You know, there are just those cities you go to that there's really not that much to say.
East Lansing.
The name pretty much says it all.
The discovery for the week was Woody's Oasis. Because really, when you think Mediterranean, you think East Lansing. And when in East Lansing, where else does one go for a "falafurger" at 11:30 at night? Angie and I also sampled some local brews there. Not surprisingly, Michigan has some good local beer. And Woody's offers buckets of six at a time, and you pick from a list of bottled local varieties to be kept on ice until you get around to them with your meal.
Our hotel, the Candlewood Suites, was not particularly promising at first, to say the least. We moved in, only to find ourselves in a small studio "suite" directly - and I mean DIRECTLY - below the tile-covered lobby floor. Every high-heeled shoe, every wobbly-wheeled rolling suitcase, every sliding back or forth of the refrigerator door in the "Candlewood Cupboard," keeping Lean Cuisines & Hot Pockets cool for the next customer - we heard it all. And Tag, who at this point, after a day-long drive in a car with two strangers and then unloading in the cold, dark, Michigan night, was wondering just what the hell he'd gotten himself into.
However, the next morning, Candlewood generously made amends by not only moving us but placing us, at no additional charge, in a one-bedroom suite at the end of the hall. This suited everyone MUCH better, especially Tag, who now had two rooms to run back & forth from. Or, if not run, at least to stretch his legs between.
What else to say, really? The theater, oddly enough, was under construction - or renovation - WHILE we were still performing, which led to some difficulties: concrete dust everywhere, the need to have the 'airborne particulate' count counted, and all sorts of difficulties on the part of the crew during their load-in & load-out.
There was an evening viewing of "The Big Lebowski," white russians included, that helped to pass one cold winter night. And Tag enjoyed the golf course next to the hotel which was on winter hibernation, resulting in the absolute PERFECT terrain for fetch ever dreamed by man or beast. You can see the video here, on the Dog-Swap Blog.
Other than than...I got nuthin'. You know, it was East Lansing. I mean.... East Lansing.... I mean..... oh.... man, it was a week that just came & went... Sometimes a week's just seven days...
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
St. Louis, MO
Lawdy, Lawdy....
If you had told either Angie or me, both veterans of work at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, that we would one day return to stay at the Rep Theater housing, for two weeks, with our spouse, both employed in the same show, a musical no less, on the road for a year, with our dog, a 65lb. pit bull, a car, and having left our apartment which we now own but which I've spent less than two full months in...well, you can imagine our response.
But as we pulled into the parking lot of the Garden Apartments in Webster Groves, MO, a suburb of St. Louis, the home of Webster University, and literally a quarter mile from the university theater where my father worked while he earned his doctorate, the first theater in which this author ever performed (at less than 2 yrs. old, and without an Equity card, let it be noted) and also a quarter mile from the first house to which said author was returned subsequent to his birthing and in which he was reared lo, these 41 years ago, the thought occurred to me with the Weight of Great Profundity and the Recognition of Harmonious Resonance, " The more things change..."
Here's the deal - travelling with our Rather Very Large, or at least, Rather Very Heavy dog, we sometimes can stay in the company hotel options, sometimes not. St. Louis was one time during which we could not. Angie, in her inevitable cleverness, called the company manager at St. Louis Rep. Could we stay there? she queeried. Would they be alright with a dog? she inquired. Could we park there? she requested. And how much would it be? she ultimately asked. Long story short, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Cheeeep. Deal done. Booked it & took it.
So on our drive down to Missouri from Ohio, we checked in with the company manager who explained she'd leave the apartment unlocked & we could settle up in the morning. No rush. Make yourselves at home. And so we did, quite happily. And you know, I'm not quite sure, but I almost think I lived in that very apartment once, during on of the earlier shows I did at the Rep. I'm not sure, and granted all the rooms are much the same (room-by-room renovations notwithstanding). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the VCR in the room was the same. Certainly, the advent of wi-fi internet connectivity was the clearest sign of the times. But other than that, well - close my eyes, and I might well have been doing KING LEAR in October of 2001.
More surprising still was the serendipitous online inquiry into the current St. Louis Rep season, at which point I discovered they were in rehearsal for THE MIRACLE WORKER, and playing the role of Helen Keller's mom was my dear friend Krista Hoeppner (seen here, in the role of Kate, in production photos from the show). Quickly, I shot off an e-mail note to her, presumably unaware of my presence in St. Louis. How funny you're in St. Louis, I wrote; I know those apartments well. Where are you? I asked. As luck would have had it, she was online at the time. Apartment K-1, she wrote back soon after. Now, Angie and I were in Apartment J-1. Literally, precisely, Right Next Door. And so it was, in the morning, I kept one eye out the window and, as I saw her trotting off to rehearsal that day, we casually opened the door and bid one very surprised Krista good morning.
Sometimes, this world is so - very - small.
And visiting Krista at the time was her husband Jay Leahy, entertaining the troops as well as anyone who knows him would assume him to be. And one of Krista's castmates was one John Rensenhouse, late of many St. Louis Rep shows but beknownst to me as Cornwall, in the production of KING LEAR of which I was a part. We shared a dressing room and the daily CryptoQuip during LEAR's tenure, and it was much fun catching up with him.
The Rep housing worked out perfectly. Long walks with Butley along winding, leafy, brick-housed streets - that is when we weren't walking across campus quadrangles & lawns. A university gym we joined which gave us access to a full health club facility within a short walk's distance. A full kitchen. A living room. And - luxury of luxuries - a front door opening up onto a small courtyard, such that morning canine peeing was no more an event than opening the door, waiting for a minute, then recalling the dog, shutting the door, and returning to bed. So THIS was how the Other Half lived.
Now, as the the theater. The Fox Theater, aka the Fabulous Fox, is ... well ... big. Something like 4,500 seats. Our nightly audiences were probably a modest 40% percent, or 1,800. But they were good houses, surprisingly audible for a house of that magnitude. And of all the "ohmygoshthistheaterisfullofhistoryandyoureallyshouldlookaround" theaters that I've played, the Fox is one of those at the top of the list. Gaudy, grand, luxurious, bejeweled, bedecked, and truly amazing. A lobby that feels like a ballroom at the Ottoman emperor's palace. And a first balcony circle along the back of the house offers a full-service dinner menu during the show. Here's how big the theater is: you can't hear a single fork clink or plate clatter from the stage during the performance.
I know - because after six months, I finally got a chance to do the role I've been understudying all this time. Henry Stram took the day off to visit some family in Kansas City, and I covered for him for the first Sunday's matinee and evening performances. It went fine; very fun to finally get up on stage with the rest of the cast, and it's such a talented group of performers that it's a real treat to be able to not only see their work up close but to be able to work with them. Including Angie. Nonetheless, for this tour, I'm really very happy to be backstage, at the keyboard. I mean, I didn't take this job to actually work for a living; I'm sort of like a farmer paid a subsidy to not farm - paid, in other words, not for the work I actually do as instead for the work I'm not able to do, or able to try to get. (Of course, in this economy, that's not such a loss.) But such is the life of a professional, sometimes. And such is my guilty pleasure, this yearlong busman's holiday, which I've enjoyed perhaps shamefully more than I imagined I might.
So - Hmmm, taking in St. Louis. Well, not a lot of that really happened. We did dine at Favazza's the first night. St. Louis is known for good restaurants, and good steak & Italian, in particular, and Favazza's was not a disappointment. I opted for the best and truest test of an Italian restaurant: the spaghetti & meatballs. Now no, it wasn't as good as my grandmother's recipe (which then became my mother's and then my sister's), but yeah - it was good. We also had lunch one day at Sqwires in Lafayette Square. Built in an old industrial & manufacturing complex, Sqwires effects the task of urban revitalization very well: take an old, rundown, brick industrial plant, clean it, add swanky fixtures straight from the pages of a chic design magazine, serve really good food, and do little else. 'S all you really need. We only had lunch there, but it pointed promisingly to great dinner & music.
We did spend a lot of time over at Washington University, helping out Angie's friends who both teach there. One is a writer, Carter Lewis, who asked us to serve as actors for his undergraduate playwriting class, and is one a director, Andrea Urice, who asked us to talk to her class of actors, to whom we tried to give a reasonably accurate description of our professional experiences while not frightening them so much that they changed majors. Angie had been directed by Andrea in Carter's play Ordinary Nation at Rep. Theater of St. Louis while I was on tour with the first year of Twelve Angry Men.
The talking to the actors was a simple, straightforward affair - two hours or so. And they had great questions & were extremely interested & prepared. The rehearsal & performing for the writers was more intensive, but it was fantastic, actually. Very good, short one-acts - six of them - which were written with two late thirties, early forties actors in mind, one male, one female (part of the class assignment being to actually write for your actors). I was very impressed, by the breadth of styles, by Carter's skill at nurturing their work without imposing his own style onto it, and at the level at which the students had been able to provide actors enough material with which to work, without providing so much as to dictate the performance, or trying to direct from the keyboard. And it was a nice change of pace from the routine of the show...
Other than that, not really so much to say. No, we didn't get any Ted Drewes ice cream. No, we didn't go up in the St. Louis Gateway Arch, opened to the public the summer of my birth which, I've always suspected, was the arch's real cause for commemoration. Such things would have made more sense, had this been our first time in the Gateway City. But this time, yours truly had a fair amount of rehearsal, and we also had other goals in mind, not the least of which was The Big Swap.
THE BIG SWAP
OK. So this would really be a crazy story, were it not something happening to us while on this tour, crazy stories apparently being the norm. Let me point out the preceding events & details, and perhaps you can guess the end result:
• We own a 65 lb. pit bull.
• There is a province-wide ban on all 'bully breeds' in Ontario.
• Knowing we were going to be playing Toronto, we had investigated all the various possibilities, including a Cleveland - NYC - Toronto drive, during which we'd leave Butley with his walker for 5 weeks.
• Butley was recently certified as a therapy dog in Des Moines.
• The therapy dog evaluators we met are also training an 8 mo. old golden lab puppy to be a mobility service dog.
• Said puppy, "Tag," is at the point in his training where he knows a series of commands and needs most of all to be exposed to a wide range of experiences. Such experiences as one might accrue while on national tour with a Broadway musical.
• St. Louis is about 5 hours away from Des Moines, and said evaluators are willing to take a vacation in June to Louisville, after law school is done.
• Said evaluators love Butley.
• Said evaluators are very generous.
• Said evaluators are a little nuts.
• Said evaluators made the offer all on on their own.
So yeah. We traded dogs for three months.
O. M. G.
To that end, I introduce to you the official dog-swap blog: http://dog-swap.blogspot.com/. This is run by both said evaluators and yours truly as a way we can both keep each other apprised of our respective dogs' status, share video, training tips, etc.
K-9 laden as this online report has been already, I'll spare you, gentle readers, from merely repeating what can already be found on the other blog. But let it suffice to be known that:
• Yes, we miss Butley.
• Yes, we're glad to have Tag.
• Yes, we're glad we don't have to worry about the ban.
• Yes, we know it sounds kinda crazy, but it really works out well for everyone.
Butley's getting to live & work with a professional dog trainer for three months. We get a dog we can take into any hotel, any restaurant, any grocery store, any theater (remember: he's a legitimate service dog).
And so, at the end of our stay in St. Louis, we traded dogs. Followers of the Rude Awakening blog, I introduce Tag:
Tag, meanwhile, is missed not only by his trainers but by the family who also helped raise him. To give them a little video hello, and to show everyone how much Tag's life is about to change, I present to you the official Tag Swap video:
So, while Butley's in farm country with his two new canine housemates, Cadence & Roggen, and his two new human handlers, Nicole & Eric Shumate, Tag has assumed the mantle of world traveller. And you, dear reader, have now TWO blogs to follow, if you so choose. For all you time wasters, forget Facebook. Let our blogs be the cause of your diminished productivity.
And yes - that's the ACTUAL house that modeled for Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic". The picture was taken on Butley's ride back to Des Moines from St. Louis, to begin his Iowa "residency."
And so, in light of the odd circumstances, the impossible coincidences, the remarkable arrangements, and all the surprises that seem to constitute our regular existence, we close as we opened, with the bowed-head-shaking, knee-softly-slapping, tongue-gently-clacking exclamation....
Lawdy, lawdy, LAWDY...
