One of the reasons I love October....

....is watching the Red Sox in the playoffs.

The ALCS starts tonight at Fenway, with the beloved Sox going up against the Cleveland Indians. I couldn't resist posting the above photo for good luck.

GO SOX!!!!!
-Lauryn

Be careful what you wish for....

This post is for Paul, who said he wanted me to blog more frequently.

He should have known better!!

Anyway, I seem to be stuck in a Muppet-related rut of late, and stumbled across this clip on YouTube.

It is oddly...moving. Touching, in a *very* strange, off-kilter way.

But cover your ears when Beaker hits those high notes....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OCbuRA_D3KU&mode=related&search=

Sometimes I just feel like Fozzie Bear....

I hold to the theory that everyone has an inner Muppet.

One Muppet that they identify with more strongly than any other.

I also believe that this is true of people and Loony Tunes characters.

This inner Muppet is the expression of all the things we can't show in our (supposedly) grown-up, day-to-day lives. They are the squishy, lovable, oddly-shaped fuzzballs of energy that lurk within us all.

My inner Muppet is, and always has been, Gonzo.

I love him from the tips of those odd blue-purple feathers on the top of his head to the soles of his Muppet-sized dress shoes. His signature hook-nose and wide goggle eyes just stir something in me. He stands up for his uniqueness and is proud of his oddities. I wish I could be that brave all the time.

And besides...how can you not love a fella who will eat a rubber tire to the accompaniment of "Flight of the Bumblebee"?

BUT.

Sometimes, just sometimes....I feel like Fozzie Bear. And lately, I feel exactly like Fozzie is in this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW5W2hhvZ2E

Of course...with the work stress and all, I also feel a little bit like the Muppet News Anchor in his bit towards the end....Eeep!!

Nessun Dorma....

Luciano Pavarotti

October 12, 1935 - September 6, 2007

Peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdTBml4oOZ8

The Book Quiz...

I took one of those random "object x = your personality type" quizzes called "The Book Quiz." Apparently I am James Joyce's ULYSSES. Hmmmm....that feels about right.

http://bluepyramid.org/ia/ulysses.htm?

Take it yourself and see who you might be!!

http://bluepyramid.org/ia/bquiz.htm

Familiar lightning....

This is the part of August when the really spectacular thunderstorms happen along the Gulf.

I don't mean the kind that arrive around dinnertime and bring torrential downpours that flood the backyard and make it impossible to drive anywhere until they're over.

I mean the kind that roll in slowly right around dusk and bring practically no rain with them at all. They make for fantastic light shows as the full darkness of the evening descends and the massive thunderheads are backlit by the various lightning bursts.

The air is sultry and heavy at night, but not as unpleasantly humid as it sometimes can be. And I can curl up on my couch and peer out my westward facing windows and watch the clouds light up again and again. It's amazing and beautiful and, unlike some of the fiercer rain-driven storms, it is not at all scary.

Now that I've been here for a little over a year, I can fully appreciate the nights that are like this. Last summer, trying to move and get settled, and adapt to the climate in the first place meant that I wasn't as observant of the different types of storms. They all just blurred together and overwhelmed. This year, I have been able to take more time to see the differences and enjoy the dazzling quality of these quieter tempests.

There is almost something comfortingly familiar about these storms.

On my way home from work Tuesday night, I stopped at the supermarket for just a few items.

The parking lot of this particular Publix overlooks Sarasota Bay, and a terrific example of this kind of lightning was illuminating the sky looking out towards Lido Key, beyond which lies the Gulf itself.

I paused to watch and enjoy it before entering the store. When I went in I heard, but did not at first consciously register, the song playing on the in store sound system.

All I felt was a jolt of warmth and comfort that ran instantaneously through me and I sensed it had to do with the song. But I had to really force my conscious brain to understand why my body was responding so joyfully to the music. It was one of those moments where instinct was ahead of cognition.

The song, Dear Valentine, was by my favorite band, Guster.

The thing is, you hardly ever hear Guster on mainstream radio. They have been increasing in popularity recently (whoo-hoo!!), but still, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard them on the radio in the past four years. I'm so used to listening to their CDs in my car that it always takes me pleasantly by surprise when I hear them in a public place.

