100 Things I Learned in 2004, Part 1

I feel about New Year's resolutions the same way I feel about New Year's parties: in my experience they are neither especially useful nor particularly enjoyable, so why bother? However, there is something to be said for marking the passage of time. Generally, I'm a fan of using one's birthday to do this, coming as it does with a ready-made excuse not only for people to party, but to do so specifically in your honor at the place of your choosing bearing gifts for you.

I'm also a big fan of listmaking, and the annual odometer roll is as great an opportunity to look backward over what's gone down as it is forward to what one might like to experience.

And I've been dying for an excuse to do one of those "100 things" lists.

So, without further ado...

100 Things I've learned in 2004 (Part I)

1. Cable TV kicks ass.
2. Digital cable TV on your Cinema Display kicks Double Secret Probation ass.
3. If you get a strange rash on your face, do not treat it with your leftover hemorrhoid cream.
4. Nothing perks up a room like a fresh coat of paint.
5. Except maybe a red sofa.
6. And art.
7. While it is not necessarily advisable, it is possible to take an excellent picture from a moving car while driving.
8. You can avoid almost all bar chords with the capo.
9. Working out is not as bad as you think it's going to be and the way it makes you feel is ten times better than you ever dreamed it could be.
10. I can do three sets of 20 pushups.
11. Boy pushups.
12. If you want to get to the Westside in a timely fashion, avoid Olympic between Highland and Fairfax, Wilshire between La Cienega and Santa Monica and the 10 between 7am and 10pm.
13. Angelyne shops at my supermarket.
14. There is a diminishing point of returns in online dating and it's pretty firmly fixed at 18 months.
15. There is such a thing as bad sex.
16. Any kind of sex, including no sex, is preferable to bad sex.
17. The best way to make a steak is to sear it on each side for two minutes in a white hot cast iron pan, then stick the whole kit-'n'-caboodle in a 350ºF oven for 6 minutes per inch of thickness.
18. If you live in an apartment, you should probably disconnect the smoke alarm before doing this.
19. As long as there are no kids involved, you do not have to spend one single second in a relationship you're better off dispensing with.
20. Rilo Kiley kicks ass.
21. So does Ollabelle.
22. Ditto Raul Malo.
23. Billy Idol is oddly compelling in person, even though he is a little skeevy and shouldn't be taking off his shirt in public anymore.
24. Batch processing in Photoshop will add years to the life of your wrist tendons.
25. When you're getting ready to produce a show, figure out in advance how much everything will cost, then double it.
26. If you glue magnets to the backs of your remotes, you will never lose them as long as you watch TV near something made of metal.
27. As if the above didn't prove it, I am a geek.
28. Woodford Reserve is better than Maker's Mark, but Maker's Mark is better than Knob Creek.
29. There are cool art galleries in L.A.
30. There is one really cool gallery in Cambria. Yes, Cambria.
31. No, it isn't any of these.
32. No, I won't tell you what it is, not until a certain painting I have been lusting after for months is safely in my clutches.
33. You can still get a free ($40) pair of shoes if you are in one of the performers' unions, but they do not make it easy to do so.
34. Knowing how to sew your own curtains is very empowering.
35. LACC is a great place to learn, even if their website is ass.
36. If you press *70, you can keep other calls from ringing through when you're on the phone.
37. Just because a play is at the Taper and the playwright has suffered inordinately does not mean it is good, even if everyone in the theater jumps to their feet at the curtain.
38. Just because a play is at the Ahmanson and the house is woefully empty does not mean it is not fantastic, even if you are the only one on your feet at the curtain.
39. There is a diet that is a bigger pain in the ass than the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
40. It is called the Candida Diet.
41. If you spend your summer eating dates stuffed with cheese wrapped in prosciutto and washing them down with large quantities of red wine, it is almost guaranteed that you'll end up having to go on it.
42. That cobbler everyone said could make you an exact copy for $150 of the Prada pumps you bought for $300 but that came in the wrong size cannot, as it happens, do so.
43. Those stovetop espresso makers make a mean cuppa.
44. The best color toenail polish is silver.
45. Just because someone is a dentist does not mean he is better at cleaning your teeth than a hygienist.
46. The ROI on making your bed every day is surprisingly high.
47. The ROI on emptying your garbage every day is, surprisingly, not.
48. Aphids and ants share a symbiotic relationship on hibiscus plants.
49. Liquid ginger in seltzer is a pretty good substitute for a Charger.
50. When you blog, amazing things happen.

xxx c

Read Part 2 here.

How to Make a Happy Accident

I remember how I learned of the word "serendipity", a very sexy upperclassman who introduced me to many carnal pleasures, including the famed NYC shop's frozen hot chocolate, but when called upon to provide a definition, I've always drawn a blank. So imagine my surprise when, as I'm looking it up for the, 20th, 30th, 100th?, time,  a mnemonic catchphrase (serendipitously) pops into my head: the happy accident.

Though I've used the phrase for years, I'm pretty sure the connection was the result of a literal (happy) accident I had last week that netted me $200. I say "netted" because the dings on my fender were so minor in comparison to the ones the bumper already sported (what can I say? people like my rear end), there's no way I'd ever pay to have them buffed out. Which I told Ari, the kindly and honest Escalade driver who hit me; he insisted I take the $200 anyway.