If you had told either Angie or me, both veterans of work at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, that we would one day return to stay at the Rep Theater housing, for two weeks, with our spouse, both employed in the same show, a musical no less, on the road for a year, with our dog, a 65lb. pit bull, a car, and having left our apartment which we now own but which I've spent less than two full months in...well, you can imagine our response.
But as we pulled into the parking lot of the Garden Apartments in Webster Groves, MO, a suburb of St. Louis, the home of Webster University, and literally a quarter mile from the university theater where my father worked while he earned his doctorate, the first theater in which this author ever performed (at less than 2 yrs. old, and without an Equity card, let it be noted) and also a quarter mile from the first house to which said author was returned subsequent to his birthing and in which he was reared lo, these 41 years ago, the thought occurred to me with the Weight of Great Profundity and the Recognition of Harmonious Resonance, " The more things change..."
Here's the deal - travelling with our Rather Very Large, or at least, Rather Very Heavy dog, we sometimes can stay in the company hotel options, sometimes not. St. Louis was one time during which we could not. Angie, in her inevitable cleverness, called the company manager at St. Louis Rep. Could we stay there? she queeried. Would they be alright with a dog? she inquired. Could we park there? she requested. And how much would it be? she ultimately asked. Long story short, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Cheeeep. Deal done. Booked it & took it.
So on our drive down to Missouri from Ohio, we checked in with the company manager who explained she'd leave the apartment unlocked & we could settle up in the morning. No rush. Make yourselves at home. And so we did, quite happily. And you know, I'm not quite sure, but I almost think I lived in that very apartment once, during on of the earlier shows I did at the Rep. I'm not sure, and granted all the rooms are much the same (room-by-room renovations notwithstanding). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the VCR in the room was the same. Certainly, the advent of wi-fi internet connectivity was the clearest sign of the times. But other than that, well - close my eyes, and I might well have been doing KING LEAR in October of 2001.
More surprising still was the serendipitous online inquiry into the current St. Louis Rep season, at which point I discovered they were in rehearsal for THE MIRACLE WORKER, and playing the role of Helen Keller's mom was my dear friend Krista Hoeppner (seen here, in the role of Kate, in production photos from the show). Quickly, I shot off an e-mail note to her, presumably unaware of my presence in St. Louis. How funny you're in St. Louis, I wrote; I know those apartments well. Where are you? I asked. As luck would have had it, she was online at the time. Apartment K-1, she wrote back soon after. Now, Angie and I were in Apartment J-1. Literally, precisely, Right Next Door. And so it was, in the morning, I kept one eye out the window and, as I saw her trotting off to rehearsal that day, we casually opened the door and bid one very surprised Krista good morning.
Sometimes, this world is so - very - small.
And visiting Krista at the time was her husband Jay Leahy, entertaining the troops as well as anyone who knows him would assume him to be. And one of Krista's castmates was one John Rensenhouse, late of many St. Louis Rep shows but beknownst to me as Cornwall, in the production of KING LEAR of which I was a part. We shared a dressing room and the daily CryptoQuip during LEAR's tenure, and it was much fun catching up with him.
The Rep housing worked out perfectly. Long walks with Butley along winding, leafy, brick-housed streets - that is when we weren't walking across campus quadrangles & lawns. A university gym we joined which gave us access to a full health club facility within a short walk's distance. A full kitchen. A living room. And - luxury of luxuries - a front door opening up onto a small courtyard, such that morning canine peeing was no more an event than opening the door, waiting for a minute, then recalling the dog, shutting the door, and returning to bed. So THIS was how the Other Half lived.
Now, as the the theater. The Fox Theater, aka the Fabulous Fox, is ... well ... big. Something like 4,500 seats. Our nightly audiences were probably a modest 40% percent, or 1,800. But they were good houses, surprisingly audible for a house of that magnitude. And of all the "ohmygoshthistheaterisfullofhistoryandyoureallyshouldlookaround" theaters that I've played, the Fox is one of those at the top of the list. Gaudy, grand, luxurious, bejeweled, bedecked, and truly amazing. A lobby that feels like a ballroom at the Ottoman emperor's palace. And a first balcony circle along the back of the house offers a full-service dinner menu during the show. Here's how big the theater is: you can't hear a single fork clink or plate clatter from the stage during the performance.
I know - because after six months, I finally got a chance to do the role I've been understudying all this time. Henry Stram took the day off to visit some family in Kansas City, and I covered for him for the first Sunday's matinee and evening performances. It went fine; very fun to finally get up on stage with the rest of the cast, and it's such a talented group of performers that it's a real treat to be able to not only see their work up close but to be able to work with them. Including Angie. Nonetheless, for this tour, I'm really very happy to be backstage, at the keyboard. I mean, I didn't take this job to actually work for a living; I'm sort of like a farmer paid a subsidy to not farm - paid, in other words, not for the work I actually do as instead for the work I'm not able to do, or able to try to get. (Of course, in this economy, that's not such a loss.) But such is the life of a professional, sometimes. And such is my guilty pleasure, this yearlong busman's holiday, which I've enjoyed perhaps shamefully more than I imagined I might.
So - Hmmm, taking in St. Louis. Well, not a lot of that really happened. We did dine at Favazza's the first night. St. Louis is known for good restaurants, and good steak & Italian, in particular, and Favazza's was not a disappointment. I opted for the best and truest test of an Italian restaurant: the spaghetti & meatballs. Now no, it wasn't as good as my grandmother's recipe (which then became my mother's and then my sister's), but yeah - it was good. We also had lunch one day at Sqwires in Lafayette Square. Built in an old industrial & manufacturing complex, Sqwires effects the task of urban revitalization very well: take an old, rundown, brick industrial plant, clean it, add swanky fixtures straight from the pages of a chic design magazine, serve really good food, and do little else. 'S all you really need. We only had lunch there, but it pointed promisingly to great dinner & music.
We did spend a lot of time over at Washington University, helping out Angie's friends who both teach there. One is a writer, Carter Lewis, who asked us to serve as actors for his undergraduate playwriting class, and is one a director, Andrea Urice, who asked us to talk to her class of actors, to whom we tried to give a reasonably accurate description of our professional experiences while not frightening them so much that they changed majors. Angie had been directed by Andrea in Carter's play Ordinary Nation at Rep. Theater of St. Louis while I was on tour with the first year of Twelve Angry Men.
The talking to the actors was a simple, straightforward affair - two hours or so. And they had great questions & were extremely interested & prepared. The rehearsal & performing for the writers was more intensive, but it was fantastic, actually. Very good, short one-acts - six of them - which were written with two late thirties, early forties actors in mind, one male, one female (part of the class assignment being to actually write for your actors). I was very impressed, by the breadth of styles, by Carter's skill at nurturing their work without imposing his own style onto it, and at the level at which the students had been able to provide actors enough material with which to work, without providing so much as to dictate the performance, or trying to direct from the keyboard. And it was a nice change of pace from the routine of the show...
Other than that, not really so much to say. No, we didn't get any Ted Drewes ice cream. No, we didn't go up in the St. Louis Gateway Arch, opened to the public the summer of my birth which, I've always suspected, was the arch's real cause for commemoration. Such things would have made more sense, had this been our first time in the Gateway City. But this time, yours truly had a fair amount of rehearsal, and we also had other goals in mind, not the least of which was The Big Swap.
THE BIG SWAP
OK. So this would really be a crazy story, were it not something happening to us while on this tour, crazy stories apparently being the norm. Let me point out the preceding events & details, and perhaps you can guess the end result:
• We own a 65 lb. pit bull.
• There is a province-wide ban on all 'bully breeds' in Ontario.
• Knowing we were going to be playing Toronto, we had investigated all the various possibilities, including a Cleveland - NYC - Toronto drive, during which we'd leave Butley with his walker for 5 weeks.
• Butley was recently certified as a therapy dog in Des Moines.
• The therapy dog evaluators we met are also training an 8 mo. old golden lab puppy to be a mobility service dog.
• Said puppy, "Tag," is at the point in his training where he knows a series of commands and needs most of all to be exposed to a wide range of experiences. Such experiences as one might accrue while on national tour with a Broadway musical.
• St. Louis is about 5 hours away from Des Moines, and said evaluators are willing to take a vacation in June to Louisville, after law school is done.
• Said evaluators love Butley.
• Said evaluators are very generous.
• Said evaluators are a little nuts.
• Said evaluators made the offer all on on their own.
So yeah. We traded dogs for three months.
O. M. G.
To that end, I introduce to you the official dog-swap blog: http://dog-swap.blogspot.com/. This is run by both said evaluators and yours truly as a way we can both keep each other apprised of our respective dogs' status, share video, training tips, etc.
K-9 laden as this online report has been already, I'll spare you, gentle readers, from merely repeating what can already be found on the other blog. But let it suffice to be known that:
• Yes, we miss Butley.
• Yes, we're glad to have Tag.
• Yes, we're glad we don't have to worry about the ban.
• Yes, we know it sounds kinda crazy, but it really works out well for everyone.
Butley's getting to live & work with a professional dog trainer for three months. We get a dog we can take into any hotel, any restaurant, any grocery store, any theater (remember: he's a legitimate service dog).
And so, at the end of our stay in St. Louis, we traded dogs. Followers of the Rude Awakening blog, I introduce Tag:
Tag, meanwhile, is missed not only by his trainers but by the family who also helped raise him. To give them a little video hello, and to show everyone how much Tag's life is about to change, I present to you the official Tag Swap video:
So, while Butley's in farm country with his two new canine housemates, Cadence & Roggen, and his two new human handlers, Nicole & Eric Shumate, Tag has assumed the mantle of world traveller. And you, dear reader, have now TWO blogs to follow, if you so choose. For all you time wasters, forget Facebook. Let our blogs be the cause of your diminished productivity.
And yes - that's the ACTUAL house that modeled for Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic". The picture was taken on Butley's ride back to Des Moines from St. Louis, to begin his Iowa "residency."
And so, in light of the odd circumstances, the impossible coincidences, the remarkable arrangements, and all the surprises that seem to constitute our regular existence, we close as we opened, with the bowed-head-shaking, knee-softly-slapping, tongue-gently-clacking exclamation....
Lawdy, lawdy, LAWDY...
Monday, February 9, 2009
Columbus, OH
Gentle readers,
Regret is a funny thing. None of us seem to want it - and yet we all seem to have it. About something. And those of us who deny having it do so at the risk of incurring accusations of denial, of suppressed memory, of the re-writing of history. Regret would seem to be like psychic flatulence - we all fear even the mildest case of our own in a crowded room, yet we only take note at the most egregious infractions of others (and some may be truly egregious). Continuing on down the path of this simile is, doubtless, a doomed affair. And yet the point, I think, is made. Moving on, then, I can only say that, for those regular followers of these minor missives who have even noticed a delay at all in my posting hereto, I must express my apologies, my regret, not for my actions but for my nature. I can get easily distracted. I am distractible. But as we are, thus we must ever be; and so, the inevitable delay was surely that - inevitable.
So - Columbus.
Arriving in Columbus was, yet again, an exercise in cold-weather logistics. Unloading at the hotel was bitter, not helped by the fact of our late evening arrival and the having-already-set-long-ago sun. We've been inordinately lucky, throughout the trip, to have enjoyed clear driving weather on every commute thus far, save for the occasional and passing rainstorm. But safely cocooned in our temperature-controlled, all-wheel-drive, Beverly-Hillbillies-laden Forester, we have often experienced the winter chill en route as the unfortunate arctic blast to be endured while refueling. But when travelling after sunset, the condensation inside the car often results in a frosty buildup on all windows but the windshield, and we have to resort to the periodic interior scraping that reminds me of U-boat sailors 'bailing the hatch' or 'stoking the main' or whatever it was that U-boat sailors would do mid-journey to keep their submersibles operational. (I say U-boat, because - when we're fully loaded up - that's a bit what the interior of the car feels like.)
Nonetheless, once ensconced in the motherly arms of yet another anonymous dwelling, we three hunkered in for the night. Or rather, after Angie and I had sallied forth for some dinner, we three hunkered in. Hunkered down? Somehow it felt more like hunkering IN.
And for dinner, we discovered the first of many fine little gems in this former post-graduate home of my once childhood friend and now graphic designer, Brad Egnor. This is a town which Brad has talked about fondly in the past - not without some sense of having outgrown it, and yet fondly nonethless. He spoke of there being a certain subculture, a certain funky flair that seeps into the town in nooks and crannies. In fact, while we were there, I saw at least a couple references to Columbus as being the "indie art capital of the Midwest." And having been there I can believe it, based on the short, shivering week we spent.