It, too, is familiar lightning....a shock to the system...electric in every sense of the word....

~~~

Though it wasn't the song I heard in the store, Guster does have a song actually called "Lightning Rod." I'll close with just a few lines from it and a link to a studio performance of it. Enjoy!!

"...Standing on a building
I am a lightning rod
And all these clouds are so familiar
Descending from the mountain tops
The gods are threatening
But I will return an honest soldier
Home..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q5o4A5b2HE

I think I'm more than a little bit in love...

...with Geof from Charm City Cakes.

You know, that bakery on the Food Network show "Ace of Cakes," where they make all the really fun, really out-there cakes.

Cakes shaped like cowboy boots, and jeeps, and the Titanic sinking, and Wrigley Field, and so on.

I really like a guy who can bake. Plus he can do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN9-YbJeQY8

He cooks, he sings, he makes quirky observational-humor style jokes.

All the things I look for!!

Yum.

To Ma'am or not to Ma'am...that *is* the question?

This is something that's been niggling at the back of my mind for a long while now.

The "Ma'am" issue.

I'm 29. Moreover, I have a very young face and could easily pass for 20 most days.

I have been getting Ma'ammed since I was 17. By people who were OLDER than me!!!!!

It rankles me. It makes me think "what could possibly be going through their minds to make them think that Ma'am is an age appropriate moniker for tiny baby-faced me?!!?!?!?"

Some might say that it's a sign of respect but, with few exceptions, I don't buy that because it's just so obvious when you look at me that I'm *not* a "Ma'am" that any intended respect is negated by the misuse of the term!!

But then I think of the alternatives:

"Miss" wouldn't work. My inner feminist Wellesley-woman would feel more than a bit patronized.

"Ms." is just silly....trying to get someone to address you as just "Ms." and force them to pronounce the "sssszzzzz" sound would just make everyone giggle. Me included.

So then, what is left?

Hmmmm.....

Oooh, I know!!

From now on, I will insist on being greeted with "Hey, Laaaaaady!!!!!"

Jerry Lewis impersonation required.

Thou abominable guts-griping fustilarian!!

It's been a quiet Monday, as far as Mondays go. Not that there isn't work to be done...there always is...but it's just that the flow of the day has gone by pretty smoothly, which isn't always the usual for a Monday.

Also, the weekend was pretty productive. It may sound like a small thing, and pretty boring, but I was able to do a *lot* of cleaning at my apartment. Felt really good...you know, that accomplished feeling you get when you've thrown out/filed/re-organized lots of stuff. It actually meant a great deal to me to be able to do that, because I'd been putting it off for quite awhile. Finally getting some of those things done was like lifting a (metaphorical) weight that had gotten even heavier than I had realized.

Plus, one of my best friends told me that I helped influence the direction of a really cool song he wrote and that made me feel pretty darn special....all in all, a good weekend.

In other news, I've been ruminating on Shakespeare a bit, hence the title of this post. It is an insult created by a "Random Shakespearean Insult" generator...though it's not actually a line from anything he wrote...the generator just takes a bunch of insulting Shakespearean words and throws them together in funny-sounding combinations.

Why a Shakespearean insult if things are going so well of late? Well, why not? I find that they always bring a smile to people's faces and are far less insulting than they are funny. If you're having a more stressful day than I am, try it out at your office...it'll relieve your stress and people will probably not take any offence anyway, so no harm, no foul.....

On a more serious note, I've also been meditating on the idea of:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
--Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

This quote can be taken one of two ways: either that nothing at *all* exists, either good or bad, unless a person believes the thing to exist. OR that the things that exist in the world don't take on good or bad attributes/qualities unless we assign them those qualities in our thoughts.

There's a profound, yet simple message in this about the power of thought and about not believing that something is ever absolute and unchangeable.

I find it's a quote I think on particularly often....now before I verge into becoming fustilarian, I'm going to sign off!!

Laurence J. Sasso, Sr.: March 14, 1920 - August 17, 1995

I wasn't expecting to post twice today, but I wanted to do this in a separate post from all the rest.

My grandfather on my Dad's side passed away 12 years ago today, and I miss him all the time still.

It has become a tradition for me to go somewhere leafy and green, usually a park (though once I did this on the side of Mount Holyoke in Western Massachusetts), and read the poem I'm posting below. I'll be doing that later today after I leave work, but I also wanted to post it here.

It's a section of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I read it every year in Pop-Pop's honor, both because it fits the occasion and because my grandfather (who was himself an excellent poet), loved Whitman's work.

So Pop, here it is for you. I love you.

*~*~*~*~*~*

A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

La Guillotine, the empire waist, and the pennant race

I have a sense that this first post may not hang together all that well.

One might say that, thematically, it will be inconsistent - more of a drawing together of random elements in a mish-mash than a true blending of disparate ideas into a coherent whole.

But then again, it may work out okay....

If it *is* more the former than the latter, I apologize in advance and I promise that as this blog carries on in the coming months I will improve my style.

Right now, I'm just feeling the need to toss out into the cyber-ether some of the things that have been inhabiting the prominent space in my brain of late. The title of the post refers respectively to the gigantic new musical adaptation of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities that my theatre is going to be producing in about a month and a half, the lovely and wonderful movie Becoming Jane that I saw last week, and the fact that somehow it's now officially more than halfway through August and the Red Sox are still in first place in the A.L. East.

