Archive for August 2008

fuck you–you self absorbed toddler parent

August 15, 2008 life No comments

After the fact, I was shaking.  I had yelled back at her as I left; “Fuck you, my kid’s bleeding!”

I didn’t realize how shocked and upset I was until after I did that.

We were having an uneventful afternoon in the apartment when the buzzer rang and it was My Kid’s friend. She and her brothers were riding their scooters and soon My Kid was with them in the park, all 4 of them flying down the walkway in the park looking like a commercial for some kind of organic yet commercially available snack food.  Then they went into the playground.

In the playground a couple of toddlers were walking around with their anxious mothers following close behind them–just like we used to do, back when we were shocked that there were dangerous older kids wildly hurtling their tough bruiser bodies around with abandon.  That was until the first physically gifted 3-year-old in our set learned to ride a bike without training wheels.  Are you nuts!  You can’t let that baby out anywhere near the street!!!!  

Our kids today were 5, 6 and just barely 8.  Big compared to a toddlers but still babies in the real world.  Our parent talk was about schools and neighborhoods and Freakonomics.  We were aware enough of the larger playground environment to yell at our kids to get off the baby swings because real babies needed to use them (this particular playground only has baby swings).  We were discussing the next playground to visit (Parents and caregivers make the rounds of playgrounds on a daily basis, like a bunch of frat boys on a Friday night pub crawl.)

One of the toddler mothers called out from about 15 feet away; “Could you watch the Razors there are babies.” Playground etiquette requires saying “hello” to other parents, or at least going up to them and making eye-contact before you tell them that you think their kid is doing something wrong.

I’m just sayin…

Anyway, our kids got off their scooters, and were playing around, and then we hear a scream.  A loud and sustained scream from the cast iron gate by the swings where My Kid and Her Friend were both standing frozen and screaming.  We looked up, my parent friend and I.  We stood up, my parent friend and I.  Then I ran over when we realized it was MY KID who was screaming. She had (or her friend had) smashed her finger in the cast iron gate.

Oh My God!!

Run to the kids.  Look at the finger.  Screams in the air.  Fear.  (back ground mind emergency protocol kicks in; going through the mental rolodex…–”Where is the insurance card?.. Which emergency room do we use?.. Car service phone number?…)  Take the kid with the finger to the cold water of the drinking fountain.  Examine the wound.  It hurts.  There’s blood.  Bruising and swelling.   But she can move the finger and ice and a bandage will be the treatment.

And yet, it is still traumatic.

 The plans to move to another playground have been abandoned.  I will take My Kid home and Her Friend and her brothers will be taken to their home.  Outside activities suddenly curtailed.  A bummer end to an impromptu playdate that was going so well.

As I was struggling out the playground gate guiding my sobbing bleeding child with one hand and juggling her sports equipment with the other, while simultaneously saying a forced cheerful goodbye to Her Friend (who is either guilt-ridden or afraid of being punished) and her brothers (who don’t know why their outside time has been suddenly cut short) and their parent (who must be thinking “Damn!”)  I hear the breathy passive-aggressive voice of the mother of one of the toddlers right beside me, “Could you shut the gate.”

After we finally get through the opening, I reach back and push at the gate with my arm  without even looking behind me (most parents and caregivers, myself included, turn back and face the gate checking for little escapees while pulling it closed and working the latch) 

I walk with my sobbing child for about 10 feet.

Then it hits me.

I suddenly yell without thinking…

“Fuck you, my kid’s bleeding!”

 

Guilty

August 14, 2008 life No comments

I feel incompetent that I didn’t get a picture into the program.  In the end it doesn’t really matter because I look enough like the two other white women, who are performing in the cabaret on the same night as me, that it doesn’t really matter that I didn’t get a photo of my own in on time.  But still, in the context of the pictures that were chosen for the brochure–we had high enough quality photographs of Lorraine’s work.  I should have gotten something in.  I’m lame.

Olympics and Americas Funniest Home Videos

August 14, 2008 life No comments

Somewhere between the drama of the Olympic Games and the idiocy of America’s Funniest Videos lies the world of clown.  I’m not getting to watch as much of the Olympics as I thought I would (because my kid is not interested and I’m not going out of my way to sell it.)  I’m not very competitive.  I’m the opposite.  As a kid I met every competitive situation certain that the others were better than I was.  I daydreamed in the outfield and would get hit on the head by the ball because I wasn’t paying attention.  Keeping a number score wasn’t interesting to me because there was no story.  It’s the backstories of the athletes that bring tears to my eyes and make me want to watch the competitions.   It’s the shock of the unexpected on America’s Funniest Videos that make My Kid Laugh.   In both cases it’s all about the face and the body.  Words are unnecessary.