Exhibit A: Tip Top Kitchen & Cocktails. Where else in the Midwest would you go to find a spacious and yet cosy feeling pub, fully stocked with local microbrews and domestic & imported favorites, many on tap, with a menu that stretches far beyond the usual pub grub to include quiche, spaghetti & meatballs, meatloaf and sweet potatoes, all manner of delectable salads, a jukebox stocked with great alt rock selections from the 90's (sorry, Beyoncé fans), a knowledgeable bar staff and a very friendly waitstaff, all open - kitchen included - until 2am? 2AM, mind you, being, Midwest-wise, the biggest cause for bragging rights in any downtown eatery.
Yea, and verily did we dine there. And it was good.
Columbus audiences were ... fine. You know, they clapped when they should, that laughed & gasped, for the most part, where they oughtta. Granted, two boys kissing wasn't high on their list, though I imagine the Guilty Ones who were in the audience were all the more appreciative for our kind of theatrical fare. But the kind of folks in Columbus who pony up the pennies for a Broadway Series ticket were, as like as not, just very polite to the point of undue restraint (though they did come alive at the curtain call). Also, in these enormous houses such as we're wont to play, it's often hard to hear the audience response. What would have been booming back at the Atlantic often feels, in these enormous old vaudeville houses, like politesse. However, I think everyone felt like they were turning in good shows and, as I say, the curtain calls were enthusiastic.
Hm - did I actually just talk about the show right there? I must be slipping - back to the REAL part of the tour. Our adventures.
Another fun part of Columbus was German Village. One would - well, THIS one would, at any rate - presume that there was a large German contingent that helped found and settle Columbus. I will leave that possibly mythic interpretation to others to dispel, but should that prove to be the case, the very existence of German Village, if not the preponderance of German street names, German or Yiddish restaurants, and other such Germania would no doubt be the first, biggest clue.
And my own personal favorite discoveries were Katzinger's Deli and the German Village Book Loft. I'll call them Exhibits B and C.
B - Katzinger's Deli: Were you to judge solely on the basis of the available option of cheeses, olives, olive oil, ethnic desserts, knishes and latkes, and such, you would surely think you had stumbled into a very small tasting room for Fairway in New York City. Katzinger's is, to be sure, MUCH, MUCH tinier, and not a grocery but a deli. But the same sense of avocational devotion to their product imbues every answer to your questions about the available foods on display. Fun little chachka-candies, sandwiches with names that sound like songtitles from an Arlo Guthrie album ("Jimmy's Photo Finish", or "Bob says 'Ella Makes My Day'"), Frosttop rootbeer (which I have only ever had elsewhere in Huntington, WV), and an overall vibe that's part Midwest hospitality, part Vermonter stubborn individuality, and part Upper West Side old world import.
C - Book Loft: In a large house, or actually - I think - a series of houses which have been functionally attached, you wander from room to room, stacked floor to ceiling with books all categorized according to the room's designation. The Graphic Novels room. The Science Fiction room. Not to be confused with the Fantasy Literature Room. The Dead, European Classicists' Room. You get the idea. Meanwhile, posters from movies past and present adorn whatever wallspace remains. Ask for directions to the bathroom and they run something like, "Go up to the North East Wing, turn left at Military History, and it's behind the 'Napoleon Dynamite' poster." Angie and I spent over an hour there. We bought nothing. We barely saw every room. As I left, I felt like I had just leafed through every page of a terrific magazine, which is one reason I love to browse through bookshops: dilettante-reading, perusing only book jacket backs and clipped & posted reviews, and feeling amply read for the day...
Add to the list of exhibits, along the way, COSI, the Columbus children's science center. Hands-on doesn't really begin to describe COSI's mandate. Hands-in, hands-full-of, hands-all-over - these may all come closer.
Above you see one Angela Reed astride a participatory demonstration of weight and counter-balance. Tour weight notwithstanding, we could both make it to the end & back, securely strapped in and nudged out onto the wire, peddling over the heads of ninth-graders who doubtless thought us very silly and yet envied us all the same. There's an enormous human skeleton, accurately constructed out of wire mesh, bone-for-bone; a hot-air balloon duo that you can, with the push of a button, heat & deflate up & down a wire; there's an actual car outside that, in the warmth of the summer, can be lifted, with the remarkable help of a complex system of pulleys and cables, by one average-strength human being; there's a rotating optical illusion that, when stared at for thirty seconds, makes all the hallway look like a scene out of "The Matrix", with the very walls wobbling, the people a bit two-dimensional, and the carpet seeming to squirm underneath your feet.
There is also: Rat Basketball!
Ginger and Marianne, two lab rats who each get a single Cheerio when they put the unused & modified ball of a roll-on deodorant through their own assigned basket, met on the field of athletic battle as we cheered them on. We, the audience, were divided into cheering sections. We cheered for Marianne. She lost. My theory is that if she'd been playing for Cap'n Crunch, we would have won.
Meanwhile, although our constant canine companion was underwhelmed by the frigid outdoors, the discovery of snow-covered, riverside Bicentennial Park was a a great joy and much gamboling about was had by one Butley Cerveris-Reed. Apparently, the abundant presence of goose poop just below the snow was intoxicating, although the frozen nature of the hardpack forced a difficult choice: dig or run. After some indecision, he wisely opted for run. (I imagine the experience was much like a cat's atop a mattress filled with catnip.)
My dad and his wife were able to visit, while we were there, Columbus being about three hours from Pittsburgh. It was at that point, after I counted the weeks and months backwards city by city, an idiom which my father considered reminiscent of a Johnny Cash song, that it had been over a year since I'd seen the two of them. As the profound reality of the length of my touring sank in, I wobbled a bit. Can it be? Really? It had felt so much like we'd been in touch quite often, which of course we were, thanks to every modern means of communication, and yet no meeting in realtime. A warning to us all, I suppose. When I was a very little kid, I remember hearing Harry Chapin's "Cat's In The Cradle" while with my mother in the Dairy Queen in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, one summer when the family had gone down to accompany my dad's then-annual stint as musical director, and thought I to my six-year-old self that the son in that song would never be me. And actually, throughout my life, I've strived to ensure exactly that. Nonetheless, as I replayed a time-lapsed year in my mind, I felt like I had come dangerously close. And I don't even have sick children to blame it on (a quick test of your lyric recollection, for all you forty-to-fifty-somethings out there)...Anyway, lesson-learned.
It was a backward recount, by the way, for which we had more than ample time as it was a task undertaken while waiting for service at the hotel restaurant. For anyone staying at the Doubletree in Columbus, it's a nice enough place in many respects, but HERE IS FAIR WARNING: don't plan to eat or drink there! Not unless you're a particularly singular fan of cool soup, warm salad, difficult bartenders, and waiting-time of paint-drying duration....
Yet another exhibit of the alternative culture trendiness that one can find in Columbus, in the very trendy "Short North" area, is the evocatively-named used CD & vinyl store, Magnolia Thunderpussy. At said store, I managed to acquire a recording of Stephin Merritt's soundtrack to the 2002 film "Eban and Charley", a cherished and gladly purchased anew CD of Porno For Pyros' self-titled debut CD, a used copy of Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs," a disappointing Mission of Burma's "ONoffON," and - because one simply must get one if one can - a Magnolia Thunderpussy t-shirt, dark blue with yellow logo & lettering. [NB: it would appear that the store's name comes from the band, Magnolia Thunderpussy, whose website describes it as "...a source of pride and inspiration for Westside LA’s mid-‘80s underground,... the first high school age band to earn a record contract with legendary indie label SST."]
If only I was a cool, indie musician who could garner yet more alternative cachet by sporting such a t-shirt at his next gig, even more coyly obscured by the Fender Stratocaster across his chest...Instead of a 41-year-old actor who can play the iPod and little else, posing as a cool, indie musician who could garner yet more alternative cachet by sporting such a t-shirt at his next gig, even more coyly obscured by the Fender Stratocaster across his chest.
But we all have our place in this world, no? 'Course, try telling that to this abandoned shopping cart, left smack in the middle of the ice of the frozen solid Scioto River.
The shopping cart seemed to be a remaining relic of a poetry event held literally on the ice of the Scioto, which runs through downtown Columbus, an event demonstrating both the cold of the area and the resiliency of its population. What to many of us would be cause to retreat inside, to Columbusians (?) was merely another performance venue.... And long after the event was left over, the cart there still remained, like a Duchamp sculpture, quizzically and beautifully out of place. Much like the Midwestern subculture we were lucky to discover, much like the "indie art capital of the midwest" itself, nestled amongst the cornfields and combines of Ohio.
Still, I'm tellin' you. It was cold....
Regret is a funny thing. None of us seem to want it - and yet we all seem to have it. About something. And those of us who deny having it do so at the risk of incurring accusations of denial, of suppressed memory, of the re-writing of history. Regret would seem to be like psychic flatulence - we all fear even the mildest case of our own in a crowded room, yet we only take note at the most egregious infractions of others (and some may be truly egregious). Continuing on down the path of this simile is, doubtless, a doomed affair. And yet the point, I think, is made. Moving on, then, I can only say that, for those regular followers of these minor missives who have even noticed a delay at all in my posting hereto, I must express my apologies, my regret, not for my actions but for my nature. I can get easily distracted. I am distractible. But as we are, thus we must ever be; and so, the inevitable delay was surely that - inevitable.
So - Columbus.
Arriving in Columbus was, yet again, an exercise in cold-weather logistics. Unloading at the hotel was bitter, not helped by the fact of our late evening arrival and the having-already-set-long-ago sun. We've been inordinately lucky, throughout the trip, to have enjoyed clear driving weather on every commute thus far, save for the occasional and passing rainstorm. But safely cocooned in our temperature-controlled, all-wheel-drive, Beverly-Hillbillies-laden Forester, we have often experienced the winter chill en route as the unfortunate arctic blast to be endured while refueling. But when travelling after sunset, the condensation inside the car often results in a frosty buildup on all windows but the windshield, and we have to resort to the periodic interior scraping that reminds me of U-boat sailors 'bailing the hatch' or 'stoking the main' or whatever it was that U-boat sailors would do mid-journey to keep their submersibles operational. (I say U-boat, because - when we're fully loaded up - that's a bit what the interior of the car feels like.)
Nonetheless, once ensconced in the motherly arms of yet another anonymous dwelling, we three hunkered in for the night. Or rather, after Angie and I had sallied forth for some dinner, we three hunkered in. Hunkered down? Somehow it felt more like hunkering IN.
And for dinner, we discovered the first of many fine little gems in this former post-graduate home of my once childhood friend and now graphic designer, Brad Egnor. This is a town which Brad has talked about fondly in the past - not without some sense of having outgrown it, and yet fondly nonethless. He spoke of there being a certain subculture, a certain funky flair that seeps into the town in nooks and crannies. In fact, while we were there, I saw at least a couple references to Columbus as being the "indie art capital of the Midwest." And having been there I can believe it, based on the short, shivering week we spent.
Exhibit A: Tip Top Kitchen & Cocktails. Where else in the Midwest would you go to find a spacious and yet cosy feeling pub, fully stocked with local microbrews and domestic & imported favorites, many on tap, with a menu that stretches far beyond the usual pub grub to include quiche, spaghetti & meatballs, meatloaf and sweet potatoes, all manner of delectable salads, a jukebox stocked with great alt rock selections from the 90's (sorry, Beyoncé fans), a knowledgeable bar staff and a very friendly waitstaff, all open - kitchen included - until 2am? 2AM, mind you, being, Midwest-wise, the biggest cause for bragging rights in any downtown eatery.
Yea, and verily did we dine there. And it was good.
Columbus audiences were ... fine. You know, they clapped when they should, that laughed & gasped, for the most part, where they oughtta. Granted, two boys kissing wasn't high on their list, though I imagine the Guilty Ones who were in the audience were all the more appreciative for our kind of theatrical fare. But the kind of folks in Columbus who pony up the pennies for a Broadway Series ticket were, as like as not, just very polite to the point of undue restraint (though they did come alive at the curtain call). Also, in these enormous houses such as we're wont to play, it's often hard to hear the audience response. What would have been booming back at the Atlantic often feels, in these enormous old vaudeville houses, like politesse. However, I think everyone felt like they were turning in good shows and, as I say, the curtain calls were enthusiastic.
Hm - did I actually just talk about the show right there? I must be slipping - back to the REAL part of the tour. Our adventures.
