Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

Due to a medical emergency – non-Life threatening but urgent – there
will be no meditation tonight.

It’s the Intermission’s OMCCB Meditatation Team

Okay, so there I was all logged on for our first OMCCB, happily inflicting some lovely Sondheim music upon our callers as we waited for the meditation to begin, and I begin to wonder why there was no “we.” It was just me. Alone.

Well, not that alone. I’m not alone alone. I mean: no one is on the phone with me. This can’t be. Even my band of friends are missing in action!

Uh… and as I’m tapping along to Bounce, feeling the appropriateness of that title song, I realize I have called into a conference number that no one knows about. Uh, like the wrong number even. I hang up and call the number everyone is patiently hanging out on, way more than five minutes late, and we get to it. More than a minute. Yup. And then we all fell down the Rabbit Hole.

So sorry, my daring OMCCB’ers. For those of you who waited, thank you, thank you, thank you. It was cool.

I believe 1948 was the one year Gallup got it wrong…

Final Presidential Estimate: Obama 55%, McCain 44%

[Edited 11/04/08 7:05 am to remove broken widget.]

Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.

While I’m not sure Pierce Brosnan should ever be allowed to sing in public, I loved the film version of Mamma Mia! I was worried because so many film adaptations of musicals fall flat, and even more worried because we ended up at a film house not known for its sound system. I’d see it again even in the same place, as it overcame even a rotten sound system, something Hairspray and (quite sadly) Sweeney Todd could not do.

Several years ago, the Beloved dragged me kicking and not quite screaming to the stage show in S.F., prior to its Broadway debut. She has a thing for Abba. Apparently a lot of people do. I was pleasantly won over by the musical’s infectious good-nature, surprised by a basic plot line that kinda worked, and thrilled to see so many women on stage in primary roles. I discovered that I, too, knew the words to most of the songs. (Oh dear, when and how did that happen?)

The book of the musical was written by Catherine Johnson, a British playwright. In an American Theater Wing symposium, Catherine said, prior to Mamma Mia! she said, “my work previously has always been in fringe theatre, and its sort of four actors and a budget of about 450 pounds.” She got to write the screenplay, too, and did an outstanding adaptation of her own work. She made it even funnier.

The photo is of the Carolina Chickadee nesting in our backyard. I’m not sure which it is, the female or the male. We hope they’ve got their clutch full by now, and are looking forward to seeing how the babies will thrive.

This morning, we chased balloons from the Kentucky Expo to the Water Tower. From there, we watched them fly over the river and land in Indiana. A gorgeous morning for the Great Balloon Rush-Hour Race. Balloons are a happy thing. Last September, we chased balloons from Bowman Field to some unsuspecting neighborhood way on the other side of town. This is a photo from that chase:

Saturday night, my Powerbook started freezing up. That lasted until yesterday, when I found the apparent cause and corrected it. (A loose Airport Extreme card.) It was more of an opportunity to obsess about something else than it being a panic problem. Because I have redundant backup systems, I wasn’t
worried about losing any files.

The niggling thought was that the PB failure was timely. I had promised my compadre, MBH, I would get him a copy of my
play by the 25th (uh, that’s today, as I write this entry). I need to get this off my plate, and give some attention to a joint project we are working on. As long as
the PB didn’t work properly, I could obsess about fixing it, and hold
on to the play. Reluctance to let go, and all that.

Still, it’s good to rest the writing mind, and focus on unrelated things. In those moments, inspiration bubbles forth, and new lines of dialog or action are created.

So, back to it. The day is early still.

Around 5:37 this morning, we were awakened by the house shaking. At first I thought, "must be a thunderstorm," and as the vibration wore on, I thought, "WTF, an earthquake?"

One of the reasons I left California was out of weariness of expecting the next "big one." My Higher Power has a wicked sense of humor. Honestly, I’ve recognized at least one other tremor in the year we’ve been here. They pretty much happen everywhere, don’t they?  In San Francisco, tremors occur with all the time. When you grow up along a fault line, you don’t freak out when there’s a moderate or minor tremor.  I was cocky about it at times, too. "Oh, a 5.2? No biggie."

When you know how devastating quakes can be, however, you learn to do the best you can to prepare for one. Which means: prepare to survive as best you can during, and then afterwards. No one can telll you when a bad quake is going to hit. It’s a little like guerrilla warfare. You know it’s gonna hit, just not when or where exactly.

Today is the anniversary of California’s 1906 earthquake. As a kid, I was taught the earthquake itself didn’t do much damage. It was the fire that caused San Francisco’s collapse. As an adult, I learned that the fire story was a lie, perpetuated by the real estate and business community, which was trying to prevent panic about moving to San Francisco back in the day. The fire was bad. Sill, it was the earthquake, not the fire, that set the City in ruin. Thousands of people–not hundreds as originally reported–lost their lives. Gladys Hansen set the record straight in her wonderful book, Denial of Disaster.

