[ Friday, February 20, 2004 ]
Well, I'm back.
And I know I'm back in Madison because I just read
the most pretentious play review ever by critic and me-hater Veronica
Rueckert. Yeah,
I read Roger Ebert, too, Ronny.
Look at this, I'm not back a week and I'm already complaining. And after such a great trip.
That's right, last week I went to see
"Lil Pervs," a night of short plays, some of which have been written by yours truly. (Running until Feb. 22nd, so for Christ's sake, get a move-on if you're going.)
I was pretty excited--I've seen work of mine performed before, and even by people unconnected to me, but...
Well, it's New York, what can I say?
Before the show started, I was stopped by Ezekiel Kendrick, sound design for the show, and Shoko Kambara, scenic designer (I think--I'm pretty sure she said she designed the set--if I'm wrong, I apologize...I was a little awe-struck I was back in NYC), who both said, "Hey, love your work." That felt good.
The two highlights of the evening are "Eye Level," by Laura Axelrod, and "The Fateful Day Of The Rabbi," by Anne De Mare. Both piece were performed by Carolyn Corbett who--and this is the most delicate way I can put this--FUCKING ROCKED. Corbett was actually my mom's favorite actress, too. "Once she started, you just can't your eyes off her!"
After seeing her in "Eye Level," I crossed my fingers and muttered,
oh please oh please oh please let her be in one of MY pieces...
Which she was--my short play, "Sappy Love," which I wrote to cheer up a friend whose girlfriend broke up with him. In the play, much is made of what could possibly be the main ingredient of the chili both characters are eating. I won't give it away, but all night when people said hi to me, they added, "oh,
you're the creepy chili guy!"
I talked to Dan Trujillo, the producer and playwright of one of the pieces, who told me that when they read everything initially, they knew they'd have to cut something--and that it was almost unanimously decided that
whatever happened, they had to keep "Sappy Love" in the show. That's pretty frickin' cool.
Lydia Radzuil, the director (as well as writer of two poems performed in the show), went in the direction of making the two characters as nerdy as humanly possible. This was different than I'd imagined it, and I couldn't be happier. It's a short piece, and should be played for maximum comic impact. And I'd walk a mile for the distant, haunted way that Corbett croaks out "WHY...?"
Also in "Sappy Love" was Paul "Klem" Klementowicz, who reminded quite a few of my friends of Stephen Root. I have to rent "13 Conversations About One Thing," now, just because the program mentions that he's in it. He was funny, too, and he also performed one of my monologues, "Duane," about a desperate man apologizing to his girlfriend, Jody-Jo. (Which is a name that guarantees at least a smile from an audience.)
The first was Radziul's poem, "bomb blast," which was rapped by Brian Nemiroff (who has the kind of face where you swear you've seen him before) and human beatboxed by Craig Waletzko, who was another standout. The two attack it with such fun, that it's a good, energetic way to start the evening.
"Roller Coaster," by Kayla Solomon, was the serious piece of the show. It's one of those kind of short works that you do kind of need to let settle a little but in your head, after. I liked it, but I understood when the audience sort of reluctantly clapped after it. It's a lot to take in, just when it seemed like things were getting purely comical.
I understand why they selected it (you can't NOT select something that powerful), but it did present them with a conundrum of
where in the show you put it. Intelligently, they put it between two funny pieces. Nemiroff was in this one, as was Beth Collins, as his sister. The acting was pretty solid, and I was actually glad to see a serious piece just because it gave you some idea of range. Collins also plays a teenager in one of my monologues ("Faye",) and if you just saw
that one, you might think that was all she can do. She speaks in a lower register for "Roller Coaster," (which is probably her normal speaking voice), holds herself totally differently, and it's a different person.
As I watched the show, I realized I had no memory of
which monologues had been picked. (I submitted ten, and they used three.) All night, I kept belatedly realizing that I was hearing my own words performed. Craig Waletzko, who read my monologue "Paul," about a man talking to his date's eight year old daughter (who apparently does a rather unflattering impression of her mother), was one of my cousin Takeo's favorites. (I think it should go without saying, from this point on, that I loved ALL the cast members.)