In production

August 13, 2008 life No comments

I think I can officially say we are in production.  Lorraine and I have sent several e-mails back and forth today about gaps in the outline and which puppets need to be made.  That’s kind of cool.  On the other hand, I played with my kid in the apartment and it looks worse than it did when we got up this morning.  And, I’m not keeping up with putting away as we go along because I keep sneaking away from the pretend car/restaurant/dog run to check my e-mail and think about the piece.  At the same time I was trying to be really zen about letting My Kid decide what she wanted to do and being her playmate since as a parent I have noticed that it has been a while since she has engaged with her toys and that imaginative play that is so important that I take studio workshops to do it as an adult.  But the “play” that clowns do in the studio bears very little resemblance to my kid pretending to do the things I do which make me crazy when I play with her because I want to be going to the real store and really cleaning and going outside and running real errands.  I feel like a hostage in her imaginary car under the table with the dolls in their car seats folding and unfolding the toy stroller again and again.  Been there done that, don’t want to pretend today.  I feel guilty.  But, My Kid is at an age where she will watch the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon for hours on end and then talk like a sarcastic TV tween for the rest of the day.  I don’t know which is worse.  My Kid is going to be so dissappointed when she gets to high school and her campus doesn’t look like the Getty Museum with latte carts the way it does on Zoey 101.  And don’t tell me it won’t happen.  I was really traumatized when my first “real” job and life after college weren’t anything like the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

actors nightmare

August 12, 2008 life No comments

I was anxious to get to the theatre.  I was running late because I had to wait for someone to show up to watch My Kid.  The dressing area was hot and crowded.  My parents were on hand for this important performance.  We thought we had time to grab something to eat before the performance.  The Thai food took a long time and I didn’t have a watch on.  When I got backstage everyone else was in full costume and the show was in progress.  How soon till my scene.  No time to warm up or clear my head.  The others were lining up on the stairs waiting for the curtain call.  I had missed the entire show.

It was a actors nightmare, so clear and real that I was genuinely relieved when I woke up in a panic and realized I was at home in my own bed.

 

a quarter to 3

August 12, 2008 life No comments

So I’m up in the middle of the night and googling the other performers who I will meet at the clown theatre festival and I look up clownlink, which I haven’t read in a while and Adam mentioned my blog and how it petered out just when I got to the part about him, so I looked it up and…  I did click publish before I sent it.  Whoops!  Didn’t mean to do that.  But, I remember I did want to make the effort to post something during that show’s three day run.  There is more to the story.  But I’m not going to write it now!  it’s a quarter to 3 in the morning.  Of course I would get caught and called out publicly for making a blogging mistake.  How very clown of me.

Back home in the hood

August 12, 2008 life No comments

Me and My Kid, we didn’t have any plans today. On our first day back from Toronto we were slow to get going day because the rain made for a dark and claustrophobic morning.  My Kid watched the recorded “So You Think You Can Dance Season Finale” while I stretched, read the New York Clown Theatre Festival brochure online, and e-mailed back and forth with Lorraine about our upcoming 15 minutes of fame. 

We had to play store and then restaurant before I could get My Kid out the door to run errands like going to a store.  Who is to say that Target is more real than the plastic cash register arranged at the foot of the bed.  The experience is essentially the same.

My Kid stands on the table in her underwear and sings into her white plastic Hannah Montana microphone with a purity that I can only wish for in my performance.

Women Don’t Have Time for Writers Block

August 10, 2008 life No comments

At the hotel, I picked up Tracy Chevalier’s book “the Virgin Blue” (by the author of “Girl With A Pearl Earring”) and have been reading it on the train. Because I have access to Bluetooth I have access to the internet and because I have access to the internet, I googled Tracy Chevalier http://www.tchevalier.com/students.html
and found her website where she has written answers to frequently asked questions:
This is my favorite:

What do you do when you have writer’s block?

Writer’s block is for wimps – or men. I have only ever heard men complain of writer’s block. Frankly, I have so little time to write (only during my son’s school hours) that I can’t afford to be blocked. If I reach a sticky point, I do some research, read around the subject – that’s what’s so handy about writing historical novels, there’s always one more source to read.[return to questions]

I also love her open letter to students. She seems like a very nice person, helpful and patient considering her fame and creative success. Well, she is a mommy after all.