Tale is all-consuming. I have every expectation that it will be a wonderful production, and it is thrilling to see the progress from the scene shop as they build the mammoth set, and to talk with my artistic director frequently (he's also directing this specific show) about text notes for the script, which is still evolving slightly. It will be a massive production; a pre-Broadway engagement, which, for a regional theatre to do (especially one so geographically far from Broadway) is quite a coup. Actors and singers will descend on us from New York in about a month...including some who are fairly well-known "big" name types. Musicians and actors have been cast and hired locally as well, and everyone in the theatre is preparing for not one, but two opening night dinner parties of epic proportion. One night is London-themed with Derby wearing waiters; the other night, attendees will "go" to Paris, and the waiters will wear berets.

I'm actually very proud to say that the idea of the different themes for these dinners was my idea!! It'll actually be a really great way to give each night cachet and get our donors and VIPs extra-excited about attending. Although the excitement level around this project is sky high anyway....I wish I could say here just who it is we've gotten to play Charles Darnay, the virtuous and wholesome romantic lead....he's someone that would make you say "oh *I* know him!!"....I mean, you've definitely seen his face on TV a *lot* lately....but it hasn't been officially released yet, so I can't tell.....rrraarrrgh.

For all the good things about the show though, I can't pretend that it doesn't add a HUGE amount of stress to our season. Everything has been pushed up a month because of it, and people all over the building are stressed to the max. But hopefully it will all be calm very soon and we can just relax a bit and relish in the excitement of the cast arriving and rehearsals truly getting under way.

*~*~*~*~*

As for the Empire waist comment...I really don't have much to say about this one, except that seeing Becoming Jane was one of those experiences I have rarely had in the movie theater...where the movie I go to see is just *exactly* what I need when I need it. That perfect serendipity of the perfect thing at the perfect time to suit the mood I'm in.

I've had this experience a few other times...notably years ago in the movie theater in Union Station in Washington, D.C. when I went to see the Val Kilmer movie The Saint. At that time, I was having a bit of a rough patch in my first year of college and I really needed something feel-good and uplifting. The Saint was, ultimately, all of those things. The hero had identity issues, yet kicked butt and was goofy in an oddly endearing way all at the same time. Not to mention that that movie was cheesy. Oh, was it ever. But it was good cheese....and good cheese was what I needed at that moment in time.

Becoming Jane on the other hand is a bittersweet, achingly beautiful movie. In quality of acting and direction so vastly far above The Saint that talking about them both in the same post is *almost* silly. But the therapeutic effect they had on me was essentially the same. With all the job stress I've been having of late and the loneliness I often feel of being so far away from home, I was in the mood for something that could be an outlet for all these emotions that have been ricocheting around inside me, and this movie was it. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of it, and that the release that provided was welcome and a relief.

And, in addition to all of that, the movie was so good. It was well-acted, well-directed, and featured James MacAvoy in some really well-fitted knee-breetches. What more can a girl ask for, really? The cinematography of the English countryside was so lush, and the literary treats for those who have read Jane Austen's work are plentiful. The most brilliant thing about the film was the way that the people in Jane's life were shown as the forerunners of her characters. You could see the shades of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in her parents, the essence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in her rich and meddlesome neighbor, and so on and so on. Also, if you've read Pride and Prejudice or some of her other works, you recognized lines from the books sprinkled into the dialogue of the movie, to give the idea that she really and truly turned her life into her work.

Another thing that amazed me about this film was that it took many "liberties" with the historical accuracy of the part of her life it portrayed....and yet, I didn't care. Usually, if a play or a movie is about a real person, I'm a stickler for being accurate and keeping the details as true as possible. Yet, there are two notable exceptions to this rule...and, perhaps not surprisingly, both of the exceptions are movies where the love story has been enhanced to greater intensity than what actual fact suggests (the other movie I refer to also has a Jane in the title - 1985's Lady Jane with Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes. An excellent, if very depressing, film). I guess that means that I'm a sucker for romance after all.

Hmmm...apparently I had more to say on that topic than I thought at first! Bottom line is that it's a great movie, and I highly recommend it.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Now, as for the last item in the title of the post - The Pennant Race - one must note that it is August 17. And the Red Sox are, for now, still in first place in their division.

One would expect this to be pleasing to a Red Sox fan such as myself.

And it is....

But...

It is also frightening.

Very frightening.

This is the part of the year where we are usually about 4 games behind the (evil) Yankees and wondering how in the world we'll ever catch up before the end of the season. Even in 2004, when everything finally finally went so well for us, we weren't out in front at this point in the regular season....not like this. Our grip on the division hadn't been firm for most of the season, as it has this year, and we were, once again, the Wild Card entry into the AL playoffs. We had to play our way up from the bottom of the playoff heap...slog our way through the rest of the teams in order to even get to the World Series. Not to mention putting ourselves way back in our ALCS against New York so that we had to come from way behind just to win *that* series.

Red Sox fans are notoriously comfortable with the underdog position....even in those (all too rare) instances when we come out on top. Being out in front is welcome, but very very scary.

It begs the questions: How are we going to screw this up? When are we going to screw this up? And just how spectacularly bad will the screw up be?

I hope that we can hang on....I'm rooting for them with all my might....but my stomach is tied in knots every time I look at the standings, and I think....only in New England, where history runs so very very deep....can there be such a Calvinistic, self-flagellating take on a BASEBALL TEAM.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

GO SOX!!!!!

-Sasso!