dateline: J-town 3.25

So the ER was a snakepit last night- put my other life here to shame.

I mean, like, here I've been stressing about whether to try out a second act for Slainte, how to make Maggie more real in the new play, whether I've been eating too much salt, hence bloating like a pig... yadayadayada...

But in the space of eight hours, two men died, who were like both younger than I am and the families were devastated and falling apart (as I would have been), an unattended psych patient managed to pull out a knife someone had overlooked and slice himself (a tiny slice, but enough to draw blood and lawsuits) and the place was alive with the moans of the impacted, distracted, etc. JEEEEEZEZ!!!! On top of that, my relief person forgot to set her alarm and was 1/2hr late. Fortunately, she's incredibly well-organized and it only took a few minutes for her to get in the saddle, and I stuck around to help her clean up some of the mess, (which was still going great guns). After I clocked out, I returned to the desk. She was ashen. "I've already lost control," she croaked....

Woke up this AM feeling incredibly grateful that I don't do this all of the time. I felt the cushion of my bed's pillow top. The Moose purred me awake. I stretched and realized that if I stayed in bed until it was time to get ready for round two at the ER- no one would know- or care- and I'd be a better woman for it. Or I could join my pals in Brown's Hotel by writing more act II. Or go for a liesurely walk along the seawall when it wasn't hailing.... It's supposed to be warm out there, though I haven't opened the door yet... And the Sox won their first game of the season today-in friggin' TOKYO! What was that all about???????

Called Killer to wish her a happy birthday and we ended up hatching the perfect birthday gift. Now you've got to understand that Killer is the one person in the world who can always bring up my inner infant like a hairball in a long-haired cat. When I talk with her, I spin out and lay tires tracks on the road to insanity that would even scare Nurse Ratchett. Here's what today's conversation looked like.

1) The Happy Birthday song- sung by both of us in Brooklyn accents.
2) Her description of the custom made coffins she'd seen on the web.
3) My blow by blow account of last PM's tragic ER deaths.
4) Her blow by blow account of her back ache.
5) My suggestion that she get a massage for her birthday.
6) Her suggestion she get a cardiac massage for her birthday.
7) Our mutual suggestion that she get a cardiac massage and a designer coffin for her birthday.
8) My suggestion that she fit the coffin up with lights and a webcam inside in case she woke up after she was buried. If she didn't wake up, the world could watch her decompose.
9) Our mutual decision to market coffin-cams for those who just can't let their loved ones go....
10) sign off.

If I ever have to leave my happy home here- I wanna go live with Killer. We could go to the same nursing home and spend the rest of our lives in existential absurdity...

Happy 64th, old gal!

Dateline: J-town 3.23

Talk about resurrections... it's the day to come out of my burrow and see my shadow...

There's something about expecting something decent from a bathroom scale that will shaft you every time. I was perfect- perfect- yesterday. Worked out in the gym, went for a long walk, ate properly (except for two frigging medium sized cookies at the play. Two. Friggin'. Middle-sized. Cookies.) And today the LED hits tilt at plus 1.5 lbs. FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!

This is what comes next. After spending almost an hour doing my psychobabble jazz practice, I could feel the lifeboat beginning to right itself. Waves were no longer crashing over the bow. It was safe to leave the bedroom. Then...

I don't know if you've ever seen the documentary "Mad, Hot Ballroom". It follows a few 4th-6th grade ballroom dancing classes in NYC for a year. The kids work like crazy to compete in the all-city finals and surmount the requisite trials and heart-warming successes of the genre. You've gotta love all of them. At one point, though, during the finals, one class is eliminated, and a little girl who totally stole my heart, cried, "But we did everything you told us to!" I wanted to hold her with all my heart and make the pain go away. I knew what she was saying. I wanted to shoot the judges, even though they were probly right.

I felt like that today because of my mechanical enemy in the bathroom and thought about her. I went deep inside myself and wondered what I would say to that little onscreen loser. What would I say to keep her from suicide or a life full of pharmaceuticals?

