i don't usually do this...

...but I'm in a playwriting class and it'd be kind of fun to share my idea - you can comment on it if you want. I am always very tight-lipped about these things, but I'm trying something new with this play, so, why the heck not? Don't pay attention to how the treatment is written, or that the name of the town is stupid, please. You can tell how good it is by the phrase "after a minor catastrophe," which is purposely nebulous because I have yet to figure that part out...sigh...

Taking into account the relatively small size of Dusk, Michigan, and the worsening economy, the County decides to close the Dusk Police Department and place the town under the umbrella of a nearby town’s police department. Upon hearing this, long-time Dusk resident John “The Turk” Delacerna – renowned in both underworld and criminal justice circles as the “biggest small-time crook of all time” for his characteristic overly-complex Rube Goldberg-esque crimes for utterly pedestrian spoils like watches and toasters – declares that in seven days, as a final coup de grace to the police who arrested him so many times without ever securing a conviction, he will commit his greatest crime to date, and then vanish for good. Lucy, a cop in her late forties with ties to the Turk stretching back to her grandfather and father – both of whom were policemen and were obsessed with trying to put the Turk away for good – announces that, before the seven days are up, the Turk will finally be behind bars at the Dusk Police Station for good.
To achieve her goal, she hounds the Turk, who agrees to let her keep an eye on him every evening, provided that she will join him for dinner. Over the course of the week, the Turk’s demands rise: first dinner, then dinner and drinks, then a dance after dinner to his favorite record. In turn, he agrees each night not only to allow her vigil, but to answer her questions, and reveal his secretive past.
Each night as he tells his story, scenes from his past as a child of the carnival are presented to show how as a child the Turk, after much persuasion, got his father, a carnie swindler famous for his techniques, to teach the young Turk his most effective and famous trick, “the Big Steal.” There is one catch to the instruction, however: that the Big Steal is never to be used to bankrupt a man, or to leave him without a nickel to get home on. The Turk, in his youthfulness and desire to impress a young woman, beings swindling customers for all they have. After a minor catastrophe, the Turk’s father casts him out, and the Turk vows to never again steal anything a person couldn’t afford to lose.
Over the course of the week, Lucy becomes swept up in the Turk’s stories and finds herself becoming attracted to him and his larger-than-life mystique. As the week comes to its close, she begins to assume that the Turk’s greatest crime was, in fact, to steal the heart of his most fervent police pursuer. She is, of course, wrong, as the Turk successfully absconds with the entire now-redundant, soon-to-be-closed Dusk Police Station and vanishes.

Thoughts?

Birthdaypaloozamaniafest spectacular '05

Well, as you all seem to be aware, my birthday was this wednesday past. After a long and frustrating day of work and class, I was lucky enough to spend the evening with Andrew and my two very good friends Monica Hunken (scroll down on the linked page for a great picture of her as the Starbucks' mermaid, or google her and be amazed at the amount of stuff one person can be involved with - she IS activism in New York, kids) and the lovely and talented Tillotama Shome (she's on the left in that picture; she played Alice in Monsoon Wedding, and is horrifically intelligent). Why these people agree to spend time with me, I WILL NEVER KNOW. We tried to go to several different restaurants before settling on one we liked, and then we had outstanding-yet-vegan desserts at a place on the way to Rice to Riches, an all rice-pudding place styled to look like it's from the future, where we had more dessert.

Oh, I should mention that my birthday celebration technically began at 12:01 a.m. on wednesday, when andrew and I ate ice cream cake and played videogames.

So thank you, one and all, for your good wishes, e-mails, calls, and presents - there were even some from people I hadn't heard from in months, who didn't even know I was in NYC! For all this, I am truly grateful.

Oh, my stars and garters!

Q. What do several hundred people, forty or so Burlesque performers, brunch, and a ride on a showboat through the hudson river have to do with my Sunday afternoon?

A. Nothing my mother should be told about. (take that hint, mom) Certainly not the New York Burlesque Festival, in which one of Andrea K's friends was a performer.

After Friday's circus fun, Saturday was spent wandering the city, doing work (ugh), catching the new and ridiculously bad-tastic new Christian Slater and L.L. Cool J movie Mindhunters, and partying on the roof of an abandoned schoolhouse next to an inflatable bed, a coffin, and some razor wire with about a gazillion people. Sunday, therefore, had to be extra-bizarre, and so it was that we attended the Burlesque festival on a boat. Several of the acts were really, really funny and cool (Andrea's friend's act being one of those), and some were just kind of boring. Of course, if my twelve-year-old self ever heard me say that seeing any woman take her clothes off was boring, I'd beat myself up. But, well, here we are.

Cirque that

So, what would happen if you and your friends decided you really wanted to put on an evening of circus acts, but you didn't actually know any, and your talents were limited to paper mache and jumping rope? And what if you knew some cool kids in a cool band, who'd play music for you, and you had a great space, and you just thought, "well, why the heck not?"

You'd get a D- for skill and an A++++ (that's A quadruple-plus) for effort, and you'd give me a hell of a time on Friday night.

