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