purse to find out for herself. Richard told me that when he told her about the upcoming new construction that's going to be on the other side of the street, she barked at him, "Where are they gonna put the crane?" Well, since Richard doesn't happen to be the construction foreman for that building, how the hell would he know? She also remarked to her clients that my circuit breaker box is illegal. Oh, well. I suppose that's nice to know, but I can't imagine what she wants me to do about it. Actually I think most of the wiring in this place is fairly illegal, since to my certain knowledge, the electrician who put it in was stoned out of his gourd on coke when he did it (he's an old friend...we didn't find out about his doing the wiring until we moved in here, long after he'd done it...he's cleaned up now, but our wiring is quite strange).

I must say it's a strange feeling to have people tromping about through your house inspecting it. I have no illusions about how the place looks (clean but decidedly lived in), so that bit doesn't bother me too much, but I confess to an enormous desire to do something off the wall...you know, lay a three foot dildo casually across my pillow, have a male friend take a shower in the upstairs bathroom during the open house and unconcernedly walk naked into the bedroom while the lookers are there...something interesting. But I guess not, not if I want to sell the place.

Meanwhile, after all that last week I haven't got a single thing on the horizon until Friday, which is Mildred Pierce. Luckily all that stuff last week will net me around $500, and my Social Security turns up on the 26th, so I can afford to relax for a few days...tomorrow I'm going to get those lamps. I was going to do it on Saturday, but the thought of going to Jack's on Saturday with the rest of the immediate world was just awful. So I shall trot off after I read the papers tomorrow morning.

Love, Wendy

First Offer!

Whoo hoo! Another open house today, and our first offer...$1.1 million. And three sets of people coming back with their architects! I am totally stoked about this. Closer and closer to my new place to play with!

Meanwhile, I am slightly drunk and on my way to bed...I have a deeply dull mundane job tomorrow as a receptionist from 8 am to 5 pm, which will bore me to extinction, but will bring in more money (I'm really, REALLY big on bringing in more money). But on Tuesday I'm back on the the Boardwalk set! Yay!

I am so full of food I can barely waddle through the keyboard here. I went off to Shai's place (my pal the chef) tonight because he was making porchetta, and it was the best damn potluck in the whole world. All that gorgeous pork, with Vicky's terrific warm potato salad, my kid's pasta salad with zucchini, a deeply hot and spicy greens thing that Shai made for the pork, and somebody made homemade cream puffs with homemade custard and jam, and Shai's lady Susan made some gorgeous macaroons with cream filling, and there was more food, and more food, and more, which included Logan's mac and cheese, which was the terrific kind with the crunchy top where when you grabbed a portion you had to cut the strings because it was so gorgeously cheesy, and...BURP.

Meanwhile, I have found the perfect lamps...at good old Jack's 99 Cent Store. I realize this sounds odd if you're not a New Yorker, but Jack's is only a 99 cent store on the first floor. The other two floors have a weird collection of anything manufacturers are trying to get rid of, and a lot of it is brand name, excellent stuff. Anyway, the lamps are nice classic crystal bases edged in bronze with cream shades, and they're $40 each - as opposed to anything I've found anywhere else, where the same thing is $119 each.

Well, that was interesting. I just heard a pop behind me on the stove, which is when I remembered I was attempting to hard boil two eggs. The pop was all the water boiling away. I think I'm going to give up on the eggs, because they smell quite peculiar. I was attempting to make a sandwich to take to work tomorrow...perhaps I had better think of something else. Perhaps I should go to bed.

Love, Wendy

World's Best Flavor Description!

I am sitting at a very dull receptionist job, and because the firm I'm working for is clearly insane, I'm not allowed to read. I can do anything I want on the computer, but I can't read a book. This strikes me as entirely bizarre, but what the hell.

The result of this is that I was looking through FARK.com, which is one of my favorite sites. It's a compendium of weird news from all over, and they had an entry today which just charmed the pants off me.