Now, $200 is no small potatoes for me. I could probably think of ten or fifteen ways that money could be put to excellent use off the top of my head. In fact, I did: bills; groceries; 1/4 of rent; long-overdue cut and color (my sole New Year's resolution is to find a reasonably priced, kick-ass salon on the EAST side).

The funny thing was, nothing I came up with felt right. I enjoy serendipity but I actually place a lot of stock in vibes: when I've listened to them, I've generally done right by myself; when I hear the voice and do it anyway, I generally find myself up the creek without a paddle. As chance (or serendipity) would have it, I'm reading Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living, a great book by Chicago-based intuitive Sonia Choquette right now, so I not only got a little reinforcement for going with the inner flow, I actually had concrete instructions:

I believe that the more you practice getting quiet, the quicker you'll sense your vibes. It doesn't matter what approach you use as long as you get quiet. Choose what suits your temperament: My mind becomes quiet when I fold laundry, organize my office, or go to the gym; Patrick paints and gardens; my mom sews; my dad putters on gadgets; my brother Stefan washes his car; one of my neighbors loves to work in the yard, while another walks his dog. All are valid ways to connect with your spirit.

I know she's right, right? I also know that patience and trust are huge parts of the equation, and neither is my strong suit. However, 43 years of living and ten years of copywriting have taught me that the answer rarely comes when you're yelling at it to hurry the hell up, so I let it go and went about my business.

Sure enough, in pretty much the first moment I'd really forgotten about the money, the perfect solution popped into my head: give it to Jen.

You see, about a month ago, I fell in love. In my obsessive quest to find out more about my new love, I stumbled upon an intriguing tidbit that bore remarking upon, so I did. The writer was apparently intrigued enough in turn to check out my site, where she found an entry discussing a particular piece of graphic design she had also admired, along with my 757th apology for the hideous graphic state of the Evidence Room website.

And so she emailed me, offering her services. To code the whole damned thing. For free.

Understand, please, that I started the redesign on that site over two years ago. I knew how butt-ugly it was; so did the rest of the company, who were politely but insistently pushing me to fix the problem NOW, or they'd fix it for me. We'd been burned so many times on the coding end that I was hours away from giving in and letting another designer do his own redesign of the site just to get the damned thing fixed.

But then came the magical, mystical email from Jen, someone I'd never met, someone I didn't know from a hole in the ground, and I paused. "Let it go," I told myself; "Let it go for the night," and I went off to see a play. And when I came home, there was an email in my inbox with a link: Jen had built an entire test site from the Photoshop sketches I'd sent her earlier that day. I didn't just find a web person; I found the web person, someone whose generosity and work ethic were so firmly entwined with her taste and abilities that she was going to do this amazing job for free.

Only she wasn't, of course: she was now going to do it for $200.

It's funny how an amount that seemed so great all of a sudden seemed so small. It's all about a shift in focus: when I relax and let go, a half-empty glass becomes half-full; a so-called tragedy becomes a gift of epic proportions.

You can't chase the happy accident. But if you give yourself time and room and lots of love, you might just find yourself having them a lot more often.

It is my Christmas wish for everyone I meet.

After all, I already got my Christmas present.

xxx c

ADDENDUM: My new buddy and coding goddess, Jen, blogged about the incident from her perspective. Made me all hot in the face and tight in the chest, so it must be good. Thanks, Jen.

Sideways

Some good things take a little extra time and effort to truly enjoy. Sideways, the terrific new film directed by Alexander Payne (based on the novel by Rex Pickett) is one of those good things. Not that it isn't immediately enjoyable on its surface; Sideways has a cracking good script and some of the finest, funniest performances I've seen on film all year.

But like the wines the characters savor within it, the film itself has subtle charms and notes that only reveal themselves upon greater (and quieter) reflection. My writing partner and I laughed pretty much non-stop through an extended sequence where the two main characters, one-time college roommates who are making a pre-wedding pilgrimage to Santa Barbara wine country, make a detour to the best man's mother's house. But it was only after the movie, or at least well into viewing it, that we realized how remarkable it was that we cared so much about two characters who are, on the face of things, pretty darned despicable.

I won't spoil the film by going into detail. I'm not even sure whether details are the best way to sell someone on this really beautifully crafted gem of a story. I think the most remarkable feature about Sideways is its reality: it pretty perfectly creates a world and then does an amazing job of drawing you in.

Fine performances, an awesome script, pretty pictures and a bitchin', homage-to-Saul-Bass poster, Sideways is like a media home run.

Hmmm...no wonder the communicatrix loves it.

xxx c

• [UPDATE] My review of Sideways, the novel

Shoe me, baby, one more time

From the news in the Sun (via Gawker) I guess it's good Britney's got her Kevin, 'cause she ain't gonna score with Tommy Lee anytime soon.

Pee at Bob's

Only two weekends left to catch the funniest filthy show of the season (as opposed to the funniest clean show of the season, which also runs for two more weekends). Bob's Holiday Office Party is hilarious from start to finish. The actual show runs just over an hour, but with the (masterful) ad libbing I've come to rely on, prepare for more like 90 minutes.

In this case, "prepare" means to monitor your fluid intake pre-show. Yes, it's really that funny.

