Not so jaded that I can't swoon

My friend Cindy and I decided to have a girls' night out and see the off-Broadway smash Altar Boyz. The show has been around in various incarnations since 2004 but I'd never seen it. All I knew about it is that it parodies the late '90s-early '00s boy-band craze. So, when discount tickets were recently made available, Cindy and I thought that we'd enjoy a laugh and maybe partake in some innocent swooning (okay, that was my hope, anyway). It would be purely for kicks, as fans of theater and comedy. It wouldn't be for the usual reasons we go to shows: to support someone we know involved in the production, or to see a work-in-progress or something new, or for research.

However, our being in the business did make me skeptical at how swept away I'd get. We got to the theater and the house was only a little more than half full. We were in a row right next to two other ladies but it was clear that there was room for all four of us to scooch over to better aisle seats once the show began (kinda like that excitement you get on an airplane when you think you'll score with an empty seat next to you).

Sure enough, an announcer promised us that the Altar Boyz were about to get all up in our "bizness," a staffer proceeded to fog up the stage with a fog machine, and we were already giggling before the first song started. Cindy and I moved to the row in front of us on the aisle and the women next to us moved in behind us.

So okay, the show was a laugh riot. The characters were very earnest and Cindy and I had our favorite performer who we kept pointing to with every breath and tic the guy made. He also had the best song of the evening. The most fun part for me, however, was when the designated hunkola of the group began to sing his ballad about abstaining from sex while at summer camp or some such scenario; and without my seeing it coming, he smoothed his way into the audience and pulled me onto the stage. Oh, no, I was about to be serenaded very publicly, oh, yes! I looked back at Cindy only because I felt that that was what I "should" do; a faux cry for help. It was actually very easy for me to walk onto the stage, even though I had nothing to do with this show and had no idea what possible humiliations were up their sleeves. Cindy told me later that the ladies behind us were losing their minds. "Too bad you don't have a camera! Oh my god, you must be so excited for her! Wow, she seems so comfortable up there!" Cindy thought to say something about me having been on stage before but decided against it.

Meanwhile, I was sitting on a stool on stage happily staring into hunkola's eyes two inches from his face while he continued to sing right to me. I appreciated that he smelled very nice, because he was a big ol' sweat machine. I tried to sneak peeks to other parts of the stage to take the whole thing in ("I'm an Altar Boy!"), but Hunky would turn my head back to his crooning eyes, while he sang about the sad fate of our relationship. It was funny. I was having a great time. The only bummer was that I was wearing a frumpy sweater over a nice shirt, because I was cold. I was like, "I wish I had taken my sweater off first. Can't you warn a sistah before you pull her up on stage?"

The song ended, we applauded, and one of the cast members took a picture of me and Hunky (with the other guys in the background) before shooing me back to my seat as he handed me a little ticket that said that I could pick up the picture in the lobby after the show. In a grand moment of lucidity, I held up the peace sign in the picture.

Afterward, by the bathroom, audience members recognized me as the girl they brought up on stage. Even a band member said hello to me. It was hilarious. I picked up the picture thinking it would be just okay to not good, but it was great! Suddenly I was ecstatic to have this souvenir of having been sung to by Hunky himself. It happily sits where I can see it every single day, near my computer.

I got to laugh.
I got to swoon!

Mission accomplished.
A tourist in my own city.

This means war

I'd had flies in my apartment for the last few weeks, but it never really bothered me because it was summer. I wondered, since I have screens on my windows, where they came from, but I thought it was normal. Yesterday, however, I came home to find way too many of them in my bathroom and kitchen. Baby flies, not fruit flies, but smaller-than-normal house flies, and it was more disconcerting when they just hung out on a wall or on my shower curtain like they were sleeping. Infestation. Gross.

The first thing I did was wash all my dishes. I tend to let them pile up, which can't help the situation. Then I went online to see what I could do. The internet was full of homemade and creative ideas. Cut to this evening. Two citronella candles, a sticky fly-strip, two clear sandwich bags filled halfway with water with a penny in them hanging over doorways and a bottle of Windex later, I've become a crazy person standing in the middle of my kitchen spraying random flies with Windex and reveling in their demise. All this Windex in the air and floor can't be good for my cat, I think, but am I in my right mind? Pray tell, no. I am not.