Waletzko, who has an open, friendly face and, like all professional actors, projects in such a way that is loud without sounding like shouting, was damn funny, but also fascinating to watch in Trujillo's piece, the longest one of the night (quiet, you), "Nothing To Do Without You," about two people bound together by...well, I wouldn't so much say love. Or hate. Perhaps genuine acceptance of each one's annoyance of the other.
This one has a bit of nasty violence in it, and I had to tell friends of mine afterwards that, "no, oddly, I did
not write the violent one."
Also in "Nothing To Do," is Alisha McKinney, who seems to have the most innocent face because of her teacup-sized eyes, and the most devious face when she narrows them. She's really funny as a character who is the hero or the villain, depending on your point of view (it's that kind of play). My mom read in the program that she was on "As The World Turns," and spent the rest of the play trying to remember if she'd seen her. "You gotta ask her what she did," she told me, "It's gonna drive me nuts!"
Sadly, my mom is now nuts because I didn't get a chance to ask. Oh, well.
Beth Collins then flat-out nailed my monologue, "Faye," sounding almost exactly like I'd imagined it. "Faye" is a quick short about an overly excited teenage girl leaving a message on her friend's machine.
Alisha McKinney then performed another of Radziul's poems--although the first night it seemed over just as it started. The second night I saw it (and maybe this is my imagination) she slowed it down a bit, and it worked.
After the show, I was stopped by Kayla Soloman, and we both congratulated each other on our scripts.
I stuck around the second night for some picture-taking (Dan wanted to get a shot of the actors and the playwrights), and I walked behind Brian Nemiroff and stood next to Paul Klementowicz. Nemiroff turned around and at first looked at me like you'd look at an audience member who just walked into the cast photo, then asked, "oh, are you one of the writers?"
Yeah, I said, I'm the crazy chili guy.
The actors around me all reacted to this, and Klementowicz turns to me, and says, "Oh,
you're the guy!"
Yup!
"Well, I apologize for butchering your words," he said, then added, "but I do not apologize for butchering Connie!" (A character in the script)
I laughed and gave him thumbs up.
After the photo, Craig Waletzko walked up to me and shook my hand, and we talked a little bit before the rest of the pictures had to be taken. There wasn't a lot of time to chat (I missed out on really getting to meet the cast) because there was another show going up in an hour, so I just stuck around to watch Dan take publicity photos from "Sappy Love," just to see Klementowicz and Corbett do it again.
After, I joined my friends at a local bar, bitched about not being able to smoke in the bar, determined that "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is essentially the same song as "Hang Tough," and basked in the warm glow of my New York City debut.
posted by Rob on 2:14 PM |
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[ Friday, February 06, 2004 ]
So, off I head to the East Coast for my vacation.
In my wake I leave a
UE Rental Reject review for the god-awful "Cheerleader Ninjas," and
the preview for Lil Pervs, which opens next week.
Last night, I call my mom to touch bases before the trip.
She says, “I have some bad news.”
I have a feeling I know what she’s going to say before she says it.
I ask her what the bad news is.
"Vito," she tells me.
Our cat. The one given to us way back when I still lived with her. A Maine coon cat we decided to name Vito "The Cat" Manelli.
I thought he should have a mob-type name because of the circumstances of him being with us. My mom's friend had more cats than her landlord allowed, and one day she surprised us with him. "Your life will be so much richer when you have an animal in it."
Under her breath, my mom said to me, "That cat's gotta go."
"He was in pain," my mom says. "He seemed to be getting better, and then he just wasn't." I can tell she's crying.
Vito spent the first night with us hiding behind a speaker and crying all night. We were told he was chosen to be the one who lived with us because he had "the most personality."
This, I have always suspected, translates directly into "The other cats hated him."
"He's not happy here," my mom said, "He's gotta find someplace else."
Often, I would have friends over. I would come back from the kitchen to find everyone under the dining room table, trying to coax Vito out.
Finally, one day, my friend Seth came over and shouted with surprise, "Ah! He's out!" He pointed at Vito, who was just lying on the floor out in the open, lounging.
"Oh, yeah," I said, "I guess he's not afraid of us any more." I hadn't even noticed that he had accepted us.
"I still find myself looking for him," my mom says, and that does it. I start bawling like a baby. "The house seems so empty," she says.
I ask her when this happened.
"Three weeks ago."
Three weeks?