There is an English magazine called The Guardian, and they have a columnist named Charlie Brooker. I don't know what he usually writes about, but this particular column is a description of various flavors of Walker's Crisps (in American, potato chips). Walker's is the Lay's of the British Isles.

Mr. Brooker proceeds to absolutely hate almost every one of the new crisp flavors, but he gives his impression of the haggis flavored chips (no, of course I don't know why - or for that matter, HOW - one would flavor potato chips with haggis - haggis, by the by, is a Scottish "delicacy" which is ground sheep entrails mixed with oatmeal, among other things, and sewn up and boiled in a sheep's stomach) as follows:

"It's like a small piece of fried potato failing to recall a repressed abuse memory while sitting on your tongue."

Now I submit to you that that is the most wonderful piece of prose in the world. You could spend hours mulling the philosophical ramifications of this. You could begin, perhaps, by attempting to figure out what would happen if the piece of fried potato had actually been able to recall the abuse memory. Would this affect the flavor in any way? What would happen if the piece of fried potato was sitting on someone else's tongue? Would it still fail to recall? You could actually build a whole dinner party conversation around this - presuming, of course, that, like mine, all your friends are clinically insane. Personally, the first person I'd invite to such a party would be Charlie Brooker, because I feel anyone who could come up with that sentence would be a more than worthy addition to my little circle of deeply disturbed inebriates.

In other news, life really is beginning to resemble a jigsaw puzzle - every morning I wake up and try to figure out what piece of what I'm supposed to be doing that day.

Today I got up at 6:30, climbed into actual pantyhose and a skirt (and a blouse, naturally) and trotted off to the Steiner Studios in Brooklyn for my Mildred Pierce fitting. You know, I'm convinced that HBO just wants me to look lousy. I had high hopes for something more attractive than my latest Boardwalk costume. But no. They've got me tricked out in pantyhose with seams, a pantygirdle, the omnipresent sports bra (my own), a full slip, a green house dress, a green striped jacket, black lace-up Oxfords with what used to be called a Cuban heel - about 1-1/2" high - black purse, beige gloves, and a truly ridiculous looking straw hat. I'm supposed to be a restaurant patron in a chicken and waffle house on Christmas. Dora Dowdy Does the Diner. I look like a superannuated Girl Scout. Bleaaah. On the other hand, the shoes are reasonably comfortable (I guess by the 30s, women had wider feet), and the restaurant part means that I'll be sitting down indoors, which I think is an excellent idea. I mean, they're shooting on April 23rd (not the 19th), so you never know...I'm still trying to get warm from Friday.

By the way, as I pointed out to the costumers, pantyhose with seams are the last things you want to wear with a pantygirdle (this one is the kind without a crotch - sort of an extended garter belt). The reason is that girdles have garters attached to them, and the way this works is that you have stockings, and the garters attach to the stockings, and the whole thing together keeps the pantygirdle from riding up to your waistline. It also makes it WAY easier to keep the seams in your stockings straight because you don't have to undress to do it, you just run to the ladies' room and unhitch them for a minute. But unfortunately, I'm told, stockings with seams and tops are now made almost exclusively for the sexy lingerie market, and are therefore not useful, since they're WAY too fragile. Damn. I can't wait to get a role in something set in the 60s so I can just go commando - and braless.

And right at this very moment, Richard the realtor is showing some people my house again...and he wants to have another open house on Wednesday, which is fine with me.

But you see what I mean about the jigsaw - a desk job here, a fitting here, a shooting day, an open house...

Love, Wendy

Hoo, Boy, Am I Tired

Should you ever think it might be a good idea, I do NOT suggest doing two long shooting days back to back.

If you have been following me this week (and if you have, stop it - that's just creepy), I had a late running birthday party on Wednesday - and went to bed at midnight. I then proceeded to get up at 3:30 in the morning on Thursday and do a long shooting day, getting home at about 7 pm. I got to bed around 10 or so, and slept until 7...and then decided to sleep some more because of the upcoming night shoot. So I eventually got up at 11 and read the papers and whatnot and got my location bus at 3:30 pm. If you add up those hours, you will discover, as I did, that there's a whole lot of not enough sleep in there.