"Life's unfair, kid, suck it up"? Ummmmmm, don't think so.

"They're a bunch of losers themselves, so blow them off"? Not quite....

And not, "Hey kid, just work harder and harder and someday show them all you're the best." That's what got her into this mess in the first place.

What I'd tell her (and what I ended up telling myself) would be this.

"Do what you love, darlin'. Just do what you love for the love of it and never, ever, compete. It can only take the joy away from it. If you learn ballroom dancing for the joy of gliding around the floor and moving your body with the music, go for it! It might be hard work, but then you get to enjoy it, and you may even enjoy practice while you're at it."

And to me, I could say, "Just do what you love for the love of it. Bicycle and walk and dance because you like to. Work out at the gym because it makes you feel swell. (And, bizarrely enough, it does! I LIKE going to the gym...). Eat beautiful food because you love it. And don't compete with the scale, with the models on TV, with the actuarial tables that tell you what numbers to shoot for. Enjoy life to the very end... "

Now, of course, I'm dancing around, going for a walk down to the beach, playing some of my favorite music and talking to Killer on the cell, eating lovely ham (with the fat drooling out under the skin thank you very much), writing, playing with the Moose and HUGELY (take that whatever way you want) enjoying myself. Yo, cinema therapy!

Last PM I went to another performance of Slainte. It's the last one I'll be able to make because I work all next weekend and it closes Sunday. Not bad. Much better, obviously, than the first ones. But the cast has gotten a bee in its collective bonnet about me expanding it into a full legnth play. Just add a second act. That's all. We'll brainstorm with you. Even a veiled threat of doing it themselves. Which, of course, would be illegal and impossible... Then- seduction- guaranteed production at another theater if I pony up the extra words. Now I admit I'm a word whore and can easily be seduced by this kind of thing. But Slainte is Slainte. It's perfect just the way it is. There are, after all, only so many words the human ear caan hear in the course of an evening....

I called my playwriting mentor Chris in Tucson and got some excellent advice about language, and how long it takes to do this, artistic integrity, etc. After all, he was there at all stages of its development the first time. Two years to be exact. And me furious every time others didn't love my versions as much as I did so I had to go back to the drawingboard. Thinking they were jerk-offs and didn't understand what I was tryna do and it's better than a lot of people can write, yadayadayada... If I rewrote to please these guys, I wouldn't have the proven back-up of my old group to test it on.

But in the dead of night my eyelashes were pinned to my forehead as I thought about it. What would a second act be like? Against my will, I saw Thomas opening the door, poking his head in, and saying to Mary, "Is she in here, then?" Against my will, I saw Brown's Hotel four months later with Maggie in on the take. Against my will, I heard Thomas, her sworn enemy, now stuck as her brother, plotting revenge. Against my will, I began to wonder if Dylan Thomas' real sons were coming home for a reunion and the crew decided to turn the tables on Maggie.... Against my will.

David asked me over the ham and potatoes and green beans with red pepper flakes, "What if the first act were prequel to the current act? What if the first act were instead a succesful but predictable sting? Keep the current act as it is." What if? What if?

And what about the new Maggie play I've started? What about Maggie among the hippies in the desert? Leaving it now would be another case of Maggie interruptus.

And speaking of the new Maggie play (working title; Until They are Embers), I got carried away by the fact that Nanowrimo's script challenge, Scripfrenzy, begins April 1. A sign from gawd, I thought. I am supposed to do this new play which deals with the deepest of human questions... I even committed myself to my old playwriting group by email. Then jerked back. Jeeeezuz. I don't need this kind of pressure. I don't have this kind of energy. And besides, I'm reaching down into my gut for this piece. So I withdrew from the challenge and began writing.

Work on two Maggie plays at one and the same time? Hmmmmmm. I don't have any mag deadines until June and the book is floating...

Poll here..... Should Patti expand Slainte???? (Does anyone read this blog???)

