Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Law & Order - The Micro-Shoot

Well, that just wasn't worth putting on all that makeup for.  The makeup was because Russian women, the older ones, wear a TON of it.  Personally I feel that the older you get, the less you should wear...it just settles into those tiny fine lines (oh, all right, crows' feet you could stick an actual crow into, if you must know) and makes you look older.

Anyway, so I caught the location bus out to Brighton Beach at 5:45 am...then we walked back and forth on Brighton Beach Avenue for a while...then we were sent back to holding...and then we were wrapped, at 10:45 in the morning!  Sheesh.  I must say that SAG is a generous employer, though; while we were out walking back and forth, it spat one or two drops of rain.  Would you believe we got wet pay for it?  (Yes, in SAG language, there really is something called wet pay.  You can also get smoke pay, among other things.)  I mean, thank you, SAG, for the extra 7 bucks, but how silly can you get?

Meanwhile, I've been being terribly social...birthday party for my friend Caesar at his place in New Jersey on Saturday (you know I adore the guy if he got me to go to New Jersey without a location bus).  Lots of lovely food and lots of people I hadn't seen forever.

Then last night I went uptown to a rather less amusing engagement...a memorial service for a gal I did a show with some time back.  It was quite a decent memorial, as these things go; lots of wine and good food, and again, a bunch of people I hadn't seen forever.  But nobody (even if we weren't close friends, which we weren't) should die at 58 from hepatitis.  Ghastly.

Tonight I'm off to play with my child at the bar...without makeup and with jeans, for a lovely change.  Well, I certainly wasn't going to a birthday party looking like I was going to the grocery store (red turtleneck, black mini, black tights, red cowboy boots...yay, me), and I would consider it impolite to not dress decently for a memorial (gray pants suit, pale blue turtleneck, short black boots).  So at least tonight I can throw on my dirty old sneaks...long sigh of relief.

I was reading the NYTimes on Sunday (through my hangover...that WAS a good party) and went directly to the vanity publishing ads, as usual.  There hasn't really been anything good in these recently, but Sunday I found one for your delectation. 

"MUSINGS OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS OF SOLITUDE

In this collection of maxims, aphorisms and just plain thoughts and unanswered questions, Bardas Benetbunk attempts to lend coherence to the thoughts that visited his mind over a great number of years, and the reflections they occasioned."

Hoo boy.  Can we say hubris?  What on earth would make this gentleman think that anybody was in the least interested?  I bet he's bored every single member of his family and everyone else he knows to death with this stuff.  Can't you just see, oh, say, Thanksgiving?  "Oh, God, here comes Bardas again.  Look, if I'm stuck with him for more than 5 minutes, invent an urgent phone call or something, please?"  No wonder he's had a thousand and one nights of solitude.  Admittedly, much can be forgiven a man who's stuck being named Bardas Benetbunk...but not everything.

So, for those of you who are looking for the equivalent of a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking for certain people this year, I give you Bardas Benetbunk.  He'll have plenty of books left after he forces one on each member of his family, I'm sure.

Love, Wendy

Friday, October 14, 2011

Time Got Away From Me Again

Well, I keep meaning to post...doesn't that count for something?

I've been locked into the ambulance-chasing lawyer's office for practically two weeks, which means that the sum total of interesting things that have happened to me is one big fat zero.  Unless, of course, you count the fact that in six days of this guy, I managed not to strangle him...which I consider an enormous achievement, frankly. 

You have no idea.  He's a perfectly nice guy, I have to say, and even (unlike far too many lawyers) actually has a sense of humor.  Most lawyers simply aren't taught these things in law school, you see...evidently moot court and torts class don't have sections devoted to oh, say, Mark Twain (although they ought to).  No, it's his method of working that drives me straight up a wall.

The man has the mind of a butterfly on crack.  He cannot prioritize (I hate that word) his work to save his life.  The result of this is that everything gets half or one qaurter done when he suddenly comes up with another frantic emergency.  Face it, people...everything is NOT an emergency.  A Will in probate is not going to get probated any faster if the letter is written this afternoon instead of this morning.  Or, in fact, tomorrow instead of today.  This guy doesn't do criminal law, so we're not talking about somebody rotting in jail for an extra day.  Anyway, six days of him was WAY too much for flesh and blood to take...which is why I've been avoiding my home computer.

So there.

However, I did get two calls in succession yesterday while I was dozing off over a Stipulation and Final Accounting for Receivership (oh, God help me...I'm talking legalese).  One was from Central Casting, who have suddenly decided they love me again...and I'm doing Law & Order SVU on Monday!  Yay!  And right after that...I mean 15 minutes after I talked to Central Casting...I got a call to do 30 Rock today!  Unfortunately, today's shoot was weather sensitive with a fallback on Monday, and of course I was already booked on Monday.  Damn. 

So today I had a nice long nap, went and got my chin and upper lip waxed (I don't think the elderly billy goat effect is a really good look for me), and am now attempting to talk myself into doing something useful in the house.  That would be organizing the books, of course.  Every single book I own (well, not quite) is on the living room floor because I'm trying to get all the authors together.  It's been like this for weeks now.  The job is intrinsically boring anyway, and then there's the basic problem of runniing across something I haven't read in forever and just saying, well, the hell with it, I'll just read for a while.  I'm managing to organize six books a day before I get sick of the whole thing and curl up with one of them.  At this rate, I'll be moving them off the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

The cats continue to be completely insane...Moon Unit showed me some affection the other day by walking up, looking me in the face, and then nipping me very gently on the eyebrow.  Um, what?

Love, Wendy

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Unbelievable...

From today's Weird But True column in the NY Post:

"Lawmakers in Ohio have made it legal for people to carry concealed weapons while visiting bars.

One state senator said there's no need to fear people carrying guns in close proximity to alcohol.

'An undischarged concealed weapon never hurt anybody,' he said."

Does anybody but me see anything hugely, deeply wrong with this whole idea?  Obviously an undischarged weapon never killed anybody, concealed or not, but how many times have we all heard, "I didn't know it was loaded!"  And the notion that you can just waltz into a bar, no matter what your mood, carrying a weapon that no one can see...well, I'm personally not going to be drinking in Ohio any time soon, I can assure you.  Not, you understand, that I have EVER planned to drink in Ohio, but stranger things have happened.  For instance, I actually have had a drink in Ohio...this was roughly a million years ago during my touring children's theatre years, and I haven't the remotest notion exactly where in Ohio I was.  Yeah, well, you do three shows a day and spend the rest of the time in a heavy fog on the Ohio Turnpike...you won't know where you are either.

And someone came up with an equally ridiculous and dangerous idea here in New York just a couple of weeks ago...the notion that you don't need a vision test to renew your driver's license.  Hoo, boy.  Like the streets around here aren't dangerous enough already...although personally I blame that on the kamikaze  bike riders we have.  Luckily someone with a modicum of good sense nipped the no vision test thing right in the bud, which is excellent.

Meanwhile, good old Anonymous (and how IS life in Chicago?) does raise a point about various people not being thrilled with my notion of heaven.  This is probably because I failed to make it clear that this is MY version of heaven.  I am firmly of the belief that if there is a heaven, you get the one you want.  I mean, I know people who would be thrilled to have heaven be one long night at a 1970's disco.  This would cause me to beg for the fires of hell immediately, but there's no accounting for taste (certainly not for that one).  No, everybody deserves their deepest desire in heaven...why not?

Love, Wendy