July 2008 – Clownmommy

BPP

Idle chat turned to real estate during rehearsal, something that didn’t matter before we became parents and found out we don’t live in good school districts.

We were leafing through the glossy New York Family magazines available in the lobby of the Manhattan Children’s Theatre, there in Tribeca. They were full of ads for multi-million dollar apartments and private schools and articles about “Kid Culture in the Hamptons”.

One of the other mommies expressed frustration with her job and the difficulties of combining work and nursing a baby. She was incredulous that a co-worker blythely suggested she reduce her stress level by hiring a nanny. Classic BPP (Bitter Poor Person) thinking in the lexicon of New York urbanbaby.com

I once read a post on that message board asking: “How much money do you normally spend on personal grooming? The original poster confessed to “about $2000 per month including haircuts, manicures, waxing, and massages….” The UB chat rooms are famous for obsessive school comparison shopping. Other threads question how many people need to be hired to “staff a party” and whether it is physically possible to live in New York on less than 200 thousand dollars per year.

A different friend of mine was once asked at a job interview (publishing) if she expected to live on the salary. As a matter of fact she did. Now if she took the job, because she majored in English hoping to work for a publishing company in New York, and then ended up resenting her diet of peanut butter and ramen while others with the same job went out every night and wore fashionable clothes and then she would be a BPP.

New York is hard because there are so many people in this city who have sources of money other than their paychecks.

Kill Me Loudly

I saw Deanna’s show tonight. Spent the first few minutes obsessing about not having brought my Clown Axioms postcards to distribute. The woman seated next to me was looking over the Eric Davis/Bouffon Glass Menajoree postcard in her hand before the lights went out. (I thought to myself; “Hmm. I wonder how much those two sided postcards cost. Lorraine and I should have some made for the Clown Theatre Festival!”)

I was looking forward to seeing Kill Me Loudly because I was in the workshop last year where Deanna found her character “Butt Kapinsky”. It’s exciting to see something from a workshop develop into and evening of theatre and Deanna’s show was a success. She gave it to Eric Davis to direct and so her costume developed buffoon bulges. It wasn’t a surprise when Eric announced after the show, as he was inviting everyone in the audience to adjourn to the adjoining bar, that this show would be in the New York Clown Theatre Festival in September. Bouffon Glass Menajoree has been playing around town since it was in the festival two years ago.

Jeff Seal got to show off some of them clown skills he acquired out there in California and that was good to see.

Also that space, Milagro Theater at Clemente Soto Velez, on the Lower East Side is a good space. I wouldn’t mind doing a show there.

On the subway coming home my head was full of pithy and critical thoughts about clown theatre in general and Deanna’s show in particular, but when I got home My Kid was still awake and there was much ado about a bath, itchy ears, eating cherries and brushing teeth so now it’s all gone.

Also, I am still a little jet lagged.

The Husband just reminded me that it’s 1:30 in the morning and I have rehearsal at 10:00 am. So I’m going to close my eyes and go to sleep now in our new brass bed that was delivered at 8:45 this morning (thank God I didn’t leave clearing out the room for morning) Rehearsal today was at PMT from 10 till 2. Then I schlepped back to Brooklyn. I had to pay attention to My Kid. There e-mails to check and send before I could go to the show tonight. We’ve been scheduled for the New York Clown Theatre Festival Cabaret on September 11. I’m just waiting for Lorraine to confirm. (I wonder if she has 9/11 issues. She did fly out of Boston on that morning… I wonder if I have 9/11 issues… I saw the second tower come down from the Monument in Fort Green Park where I was standing with My Kid in a pack on my back.)

back in NYC

I have postings to post that I wrote in Montana at my parents house where there is no DSL.
My kid and I took the red-eye to from Seattle and were home by 7am.
Rehearsal at Triskelion at noon. It’s odd to come in so late in rehearsal, a walk-thru today. Rehearsal tomorrow and Sunday is tech.

murakami

We made it to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Success! If we hadn’t gone today we would have missed it because it will close while we are in Montana. I wanted to see it because I have clown reasons to relate to the cuteness and corporateness and scariness, the Japaneseness of his art. A year after graduating from The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (registered trademark) I found myself working as a clown and stiltwalker at Nagasaki Holland Village which can be compared to Main Street USA at Disneyworld, only it’s Dutch and in Japan. I spent most of my time posing for pictures with Japanese schoolgirls who shouted “Kawaii” (“cute!”) and crowded around me holding up their hands in a peace sign and smiling for the camera. At the time my clown wore overalls with a sash with a big bow at the back (“Nice obi.” commented one of the tech guys) and another bow in my orange clown hair. I bore a striking resemblance to Hello Kitty. On one of our days off we visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park. That same week George Bush The First ordered the bombing of Iraq.