Another fun part of Columbus was German Village. One would - well, THIS one would, at any rate - presume that there was a large German contingent that helped found and settle Columbus. I will leave that possibly mythic interpretation to others to dispel, but should that prove to be the case, the very existence of German Village, if not the preponderance of German street names, German or Yiddish restaurants, and other such Germania would no doubt be the first, biggest clue.
And my own personal favorite discoveries were Katzinger's Deli and the German Village Book Loft. I'll call them Exhibits B and C.
B - Katzinger's Deli: Were you to judge solely on the basis of the available option of cheeses, olives, olive oil, ethnic desserts, knishes and latkes, and such, you would surely think you had stumbled into a very small tasting room for Fairway in New York City. Katzinger's is, to be sure, MUCH, MUCH tinier, and not a grocery but a deli. But the same sense of avocational devotion to their product imbues every answer to your questions about the available foods on display. Fun little chachka-candies, sandwiches with names that sound like songtitles from an Arlo Guthrie album ("Jimmy's Photo Finish", or "Bob says 'Ella Makes My Day'"), Frosttop rootbeer (which I have only ever had elsewhere in Huntington, WV), and an overall vibe that's part Midwest hospitality, part Vermonter stubborn individuality, and part Upper West Side old world import.
C - Book Loft: In a large house, or actually - I think - a series of houses which have been functionally attached, you wander from room to room, stacked floor to ceiling with books all categorized according to the room's designation. The Graphic Novels room. The Science Fiction room. Not to be confused with the Fantasy Literature Room. The Dead, European Classicists' Room. You get the idea. Meanwhile, posters from movies past and present adorn whatever wallspace remains. Ask for directions to the bathroom and they run something like, "Go up to the North East Wing, turn left at Military History, and it's behind the 'Napoleon Dynamite' poster." Angie and I spent over an hour there. We bought nothing. We barely saw every room. As I left, I felt like I had just leafed through every page of a terrific magazine, which is one reason I love to browse through bookshops: dilettante-reading, perusing only book jacket backs and clipped & posted reviews, and feeling amply read for the day...
Add to the list of exhibits, along the way, COSI, the Columbus children's science center. Hands-on doesn't really begin to describe COSI's mandate. Hands-in, hands-full-of, hands-all-over - these may all come closer.
Above you see one Angela Reed astride a participatory demonstration of weight and counter-balance. Tour weight notwithstanding, we could both make it to the end & back, securely strapped in and nudged out onto the wire, peddling over the heads of ninth-graders who doubtless thought us very silly and yet envied us all the same. There's an enormous human skeleton, accurately constructed out of wire mesh, bone-for-bone; a hot-air balloon duo that you can, with the push of a button, heat & deflate up & down a wire; there's an actual car outside that, in the warmth of the summer, can be lifted, with the remarkable help of a complex system of pulleys and cables, by one average-strength human being; there's a rotating optical illusion that, when stared at for thirty seconds, makes all the hallway look like a scene out of "The Matrix", with the very walls wobbling, the people a bit two-dimensional, and the carpet seeming to squirm underneath your feet.
There is also: Rat Basketball!
Ginger and Marianne, two lab rats who each get a single Cheerio when they put the unused & modified ball of a roll-on deodorant through their own assigned basket, met on the field of athletic battle as we cheered them on. We, the audience, were divided into cheering sections. We cheered for Marianne. She lost. My theory is that if she'd been playing for Cap'n Crunch, we would have won.
Meanwhile, although our constant canine companion was underwhelmed by the frigid outdoors, the discovery of snow-covered, riverside Bicentennial Park was a a great joy and much gamboling about was had by one Butley Cerveris-Reed. Apparently, the abundant presence of goose poop just below the snow was intoxicating, although the frozen nature of the hardpack forced a difficult choice: dig or run. After some indecision, he wisely opted for run. (I imagine the experience was much like a cat's atop a mattress filled with catnip.)
My dad and his wife were able to visit, while we were there, Columbus being about three hours from Pittsburgh. It was at that point, after I counted the weeks and months backwards city by city, an idiom which my father considered reminiscent of a Johnny Cash song, that it had been over a year since I'd seen the two of them. As the profound reality of the length of my touring sank in, I wobbled a bit. Can it be? Really? It had felt so much like we'd been in touch quite often, which of course we were, thanks to every modern means of communication, and yet no meeting in realtime. A warning to us all, I suppose. When I was a very little kid, I remember hearing Harry Chapin's "Cat's In The Cradle" while with my mother in the Dairy Queen in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, one summer when the family had gone down to accompany my dad's then-annual stint as musical director, and thought I to my six-year-old self that the son in that song would never be me. And actually, throughout my life, I've strived to ensure exactly that. Nonetheless, as I replayed a time-lapsed year in my mind, I felt like I had come dangerously close. And I don't even have sick children to blame it on (a quick test of your lyric recollection, for all you forty-to-fifty-somethings out there)...Anyway, lesson-learned.
It was a backward recount, by the way, for which we had more than ample time as it was a task undertaken while waiting for service at the hotel restaurant. For anyone staying at the Doubletree in Columbus, it's a nice enough place in many respects, but HERE IS FAIR WARNING: don't plan to eat or drink there! Not unless you're a particularly singular fan of cool soup, warm salad, difficult bartenders, and waiting-time of paint-drying duration....
Yet another exhibit of the alternative culture trendiness that one can find in Columbus, in the very trendy "Short North" area, is the evocatively-named used CD & vinyl store, Magnolia Thunderpussy. At said store, I managed to acquire a recording of Stephin Merritt's soundtrack to the 2002 film "Eban and Charley", a cherished and gladly purchased anew CD of Porno For Pyros' self-titled debut CD, a used copy of Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs," a disappointing Mission of Burma's "ONoffON," and - because one simply must get one if one can - a Magnolia Thunderpussy t-shirt, dark blue with yellow logo & lettering. [NB: it would appear that the store's name comes from the band, Magnolia Thunderpussy, whose website describes it as "...a source of pride and inspiration for Westside LA’s mid-‘80s underground,... the first high school age band to earn a record contract with legendary indie label SST."]
If only I was a cool, indie musician who could garner yet more alternative cachet by sporting such a t-shirt at his next gig, even more coyly obscured by the Fender Stratocaster across his chest...Instead of a 41-year-old actor who can play the iPod and little else, posing as a cool, indie musician who could garner yet more alternative cachet by sporting such a t-shirt at his next gig, even more coyly obscured by the Fender Stratocaster across his chest.
But we all have our place in this world, no? 'Course, try telling that to this abandoned shopping cart, left smack in the middle of the ice of the frozen solid Scioto River.
The shopping cart seemed to be a remaining relic of a poetry event held literally on the ice of the Scioto, which runs through downtown Columbus, an event demonstrating both the cold of the area and the resiliency of its population. What to many of us would be cause to retreat inside, to Columbusians (?) was merely another performance venue.... And long after the event was left over, the cart there still remained, like a Duchamp sculpture, quizzically and beautifully out of place. Much like the Midwestern subculture we were lucky to discover, much like the "indie art capital of the midwest" itself, nestled amongst the cornfields and combines of Ohio.
Still, I'm tellin' you. It was cold....
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Minneapolis
Cold.
Ass cold.
I mean - COLD.
And yet, not without cause for fun.
One Surprising Note About Minneapolis in the Winter: They don't sell long underwear. No, let me say that again. There is no long silk winter underwear on any of the shelves. At a time when the temperature dips below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the evening, when the streets are black with city slush and parking meters are bagged to prevent their use (leaving streets clear for snow removal), a city which is one of the northernmost major cities in the continental United States, whose very own football team's name recalls far off, distant lands with savage winters, and where even the local dialect seems intentionally designed to keep the opening to the human mouth as small as possible, to preserve as much body heat as possible ("Ooooh, yah, shure, I knooooow it...") - there is not a single pair of long, silk underwear in any size below XXL on the shelves of Macy's, Target, Marshall's.
I asked a sales clerk how this could be, and her response was, "Oooh, yah, gosh, I dooon't knooow. Guess we all bought 'em up, y'knooow?" I gave up looking. We're here for a week. I can use the skyway.
This is now the second time I've been to the home of Mary Tyler Moore on tour, and both times it's been smack in the middle of winter. I think that's enough.
But it has proven to be the land of surprising coincidence. My friend, Paul Fontana - sporting a new Inigo Montoya look - happened to be in town, in his capacity of Education Director for The Acting Company, which is debuting their production of Henry V here at the Guthrie. Thanks to Facebook, we realized our mutually serendipitous city status, and made use of the chance to catch up over a drink at the Marquette Hotel.
Also, a friend who was an undergrad in the theater department at UCSD while I was in grad school there, Elise Langer, has recently emigrated to these hinterlands and set up shop. I caught a Sunday matinee performance (in between our own matinee & evening shows) of Open Eye Figure Theater's new production of "Snowman." A brilliant and visually arresting fable that was a great midday surprise.
We also visited the Walker Arts Center - in equal parts, an inspiring, confounding, stultifying, and astounding artspace that has a broad range of artistic work. Kind of great - kind of weird - always worth a look.
And the Minneapolis audiences share the enthusiasm of their Iowan cousins. Always nice for the cast to be subjects of such adulation. In this series of one-week stands we're in the middle of, that's exactly what they need to keep their spirits up.
Beyond that, there's a shocking paucity of reportage to be had. Call it the fault of the icy conditions. We enjoyed the comfortable, king-sized bed of the downtown Radisson and the luxury of HBO, which we haven't had for awhile, actually. What can I say - it's tour. Some weeks, you just wanna hibernate...
Oh, and yes ... GO STEELERS!!!!
Ass cold.
I mean - COLD.
And yet, not without cause for fun.
One Surprising Note About Minneapolis in the Winter: They don't sell long underwear. No, let me say that again. There is no long silk winter underwear on any of the shelves. At a time when the temperature dips below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the evening, when the streets are black with city slush and parking meters are bagged to prevent their use (leaving streets clear for snow removal), a city which is one of the northernmost major cities in the continental United States, whose very own football team's name recalls far off, distant lands with savage winters, and where even the local dialect seems intentionally designed to keep the opening to the human mouth as small as possible, to preserve as much body heat as possible ("Ooooh, yah, shure, I knooooow it...") - there is not a single pair of long, silk underwear in any size below XXL on the shelves of Macy's, Target, Marshall's.
I asked a sales clerk how this could be, and her response was, "Oooh, yah, gosh, I dooon't knooow. Guess we all bought 'em up, y'knooow?" I gave up looking. We're here for a week. I can use the skyway.
This is now the second time I've been to the home of Mary Tyler Moore on tour, and both times it's been smack in the middle of winter. I think that's enough.
But it has proven to be the land of surprising coincidence. My friend, Paul Fontana - sporting a new Inigo Montoya look - happened to be in town, in his capacity of Education Director for The Acting Company, which is debuting their production of Henry V here at the Guthrie. Thanks to Facebook, we realized our mutually serendipitous city status, and made use of the chance to catch up over a drink at the Marquette Hotel.
Also, a friend who was an undergrad in the theater department at UCSD while I was in grad school there, Elise Langer, has recently emigrated to these hinterlands and set up shop. I caught a Sunday matinee performance (in between our own matinee & evening shows) of Open Eye Figure Theater's new production of "Snowman." A brilliant and visually arresting fable that was a great midday surprise.
We also visited the Walker Arts Center - in equal parts, an inspiring, confounding, stultifying, and astounding artspace that has a broad range of artistic work. Kind of great - kind of weird - always worth a look.
And the Minneapolis audiences share the enthusiasm of their Iowan cousins. Always nice for the cast to be subjects of such adulation. In this series of one-week stands we're in the middle of, that's exactly what they need to keep their spirits up.
Beyond that, there's a shocking paucity of reportage to be had. Call it the fault of the icy conditions. We enjoyed the comfortable, king-sized bed of the downtown Radisson and the luxury of HBO, which we haven't had for awhile, actually. What can I say - it's tour. Some weeks, you just wanna hibernate...
Oh, and yes ... GO STEELERS!!!!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Des Moines
Well in fact: Yes. We did.
Drive straight through from Houston to Des Moines, that is. 14 Hours. Thass right. We bad.