Consider yourself warned.

At the Third Stage in Burbank through December 19th.

xxx c

Proving doctors wrong, one patient at a time

Since writing this post, I've aggregated a number of helpful Specific Carbohydrate Diet-related links, both internal and on other sites, on this dedicated SCD page. I'll say this upfront: I have never been the dieting type. I'm pretty tiny, it's pretty much genetic, and I pretty much top out at about 5 lbs. over my fightin' weight of 104 lbs. B.G. (Before Gold's); I guess if I worked reeeeally hard at it now that I have some muscle on me, I might be able to make it to blood donor weight.

But I'd have to work really, reeeeeeeally hard at it, now that I'm on the first restricted food plan of my life: the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, or SCD. I've been following it with "fanatical adherence" for over two years now, ever since I was released from my 11-day incarceration in the IBD ward of Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

That's one of the crazy things about the SCD, as its major proponent, Elaine Gottschall, B.A., MSc., has emphasized repeatedly on the many Listservs and bulletin boards she still frequents for sufferers of Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis (UC) and autism, in order to work, the diet must (at least, initially) be followed with fanatical adherence. As in, no "just this one cupcake" or "just this one beer" or even "just this one sip of Coca-Cola", you either follow the SCD 100% or she very kindly but firmly insists that you are not actually following the SCD.

Elaine Gottschall stumbled upon the precursor to the SCD when her young daughter was diagnosed with UC. After dragging her from specialist to specialist, she finally met Dr. Valentine Haas, who put Elaine's little girl on a diet he'd found successful in alleviating a number of gastrointestinal disorders. Her progress was slow but steady; to this day, some 40 years later, she remains in remission (and on a modified version of the SCD). Elaine was so impressed by this remarkable recovery that she went back to school to further research the diet. She subsequently wrote a book about the SCD, outlining the science behind it and including an extensive list of allowed and disallowed foods, as well as a batch of recipes that she had come up with over the years.

Very simply, the premise behind the SCD is this (from Seth Barrows's site):

The premise of the diet is that damaged intestinal walls and bacterial overgrowth are a part of a vicious cycle that wreaks havoc with the body's health and immunity. The diet restricts the types of carbohydrates that feed these pathogens, thereby restoring the body's inner ecology. The SCD diet is very similar to a Paleolithic diet, except it allows the consumption of certain legumes, fermented dairy products, and dry alcohol.

The SCD also resembles the Atkins diet in certain respects (although as SCDers are always quick to point out, unlike Atkins, you can be on the SCD and eat a lot of carbs. You just can't eat any of the good ones). The diet basically excludes all disaccharides and polysaccharides, which pretty much in turn excludes all processed foods, since they rely heavily on sugars and starches.

So for 2+ years, I've had no ice cream, sherbet, sorbet, cake, cookies, cupcakes, candy, pasta, pizza, rice, tofu, potatoes, pancakes, waffles, syrup, bread, bagels, crackers, chips, gum, soft drinks, Russian/French/Thousand/Ranch dressing, ketchup, coffee, beer or chocolate. And that's a partial list.

But for most of the past 2+ years, I've been healthy. I've put back the weight I lost in my initial Crohn's onset and actually gained enough energy to start a weight-training program. I've been tapering off my meds successfully and plan to be off them completely by early 2005.

My doctors still think diet has had nothing to do with my recovery. This is a fairly standard reaction, I'm told, which is sad. Out of all the doctors I've met since I was diagnosed, only one was even aware of the diet, and as he said, "It's really hard to follow and we can't explain the science so we don't really recommend it to most of our patients."

So if you know of someone with Crohn's, UC, IBS, candiasis, celiac disease, cystic fibrosis, or even a parent of an autistic child (there's an incredibly brave and intrepid parents' SCD group which Elaine has lent a great deal of support to), please send them here. Or here. Or here.

The SCD can't cure everyone, but it can't cure anyone who doesn't know about it.

xxx c

UPDATE 3/4/11: I fell off the SCD wagon roughly two months after writing this post, and did not get back on (with fanatical adherence) until September of 2010, which I did through the aid of hypnotherapy. (The hypnotherapist, James Borrelli, cured my wandering eye for carbs in one session. WELL worth it.) While I can't blame falling off the diet for the flares I suffered afterwards, there are many, many things that can trigger a Crohn's flare, I know that I feel better, look better, maintain a healthier weight and have way less G.I. distress (not to mention much less stinky gas) when I follow SCD 100%.

I Am Mrs. Potato Head

Between a long bout of enforced relaxation and finding the true love of her life (ooooo...izza good widdle bloggy blog?...yes, it is! yes it is!), the communicatrix did a little online dating. Correction: a lot of online dating.

Yes, before I was the communicatrix, I was Mrs. Potato Head. And tiny_monkey and mrs. nom de plume and ETICKET399 (yeah, I know I was dating myself...no pun intended). It's a point of pride with me to apply the same zeal to all my gigs, paying and non-paying. And yes, this was a non-paying gig.

Anyway, there is a heap-load of dross to sort through online and I got emailed by a lot of it. I imagine gals in the under-40 set have their own trash to sort through, and given my own volume of mail, I can't imagine how the under-30 gals ever get to the bottoms of their in-boxes.