smug anxiety

Despite having a good time on the 4th of July I spent a good percentage of the next day filled with anxiety and stress. I should have felt good that I had just had a paying gig, but then I watched re-runs of “I Love Lucy” with my kid and instead of enjoying them I thought about how when I first became a clown the knowledge that she did the “I Love Lucy” shows in her 40’s made me think I still had lots of time in which to make my mark as a clown. I’m not feeling that way so much anymore. (There is also the shrinking amount of time in which to clean and pack and get ready for our trip to Montana which must also include being ready to hit the ground running at Kendall’s rehearsals the day we get back to New York, –clearing and readying our bedroom for the delivery of a new bed, by far the biggest job on my list– and being packed and ready to go to Toronto the morning after the last performance of “Clown Axioms”.) I drank too much coffee until I suddenly had to eat or implode. I quickly prepared a breakfast of vegetarian imitation bacon and fried eggs for the three of us while I listened to an NPR interview with Barbara Kingsolver talking about her book about her year spent eating in season food they had grown themselves. People with the cultural capitol to write books that are published about such things generally begin their stories by describing the beautiful property that they own, this book is no exception. And so a bitterness tinged the fresh berries, greens and apple juice I had purchased for more than twenty dollars at the green market in the park that morning.

In the afternoon we went to see WallE at Cobble Hill Cinemas (second time for My Kid and I, first time for My Husband). We played in the park and ate an old-school Italian dinner at the Red Rose on Smith Street. Wine and pasta in the company of my small family comforted and relaxed me even without the smug joy of preparing the dishes myself using homegrown produce.

Mommy Camp went off with a bang and I am exhausted

Thank goodness today’s scheduled group Mommy Camp was cancelled because I am exhausted and I have to work the Macy’s Fireworks VIP audience tonight.

We decided on the way home from Coney Island yesterday afternoon that we did not need to get up early today and rush to the Painted Pot to decorate knickknacks in yet another fun-filled activity during our Mommy Camp Summer-Kick-Off Week.

On Monday we met at noon to see the 12:30 showing of Wall*E at Cobble Hill Cinema, afterwards we had pizza in a restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon with water balloons (some of us until after 6pm) at Peirrepont Playground on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights. On Tuesday we Met at Melody Lanes Bowling Alley at 10am (I ducked out to meet the cleaning lady at my apartment–she never showed–so I made phone calls about clown stuff and paid bills–she is here now with her mother–how embarrassing for me) and returned to meet the group again at Pierrepont Playground where we stayed until after 6pm. Then I brought My Kid and her friend home for a sleepover. We walked to Ft. Green from Brooklyn Heights through Fulton Mall, stopping at Cookies to buy cheap plastic walkie talkies CUZ WE NEEEEEED THEM FOR OUR SLEEPOVER!. At home we made tacos. The girls had fun cutting up tomatoes and lettuce with plastic knives. Then at 9:30 we went outside and walked to Fort Greene Park looking for fireflies. Two were captured. Many never made it into the jar, then one of the two prisoners escaped. The other was granted clemency and freed. The girls desperately needed a bath and so they had one. They were asleep by 11:30. But we had to get up early because I had a 9am appointment in Brooklyn Heights. I was late. The kids played Ninetendo in the waiting room. Then we met up with the others and took the train and a bus to Chelsea Piers to go ice skating. But, none of us had checked in advanced and the rink was closed to the public. So we went, as scheduled to the water playground next to Chelsea Piers and then (as a quick Plan B) to Dave and Busters in Times Square where everyone ate greasy food and the adults drank overpriced tropical drinks and spent too much on games for the kids. Afterwards we returned My Kid’s friend to her apartment where her mom had been home all day with a sick 4-year-old, a baby, and less than 24 hours to pack camping gear and clothes for a family of 5 before a flight to Colorado the next day. My Kid and I again walked home from Brooklyn Heights through Fulton Mall. (Meanwhile Enthusiastic Mom took her son to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium and they got home at midnight) I think we ate Chinese take-out. I think we watched “So You Think You Can Dance” on TV. I was beginning to wonder if the week of fun would ever end. Nope not yet. Next on the schedule–Thursday morning we met on the Q train for a trip to Coney Island; Astroland unlimited ride bracelets, Nathan’s cheese fries. Sand and Sea. And the inevitable melt-down. My Kid was too short to ride the pirate ship but her friend was tall enough. So My Kid got to play some games and win some MORE stuffed animals to add to the clutter in our apartment.

Enthusiastic Mom had e-mailed us a spread-sheet schedule of the week’s planned activities. The kids were all supposed to wear the same colored shirt each day (so they would look like a group just like real day camp kids) which they took seriously. Monday was white, Tuesday was red, Wednesday was blue, Thursday was yellow. We discussed changing plans, but unfortunately our kids are old enough to read and in fact had been studying the schedule. The children would not allow us to deviate much from what had been printed. (Thank goodness they were also exhausted by Thursday night so we could cancel today–which isn’t really a day of nothing since it is the 4th of July and that involves at the very least schlepping out somewhere to stand with a crowd to watch the fireworks and then schlepping home in the dark and possibly rain.) That’s why we still had to go to Astroland at Coney Island even though we had spent the previous afternoon at Dave and Busters in Times Square. They are effectively the same thing from a spending money for nothing point of view.

All in all it was a good week. But, I will be glad to get back to My Kid’s version of Mommy Camp which is much more like homeschooling with reading and writing, math and science, and art (what can I do that’s what My Kid said she wanted…) But, we’ll be going to Montana for two weeks and accompanying My Husband on a business trip to Toronto in August so I don’t know how many days of this brand of low-key educational mommy camp she will actually get.