You see, we've learned this little trick - if, contrary to our natural inclinations as actors and theater-type people, we rise in the early morning - yes, Virginia, there IS an early morning - we find that there are simply more hours in the day to make the drive. Strange how that works. There is, of course, early morning sleepiness to contend with, however I'm usually good in the mornings (Angie, decidedly, is not). So we worked it out that, having loaded the car the night before (made possible by the good climate in Houston and the fact that we were parked in a private driveway), we simply rose, bathed (somewhat marginally, admittedly), broke fast, and left. 8am, I'm pleased to say. Which, for us, is usually right around when the sheep we've been counting are discussing talking about considering the possibility of having a conversation regarding the available option at sometime in the relative future maybe possibly heading back to the barn.
I drove, Angie slept. Until about noon. Then she drove & I slept. And so on. We packed a lunch, dinner & snack. Stopped for gas, coffee, and pee-breaks. Basically pretty easy. Just gotta get psychologically used to the idea that you're sitting in the car for 14 hours. Good weather, too, although we watched the temperature gauge drop incrementally from 65 to 19, as we drove northward and into the night time.
We arrived at a perfect little home we'd rented on Craigslist. A two-bedroom house in Windsor Heights, about 4 miles from downtown. The lights were on, the heat was going, and it was a very gratefully-received midwestern welcome at which to arrive. I went to the grocery store & tanked up for the week. Angie unpacked. Butley sniffed around. We settled in for a long winter's night.
The next morning, we woke to a new day. A very New Day.
It was particularly nice to be in the city where Obama's serious contender-ship actually started, just about one year ago....and by the way, what was that on Aretha Franklin's head?
The big news, though, was an adventure upon which we had embarked a few weeks prior, and which we had come to Des Moines almost with more purpose than serving as company members in SPRING AWAKENING. Being on the road, it would be easy to walk the dog, feed the dog, leave the dog in the hotel room, come home & walk the dog, and go to sleep. But given the time that we have at our disposal, and given the fact that Butley's a pit bull and (both because of the headstrong nature of the breed and public perception or fear) it particularly behooves us to have a well-mannered dog, and the fact that Butley's such a natural charmer (making friends with hotel staff all over the US), we thought it would be a good project to train him to be a therapy dog. It would strengthen our relationship & handling skills, it would make for good PR for the breed, it wouldn't hurt - when checking into hotels - to be able to say our dog was a certified "Canine Good Citizen." All of that.
So - enter The Delta Society. The Delta Society is an organization - probably the premier national organization - that certifies dogs for use in therapeutic environments. Visiting patients in hospitals, seniors or people in hospice care, a conversational bridge to encourage interaction among people with Alzheimer's, a means for people going through physical rehabilitation to practice minor muscle control, such as might be used in brushing a dog. They also serve other purposes, such as reading partners for kids whose anxiety about reading aloud is reduced (and whose reading skills in general are improved) by having a furry friend to whom they can practice reading. They can visit half-way houses or demonstrate to ex-cons returning from an animal abuse conviction the more peaceful side of domestic pets (pit bulls in particular). And in conjunction with licensed therapists, they can help in psychotherapeutic environments, either as a means for people to confront their own anxieties about animal aggression or just to lower the blood pressure a little with the calming affect of their presence.
Their uses are probably only limited by imagination. and the purpose of the training is to establish not a "bomb-proof" dog, but one over whom the certified handler (the handlers are trained and evaluated as well) holds sufficient command and one who can serve as a reliable goodwill ambassador. They get acclimated to people who may act a little funny, move strangely, pet a little too roughly, be prone to loud outbursts, that kind of thing.
They're not service dogs. They're not legally allowed where animals usually are not. They're not crisis response dogs. They're not search & rescue dogs. They're just friendly, well-mannered good listeners who, in the hands of an equally-trained handler, can put up with some distraction, some unusual circumstances, some people that may not know how to put them at ease themselves.
Never gonna happen, Angie thought. That's a really hard test, her friend Lisa said. Doubts were shared, aspersions were cast. But I had faith. I understood the concerns - Butley can be willful, he can forge ahead, he can get over-excited, he can be a little much sometime. But at the very least, it seemed like a good goal to train towards. Just the training for it would be a good experience.
Now usually, Delta Society dogs go through a series of classes, run by Delta Evaluators. But they have a home study course, and we ordered the manual. It's not small. There's a lot of info, and a lot of training to cover. And there are regularly scheduled evaluation events, which - given our schedule - were usually not happening in the cities we were going to be in on the days we were going to be there. But I went online and contacted a few Delta Society evaluators, and was very taken by the willingness by some to be as flexible as they could.
By a stroke of heaven-sent good fortune, we made contact with Nicole & Eric Shumate, in Des Moines, IA. And what will become apparent in the ensuing story, I will summarize here by simply saying that they were everything we could possibly have hoped for and three times more. Where to begin?
• The long e-mail exchange between Nicole and me, in which I addressed, point for point, each behavior with Butley that needed the most attention, and in which she addressed, in great detail and with thorough examples, exercises we could do with Butley which would help put him (and us) in better control?
• The advice Nicole gave every step of the way about what to expect on the evaluation exam, ways to anticipate unfavorable responses from Butley, and ways to circumvent those responses?
• The daily availability that Nicole offered of the dog agility center she works with, Canine Craze, for Butley to come romp around in their 5,000 square foot indoor agility training room, burn off that cabin fever, and practice his obedience drills?
• The companionship that Nicole offered for Butley by bringing along Cadence, her and Eric's wonderfully playful and ridiculously fast catahoula leopard dog and Tag, a golden lab puppy in their care who's training for work as a service dog?
• The subsequent evaluations of Butley's behavior, in the training sessions and in playtime with Cadence & Tag, of his behavior, helping us read his body language and learn about ways to encourage the good stuff & discourage the bad?
• The offer of giving up their Sunday to give us a personal evaluation for Delta Society certification?
• The making of another room in Canine Craze available for the evaluation?
• The openness and neighborliness at every step along the way?
It goes without saying that without all this, Butley would never have had the chance to test as soon and as well as he did.
In a nutshell, HE PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS (you can read the evaluator's blog account of it here), and - pending approval of the registration packet - will soon be joining the ranks of certified, insured, and trusted animals on registry and available for therapeutic use of The Delta Society. He even got a "complex" rating, meaning he's certified to go into some of the more complex environments and keep his cool amidst distractions, etc.
And here are the photos we took for our ID badges, right after the triumphant exam:
Now of course, given that we're in a different city each week, it may be kind of hard for the next few months to actually schedule any Pet Partner visits while we're on the road, but we'll have four weeks in Boston, four weeks in DC... We can start working on those soon enough. But it's just cool to know that we achieved that little watermark of passing the evaluation. So - all ye in need of therapy, Dr. Butley Feelgood is ready to start spreading the love...
Honestly, at some point, this blog will return to extra-canine pursuits. At some point....
But not yet....
We were also able to arrange, in conjunction with Paws & Effect, a R.E.A.D event, a program in which Delta Society therapy dogs are made available to kids to read to, as a way of encouraging reading in general. It started out as just Angie and me, but as soon as I offered the chance to come in on a Saturday morning and sit with a bunch of dogs & read children's books to kids, ten other members of the SPRING AWAKENING company clamored to join us.
We even made the local 6 o'clock news.
I didn't know how many of them might actually make it to the reading, but they were there early, ready to read, and we had a terrific time rolling around with Jersey, the golden retriever, Jesse, the golden lab, Gizmo, a puggle-y sort of mutt, and a few other terrific dogs. Six, maybe, in total. And as we all read the stories, the kids leaned in & sat beside the dogs (some of whom looked so attentive to the readers, you would be excused for thinking they were taking notes), and we all had a rather unexpectedly serene Saturday morning, the dogs, the SA company, the kids, and the handlers and Paws & Effect crew, discussing the finer points of such literary masterworks as Goodnight Moon and Harry, The Dirty Dog.
Allow me to present the vixen of the group, Jersey, as she made her rounds...
Butley, alas, had to stay home - as yet untested at that point as he was. But he heard the stories, he's very envious, and he's looking forward to his chance at bat.
What else about Des Moines? Not much, frankly, as all the dog stuff took up most of our time. Des Moines was a great city to play - very smart, excited audiences. A real blessing after what proved to be a rather blasé crowd in Houston. Not that they were bad, but Houston's car-culture (much like LA) had droves leaving the theater during the curtain call, all in a rush to get to the valet parking ahead of everyone else. But not in Des Moines. We even had some brave souls out by the stage door after the show, in spite of the chilly, Des Moines winds. Iowa, we hardly knew ye...
Drive straight through from Houston to Des Moines, that is. 14 Hours. Thass right. We bad.
You see, we've learned this little trick - if, contrary to our natural inclinations as actors and theater-type people, we rise in the early morning - yes, Virginia, there IS an early morning - we find that there are simply more hours in the day to make the drive. Strange how that works. There is, of course, early morning sleepiness to contend with, however I'm usually good in the mornings (Angie, decidedly, is not). So we worked it out that, having loaded the car the night before (made possible by the good climate in Houston and the fact that we were parked in a private driveway), we simply rose, bathed (somewhat marginally, admittedly), broke fast, and left. 8am, I'm pleased to say. Which, for us, is usually right around when the sheep we've been counting are discussing talking about considering the possibility of having a conversation regarding the available option at sometime in the relative future maybe possibly heading back to the barn.
I drove, Angie slept. Until about noon. Then she drove & I slept. And so on. We packed a lunch, dinner & snack. Stopped for gas, coffee, and pee-breaks. Basically pretty easy. Just gotta get psychologically used to the idea that you're sitting in the car for 14 hours. Good weather, too, although we watched the temperature gauge drop incrementally from 65 to 19, as we drove northward and into the night time.
We arrived at a perfect little home we'd rented on Craigslist. A two-bedroom house in Windsor Heights, about 4 miles from downtown. The lights were on, the heat was going, and it was a very gratefully-received midwestern welcome at which to arrive. I went to the grocery store & tanked up for the week. Angie unpacked. Butley sniffed around. We settled in for a long winter's night.
The next morning, we woke to a new day. A very New Day.
It was particularly nice to be in the city where Obama's serious contender-ship actually started, just about one year ago....and by the way, what was that on Aretha Franklin's head?
The big news, though, was an adventure upon which we had embarked a few weeks prior, and which we had come to Des Moines almost with more purpose than serving as company members in SPRING AWAKENING. Being on the road, it would be easy to walk the dog, feed the dog, leave the dog in the hotel room, come home & walk the dog, and go to sleep. But given the time that we have at our disposal, and given the fact that Butley's a pit bull and (both because of the headstrong nature of the breed and public perception or fear) it particularly behooves us to have a well-mannered dog, and the fact that Butley's such a natural charmer (making friends with hotel staff all over the US), we thought it would be a good project to train him to be a therapy dog. It would strengthen our relationship & handling skills, it would make for good PR for the breed, it wouldn't hurt - when checking into hotels - to be able to say our dog was a certified "Canine Good Citizen." All of that.
So - enter The Delta Society. The Delta Society is an organization - probably the premier national organization - that certifies dogs for use in therapeutic environments. Visiting patients in hospitals, seniors or people in hospice care, a conversational bridge to encourage interaction among people with Alzheimer's, a means for people going through physical rehabilitation to practice minor muscle control, such as might be used in brushing a dog. They also serve other purposes, such as reading partners for kids whose anxiety about reading aloud is reduced (and whose reading skills in general are improved) by having a furry friend to whom they can practice reading. They can visit half-way houses or demonstrate to ex-cons returning from an animal abuse conviction the more peaceful side of domestic pets (pit bulls in particular). And in conjunction with licensed therapists, they can help in psychotherapeutic environments, either as a means for people to confront their own anxieties about animal aggression or just to lower the blood pressure a little with the calming affect of their presence.
Their uses are probably only limited by imagination. and the purpose of the training is to establish not a "bomb-proof" dog, but one over whom the certified handler (the handlers are trained and evaluated as well) holds sufficient command and one who can serve as a reliable goodwill ambassador. They get acclimated to people who may act a little funny, move strangely, pet a little too roughly, be prone to loud outbursts, that kind of thing.
They're not service dogs. They're not legally allowed where animals usually are not. They're not crisis response dogs. They're not search & rescue dogs. They're just friendly, well-mannered good listeners who, in the hands of an equally-trained handler, can put up with some distraction, some unusual circumstances, some people that may not know how to put them at ease themselves.