Dateline: J-town 3.20

So I started writing this entry in soft prose, describing the way the bay breathes in its soft quiet bed covered with fog... but somehow... I'll leave that stuff to the Rod McKuens of the world. (Is he still alive?) Give me Billy Collins every time. A little tougher. A lot more skewed.

Here's the deal. I spend a helluva lot of time trying to amuse myself. Boredom threshold is about at zero most of the time. I know this indicates a fatal character flaw in me, and believe me, ADD is the pits when you're my age. But the upside is that when you have this need to entertain yourself every minute, you can end up with some interesting results.

The usual gig is one. Fortunately they pay me to play.

It can be hard work structuring the piece. Nailing the words into place. Versal combat. But I love taking the pix, running across bizarre or cool facts, yadayadayada. Take today for example. I'm doing a profile of the URI over in Kingston. It was time to take the pix (on the greyest day of the month- happy Spring!) and I safaried all over campus to bag a 50 year old marble ram that looked like it was made of plaster; a 146 year old cannon that the students overloaded and blew apart in 1892; the oldest house on campus, and the Eleanor Roosevelt dorm that was dedicated by that bastion of liberalism herself. Turns out it was an off day for the campus cops so I could drive anywhere I wanted to and got a perverse pleasure out of parking right on the edge of the quadrangle that's usually off limits. It doesn't take much to chip away at the boredom sometimes....

Himself is off to a funeral in Long Island for the day. Yet another Kaiser cousin bit the dust(the list, it appears, is endless...). I felt a little guilty for not standing by my man, but this is one cousin I didn't know ("You remember him," D explained patiently this AM while he was shaving. "He was at my father's funeral. Big blond guy. He flew in from Wimbeldon for it..." Senility can be a great dodge when faced with such situations.) and about whom himself never mentioned. He was a lucky cousin, even though only a Kaiser by marriage, and was felled, apparently, by a massive coronary in the middle of a party. I like a man with that kind of style. But not enough to ride for 7 hours all told and stand around stiffly with those who survive. So I decided to save myself for closer relatives whose demise is bound to be more traumatic. And, given the age of the last generation, there's bound to be a spate of them before the end of the decade.

But I digress...

Boredom, as I mentioned, can be a spur to the some pretty amusing projects. I was tired of writing and websurfing last PM, so I decided to make a movie instead. Of course, with no script and no ideas, this can be a challenge. And with CDbaby limiting my music choices it can be wicked hard work.... But it's something to do, and I don't mind working hard on something I'm interested in. So now I'm up to my elbows in a little noir piece called, ummmm... "Holiday for the Dead- Paris" about visting an old friend's grave in Paris and the ensuing adventures- or something like that. Cool, eh? I could polish up the title a little, though. Like make it "The Dame ain't for Exhuming", or "Knock, knock, who's there?" or- any ideas? On the whole, I'm in favor of 2 word titles, but this could be longer- like "My Parisian Friend is always at home." Help me here.

More as life progresses....

Dateline: Boston 3.16

I finally chose to sit on the floor of the packed "50 Writing Tools in 3 Hours" session because it was hard to balance the laptop on my "airplane lap" with no space on the chairs. On my left stretched a particularly earnest young writer in glasses, looking like Jimmy Olsen, only dark, and on the right, a mid-eastern guy who was writing his notes from right to left. I, for the first time in the conference, had the laptop open and humming. Almost everyone along the wall was half my age and younger.

The workshop was pretty much bloviation and mirrors. Teacher may be good, but he spent so much time trying to be entertaining with his guitar and references to dated pop culture that it was embarrassing and not very enlightening. But I'd signed on for the full 3 hours and since I was on wi fi, I cruised the web while he talked, did some exercises that he finally got around to giving, and waited.

At the break, I asked a 20 something woman if she'd noticed the HUGE percentage of women at the conference. (I'd pin it at about 70%.) I had noticed it the minute I walked into the lobby and at every workshop. David had noticed it for the ten minutes he was in the reception room with me on Fri night. Said 20 year old hadn't noticed a thing. Completely under her radar. She opined that "There are a lot more women everywhere." Whiplash. I could feel my neck snap.