But the over-40, reasonably attractive, female online dater has her own set of peccadilloes to deal with. I was generous at first, but after a few (several...countless...) "interesting" experiences, I became a bit more ruthless. At this point, it's unlikely that anyone could scale my online wall of "don't"s, so I've pretty much given up on the online proposition. (Note that I did not say "completely," so I can't divulge where I'm still trolling these days with information like the portal is VERY FUNNY and I am listed under my ACTUAL AGE and LOCATION. Sleuth away, suckahs!!!)

Part of my mission on this blog is to share my path that others might find shortcuts. In this case, the ladies will have to read between the lines, but I am s p e l l i n g o u t for you gentlemen some of the more egregious red flags I've found in profiles, emails and even first dates.

And so...

10 Sure-Fire Ways to NOT Get Into the Communicatrix's Pants:

1. Post a picture of yourself standing next to your car, boat or plane.
2. Wear your sunglasses!
3. Make sure the photo is at least three years old.
4. Be at least 10 years/50 lbs. outside of my search parameters but email me anyway because you're sure I'll make an exception in your case.
5. Post your profile in a younger age category because you don't want to get aced out of some hot young chick's search parameters.
6. Be sure to tell me in your profile that you look MUCH YOUNGER than your photo because I have NO EYES with which TO SEE THIS FOR MYSELF.
7. When I email you a polite "no, thanks" to your query, be sure to email me back berating me for not going out with you because bellicosity is a HUGE turn-on and will for sure change my mind about dating you.
8. If I meet you at a speed-dating event, try to see how much venom you can spew about "money-grubbing bitches" and "cheap whores" before the bell rings.
9. When we finally talk on the phone, repeat over and over that you're not sure if we'll be a good match because I'm so petite, and when I still don't get it, shout out that you're afraid you'll rip me apart with your huge cock.

And finally, the surest-fire way NOT to get a date with the c-trix:

10. Send me a picture of yourself on your bed holding your (tiny) penis.

Happy hunting, everyone!

xxx c

Does luck come in flavors?

It's official, I'm sick. I hung in there for awhile, but I've been exposed to too many germs from too many people in too small a space, and I've succumbed. (Theaters, nursery schools and hospitals are notoriously difficult places to stay healthy. They're dropping like flies at the show these days.)

My dumb luck, right? Getting sick in the middle of the holidays?

Well, maybe. And maybe not.

You see, two years ago, I had what some people would characterize as a really nasty streak of luck. In February of 2002, my father found out he had to go on full-time dialysis. In May, my live-in boyfriend of 3 years and I broke up. And finally, in September, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, Crohn's is a super-chic disease whose symptoms include fever, weight loss and diarrhea. And we're talking high fevers (104ºF +...several!), severe weight loss (I was 90 lbs. when they released me from the hospital), and, well, I won't even detail the horrors of my bowel movements except to say that at my nadir, they were happening 32x/day and necessitated the replacement of 2 pints of blood.

The thing is, when I'm done cataloguing the many delights of my illness, I always follow up by assuring my now-horrified listener that it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because it was. Not only did I have a bona fide epiphany in the hospital (worth the price of admission, alone, believe me), the sucker actually took. My outlook shifted. I relaxed, for one. I began greeting each day with genuine delight, instead of worry or aggravation. I began to rely less on "The Colleen Show" and got more in touch with my authentic self.

If I hadn't gotten sick, I wouldn't have found the amazing diet that not only sent my Crohn's into remission and improved my overall health, but taught me that I was the best authority on my health, not some doctor. I might have met my new best friend, Jan Pessin, in fact, we already had met prior to my illness. But if I hadn't been sick, she wouldn't have been my advocate in the hospital. We might never have bonded over our illnesses and become good friends. And we certainly wouldn't have written our show.

I don't mean to discount the tragedies great and small that befall us all; I would never use the word "lucky" to describe someone who has suffered a loss of any kind. But since my own so-called misfortune, I much more leery of automatically classifying something as being bad for me, whether it's an election outcome, a relationship that ends painfully or a much needed job that falls through. I enjoy my good times, but it's my difficult ones that have moved me to look at the world differently, to become more compassionate, to educate myself, to change.

I suppose that sometimes a rotten thing that happens to you ends up just being a rotten thing that happens to you. Lord knows I don't have all the answers (I'm still learning to recognize the damned questions.)

But sometimes, just sometimes, what you think is the worst thing that ever happened to you can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

If you're lucky, that is.

xxx c

What to get the butt doctor who has everything

As a neophyte blogger, I'm still fascinated by every technical aspect of blogging. But I'm especially curious about where my up-to-200 hits per day are coming from. I mean, I have friends, but not that many. And while my new presence at blogging.la has driven some traffic over here, there are still plenty of people who randomly stumble on my wacko wedge of iSpace and, I guess, poke around a bit while they're here.

Many of them come via Google. Some are doing a search on my name, which freaks my shit out a little, but since I've not done too many noteworthy things I'm ashamed of, doesn't really keep me up at night. (I have lain awake wondering if any of the other Colleen Wainwrights ever Google our name and if so, whether they click on my links like I do theirs.)