Never gonna happen, Angie thought. That's a really hard test, her friend Lisa said. Doubts were shared, aspersions were cast. But I had faith. I understood the concerns - Butley can be willful, he can forge ahead, he can get over-excited, he can be a little much sometime. But at the very least, it seemed like a good goal to train towards. Just the training for it would be a good experience.
Now usually, Delta Society dogs go through a series of classes, run by Delta Evaluators. But they have a home study course, and we ordered the manual. It's not small. There's a lot of info, and a lot of training to cover. And there are regularly scheduled evaluation events, which - given our schedule - were usually not happening in the cities we were going to be in on the days we were going to be there. But I went online and contacted a few Delta Society evaluators, and was very taken by the willingness by some to be as flexible as they could.
By a stroke of heaven-sent good fortune, we made contact with Nicole & Eric Shumate, in Des Moines, IA. And what will become apparent in the ensuing story, I will summarize here by simply saying that they were everything we could possibly have hoped for and three times more. Where to begin?
• The long e-mail exchange between Nicole and me, in which I addressed, point for point, each behavior with Butley that needed the most attention, and in which she addressed, in great detail and with thorough examples, exercises we could do with Butley which would help put him (and us) in better control?
• The advice Nicole gave every step of the way about what to expect on the evaluation exam, ways to anticipate unfavorable responses from Butley, and ways to circumvent those responses?
• The daily availability that Nicole offered of the dog agility center she works with, Canine Craze, for Butley to come romp around in their 5,000 square foot indoor agility training room, burn off that cabin fever, and practice his obedience drills?
• The companionship that Nicole offered for Butley by bringing along Cadence, her and Eric's wonderfully playful and ridiculously fast catahoula leopard dog and Tag, a golden lab puppy in their care who's training for work as a service dog?
• The subsequent evaluations of Butley's behavior, in the training sessions and in playtime with Cadence & Tag, of his behavior, helping us read his body language and learn about ways to encourage the good stuff & discourage the bad?
• The offer of giving up their Sunday to give us a personal evaluation for Delta Society certification?
• The making of another room in Canine Craze available for the evaluation?
• The openness and neighborliness at every step along the way?
It goes without saying that without all this, Butley would never have had the chance to test as soon and as well as he did.
In a nutshell, HE PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS (you can read the evaluator's blog account of it here), and - pending approval of the registration packet - will soon be joining the ranks of certified, insured, and trusted animals on registry and available for therapeutic use of The Delta Society. He even got a "complex" rating, meaning he's certified to go into some of the more complex environments and keep his cool amidst distractions, etc.
And here are the photos we took for our ID badges, right after the triumphant exam:
Now of course, given that we're in a different city each week, it may be kind of hard for the next few months to actually schedule any Pet Partner visits while we're on the road, but we'll have four weeks in Boston, four weeks in DC... We can start working on those soon enough. But it's just cool to know that we achieved that little watermark of passing the evaluation. So - all ye in need of therapy, Dr. Butley Feelgood is ready to start spreading the love...
Honestly, at some point, this blog will return to extra-canine pursuits. At some point....
But not yet....
We were also able to arrange, in conjunction with Paws & Effect, a R.E.A.D event, a program in which Delta Society therapy dogs are made available to kids to read to, as a way of encouraging reading in general. It started out as just Angie and me, but as soon as I offered the chance to come in on a Saturday morning and sit with a bunch of dogs & read children's books to kids, ten other members of the SPRING AWAKENING company clamored to join us.
We even made the local 6 o'clock news.
I didn't know how many of them might actually make it to the reading, but they were there early, ready to read, and we had a terrific time rolling around with Jersey, the golden retriever, Jesse, the golden lab, Gizmo, a puggle-y sort of mutt, and a few other terrific dogs. Six, maybe, in total. And as we all read the stories, the kids leaned in & sat beside the dogs (some of whom looked so attentive to the readers, you would be excused for thinking they were taking notes), and we all had a rather unexpectedly serene Saturday morning, the dogs, the SA company, the kids, and the handlers and Paws & Effect crew, discussing the finer points of such literary masterworks as Goodnight Moon and Harry, The Dirty Dog.
Allow me to present the vixen of the group, Jersey, as she made her rounds...
Butley, alas, had to stay home - as yet untested at that point as he was. But he heard the stories, he's very envious, and he's looking forward to his chance at bat.
What else about Des Moines? Not much, frankly, as all the dog stuff took up most of our time. Des Moines was a great city to play - very smart, excited audiences. A real blessing after what proved to be a rather blasé crowd in Houston. Not that they were bad, but Houston's car-culture (much like LA) had droves leaving the theater during the curtain call, all in a rush to get to the valet parking ahead of everyone else. But not in Des Moines. We even had some brave souls out by the stage door after the show, in spite of the chilly, Des Moines winds. Iowa, we hardly knew ye...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Houston
Houston was to be the Stop of Amazing Coincidence. This we knew, in part. And the rest we discovered on our arrival. But more on that later.
So, driving to Houston was fine.
You know - nothing unexpected. And the exact same route, almost mile for mile, that we had driven from Tucson to Tampa. We are intimately familiar with the 10. We're nearly on a first name basis with some of the rest stop staff. They have good orange juice at the Visitors' Stop on the Tampa/Alabama border. Fresh squeezed. Good maps, too.
It was a looong drive, one which took, as expected a day & a half. We covered 767 miles in about twelve hours, and we spent the night at the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana. When we were pulling into Lafayette, calling around on to hotels listed in the GPS, we rang the Pear Tree and were quoted one price. But then when we got to the desk, they said that it was an internet rate and that's not the 'drop-in' rate. However - TRAVELLER'S TIP: the receptionist at the front desk, somewhat sotto voce, explained that if we simply walked across the lobby to the computer & printer, and went to Roomsavers.com, and looked up the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana, we would be able to download & print a coupon, redeemable at the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana, which offered a better rate than either the walk-in rate OR the online reservation rate through their website. $39/night! So, all you money-grubbing Gullivers, all you parsimonious Phineas Foggs, take note - and not just of the website, but of the fact that, often, you can walk into a hotel, go right to their 'business center,' right onto their computer, and print out the coupon right on site.
So, feeling very satisfied about ourselves, we unloaded the car, washed our faces, fed & walked the dog, and headed out to a perfectly fine, truck-stop kind of diner at the TA Travel Center #161, at exit 101. You know the one.
The next day, we covered the final 217 miles to our Craigslist rental and were every bit as satisfied as we might have hoped. Situated on Heights Boulevard, in the up-and-coming, if not already up-and-come, neightborhood of Houston Heights, the home of Steve Ouellette, his partner John, and their dog Foster, is a very comfortable, brick home complete with carport, green lawn to the side, metal-framed gazebo and granite Greek discus-thrower to greet you on your arrival. In the back are two carriage houses, both of which he rents, one on a regular basis and one to transients like ourselves. Essentially a one bedroom apartment, complete with a separate living room, hardwood floors, complete kitchen, cable TV & wi-fi, we were back to homestyle living for a couple weeks. It was very comfortable, and Steve & John were perfect hosts, even supplying us with wine for the night & fresh coffee beans and a grinder for the morning.
NOW - here's where the Amazing Coincidences begin. But first, a little history.
Flashback to two years ago. Your humble correspondent was taken by his morning jog past a parking lot each day, wherein he noticed a gaunt, dusty, and very sad looking dog lying underneath a shrub. He was there the first day. He was there the second day, and I bought him a Subway sandwich, which I fed him through the fence. The third day, seeing him again and convinced that he was indeed homeless and in bad need of medical attention, I couldn't take it. I took a company rental car and, armed with another Subway sandwich, I found a way into the parking lot, whereupon I proceeded to lure him into the back seat. Why didn't I blanche at the notion of bringing a stray pit bull into the back seat of the car, I can only explain by way of my own dog, Diego, back home and the fact of his early life on the street.
Here are some photos of him, when I took him in, and the shape he was in.
I took him to the local shelter. But they don't adopt out pit bulls. If he wasn't claimed over the weekend, he'd be put down. So, I took him to a couple vets before I found one that would not only treat him for the severe malnutrition and dehydration, begin de-worming, and give him some antibiotics, but who would also agree to hold him for the weekend while I looked for a rescue organization. Many phone calls and referrals later, I made a fellow named Dana Blankenship at Scouts Honor, a local Houston rescue & fostering organization. Dana called the vet and, after consulting with them on his general health, agreed to take "Cheech" (as I'd been calling him) in.
As I kept in touch with Dana, over the rest of the tour, I learned that Cheech had acclimated to his foster home very well, making a great recovery. And, ultimately, he was adopted (and renamed "Chuck") by a young woman - who actually lived in Houston Heights, not far from Steve Ouellette's home where we stayed, two years later.
Here he is after his recovery.
My contact with Dana proved to be particularly valuable to us later on as it became clear to Angie and me that Diego, with his increasingly difficult behavioral problems, simply needed owners with a better skill set than we had to offer. Much time was spent on the phone with Dana, with their trainers, with their vet, and after much, much grief, we ended up putting Diego on a plane to Houston. It was the worst day, in July of 2007, and it was only alleviated by the knowledge that - if our ultimate purpose in Diego's life - was to get him from point A to point B, then we were glad to have played that role. Diego later was sent to stay at Spindletop Pitbull Rescue - a place which has been described to us as the "witness protection program" for dogs, because they work with many difficult cases - ex-fighting dogs, dogs who've been abused - and they don't list their physical location. They have 70 acres in the country, about an hour north of Houston. They work with them intensively. And if they decide the dog simply can't be trusted to be adopted out, then the dog lives out its life in a safe environment there. They don't take in animals from private individuals - only fostering organizations. And they're considered a last, best hope for some dogs.
NOW STAY WITH ME, PEOPLE....
So, we think we're done with dogs for awhile. Then Butley falls in our lap, another pitbull no less, and I leave Angie to host him for the 'weekend' (which has now turned into a year and a half) to go out on the second year of TWELVE ANGRY MEN. Then, with our little family heading out on the road again this year, we're in constant need of dog-friendly housing, of which were neither of the two company options. So we scanned the Craigslist options in Houston and posted our own ad. We were then contacted by Steve Ouellette, who sent us photos and an address. I check in with him - is he okay with a pitbull? He's fine, he says. He and his partner have hosted many dog-adoption events on their front lawn. Oh really, I reply. Maybe you know a friend of mine, Dana Blankenship, with Scouts Honor. I know Dana very well, he responds. In fact, they're the group that we often host here. Really, I write, that's such a coincidence. Dana was kind enough to take in our dog, Diego.
Here's where the chill of impossible coincidence set in.
Oh, I knew Diego very well, he replies. In fact, the vet who rents the house right next door to me worked with Diego and even housed him for a brief time. I write Dana to let him know. He's as spooked by the coincidence as we are.
Just something about karma, I guess. In any event, we knew we had found The Right Place to Stay in Houston.
So, shortly after our arrival, we were walking Butley along Heights Boulevard, a tree-lined neighborhood with a grassy median in the middle along which residents often jog or walk their dogs. On our way back we happened to stop in front of the vet, right next door to Steve's place. The assistant comes out to see Butley, because she just can't pass up a big-headed lug like Butley (and who can blame her). We talk for awhile, and it happens that we end up going in to see some very new puppies they're fostering and their mom. We meet the vet, Patricia Cooper, mention the connection through Diego and Scouts Honor, and she recalls Diego fondly, with the inevitable tinge of trieste over what a trying case he was. Thankful, though, as were we, that he ended up in a good place after all.
Meanwhile, Butley befriends the new mama (named Cassia), and before you know it, Angie and I are making it a daily practice, on Butley's walks, to stop by Dr. Cooper's & pick up Cassia for our walk, who's thrilled and starting to come out of her shell. Butley has a good time, showing her the ropes of how to behave on a walk. And Dr. Cooper not only gives us some pointers on how to give Butley the allergy injections he's been recently prescribed (another story, don't ask - our dog is allergic to grass and trees - it's like a kid being allergic to Crayolas & Play-Doh) but she also gives us a box of syringes & needles for his injections. Like father, like son, apparently. Only he has to get his every three days.
Much of the rest of our time in Houston was occupied with dog-related activities as well. We had dinner with Steve & John and Dana and his partner Danny. We tried (unsuccessfully) to make contact with Spindletop's owner, Leah, who was predictably shy and still recovering from Hurricane Ike and a separate injury to boot. And beyond that, there was just a lot of rehearsal.