The Brooklyn Hotel

Even though we're down one roomate (RIP, James Thromboidimous Heably), it seems like we've had enough people come through for a weekend here and there that the place is always full of folks. And by "full," I of course mean, "nowhere near full" because this place is huge. We've had the lion's share of visitors, and that makes yours truly a happy camper. This weekend it was Andrea K, a friend from my U of M days (who is on the poster for, and performed in, this event) crashing at our place, and a good deal of fun was had (see above). Anyways, my point in writing this is that I really, really love the fact that our apartment can accomodate visitors so easily -- especially when some of you NYC cats be living in shoeboxes, showers all up in your kitchens so you can make eggs while shampooing and what not. That's just wrong. Wait---what was I saying?

Nice to know I'm not the only one

Read this story! Pirates! (NYTimes registration required)

The Nuclear Option, or, remember when we had three branches of gov't, and we liked it that way?

I don't really understand why, but for some reason there has been almost no coverage of Bill Frist's intended dismantling of the filibuster. I can't overtstate the significance of what he's trying to do - which, incidentally, is why some refer to his plan as the "nuclear option" for the scale of effect it will have on our constitution and congressional procedure. Quite simply, Frist wants to change the rules of the senate so that all that is needed to stop a filibuster is a simple majority vote. Therefore, if a single party controls the senate and the white house, there is nothing to stand in the way of the white house's judicial nominees, because the minority party can't block their approval by filibuster. Even though a president's nominees are by and large usually approved, there is a fraction whose approval is vociferously blocked by filibuster. Now, with Bush re-nominating some of those who were blocked last time, Frist wants to weaken into impotence the best chance the minority democrats have to save the courts. If I'm not explaining this well, which is probably the case, you can read a pretty good article on it here.

As I write this, a dinner of wild duck is being prepared for Bill Frist and his staunch opponent, Harry Reid. They will sit down to dinner tonight and decide whether there can be a compormise on this issue, what many are calling the climax of a "culture war" in america between the religious right and the left. These are dangerous days...

Having Fun and Cake in NYC

This weekend I forced myself (with some help from andrew) to get in some fun. And while said "fun" ended up including housecleaning and the purchase of new roach poison (woo-hoo!), there was still time to watch movies and enjoy 2 - TWO! - different kinds of cake.

Other highlights from this weekend include going bowling (which New York has turned into a club scene - complete with VIP area - and done away with the usual fat, smoky men under bright fluorescent lights I was looking forward to seeing. Thank you, new york, for once again screwing up something that was fine to begin with); also, last night I took in a one-man musical show about the genocide in Rwanda. Hoo-boy, let me tell you now: on the Grand List of Good Ideas, a one-man musical about the genocide in Rwanda is WAY down on the bottom with setting your own hair on fire and trying to eat a hive of angry bees.

Going to work in NYC

I am not good at being on vacation, I have learned. This week, instead of kicking it around town, catching up with friends, and sleeping all day - this being my break between semesters and those being perfectly acceptable activties for such a time - I worked more hours than usual at the lab. My new classes start Monday!

No, no, you were right...it WAS more like "thrilladelphia"

I had been planning to go to philadelphia since, oh...august. So when I turned in my finalest of finals on friday, I took myself and my newly-incurred sense of post-semester levity down to 88 East Broadway and hopped on a twelve dollar bus going to philly. One of my oldest and most dear friends in the whole wide world is a brilliant firecracker of a woman named Sarah, who's studying historic preservation at Penn. She and I walked all over the city on friday night, and I had my first real philly cheese steak just after watching a friend of one of sarah's friends get arrested for urinating in public. The next day Sarah and I ate ribs for breakfast at a food festival we stumbled into. Ah, vacation.

I absolultely love that city, though. I had never been before, and was astounded to see how, despite its being a major american city, it still feels like a small town. In that sense, it was a diametrically different experience from being in NYC. I also got to hang out with two of my other friends who live in philly, and I ate some really incredible food at this restaurant that boasts "eclectic south american cuisine." I went to a party with some really fun activist kids (who work with a friend of mine at Design for Social Impact), walked a ridiculous amount, hung out in a super-posh apartment building where one friend resides, and generally just kicked it around town.

The real highlight of the trip, though, was not only seeing sarah but having her take me on a tour of the site where she works as an intern doing historic preservation: the ultra-creepy abandoned prison known as Eastern State Penitentiary. I can't even begin to describe how cool this was. The only thing that might possibly come close is if you've ever played Castlevania for the old NES. Anyways, it was great to see Sarah and all the good times philly has to offer. I'll definitely be going back.

And now I'm going to get in the bathtub with my Gameboy.

I have appeared in the staged reading of a play based on interviews with recent immigrants to the United States about whether they feel they could ever truly become "American"; created and conducted (after a first failed attempt) an interactive audio tour of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, based on interviews with residents of that area and their understanding of the brutal impact that gentrification and development are having on their neighborhood; created and performed a show about the disparity between the employment rates of men and women in science and engineering in light of recent comments made by the president of Harvard University and the incredible life story of Rita Levi Montalcini; gone on two auditions; worked through no fewer than ten hours of group meetings; attended a performance of "Arabian Nights"; written more than twenty pages' worth of papers; taught someone how to extract cochlea from mice; participated in moving our entire lab from one room to another; purchased an LCD projector; said goodbye to some really incredible people and did the dishes...

...in the past seven days.