Denial of Disaster was published shortly after the Loma Prieta quake of 1989. Oddly, this book helped me through some my post-traumatic stress from that ‘89 quake.

Years later, I studied screenwriting with James Dalessandro, who wrote a novel about 1906. He made a pretty good documentary about the quake, too, The Damnedest Finest Ruins. Brad Bird is directing the film of James’ novel.

Fortunately, in today’s quake, centered in Illinois at 5.2 magnitude, no one was hurt, no real damage sustained. It was a little tough watching the news people here who did not know how to report the quake. Uh, folks, we don’t call the police when an earthquake hits. We call the USGS.

Folks here love to talk about the pending big one expected along the New Madrid fault. That fault line throws out a magnitude 6.0 or greater every 80 years. It’s over due. People talk about this pending quake like it’s a source of pride, or it’s some kind of weird contest with California. No one seems prepared for it.

Yeah, I’m a little cranky today.

I’m prepared, too.

This time last year, our house was about to empty of furniture. More importantly, our dog and cat were about to prove to us even a four-day trip across country, sharing the backseat of our car, would make them friends. Ever.

Ever.

I mean it.

Ever is not a word I use lightly.

Ever, never, always, try, yes, but, and just are words much overused. Thus, I aspire to under-use them.

A shake-up for "Intermission/Writing the Play" is in the works, too. The journal will be moving away from Typepad. When depends on if, uh, I can get the new site setup to my liking. I decided to revamp the journal from scratch, which required dusting off my CSS skills. Not pretty, my friends. Of course, we’ll stay here until "then."

Perhaps even more daunting, I took the "write a poem for 30 days" challenge for National Poetry Month. Every good lesbian writes a bit of bad poetry now and then.

Meanwhile, exciting to a theatre slash word nerd like me:

    New York Magazine has reprinted three of Steve’s crossword puzzles.

I’ve been looking for the book of the Sondheim puzzles for years.

Since I last posted about swapping books, movies and music, I’ve received some pretty cool books from Bookmooch, found new homes for over 50 of my own. Thanks to Bookmooch, I’m finally reading Uncommon Arrangements. When this book was reviewed, a least a dozen people, knowing my obsession about Radclyffe Hall, sent me clippings. Y’all can rest easy now, my friends.

While I haven’t ventured out to other book swapping sites, I did cancel my Peerflix account for DVDs. I’m trying out a different DVD swapping site called, Swap A DVD. So far, I’m pretty happy with it as it feels more respectful, trading person to person. Much like Bookmooch, you get credits for posting DVDs, and for giving your DVDs away. To get DVDs, you spend your credits. Swap A DVD is a sister site to Paperback Swap, which, like I’ve already said, I have not tried.

Last Spring, I found I did not have enough bookshelves for all my books. In fact, I did not even have room for more bookshelves. My personal library has gone through several purges over the years, and I decided to relinquish my poetry collection. It has been the least touched section of my library in a handful of years.

Less than a month ago, I found Bookmooch, a book swapping site. You list books you want to give away, and when someone asks for your book, you pay the postage to send it. For books you would like to receive, there are no additional fees for you, and the sender pays the postage.

So far, I’ve given away over twenty beautiful poetry books. In return, I’ve received about a dozen other books, which include plays, and science topics.

I still don’t have the bookshelf space. Still, Bookmooch is a lot of fun. I like that my books go to other book lovers, and I enjoy looking at individual inventories of books. A lot of fascinating stuff I don’t see in bookstores.

Bookmooch runs on a point system. You accumulate points when you list books, give them away, and give feedback. Your points are taken away when you request books. There’s even a way to donate your points to charity.

Alternate book swap sites:

• PaperBackSwap
• FrugalReader
• TitleTrader which also does DVDs, and CDs

I like the concept of trading. For quite a long time, we’ve traded CDs on LaLa. The costs to trade CDs is minimal (postage plus a small fee), and the artist gets a small bit of the money.

More recently, we discovered Peerflix, which I am ambivalent about. I have traded more DVDs than I’ve gotten in return. Often the DVDs seem to be lost in the mail, or arrive damaged. I might try TitleTrader to see if they fare better.

I’m always trying to figure out ways to avoid consuming more new stuff.

Here’s a great 20 minute video called The Story of Stuff.

You’re To Kill a Mockingbird!
by Harper Lee

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you’ve also taken a significant amount of flack. But you’ve had the admirable guts to persevere. There’s a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you, but you’re pretty sure it’s worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

The link I took to the book quiz came from Matthew Freeman.

If I were a play, I think I’d be Tales of the Lost Formicans.