You see, Kate Fuglei, Angie's understudy and a wife & mom who's been away from home for six months, quite understandably made only a six month commitment to the tour. And now that the time has passed, she's heading back to her husband and two boys, one of whom is currently fielding offers from college, when he's not fielding baseballs on his varsity team (and the source of much pride to his coaches and college recruiters). And while we'll all sorely miss her, I'm sure she'll enjoy a triumphant return home, brief though it may be before she's packing lunches, driving to practice, and all the other inevitable motherly & wifely pursuits - pursuits whose familiarity will offer a soft landing for her, I'm sure.
Kate Hampton is her replacement, kindly only requiring us to learn a new last name only, and a welcome addition to the "Seniors' Club" here on tour. And as she's been trying to get up to speed, there has been a maximum amount of rehearsal to help her do so, understandably. She's doing just fine, and I'm sure everyone will enjoy the chance to get to know a new face & a new set of favorite drink recipes.
And so, rolling ever onward, we tip our hat to the locals and saddle up. Tomorrow, we've got 981 miles to go to get to Des Moines. In a fantasy life, we'll be making the whole drive in one day, crashing in Des Moines, and then rising to watch the Inauguration with a cup of coffee and a smile. It'll be a whole, new US of A come 11am on Tuesday.
Do I think we can make the drive in one day, the whole 981 miles? If we just grin and bear it, get up early, stop only for gas & bathroom breaks, and milk the Texas 80mph speed limit for all it's worth?
Yes we can.
Do I think we will?
No I don't.
So, driving to Houston was fine.
You know - nothing unexpected. And the exact same route, almost mile for mile, that we had driven from Tucson to Tampa. We are intimately familiar with the 10. We're nearly on a first name basis with some of the rest stop staff. They have good orange juice at the Visitors' Stop on the Tampa/Alabama border. Fresh squeezed. Good maps, too.
It was a looong drive, one which took, as expected a day & a half. We covered 767 miles in about twelve hours, and we spent the night at the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana. When we were pulling into Lafayette, calling around on to hotels listed in the GPS, we rang the Pear Tree and were quoted one price. But then when we got to the desk, they said that it was an internet rate and that's not the 'drop-in' rate. However - TRAVELLER'S TIP: the receptionist at the front desk, somewhat sotto voce, explained that if we simply walked across the lobby to the computer & printer, and went to Roomsavers.com, and looked up the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana, we would be able to download & print a coupon, redeemable at the Pear Tree Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana, which offered a better rate than either the walk-in rate OR the online reservation rate through their website. $39/night! So, all you money-grubbing Gullivers, all you parsimonious Phineas Foggs, take note - and not just of the website, but of the fact that, often, you can walk into a hotel, go right to their 'business center,' right onto their computer, and print out the coupon right on site.
So, feeling very satisfied about ourselves, we unloaded the car, washed our faces, fed & walked the dog, and headed out to a perfectly fine, truck-stop kind of diner at the TA Travel Center #161, at exit 101. You know the one.
The next day, we covered the final 217 miles to our Craigslist rental and were every bit as satisfied as we might have hoped. Situated on Heights Boulevard, in the up-and-coming, if not already up-and-come, neightborhood of Houston Heights, the home of Steve Ouellette, his partner John, and their dog Foster, is a very comfortable, brick home complete with carport, green lawn to the side, metal-framed gazebo and granite Greek discus-thrower to greet you on your arrival. In the back are two carriage houses, both of which he rents, one on a regular basis and one to transients like ourselves. Essentially a one bedroom apartment, complete with a separate living room, hardwood floors, complete kitchen, cable TV & wi-fi, we were back to homestyle living for a couple weeks. It was very comfortable, and Steve & John were perfect hosts, even supplying us with wine for the night & fresh coffee beans and a grinder for the morning.
NOW - here's where the Amazing Coincidences begin. But first, a little history.
Flashback to two years ago. Your humble correspondent was taken by his morning jog past a parking lot each day, wherein he noticed a gaunt, dusty, and very sad looking dog lying underneath a shrub. He was there the first day. He was there the second day, and I bought him a Subway sandwich, which I fed him through the fence. The third day, seeing him again and convinced that he was indeed homeless and in bad need of medical attention, I couldn't take it. I took a company rental car and, armed with another Subway sandwich, I found a way into the parking lot, whereupon I proceeded to lure him into the back seat. Why didn't I blanche at the notion of bringing a stray pit bull into the back seat of the car, I can only explain by way of my own dog, Diego, back home and the fact of his early life on the street.
Here are some photos of him, when I took him in, and the shape he was in.
I took him to the local shelter. But they don't adopt out pit bulls. If he wasn't claimed over the weekend, he'd be put down. So, I took him to a couple vets before I found one that would not only treat him for the severe malnutrition and dehydration, begin de-worming, and give him some antibiotics, but who would also agree to hold him for the weekend while I looked for a rescue organization. Many phone calls and referrals later, I made a fellow named Dana Blankenship at Scouts Honor, a local Houston rescue & fostering organization. Dana called the vet and, after consulting with them on his general health, agreed to take "Cheech" (as I'd been calling him) in.
As I kept in touch with Dana, over the rest of the tour, I learned that Cheech had acclimated to his foster home very well, making a great recovery. And, ultimately, he was adopted (and renamed "Chuck") by a young woman - who actually lived in Houston Heights, not far from Steve Ouellette's home where we stayed, two years later.
Here he is after his recovery.
My contact with Dana proved to be particularly valuable to us later on as it became clear to Angie and me that Diego, with his increasingly difficult behavioral problems, simply needed owners with a better skill set than we had to offer. Much time was spent on the phone with Dana, with their trainers, with their vet, and after much, much grief, we ended up putting Diego on a plane to Houston. It was the worst day, in July of 2007, and it was only alleviated by the knowledge that - if our ultimate purpose in Diego's life - was to get him from point A to point B, then we were glad to have played that role. Diego later was sent to stay at Spindletop Pitbull Rescue - a place which has been described to us as the "witness protection program" for dogs, because they work with many difficult cases - ex-fighting dogs, dogs who've been abused - and they don't list their physical location. They have 70 acres in the country, about an hour north of Houston. They work with them intensively. And if they decide the dog simply can't be trusted to be adopted out, then the dog lives out its life in a safe environment there. They don't take in animals from private individuals - only fostering organizations. And they're considered a last, best hope for some dogs.
NOW STAY WITH ME, PEOPLE....
So, we think we're done with dogs for awhile. Then Butley falls in our lap, another pitbull no less, and I leave Angie to host him for the 'weekend' (which has now turned into a year and a half) to go out on the second year of TWELVE ANGRY MEN. Then, with our little family heading out on the road again this year, we're in constant need of dog-friendly housing, of which were neither of the two company options. So we scanned the Craigslist options in Houston and posted our own ad. We were then contacted by Steve Ouellette, who sent us photos and an address. I check in with him - is he okay with a pitbull? He's fine, he says. He and his partner have hosted many dog-adoption events on their front lawn. Oh really, I reply. Maybe you know a friend of mine, Dana Blankenship, with Scouts Honor. I know Dana very well, he responds. In fact, they're the group that we often host here. Really, I write, that's such a coincidence. Dana was kind enough to take in our dog, Diego.
Here's where the chill of impossible coincidence set in.
Oh, I knew Diego very well, he replies. In fact, the vet who rents the house right next door to me worked with Diego and even housed him for a brief time. I write Dana to let him know. He's as spooked by the coincidence as we are.
Just something about karma, I guess. In any event, we knew we had found The Right Place to Stay in Houston.
So, shortly after our arrival, we were walking Butley along Heights Boulevard, a tree-lined neighborhood with a grassy median in the middle along which residents often jog or walk their dogs. On our way back we happened to stop in front of the vet, right next door to Steve's place. The assistant comes out to see Butley, because she just can't pass up a big-headed lug like Butley (and who can blame her). We talk for awhile, and it happens that we end up going in to see some very new puppies they're fostering and their mom. We meet the vet, Patricia Cooper, mention the connection through Diego and Scouts Honor, and she recalls Diego fondly, with the inevitable tinge of trieste over what a trying case he was. Thankful, though, as were we, that he ended up in a good place after all.
Meanwhile, Butley befriends the new mama (named Cassia), and before you know it, Angie and I are making it a daily practice, on Butley's walks, to stop by Dr. Cooper's & pick up Cassia for our walk, who's thrilled and starting to come out of her shell. Butley has a good time, showing her the ropes of how to behave on a walk. And Dr. Cooper not only gives us some pointers on how to give Butley the allergy injections he's been recently prescribed (another story, don't ask - our dog is allergic to grass and trees - it's like a kid being allergic to Crayolas & Play-Doh) but she also gives us a box of syringes & needles for his injections. Like father, like son, apparently. Only he has to get his every three days.
Much of the rest of our time in Houston was occupied with dog-related activities as well. We had dinner with Steve & John and Dana and his partner Danny. We tried (unsuccessfully) to make contact with Spindletop's owner, Leah, who was predictably shy and still recovering from Hurricane Ike and a separate injury to boot. And beyond that, there was just a lot of rehearsal.
You see, Kate Fuglei, Angie's understudy and a wife & mom who's been away from home for six months, quite understandably made only a six month commitment to the tour. And now that the time has passed, she's heading back to her husband and two boys, one of whom is currently fielding offers from college, when he's not fielding baseballs on his varsity team (and the source of much pride to his coaches and college recruiters). And while we'll all sorely miss her, I'm sure she'll enjoy a triumphant return home, brief though it may be before she's packing lunches, driving to practice, and all the other inevitable motherly & wifely pursuits - pursuits whose familiarity will offer a soft landing for her, I'm sure.
Kate Hampton is her replacement, kindly only requiring us to learn a new last name only, and a welcome addition to the "Seniors' Club" here on tour. And as she's been trying to get up to speed, there has been a maximum amount of rehearsal to help her do so, understandably. She's doing just fine, and I'm sure everyone will enjoy the chance to get to know a new face & a new set of favorite drink recipes.
And so, rolling ever onward, we tip our hat to the locals and saddle up. Tomorrow, we've got 981 miles to go to get to Des Moines. In a fantasy life, we'll be making the whole drive in one day, crashing in Des Moines, and then rising to watch the Inauguration with a cup of coffee and a smile. It'll be a whole, new US of A come 11am on Tuesday.
Do I think we can make the drive in one day, the whole 981 miles? If we just grin and bear it, get up early, stop only for gas & bathroom breaks, and milk the Texas 80mph speed limit for all it's worth?
Yes we can.
Do I think we will?
No I don't.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Tampa & New Years Eve
Getting up the next day, we had a good ten hours of driving ahead of us, to make it to Tampa. Not much to say about it, really – we’ve got the routine down by now. We hook up the iPod, we each take turns driving or relaxing, Butley falls asleep, and we only stop for food, gas, and bathrooms. And there’s always coffee and peanut butter crackers, when things get rough.
We got into Tampa late Sunday night and checked in to our very comfortable Residence Inn digs. Since we didn’t have to be anywhere except rehearsal the following Tuesday, we had Monday, as planned, for ‘reparations’. Laundry, car wash, oil change, tires rotated, and massages. The last part is my favorite, and of course the best way to end the day. I’m a real convert to the notion of a massage after a long drive. One indulgence that seems particularly useful in getting back onto my feet all the sooner.
Angie’s family came into town Wednesday evening (New Year’s Eve), and we met them at Busch Gardens where our ever-resourceful company manager managed to trade show tickets for free admission to the park after our show. We got there kind of late (11pm), and we met Tony & Marianne, Deb, Mike, Nick & Taylor at a steakhouse on the grounds where, after a long day of traveling from Denver, they set about their own recovery. But Angie and I, only having a couple hours to enjoy the park, lit out for the roller coasters and went straight to the biggest, baddest one in the park. Shei-kra. Featuring a thirty story drop straight down at a ninety-degree angle. We got in line and waited for about 15 minutes, until they made an announcement that they were shutting down the ride until after the fireworks display at the park. Apparently, falling debris and gunpowder flares don’t mix well with high-altitude hijinks.
So, rather than stay in line, we headed in the direct opposite direction towards which everyone else was walking to go see the fireworks, in the hopes that we might find one rollercoaster that was far enough away not to be threatened.