"Everywhere where? Here?"
"No. Just everywhere you go."
"Depends on who you're hanging out with."

I checked the demos on the web. The US is 51% female now. That wouldn't account for her observation.

I grilled Jimmy Olsen. He hadn't noticed a thing either. But he ventured that perhaps this was the kind of writing women would be more interested in. Or maybe women were more likely to go to conferences in general.

My own theory was that women are social animals and even women writers tend to club it up with one another and they're still running in packs to protect themselves. But the kids' total blindness to such skewed figures smacked me in the face. On reflection, though, it's pretty obvious what's been going on.

They've never known a life without females dominating their eyespace. Teachers, bankers, writers, cops- everywhere, everywhere, we've made the inroads. We've established our presence on the beachhead.

At the end of the 3 hours, I marched obediently to the "Narrative Lounge" to meet said agent and present my spiel for Sculptural Assassination. He was late, worn out, and only came in because I saw him in the hall and lassoed him. There were two others waiting to see him, too, and for once I offered to go first. Now, as you all know, I'm in the habit of post-performance assault and battery on myself and my presentation, but this time, I really feel as if I knocked it out of the ballpark. I was totally prepared, gave a brilliant elevator pitch, backed it up with stats and sound byte info, and left him with my beautiful packet to take home and put on his bedside table. He appeared reasonably impressed (or his valium was beginning to kick in).

The other two writers had interesting projects, but I was particularly interested in the guy who was writing about MLK's assassination. He had traced participants back to an art museums heist in the mid-west in the 1960's and with George Wallace's presidential campaign. Can't wait to skim the whole manuscript...

Update: Talked to another participant of the 50 tools workshop who loved it. She was young and... less jaded, and more open to the wheezing circus calliope... so maybe it was just me. But she was oung, too, and I discussed the excess women issue with her. She actually had noticed, but it was so common in her world she said, that it was unworthy of note. As a matter of fact, she said that the percentage of men at the conference (1:3) was higher than in her newsroom...

Also attended the last workshop- "Practicing History without a License" which actaully was fairly helpful, but... maybe I'm like sooo over being impressed with writing classes...

Dateline:boston 3.15

Laptop on lap, I'm tapping at the conference ready to enter a three hours session of writing exercises. How good could it posssibley be? Surely, I already know this stuff after 30 years, but you can never tell. And the kick-in-the-butt factor can be huge at something like this...

This AM I attended a "story as blog" session that had me so jazzed, I couldn't wat to burn up the keyboard at the firsst possible moment. The presenter, Josh (aren't they all Josh or Jason???) talked about what blogs are and aren't while avoiding the basics of how do you make a blog, how to you make a blog famous, how do you get paid for blogging. The fact that interested me is that most of the attendees were like these old women my age who were afraid of blogging because theyw ere afraid to get it wrong!!! Jezuz Christ! There is no wrong in a blog. And if you wna tot "accomplish" something with it, say- use it as a selling tool for yourself, start another one for the public. They're free. I don't know why old women with structure problems bother me so.

But his main point was the ability of bloggers to hit the "immediacy plus interestingness" trajectory to give the most engaging experience to his readers. And maybe, on the way, to have something, like, timeless or even worthwhile.

I've been battling the grunge with massive doses of green tea, aspirin and echinacea for the past 24 hrs. Made my uber cranky last PM and though I saw the most amazing presentation ever by mediastorm.com, I couldn't spin the way I usually do afterward. However- suffice it to say- I am entering yet another new phase to my career.... Photojournalism as we know it is not, like, dad, but being reborn- and I've already been doing some of it without even knowing what I was doing!!!

More as things progress...

Dateline: J-town 3.12

So I dragged home from work Monday night dragging a 100.1 fever behind me. I couldn't get cold enough or hot enough all at the same time and the covers were blessedly heavy when I crawled under them too achy and grungy to move. Moose bounced in expecting to be cuddled, but- what is that whiff? Jeeeeze Louise! The cat didn't wipe herself and she's been eating tuna. So it's drag her into the bathroom and wipe her clean and then- holy shit- what are those black things coming out of little holes near her butt???!!! Life doesn't plunge much lower than that.

