Let's be Real

It was nine seasons of Friends.

I don't want to talk about it.

I am: Fig Tart

A few weeks ago, Dennis and I drove up to Reno with Will (an actor in the company here) to see our friend Eric Weaver in 42nd Street at the El Dorado Casino. We had never been to Reno before. I had heard tale of this magical place from my dear friend Taylor Katai whose father lives there, but I still was not quite prepared.

Reno is a strange mirage of casinos and hotels in the middle of nothing. I hear that is what all the big cities in Nevada are like. Well, the show was great and Eric tapped his little heart out. Also, we realized part way through the show that another friend, Melinda was playing on of the leads. She was fantastic! And afterwards we found that another friend, Kristin, was the stage manager.

We hadn't had time to get dinner before we got to the show, so by the time it had ended we were famished to no end. We desperately searched through the casino to find a restaurant, which sounds easy but is no walk in the park.

Casinos are gigantic! And there are places where you feel like you are outside, but you aren't. You are in a some oversized hallway with a sky painted on the ceiling and mirrors and flashing lights enclosing in on you.

So, after stumbling around the hallways of trickery, we stumbled upon a restaurant called the Roxy.

As soon as we sat down these two sixty year old women at the next table started staring at us. If you don't already know this about me, crazy people love me. If there are a thousand people in an open field hanging out and one of them is crazy and one of them is me, that lunatic will without a doubt run directly over to me and ask me if he knows me from our time in the Japanese Interment Camp. No, sorry you loon, I've not trekked through Manzanar this lifetime, we must know each other from somewhere else. Then in his rage, he will through glitter in my face and tell me I've been a terrible wife and an even worse cat.

Dennis leaned over to ask me, "Do you know those women?

"No." I replied.

"Are you famous?"

"Not here. Not in Reno."

We went on to enjoy a lovely meal (Rosemary chicken is a dear friend to me). The two lushy old birds were finishing up their second bottle of wine when they decided to approach.

Drunk cougar number one asked us "Which dessert should I get?" whilst waving the dessert menu around like it was overcooked linguine.

"You should get whatever dessert you want to get," I retorted icily.

"Should I get the fig tart?" She obviously doesn't take hints well. At this point my sarcasm was tickling the back of my throat like acid reflux.

"I told you never to call me that."

Two can play this game, she thought.

"I'll call you whatevers I wants to, you fig tart!" The words were definitely slurring together like grapes in a wine bottle. "Fig tart! YOu're a figgg tart."

Luckily she got tired and left. And I was bestowed an extremely unexpected nickname.

Cats!

Cast is opening at Sacramento Music Circus this Tuesday!

Click Here for ticket information!

This is the last show of the season and my last show here as the Music Assistant for the summer.

Two months, seven musicals and eight seasons of Friends later (The girl I'm subletting from has every season. Don't judge me.), I will be heading back to Irvine where I will be packing up my apartment and beginning a post-college life in Los Angeles! Here we go!

Playing Backgammon with Hitler

I. Fucking. Win.

Holidrawl

The other day I was walking to work and a man stopped me on the street:

Man: When's Memorial Day?

Me: It's in May.

Man: Then what's this month?

Me: August.

Man: NO, what Holiday is this month?

Me: None...but Labor Day is the first weekend in September...

Man: Uh! LABOR DAY!

Then he walked away.

I got to work and checked my email. The Urban Dictionary word of the day was holidrawl.

I guess that man was feelin it bad.

Tamale Amor

Last summer I had the privilege to work with the delightfully quirky conductor, Michael Rice and his cat Walter.

Here at Sacramento Music Circus, we pay homage to a sacred Thursday tradition. That tradition is the Tamale lady. Her name is Esperanza and she journeys from the mountains of Mexico three thousand long miles all the way to Music Circus atop the back of a mule cradling a satchel full of magic tamales made of Gold and Visiones. Well, maybe she just pulls up in a beat up white station wagon, opens the back and sells tamales in the street in front of the theatre, the point is: these tamales are fucking delicious. There is always a line and sometimes people fight over them. Okay, sometimes I fight over them, but no one else does.

Michael and I (along with comrades Rachel Stivers and Brian King) developed a special love for this Tamale Ritual. We soon learned that a bad day could be healed with the sweet love found between the sheets of a corn husk molded by Esperanza. Many days stress would bog me down and deadlines would overwhelm me like mustard gas to a trench. Luckily, I would return to my desk and see that Michael had been the Tamale Fairy and left me a little slice of hope.

Esperanza was not named arbitrarily.

Michael isn't in Sacramento this summer, but Brian and I are keeping the dream alive. Though, it is unfortunate that the tamale lady has been less consistent this year. In fact, I've been trying to pin that bitch down all summer and just had my first tamale of the season yesterday. I was getting so insanely frustrated by her inability to show up to our weekly date that I began referring to her as the "Nomadic Tamale Bitch" and occasionally "The Mexican Brigadoon."

I emailed Michael yesterday saying I finally got my mitts on a tamale and he said:

"If Brian really cared about me, he'd have faxed me a tamale."

And that's just what he did.

The Musician's Life

Musicians mark blank pages in their scores so that they know it isn't a mistake.

I'm preparing scores for the Orchestra read-through of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers tomorrow.

So, I'm editing the trumpet book and apparently the guy who played the book last time the show was done at this theatre was feeling a little broke:

Shit just got REAL.