There is less of them because I am killing them. But they better be all gone soon. I have seen the enemy and I will not rest until I have hunted them all down.

I am from...

I am from the city: cinder blocks and cement and a tree here and there, with supermarkets that have dark corners, and old people in a hospital that Clara's mother works at. When my dad died, I was walking by that old-folks hospital when Clara told me that someone told her that I was very young to have a parent die. I felt defensive, mature, as we tend to do as kids. I am from a tropical land in Asia that doesn't ever seem to get out of a life of corruption. Actors and presidents and little barefoot girls holding one-year-old boys on their nonexistent hips as they beg foreigners for money. I am one of those foreigners. I am of the Motherland but not from there. "New York," I sigh when cab drivers ask me where I'm from. They're all of somewhere else and from somewhere else. I am from an Irish-American great-great grandfather who has the same name as an actor, I just realized today. Am I related to this random Caucasion Hollywood actor who used to be married to Teri Hatcher? I am from the Golden Gate Bridge. And like the Golden Gate Brige, sometimes I am out there: red and fiery and vast and expansive. Other days, you can be right on top of me and I'm hidden in the dense fog. It is also cold on the Golden Gate, any time of year. I am from neighborhoods that always play salsa music. Whether in New Jersey or New York, my neighbors speak Spanish and listen to Spanish radio. They think I'm Spanish more often than not. My Korean friend was jealous that for an Asian person I don't really get random "ching-chongs" from ignorant people out to amuse themselves. I am from the womb of a woman so unlike me and like me it can only be a mother/daughter phenomenon. I wonder if she is upset that I don't call her as often as I used to. I'm just getting to know me, which is affecting how I interact with her. I hope I will come around. Besides, I turned out pretty well, and my brother did, too. Single parenthood can't be easy - understatement of the year. I am from energy, particles of matter joined together to form this brain.

{the picture is of a train track under the Bowne St. overpass in my hometown in Queens, NY}

Back again

The TV gig I did months ago
Called my agent
"Is she around?
Would she play another nurse?"
I guess I'm a go-to nurse.
I'll take it.

Donned in colorful, cheery scrubs
Much like the ones modeled here
(And no, that's not me,
Although it could be back in '95)
Someone put my hair in
A loose French braid
And I went to work
Walking around the halls
Of a real hospital.
I'll bet some people thought
I was the real McCoy.

My objective that day,
More than making sure
I didn't mess up my few lines,
Was to not stuff my face
With every food offered me
On the craft services table
And the awesomely catered meals.
I succeeded.
I am shrinking!
Even my scrubs pants were loose.
(The costume department has
My old measurements.)

I became buddies
With my scene partner
A 19-year-old showbiz veteran
Who was polite and friendly.
We were "honey wagon" neighbors.

One of the actors
Was a blustery crumudgeon
Who played at being a blowhard
As if the "playing at" would disguise
The fact that he really is a blowhard.
It didn't.
He also "played at" flirting with me.
"Nurse, what are you doing later?"
"Nurse, let me give you my number."
Ha ha, ha ha. We're being jovial.
But really, why are you so impatient?
We'd probably do better work
If you stopped making it all about you.
I know you do this every day.
But still.

I wasn't freaked out this time
That, unlike theater,
Scenes between people on film
Are so...quiet!
Even when I'm in the fricking scene
I can't hear the other person!
But we're mic'd
And it reads fine on screen.
I knew that this time
And fit right in.
No "You're doing too much" this time.
I've learned.
Different skill, different medium.

Exhausting day.
Much energy spent in making sure
You don't fuck up.
Everyone else can joke around
And relax.
But you can't.
You're a guest.
And you want to be a good guest.
So that maybe they'll invite you back.

My role was smaller
And my day was shorter
But the pay was better.
Nice work if you can get it.

:)

The Da Vinci Code

Three-fourths into the movie I hoped to god the two main characters were not going to hook up romantically, as they ended up doing in the book, because the actors/characters on screen had zero romantic chemistry. Lo and behold, they did not! Hollywood didn't go all happily-ever-after on me this time. Yay.