But by far my favorite Google search landing people here thus far is this one: colorectal + surgeon +  christmas + gift + ideas.

Oooookay!

Frankly, I'd sooner go back on prednisone than buy a gift for the one colorectal surgeon it's been my misfortune to meet. But if you have a beloved butt doctor on your holiday shopping list, I do have a suggestion.

If you don't have one of your own, I'd be happy to make you a copy of my own recent colonoscopy memento (see  above-left) at cost. It was taken just this fall that sought-after c-scope photog, Dr. Graham Woolf of Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Because, after two years of struggling with Crohn's, I'm happy to report that my colon is pretty as a picture.

Not to mention suitable for framing and gifting.

xxx c

I'm such a proud mama, I could burst

One of the 99¢ show's Weird Family was out with strep throat tonight, so a longtime friend of and dramaturg for Orphean Circus gamely stepped in for him tonight at a moment's notice. (I swear, they're dropping like flies, it's starting to sound like a TB ward in that dressing room.) We were all a bit worried for Michael during the early show; it was already a hairy night for other reasons, and while he was more than familiar with the script and production, it's quite a different thing when you're on the other side of the footlights. Especially for the very first time.

But we needn't have worried. Not only did he do a bang-up job delivering his lines and not bumping into the furniture (who was it who said that about acting, anyway, Spencer Tracy?), our budding superstar totally grabbed the spotlight and ripped his second act solo to shreds. Barbra Streisand, look out.

As we discussed in the lobby aprés, after your first show, you wonder why anyone wants to do this; after your second show, you wonder why anyone would want to do anything else.

xxx c

Getting in the proper spirit

Maybe it's easier once you know your special holiday name. Thank you, Silvie (fellow 99¢-er) for the link.

xxx c

a.k.a. "Lucky Floppy-Helper"

P.S. BTW, pic is not of me, but Bubbles, the Christmas Fairy. You know you want one.

(UPDATE: pulled the pic, and the UK site that sold them went out of business. Such, my dears, is life...)

Why I Wish I Was Ella Fitzgerald

At some point during the show last night I was perched on the bar, talking to my friend, Nick (he was bartending and the bar is at ass-height when you're on stilts) when the conversation turned to guitar playing. He's just picked it up and I started earlier this year and he's into the same cowboy kind of stuff as I am, only even more so: he's a Hank kind of purist and I'm more of a Lyle/Lucinda/alt-country fan. (In fact, I'm listening to the remastered Waiting for Columbus right this second, which I purchased at extraordinary savings through the super-cool YourMusic.com, every single-disc CD is $5.99; doppios are only $11.98, which, of course, is $5.99...x 2!!) But I digress. As usual.

You see, Nick's enthusiasm for playing got me all fired up again about playing. It also made me realize it wasn't so long ago that I was playing every day, wasting all my time on pop-up-ridden tabs sites, teaching myself new strums and chords and songs; today, when I picked up Lucia (she's from São Paulo, via a theater dumpster and a couple of generous friends) for the first time in god-knows-how long, I realized that, urp!, my hard-won callouses were gone! I was playing with virgin pads! What the hell happened?!?

Well...the show, for one. And my show, #1 & #2, for two. And this blog, of course. Oh, and a bunch of design work I couldn't say "no" to. And, and and and.

I've come to the conclusion that I always digress. Digression, or parenthetical leanings, or split focus, or whatever you want to serve it up as, has always been my bête noire. Or maybe overabundant appetite is really my bête noire and digression is my modus operandi. All I know is, there's something a little bit wrong with a chick who is cheating herself on much-needed sleep and letting the clock tick away on a friend's (Christmas!!!) design project deadline and taking up valuable gee-tar playin' time because she just has to find the key combo for the circumflex-ê glyph (option-i e on a Mac) to write a blog entry about how she no longer has the time for, you guessed it, guitar playing.

I have a sneaking suspicion that a part of my problem is a lingering addiction to perfectionism. I've let some things go (come eat off my baba ghanoush-encrusted, hair-strewn kitchen floor tonight if you don't believe me) but clearly, not enough. I mean, the bed is unmade right now and I've been out of it for a few hours, but its state of dishevelment is bothering me. (I was talking to my Scary-Movie Companion and  fellow-sufferer in Virgo Never-Enoughness, Dorie, about the whole perfectionism issue after the show last night. Two healthy bourbons each and we still didn't make a dent in the problem. So more on that in another post.)

But the other problem is I have been cursed with just enough ability and/or interest in a number of things to make them equally rewarding and cumulatively disastrous. I doubt Ella Fitzgerald had this problem. Not that she wasn't a rip-snortin' chess player or a killer in the kitchen, but come on, those gifts knew their place; they couldn't hold a candle to the pipes. So Ella didn't stay awake nights wondering how she was going to finish the patter song for her one-woman show when she really wanted to blog her feelings about the shift in the way businesses are marketing to their customers, or whether she should market herself as an artist who does PowerPoint or a former copywriter who does graphics for artists, or even how she was going to see four shows in the two free days she had left to see them. Or maybe she did, but somehow I doubt it: I've gotta believe that a super-talent on the scale of Ella Fitzgerald's voice or Vincent VanGogh's painting or Eleanora Duse's acting demands its due, period. Maybe there's room for stamp collecting or swing dancing or some other hobby, but it knows its place.