She purred all the way upstairs to her Exile Island and I looked up "cat black worms" on the web. Turns out there are no such things, so I shut her in and dragged down to the kitchen where I took a mega dose of echinacea and vitamin C.

Yesterday AM I repeated the dose, called the vet ("I see here you've got a cat and a Moose. Which one will be coming in?") and got a 1.30 appointment for her majesty, with a little hesitation. Maybe I should have brought the Moose in... Upshot? She's got these little scent glands next to her butt hole and sometimes they get a little impacted and the stuff can be dark and icky, but normal. She usually will lick them clean (gag). I just happened to see her at the wrong moment. But we got a full check-up out of it and a rabies shot (required by law even though she's an indoor Moose) and a slick red tag (what is she going to wear it on?) She's very healthy for a 17 year old, apparently. Life is back to normal for her.

One more dose of echinacea and c before work (are you counting? That's 3 in 15 hours) and I was dancing in the aisles. All night. It may be a coincidence, or it may be the bottle of "brainiac" I sucked on all night. But I'm taking the e+c every 12 hours to get rid of the residuals... After all, I have the conference to think of.

It's been an electronic AM what with a phone call from a phone sex operator friend of mine who's writing a book and needed some tips on getting it published (like I know anything). Helped her work out her elevator pitch (why is it always so much easier for me to see someone else's needs?) and her title dilemma. Then contacted an agent and a couple of other writers for the conference. No word yet from the other 2 agents I contacted- one of whom has had my 3 magic chapters for 10 days. I attempt to not be too hasty.

Dateline: J-town 3.09

Now where was I?

Life, of course, is a swirl and I have trouble keeping track.

I attended the afternoon performance of "Slainte" over at the Courthouse near the railroad station. It was a fast (and I mean fast) production becaause they only had a half hour to do it between the Irish folk singers and the step dancers at the Irish festival. Of course, Dylan Thomas has nothing to do with the Irish nation, and the actors (god bless their Celtic hearts) after announcing this as an Irish play, asked me to say a few words. The crowd was sucking Guiness, and all, like, predisposed to love me ("Cassidy. And Patti Cassidy at that. Yo, homey.") when I mentioned that it wasn't an Irish play, but a celtic one nonetheless about the legacy of a celtic poet. Dead silence. And now on with the show. There were spatters of laughter at the off-color lines. The kids didn't race around too much, and a good time (as they say) was had... except for the harpy in the second row who bore into me with her scalding blue eyes...

The night before, at the premiere of the same and aforesaid at the Firehouse Theater in Newport where it began its one month run, the audience liked it, but I thought the acting was a bit, like, hysterical, you know. Sort of began at the dragster-level, and graduated from there to jet engines. But she's a new director, her heart is in the right place, she loves the play, she loves me and her basic concepts are sound. And I'm getting $100 to let them present it, so who am I to complain?

And, as a result of all of this, the theater is considering mounting another of my one-act extravaganzas, I was asked to consider collaborating on a musical, and I have access to a slick editing system on which I'll edit the video of the play and make copies! Life is sweet. In exchange for editing, the unwritten agreement is that I'll get a copy of some Sony Vegas editing software one version out of date, which I was going to spend $100 on myself, anyway. I am a simple woman with simple electronic tastes.

Of course, I started thinking about joining the playwrighting game again. Do I want to re-open that throat and be swallowed whole, with Plays like "Crimes of a Lifetime" using superscript crawl above the stage and "The Last Days of Vinnie Reams" with Vinnie and her talking statue of Virginia Dare. Stop me before I....

I drove past the Newport dog park the other day and wish I had been able to shoot my camera at the same time. There, in the middle of the park where they've place a faux fireplug, stood four guys talking, surrounding the plug like pissers in the park on their own. It's like living in an amusement park.