We thought we would DIE last night. Even though it wasn't as warm as it was supposed to be on Thursday's shoot, we did get a lot of sun, and at one point in the afternoon it got really warm. But last night...my God.

Remember, we're still in VERY early spring. And our set is on the edge of the river...the East River, that is. And on top of that, there are fans which blow directly on us at some points on the set which are there to make the awnings flutter realistically. And it got down to about 42 degrees last night. AND we're filming a SUMMER night on the Boardwalk...in SUMMER clothing. LIGHT summer clothing.

You have never seen more people simultaneously shivering in your life. We had our coats, which the production assistants collected from us just before the actual shot each time, and they also handed out those chemical heat patches. I had one planted on my chest, which was some help, but not in the least enough help. I would have killed for the shoe warmer patches, but my boots were A. much too tight to allow me to get anything in them (including, with any comfort, my feet), and B. laced all the way to the knee, which would have taken for-friggin'-ever to undo and do again. Arrrgh.

However, two things happened yesterday that made it all worthwhile. The first one was that when I was in the bus heading toward good old Greenpoint, Brooklyn, my phone rang, and it was dear sweet Sarah from Grant Wilfley announcing that they wanted me for a costume fitting on Monday for work April 18th on Mildred Pierce! Yay! I've been submitting for this one ever since it was first posted, and I'm so glad to get it. I'm moving ten years forward...it's set in the 1930's. Now I have to look up 1930's female underwear on the internet, and pray that there are no corsets involved...I don't think there were...please God, tell me there weren't...shit. I just looked. It was (as I feared) the start of the panty girdle. Crud.

But the second thing that happened is really enough to reconcile me to the upcoming panty girdle and even the frigid air last night. The SAG rep came in at dinner time (my union sends reps to all big shoots to deal with any complaints on the spot, which I think is deeply neat) and informed us that Good Friday is considered a holiday. A HOLIDAY!

That was capitalized because I am indeed shouting - with glee. What it means is that every single one of those 14 or so hours I worked last night is DOUBLE TIME. Yup. Double time. In layman's terms, that is...wait for it...$33.50 PER HOUR.

Now Boardwalk Empire shoots long days, and I usually take home at the very least 200 bucks for the day. But when you put together a full day (oh, all right - a full night) of double time PLUS the night differential, you come up with a gross of around $500 for the day. You know, you can do a LOT of shivering at those rates.

I do dearly love working this show. Last night was the sixth time I've worked it, and it's now at the point where some of the crew knows me by name and greets me when I turn up, and there are a fair amount of people who are regulars like I am, and it's beginning to feel like family around there. What's really nice is that when I was saying goodbye to various people on the crew last night, all of them said, "Oh, we'll see YOU again!"

Now this is VERY important in background work. If you get a reputation as being pleasant and fun and easy to work with, the crew DOES have an impact on whether you will be hired again. You can be a total annoying diva, and the makeup and hair and costume people, and the background wranglers and assistant directors, will go right back to SAG or the casting agency and say, "I do not ever want to have to work with that bitch again," and they are listened to. It's essentially the crew who makes a movie happen, and you'd better NEVER forget it. Get in with them, and you WILL be hired again. Trust me on this one!

So Monday will be an interesting day. I have a 9 am fitting for Mildred Pierce out at Steiner Studios, but thank God they've got a van from the subway station to the studio (it's right across the street from the fitting place for Boardwalk). That means I only have to take the bus from my place over to 6th Avenue and catch the F train to some damn where or another...York Street? I've got it written down. Unfortunately, before I got the movie, I accepted a temp job for Monday. It originally was for noon, which would have been fine...but now they want me there at 11 am. It's going to be just a tad bit tight...so I emailed the temp people to tell them that I might not be able to get there until 11:30. And Richard the realtor is coming at 2 pm to drag some other unsuspecting victim through my house. The fun never stops!