I'm not saying life as Ella or Vincent or Eleanora was all sunshine and roses; biographies on plenty of great talents show that genius and happiness, while not necessarily mutually exclusive, do not ordinarily go hand in hand.

I'm just saying there are over-booked days when I wish I could (just) act/write/sing/design the hell out of one goddam thing, and leave it at that.

And now, back to Lucia. Or the Christmas project. Or...

xxx c

Holiday hit!

It's official: the "real" media have declared Peace Squad Goes 99: The Greatest 99¢ Only Story Ever Told...Ever!, a.k.a. "the 99¢ show", a hit.

We got a thumbs-up review in today's L.A. Times. There was also an excellent feature in yesterday's Times in which my gal Heseon Park catalogues her 99¢ experience from the Wine Tasting Station (not her favorite thing) to the show itself. If you subscribe to Calendar Live, you can find the article there. (And no, I'm not going to link to those cheap bastards; make the content freely available and I'll link your asses seven ways to Sunday.)

And, hooray, the communicatrix gets quoted:

What's it like wearing plastic-and-vinyl costumes for your art?

"You just have no idea how wet underclothes can get until you have done back-to-back perfs of a 99¢ show," says Colleen Wainwright, who plays a stiltwalking mom in the village.

Yup. Proof of stilts part of the equation above.

Get those tickets now. You've been warned...

xxx c

Change your life: write a blog

While I'm new at this whole blogging thing, I think it's safe to say that "Why Blog?" is a perennial question amongst bloggers. And I include the variations on this, such as: "Why am I blogging about this?" Or better yet, "Why am I blogging about this?" Who am I to be writing things down and throwing them out there for everyone, or no one, to see? It's a hot question in the blogosphere lately. Hugh MacLeod points to a staggeringly long entry on Frank Paynter's blog that asks "Why Do We Blog? I think the sheer number and fervor of the entries answers the question more eloquently than any of the excellent essays themselves: we blog, most of us who do, because it plugs us in, to the community, to the questions, to ourselves. (I'm putting aside those who blog exclusively for the bucks; neither the question nor the answer is of much interest in that case.)

Evelyn Rodriguez weighs in on the Why Blog? question this morning with an interesting spin on the issue: what I'd call the "Morning Pages" motivation:

I was thinking that blogging could be an excellent practice for someone in "transition" figuring out and wondering what they would like to do next in their lives. Your writing will lead you into what's next for you if you just focus on one day's post at a time. The pattern between your posts will reveal what your voice whispers but is too shy to shout. And your surroundings and other writers and readers that stumble across your path will inform you as well. Writers become keen observers - about the world about them and the world within. Pay attention to what tugs at you and write about that.

For the uninitiated, one of the chief tools of Julia Cameron's watershed book on personal transformation, The Artist's Way, is Morning Pages, basically, daily journaling within very specific parameters designed to empty the mind of clutter and provide a peaceful, open space for growth and change.

What's marvelous about Morning Pages, aside from the inner peace they give to type-A whack-jobs like me who suck at sitting meditation, is the reverse map they provide. In looking back over where you've been , you tend not only to see more clearly where you are but also where it is you are headed. Pretty nifty, that.

Of course, there's also the huge bonus-extra of getting better at writing and thinking and listening. As I mentioned in my recent post about morphing from copywriter to actor, change is mostly born of lots and lots of boring-ass, repetitive work: what I call logging the miles.

Interesting side-note: while I picked up The Artist's Way on a lark, it wound up getting me to dump advertising completely and become an actress. At 33. In Hollywood. Which, for those of you who aren't intimately acquainted with the way things work here in hyper-youth-oriented LaLa, is completely fucking insane. But it turned out to be not only the perfectly perfect thing for me to do, spiritually speaking, but also a good financial move. Go figure.

But I'd have done it for free (and did, for the first few years) because of the joy it gave me.

Just like blogging.

Go figure.

xxx c

P.S. Today's JPEG is the Japanese kanji "henka," or the symbol for change. From the ever-wonderful about.com. Beats that triangle we used to use in high school chem.

How? No...YES!!!

Wednesday is List Day here at communicatrix.com. Imagine my consternation, then, when I pulled up this entry from Evelyn Rodriguez's always-stimulating blog this morning in my RSS reader and realized I could not possibly coast on Fave Rave Eric Rohmer Flix or 10 Ways to Ace Yourself Out of a Date with the Communicatrix Through Your Profile Alone, but would have to address the role of risk in effecting change. Unless...

Well, unless I can combine the two. How would it look if I did? What could be gained by compiling a list instead of writing an essay? How might I feel if I were able to do it? What impact might it have on my life as an artist, a blogger, a designer, a friend & companion?

Okay, enough. You get the idea. Or if not, you can go read Evelyn's post about Peter Block's book, The Answer to How is Yes and the leap of faith required in any great venture.

And so, my list. I put these things forth not to toot my own horn, but to tell everyone within shouting distance,"if an a**hole like me can do it, imagine what you smart people can do":

"IMPOSSIBLE" ACCOMPLISHMENTS ACCRUED BY SAYING "YES," NOT "HOW?"