We were in luck, as the Kumba, a manic maze of corkscrews and loop-de-loops, was not only running, it was completely empty. We walked right up to the front and had about a five minute wait. Sitting down in the car, as the chest restraints locked into place, Angie and I looked at our watches. One minute to midnight. How perfect, I thought. For two people whose lives, since we got married, have been filled with unexpected turns, wild adventures and misadventures, and harem-scarem surprises of all kinds, in careers which are in a constant state of flux, and who seem to have little more than the vaguest of notions about what life may have in store for us in the ensuing weeks, let alone months or years, that we should be ringing in the new year strapped into a mechanical wild bull bucking and kicking, screaming at sixty miles an hour through alpine climbs and daredevil falls, spinning around in mad disorientation, and totally at the mercy of all kinds of forces larger than ourselves, with fireworks going off all around us along the horizon, and for that horizon, depending on which direction and which incline we happen to be on, to be constantly shifting and twirling around … well, it rarely gets more apropos than that.
Unless it’s like this. That after one crazy, fear-inspiring, stability-shredding trip like that, our first thought is – let’s turn around and do it again. Which, because everyone was still over at the fireworks, and there was no one in line, was just what we did. I felt like Richie Rich and the park was all mine for the day.
Immediately afterwards, we walked back to Shei-kra, that granddaddy of terror, committed to the idea of getting as much panic and near-death experience as possible before the park’s doors closed at 1am. On our way there, we found The Reed/Ogborn contingent and en masse we all sallied forth to our doom. Tony & Nick sat it out, but the rest of us enjoyed a similarly empty line and walked right past the “From here your wait is 1 hour – From here your wait is 45 minutes – From here your wait is 30 minutes – From here your wait is 15 minutes” signs, right to the gate at which you enter the ride.
Now – exactly what it is in some people’s natures (mine included) that actually seeks out such death-defying bull rides like this, I don’t know. But I think this may have been the shortest, and yet most intense, ride I’ve ever done. Here’s the deal: they strap you in, six abreast, three rows to a car. Your feet dangle below you. You climb up into the heavens, unable to turn your head for any more than 90 degrees in either direction, and if you are (as we were) doing the ride at night it feels like you’re in a slow motion rocket ride up and up and up, as there are no tall buildings around the park so you can see off for miles in every direction. Then it levels off at the top, and you feel like you’re taking a tour of some construction site, with nothing more than metal framework around and beneath you.
Then – the track below you stops. At least as far as you can see. It looks that way because it actually bends down. Down at – I swear to God – what I think is a 90 degree angle. And there you sit, legs free and braced in only by the chest restraint, looking at the expanse of the park below you, as your car creeps, foot by foot, towards the edge. And if that isn’t enough, it even slowly crests the corner ever so slightly, and leaves you literally hanging there – stopped – staring down the immediately impending drop of twenty stories below.
And you’re there for probably a full ten seconds.
And then you drop.
There’s no wind up. There’s no gradual increase in your rate of fall. You PLUMMET. Like you have never PLUMMETED before. In fact, I think this ride specifically was the purpose for the crafting of the word PLUMMET.
Down at the end of fall, you wind around a few curves and turns and then back up for another 15 story climb – another slow crawl towards the edge – and another PLUMMETING PLUMMET.
And then you whirl around, and you’re easing slowly into the station. And if you are, as we were, there at 12:30 at night, and almost no one else is around, you think to yourself – let’s do that again.
And so you do.
Madness.
Now – you would think, if you’re prone to motion sickness, particularly in twisty-turny car rides and stomach-flipping rollercoasters, this ride – this one ride – might be one you would think to avoid. My wife, however, was not one to make such a choice. And her bravery got the better of her as, descending the stairs after the second ride, the beer-and-potato-chip dinner that we hastily enjoyed upon our arrival at the park began to argue with her intestinal chain of command. Clearly, her digestive mechanism was understandably confused as to the proper direction in which to process her less-than-nutritious meal. And the result, after looking a bit woozy and green around the gills, was inevitable.
Fortunately, there was a small, wooded area off to the side. I pity the poor shrubs and cedar chips.
Happy New Year.
--------------------------------
The next day, we visited my Aunt Sue and Uncle Erny at their lakeside home. Erny and Sue, various maladies not withstanding, are two of the finer examples of retirement life one could hope to enjoy. And we had a great New Year’s Day lunch, Erny showed us his amazing orchids, out in the garden in the shade, and Sue plied us with sandwiches, potato salad and peanut butter cheesecake. He had plenty of old family stories, from back in the days before I was even around, and in looking at his face I could look straight back through the generations, to my dad, to my grandmother, and probably my great grandparents. The blessings of a family are many, to be sure, and one of the treats is the sense of connectedness it gives you.
The rest of the time in Tampa has been a bit busy. I had understudy rehearsal Wednesday & Friday, and we had two-show days on Saturday & Sunday. But we’ve nonetheless managed to meet up with Angie’s family for drinks or breakfast in the morning. It’s been a good visit, and the Deb & Mike and the kids went off to take in Disney World also. Sunday night, we were planning to pack up & head out after the evening show, to try to get a couple hours of driving under our belts before crashing, but the more we thought about packing the car, then unpacking the roof rack and the bike rack when we land somewhere, and re-packing the roof rack and the bike rack before leaving again, it just seemed wiser to stay the night and just get an early start on Monday. Who knows – maybe we’ll even make it to New Orleans for one more stay, though it would seem like a shame to put down in the Five Continents for little more than a stop-over.
In any event – it’s fifteen hours of driving back to our next stop in Houston. Nearly half-way back the way we just came, from Tucson. And then, after two weeks there, we have another 900+ mile drive to Des Moines.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us……..
We got into Tampa late Sunday night and checked in to our very comfortable Residence Inn digs. Since we didn’t have to be anywhere except rehearsal the following Tuesday, we had Monday, as planned, for ‘reparations’. Laundry, car wash, oil change, tires rotated, and massages. The last part is my favorite, and of course the best way to end the day. I’m a real convert to the notion of a massage after a long drive. One indulgence that seems particularly useful in getting back onto my feet all the sooner.
Angie’s family came into town Wednesday evening (New Year’s Eve), and we met them at Busch Gardens where our ever-resourceful company manager managed to trade show tickets for free admission to the park after our show. We got there kind of late (11pm), and we met Tony & Marianne, Deb, Mike, Nick & Taylor at a steakhouse on the grounds where, after a long day of traveling from Denver, they set about their own recovery. But Angie and I, only having a couple hours to enjoy the park, lit out for the roller coasters and went straight to the biggest, baddest one in the park. Shei-kra. Featuring a thirty story drop straight down at a ninety-degree angle. We got in line and waited for about 15 minutes, until they made an announcement that they were shutting down the ride until after the fireworks display at the park. Apparently, falling debris and gunpowder flares don’t mix well with high-altitude hijinks.
So, rather than stay in line, we headed in the direct opposite direction towards which everyone else was walking to go see the fireworks, in the hopes that we might find one rollercoaster that was far enough away not to be threatened.
We were in luck, as the Kumba, a manic maze of corkscrews and loop-de-loops, was not only running, it was completely empty. We walked right up to the front and had about a five minute wait. Sitting down in the car, as the chest restraints locked into place, Angie and I looked at our watches. One minute to midnight. How perfect, I thought. For two people whose lives, since we got married, have been filled with unexpected turns, wild adventures and misadventures, and harem-scarem surprises of all kinds, in careers which are in a constant state of flux, and who seem to have little more than the vaguest of notions about what life may have in store for us in the ensuing weeks, let alone months or years, that we should be ringing in the new year strapped into a mechanical wild bull bucking and kicking, screaming at sixty miles an hour through alpine climbs and daredevil falls, spinning around in mad disorientation, and totally at the mercy of all kinds of forces larger than ourselves, with fireworks going off all around us along the horizon, and for that horizon, depending on which direction and which incline we happen to be on, to be constantly shifting and twirling around … well, it rarely gets more apropos than that.
Unless it’s like this. That after one crazy, fear-inspiring, stability-shredding trip like that, our first thought is – let’s turn around and do it again. Which, because everyone was still over at the fireworks, and there was no one in line, was just what we did. I felt like Richie Rich and the park was all mine for the day.
Immediately afterwards, we walked back to Shei-kra, that granddaddy of terror, committed to the idea of getting as much panic and near-death experience as possible before the park’s doors closed at 1am. On our way there, we found The Reed/Ogborn contingent and en masse we all sallied forth to our doom. Tony & Nick sat it out, but the rest of us enjoyed a similarly empty line and walked right past the “From here your wait is 1 hour – From here your wait is 45 minutes – From here your wait is 30 minutes – From here your wait is 15 minutes” signs, right to the gate at which you enter the ride.
Now – exactly what it is in some people’s natures (mine included) that actually seeks out such death-defying bull rides like this, I don’t know. But I think this may have been the shortest, and yet most intense, ride I’ve ever done. Here’s the deal: they strap you in, six abreast, three rows to a car. Your feet dangle below you. You climb up into the heavens, unable to turn your head for any more than 90 degrees in either direction, and if you are (as we were) doing the ride at night it feels like you’re in a slow motion rocket ride up and up and up, as there are no tall buildings around the park so you can see off for miles in every direction. Then it levels off at the top, and you feel like you’re taking a tour of some construction site, with nothing more than metal framework around and beneath you.
Then – the track below you stops. At least as far as you can see. It looks that way because it actually bends down. Down at – I swear to God – what I think is a 90 degree angle. And there you sit, legs free and braced in only by the chest restraint, looking at the expanse of the park below you, as your car creeps, foot by foot, towards the edge. And if that isn’t enough, it even slowly crests the corner ever so slightly, and leaves you literally hanging there – stopped – staring down the immediately impending drop of twenty stories below.
And you’re there for probably a full ten seconds.
And then you drop.
There’s no wind up. There’s no gradual increase in your rate of fall. You PLUMMET. Like you have never PLUMMETED before. In fact, I think this ride specifically was the purpose for the crafting of the word PLUMMET.
Down at the end of fall, you wind around a few curves and turns and then back up for another 15 story climb – another slow crawl towards the edge – and another PLUMMETING PLUMMET.
And then you whirl around, and you’re easing slowly into the station. And if you are, as we were, there at 12:30 at night, and almost no one else is around, you think to yourself – let’s do that again.
And so you do.
Madness.
Now – you would think, if you’re prone to motion sickness, particularly in twisty-turny car rides and stomach-flipping rollercoasters, this ride – this one ride – might be one you would think to avoid. My wife, however, was not one to make such a choice. And her bravery got the better of her as, descending the stairs after the second ride, the beer-and-potato-chip dinner that we hastily enjoyed upon our arrival at the park began to argue with her intestinal chain of command. Clearly, her digestive mechanism was understandably confused as to the proper direction in which to process her less-than-nutritious meal. And the result, after looking a bit woozy and green around the gills, was inevitable.
Fortunately, there was a small, wooded area off to the side. I pity the poor shrubs and cedar chips.
Happy New Year.
--------------------------------
The next day, we visited my Aunt Sue and Uncle Erny at their lakeside home. Erny and Sue, various maladies not withstanding, are two of the finer examples of retirement life one could hope to enjoy. And we had a great New Year’s Day lunch, Erny showed us his amazing orchids, out in the garden in the shade, and Sue plied us with sandwiches, potato salad and peanut butter cheesecake. He had plenty of old family stories, from back in the days before I was even around, and in looking at his face I could look straight back through the generations, to my dad, to my grandmother, and probably my great grandparents. The blessings of a family are many, to be sure, and one of the treats is the sense of connectedness it gives you.
The rest of the time in Tampa has been a bit busy. I had understudy rehearsal Wednesday & Friday, and we had two-show days on Saturday & Sunday. But we’ve nonetheless managed to meet up with Angie’s family for drinks or breakfast in the morning. It’s been a good visit, and the Deb & Mike and the kids went off to take in Disney World also. Sunday night, we were planning to pack up & head out after the evening show, to try to get a couple hours of driving under our belts before crashing, but the more we thought about packing the car, then unpacking the roof rack and the bike rack when we land somewhere, and re-packing the roof rack and the bike rack before leaving again, it just seemed wiser to stay the night and just get an early start on Monday. Who knows – maybe we’ll even make it to New Orleans for one more stay, though it would seem like a shame to put down in the Five Continents for little more than a stop-over.
In any event – it’s fifteen hours of driving back to our next stop in Houston. Nearly half-way back the way we just came, from Tucson. And then, after two weeks there, we have another 900+ mile drive to Des Moines.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us……..
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