Love, Wendy

A Birthday - Followed By A Corset

Please do not expect anything brilliant in here, because I am a dead human being.

Yesterday was my birthday - and I am now an actual, living, breathing legal Senior Citizen. Doesn't that sound impressive? It isn't, primarily because I insist on remaining the same old me...or, as I remarked to a friend on the phone tonight, just wait until you see me dancing on the bar at an East Village dive, waving my Medicare card.

We held my birthday party in my favorite restaurant, about which I have blogged...Tout Va Bien, on 51st and 8th. Last night it was filled, for some reason, with French sailors, in their adorable tight little pants. I consider this an extremely excellent birthday present. The place was jumping. I ate escargots with humongous amounts of butter and garlic, an enormous filet mignon bordelaise, mashed potatoes AND frites (well, hell, it was my birthday), and then they came out with a chocolate mousse draped in whipped cream with a candle in it for me while dimming the lights, causing a perfect storm of VERY French voices weaving their way through "Appy Birsday". Then I also ate the creme caramel that I'd actually ordered for dessert (well, you know, it was my birthday and all). After all THIS, they brought us an (all ten of us) an enormous bowl of Sangria for no particular reason, but what the hell...it WAS my - yeah, you know. And my meal was paid for by my best friend Carolyn (really forever friend, like since we were seven or so), since she couldn't make it in from Chicago for the event. I think that's deeply neat. I think it's even neater that I have friends who date back that far. There's really nothing like being able to discuss how much better good old fashioned roller skates with a key were than these newfangled things (watch me...I'm going to be a doddery grumphing old lady in no time at all!).

The only unfortunate part of this utterly glorious blowout was that yesterday afternoon while I was beginning to think about getting dressed in my nice new pale green dress with the turquoise flower print and its matching cardigan (God bless Michelle Obama for making the world safe for ladies with upper arm issues - i.e., me), the phone rang for that Boardwalk Empire shoot that got cancelled last week because of the deluge. But it wasn't the night shoot. Oh, no. After all that food and wine, I had to get up at 3:30 this morning to stuff my bloated body into that damned corset. I do NOT recommend this as an interesting activity.

But, by God, I did it...somehow. And something really weird happened. I got on the bus at 5:30 am (a time at which to come HOME, for God's sake, not a time to go to work) and sitting in the front seat was our old family friend Rob, with whom I'd done the terrible Iraq play at Theater for the New City (I mentioned that a couple of posts ago, I think). Well, this was certainly a shocker, since I hadn't seen Rob in ages. So we get to the set, and do the whole costume, makeup, hair routine (which, by the by, takes for friggin' ever because of the hordes of background people Boardwalk Empire uses). After all of THAT, I finally got my breakfast and unbelievably necessary coffee...and looked up as I was standing in line to find Pierre, who was ALSO in the Iraq play. This was just a tad bit too much, I felt. I mean, three of us from the same bad play on the same set? And me with that awful hangover and all?

Anyway, I got a good 12 and a half hours out of it...and in the middle of the day my agency called to make sure I was on board for the night shoot tomorrow, which of course I am, even if it means another 12 hours in the horrendously tight shoes (and, of course, that damn corset). So tomorrow my bus is at 3:30 pm and we will work until just past dawn. And tonight I am going to SLEEP, for God's sake. And Saturday, when I get home in the morning, I am going to SLEEP, for God's sake.

Meanwhile, my terrible child has announced that she and her boyfriend want to dye Easter eggs and bake a ham for Easter...wait, that's not quite right. THEY want to dye Easter eggs. I'M supposed to bake the ham and then turn the eggs into devilled eggs. My feeling about all of this is, you guys buy the ham, the ham glaze ingredients, the eggs, and the egg dye, and we'll discuss it further.

Meanwhile, what a neat birthday...and look at me! I'm officially OLD!

Love, Wendy