1. Got copywriting job with worst book in ad history.
2. Got into Groundlings Sunday Company with no prior experience being funny.
3. Did not die when world collapsed after being unceremoniously booted from Sunday Company. (NOTE: Seriously, this was worse than any breakup, divorce or death of a loved one I have experienced. Yeah, I'm nuts; I'm an actress, for cryin' out loud.)
4. Wormed my way into best 99-seat theater company in L.A. with worst resume in L.A. theater history.
5. Became working actress at 36 (that's 207 in Hollywood Years).
6. Despite dour prognosis from Son-of-Mengele Colorectal Surgeon, went from Miss Bloody Hamburger Intestines of 2002 to a clean colonoscopy in two years.
7. Co-wrote & produced play about aforementioned bloody colon that people actually came to see.
8. Taught myself enough graphic design to pass.
9. Got invited to blog for honest-to-jesus metblog.
10. Met blogging idol.

What dream can you say "yes" to right now?

xxx c

From the mouths of a**holes

About ten years ago, shortly after I'd decided to give up the uncertain and (for me) unsatisfying waters of advertising for a sensible career in acting, I thought it might be a good idea to take a class or two, since I had no idea of what I was doing. Of course, being hopelessly goal-oriented and a perennial skipper-of-steps (a whole nuther post), instead of taking, say, a good scene study course or a class in text analysis, I elected to take a seminar in cold reading, which, for the uninitiated, is the dubious-but-necessary practice of to picking up "sides" (a chunk of a full script) and giving a decent audition at the drop of a casting director's hat. (Because as a 33-year-old actress who was not particularly good-looking and had zero training and experience, I was for sure going to be highly sought after for many parts in film and television. Uh-huh.)

There are various teachers of cold reading technique in Los Angeles, hotbed of auditioning activity, but I had the great good fortune of landing at Margie Haber's studio, and, after being vetted and prepped by her excellent associate, I got to study with Margie herself. Who hated me. Hated me. Wait, did I mention she hated me? Because she did.

Okay, she didn't hate me, personally. How could she? She didn't know me from Adam. She hated my acting. Excuse me, my hackting (hack + acting = hackting^®). All the other boys and girls seemed to be able to just...be. I was acting up a storm, and it was almost unbearable to watch. But we had to watch, since the classes were all taped. That was part of the deal: see your shame; get motivated to fix it.

Many, many years (and classes and rehearsals and bad performances in worse plays) later, I finally "get" a lot of what Margie was trying to teach. Like any other kind of knowledge, good acting technique, and by extension, good acting, is born of many, many days/weeks/months/years of effort. And, frankly, just logging the miles. Getting the lessons off the page and into your bones. And as the lessons worked their way into my acting, they also affected my life. Understanding character made me a much better theatrical writer. Learning to really listen created a heretofore unrealized depth and richness in all my relationships.

And Margie's technique for successfully playing characters different from oneself, as in, with nuance and depth rather than broad strokes and caricature, got me through this last election.

It's gorgeously simple, really, although not at all easy. Let's say a quick skimming of the sides reveals that the character you're being asked to play is a Murdering Vampire Prostitute. You have neither spilt blood (on purpose), sucked blood (with malice aforethought) nor traded sex for goods or services (not going to get into the traditional marriage paradigm here, you know what I mean). How do you relate? By scanning your mental Rolodex® for previous stage-'n'-screen examples (read: stereotypes) of undead bloodthirsty whores? Or, perhaps, by finding the similarities between you and these ladies you were so quick to judge?

A caveat: any examples should either be lifted straight from the script or ever-so-c a r e f u l l y extrapolated. In other words, if the character is yelling in the scene...well, you ask yourself, have I ever yelled? Do I live in a city/smoke/swear/use contractions/scratch where it itches?

Does this person maybe feel passionately about a cause...just like I do? Does this person perhaps feel frustrated and overwhelmed by the situation at hand and scared for the future...just like little old liberal/conservative, pro-choice/pro-life, anti-war, pro-sports, antidisestablishmentarian me?

My own personal bias for years was, you guessed it, against actors. Years of exposure to the Stupid Flaky Self-Absorbed Artist myth was probably mostly to blame, although ten years of screening commercial audition tapes didn't help. I was incapable of putting myself in these poor schlubs' shoes. I was an overworked, underappreciated, universally loathed copywriter and so I ate my sandwich and took calls and all the rest of the careless, insensitive, self-absorbed agency behavior I now hear commercial actors complaining about at auditions. I was wrong (and I'm sorry).

It's funny: if I'd had a little Margie Haber Technique back when I was a copywriter, maybe I wouldn't have had to become an actor. And if actors could see the hideous process by which excellent copy gets beaten into shapeless wads of marketing goo, maybe they'd be kinder. Maybe they'd try harder to make that hack copy sound good.

Maybe if we could all see each other, the world would be a little bit nicer place to play in.