I guess I haven't called in a while.
"I only start to get upset when I talk about it," she says.
Vito, like a lot of pets in single-pet households, thought he was a human. Or, at least, he didn't seem to know he was a cat.
He would watch TV, sitting on his butt like a single guy watching the game with a beer in his hand. He would get actively interested at times. He would see an elephant on the screen and suddenly take interest, as if to ask: Is
that what I am?
When a special on wolves came on the Learning Channel, Vito would cock his head back, as if he wanted to howl. But he would yawn instead.
While watching the scene in "Godfather II" where Bruno Kirby is showing Robert DeNiro how to rob a house, and saying, "Hey, Vito! Vito! C'mere!" Vito would quickly run up to the set, desperately trying to give Bruno Kirby some help.
When he was a kitten, Vito would eat spaghetti like a person. He would find the end of a strand, and then slurp it down. At family functions, my mom would make him a plate and he would sit at the table.
I ask my mom how old Vito was.
"Eleven," she tells me.
I ask if that's old, and she tells me no. "He was sick," she adds.
Vito, in addition to the cancer he eventually died from, also had this condition where his urine would crystallize in his urethra, causing him intense pain whenever he had to pee. Frequently he would pee on someplace where he knew we would sit, so we could see that there was blood in his urine.
Eventually, we got him a special food that broke up the crystals, and Vito got better.
Vito also had asthma, and as it turns out, was allergic to his own dander. No wonder he was so cranky all the time.
When I came to visit last year, Vito was getting these growths on his back that had to be operated on. This was not the first time, I was told. Vito spent most of my vacation in bandages.
"I haven't got his ashes, yet," my mom tells me.
I ask her what she's planning on doing with them.
"Probably put them on the piano next to his picture, and the picture of Poody."
Poody.
Our first cat. A brown tabby. Died of leukemia when I was about nine. I thought that was the worst news I would ever receive until my dad told me in a hotel room that he and my mom were splitting up.
My mom named him Poody because that was the only name he even remotely responded to.
Of the two cats, Poody was the macho one.
Poody hunted. Once, when I was seven, my mom opened the door for Poody to come in, and only then did we realize that Poody had a screaming baby rabbit in his mouth, which he'd brought home as a tribute for all of us to share. Mom and I freaked, Poody was confused, and Dad ended up dealing with it.
When Poody died, my mom said that she would never get a cat again. It was too hard, she said, to care for something that long that you knew you were going to outlive.
"I wouldn't have got the ashes in the first place if I'da known they'd be so damned expensive," my mom says. "I think I only have one picture of him."
I know the picture. Vito was about two months old. Still tiny. Maine coon cats grow to be very big--the size of a medium-sized dog, really.
I told her that I might have one, but I'm not sure. I lost a lot moving out of the old place.
Vito was not an outdoor cat. He was scared of everything, and the closest he got to the outside was when we let him on the screened-in porch. He would sit there, late at night, and the other cats would come and visit him, like he was the Godfather.
I tell her that I had been really looking forward to seeing Vito again.
And by seeing, I mean "mugging."
Vito, publicly, didn't like affection. So I used to bother him by picking him up, holding him, and yelling "MUG THE CAT!!!" until he'd wriggle away.
"Must you torment him?" my mom would say.
Vito, frequently, could be a vindictive asshole. If he was upset at you, he'd let you know it. Early on, he'd taken to peeing on our spots on the couch. He'd do it so far in advance, that you often wouldn't know until you sat down.
His new name, for a time, became "Little Bastard."
Privately, when it was a one-on-one situation, however, Vito would be affectionate. If you got up late at night to get a glass of water, he'd be rolling around on the floor, purring loudly, waiting to be petted.
When Vito thought my mom was asleep, he'd crawl over and sleep next to her. My mom woke up once, saw him, and he quickly moved to the other side of the bed, pretending like it was an accident that he was sleeping that close to her.
When I left last time, Vito seemed so old and fragile to me that I had changed it to "HUG the cat."
"So, when you come here, it'll be the same place," my mom says, "just without any of the cat stuff."
I tell her I'll see her on Saturday.
Welcome back, Rob. Says New Jersey.
Goodbye, Vito. Says Rob.
posted by Rob on 11:51 AM |
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