At the very least, the ads would be better.

xxx c

Best of the flyer table

One of my continual frustrations as a theater rat with a scrabbly foot in the design world is the unforgivable lack of pretty in most show flyers. They'll pay the lighting designer, they'll pay the costume designer, they'll sure as shit pay the director, they'll get everything on stage looking Sunday-go-to-meetin' purty, and then crap all over themselves with an ill-conceived, poorly designed flyer. It's like my crazy Polish art teacher whined about back in silkscreen class: the packaging on materials being sold to artists is among the dullest and horsiest design there is. Ah, sweet irony. (Of course, I say this knowing full well that our website is among the ugliest in town, but I'm not web-proficient enough to do anything about that end of the design thing. So there.) [UPDATE 10/9/07: our beautiful new site, designed by me and developed by Jen Rocha, is available for viewing here.]

Anyway, out of the (no lie) 25+ (!!!) flyers on Evidence Room's box office entry table, above left are the few I found that I wish I'd done myself. Designers, feel free to step forward and introduce yourselves:

• REDCAT's tasty season brochure. Yum, yum. Of course, they've got funding out the wazoo and ties to one of the West coast's greatest art communities. They'd be stoned for anything less than stellar design.
• Jon Rivera's Dogeaters flyer. Great use of oversize medium, color and imagery. Love the crazy low-end Photoshop work on Imelda's eyes, too.
• For juicy, juicy printing alone, the flyer for Phacts of Life (show running at The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Renberg Theater). Chris Rooney did the design; may have to email him for his printer's digits. The show looks kinda cute, too, and features the always-hilarious Sam Pancake and a stellar roster of guest stars: Mink Stole, Kate Flannery and Mike Hitchcock.
• Finally, I just plain liked the image on the flyer advertising Todd Noel's work. Not as nuts about the rest of the stuff on his site (and not crazy about the font the Toddster chose for the flyer, either), but it got me to type in a URL and click, which is more than most of those flyer jockeys do.

xxx c

The communicatrix bifurcates

Because I do not have enough to do (wait...hahahahahaha!...okay...), when they put out the call for replacement bloggers over at blogging.la, I threw my gigantic (7 1/4") hat into the ring. Either they were more desperate than I thought or I managed to hoodwink them into thinking I could hang with the excellent crew already in place, because they've given me an at-bat.

I'll still be mainly blogging here, of course, but more of my L.A.-centric musings will likely land over there. (Just as well. My "categories" section here is looking, um, embarrassingly huge.)

So for future posts on Angelyne, cool L.A. art or anything else that strikes my goddamn fancy, head on over to b.la.

xxx c

Rocking the house for 4 weeks only!

Upside of being in Peace Squad Goes 99: The Greatest 99¢ Only Story Ever Told...Ever!: you will, apparently, play to packed houses full of cheering audience members who throw the love at you across the footlights in overwhelming waves. Downside: 3.5 hours/night strapped into plastic clothing with packing tape.

You just have no idea how wet underclothes can get until you have done back-to-back perfs of a 99¢ show.

Four weeks only, my babies. Reserve your seat now. You'll kick yourself if you miss it.

xxx c 

Me & the Zen Mistress of Business

I got to meet one of my blogging idols yesterday, and I'm delighted to report that the smart and talented Evelyn Rodriguez is every bit as terrific in person as she is on the web, plus way cuter. And yeah, there's kind of an online-datey feel to the whole thing that's sort of trippy: you're surfing and clicking through to a narrower and narrower set of specs when all of a sudden, wham!, you stumble upon what seems like a like-minded soul, or, as I like to call it, someone with whom you share Significant Areas Of Overlap. You eagerly devour statistics, stories and other wares that your Shiny Object has laid out for you to view. Then, if you're me, anyway, you project yourself into a fantasy world where the two of you seamlessly slip from talk of business ethics to sociopolitics to favorite experiences at sleepaway camp (and finally, if your point of entry was nerve.com, into dessert, the sack and a fabulous little Craftsman bungalow in Echo Park that you painstakingly rehab together in perfect harmony).

Meeting an online presence in the flesh yesterday, there was (for me, anyway) that customary, brief loss of equilibrium at first as I adjusted to a real, separate human being who moved and sounded and even looked slightly different than the 2-d version I had in my head, but after a little chit-chat about traffic and turkey dinners, we were off to the races and I couldn't stop talking. (Well, I stopped to let Evelyn talk from time to time, but only because she is very smart and interesting.)

Suffice to say it was a thoroughly energizing and enjoyable meeting, with the bonus-extra goodie of generating new blog entry ideas for (I think) both of us. Not that we couldn't email and post and IM back & forth to create a dialogue (well, no IMing, because it gives me heart palpitations), but there's something about meeting in person that kicks it into a higher gear, I'm a big fan from way back of the epistolery novel, but eventually, you want those see those scribblers meet up and watch the sparks fly. It's why I don't think cities will die off anytime soon (and I'm not alone: go here for lively discussion on urban splendor or the lack thereof). We're social creatures, even us crazy-geeky hermit types, and cities are a great way to keep us in proximity to one another. (According to an interesting article in The New Yorker a ways back, dense, old-style cities, like New York, may also be the most ecologically sound way to collect us, but I can't cite the source because in an insane cleaning frenzy, I pitched that issue. I am an asshole.)

So Evelyn, and any fellow bloggers (or, um, online dates) I might like to meet, here's to the next time fate throws us together geographically. And until then, let the Internet do its magical work.

xxx c

P.S. Evelyn, even though the other photo had better light, I had to use this one. The starbust-halo effect just seemed like some kind of summit endorsement from on high.