One of my New York “Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore” moments took place at one of our regular playgrounds in Brooklyn few years ago. We were chatting and chasing toddlers and Jennifer Egan and Sheri Holman were comparing notes on the difficulties of doing a book tour while nursing infants.

Playing Second Fiddle in Toronto

August 8, 2008 life One comment

Finally I have a chance to come down to the lobby of the hotel and post a blog entry. This trip has been about The Husband and his presentation and his continued ability to work remotely while at a conference and also about My Kid who is on vacation, a glorified field trip or whatever. The Husband’s computer worked in the room but mine did not. My kid and I have been sleeping late, then she would watch cartoons and I would read the Globe and Mail that was delivered to our door each morning, until neither of us could stand it anymore, then we would dress quickly and leave for our day as tourists.

The first night we were here we met at the pool another “convention widow”. She was traveling with a 7-year-old, a 2-year-old and an American au-pair who had only been with the family for a month. We ran into them again the next day and joined them on an expedition to Little India, where the girls bought matching outfits and the au pair bought beautiful Sari fabric.

The next day the girls wore their matching outfits when we met to go together on a boat tour of the harbour and to the amusement park on Centre Island. My Kid was particularly excited by the old fashioned car on a track she got to drive–not just steering but pressing the accelerator pedal as well–very grown up!) But, at the end of the outing all of the kids melted down, we rushed back to the hotel in separate cabs and we haven’t seen them since.

My kid swam late, we went out to dinner late, and then slept late the next day and I didn’t find the other mothers phone number until around noon. By then we had decided that we would go to the Royal Ontario Museum. (My kid was not impressed. She prefers the American Museum of Natural History in New York and was more impressed with the child-friendly exhibits and activities at the Natural History Museum in London —-tough crowd My Kid—-) At the end of the visit, the souvenir she chose was a plastic box of 12 birthstones in their natural unprocessed state.

We have enjoyed the pool every day, partially outside, the pool is heated. But, I still get cold, and a little annoyed, standing in the water (not swimming laps and getting fit) watching, cheering, and being splashed in the face by every single spectacular jump into the water performed by My Kid.

We did have fun with her learning to stand on my shoulders just like we learned at clown college (although when I went, I was the tiny thing that got to stand on the shoulders of a big sweaty muscly guy…) I think that is the favorite thing to do in the pool. But, I wanted to spend more time in the hot tub than she did, (duh) and she wouldn’t believe me when I said she could swim without me.

Well, I’d better stop now as I know The Husband and My Kid are in the pool together and if I don’t join them we will never have a proper meal or make our way to another tourist destination today. Not that we must, but I do feel somewhat obligated to do so.

My plans to look up members of the Toronto Clown Community, and try to catch a show, have come to naught. I haven’t even done anything regarding the New York Clown Theatre Festival next month. This week isn’t about me. I’m just the mommy.

Exploring the Bozo Mystique…on…Feminine Terms

August 1, 2008 life One comment

The show opened last night. The house was small (due in part to the fact that the “undergroundzero” festival of experimental theatre, was moved to the Manhattan Children’s Theatre from Collective:Unconscious space after a sewage leak forced the theater to close.) Kendall said she was told there would be signs and a live person in front of Collective:Unconscious sending audience around the block and across the street to the new location. But, there wasn’t. There were some advance sales who did not show.

Anyway the show went well. Not genius, but for the first time in front of an audience it was great. Some things, like Ginny’s Cinderella piece which needed an audience volunteer really clicked. It’s always scary to put a clown show in front of a real audience for the first time because contact with the audience is so important. More so than in scripted theatre, the performance changes with every audience. (This thought makes me nervous about the one shot I get to be on stage at the New York Clown Theatre Festival in September.)

At a bar after the show Kendall revealed that she had been contacted by someone from a high profile comedy show, after the New York Times article came out on Tuesday. Such things are taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes it’s just an assistant trolling for material, even when they don’t know what you do. A friend of mine started the Chad Everett fan club at her college to see if the student government would give them money. The student government funded the club and it and it was written up in the papers. She was contacted and invited to be on the David Letterman show. She assumed they knew it was a stunt since they’d found her through the newspaper. She was flown to New York and got as far as the green room before anyone actually read the articles close enough to realize she was in on the joke and her appearance was cancelled.

Kendall was very interested in what her friends had to say after the show, which images stuck with them and what they found funny or fascinating. It’s hard to tell in a rehearsal process. Something is cool, and then you rehearse it and watch it over and over, everyone in the studio has seen it so nobody’s laughing anymore and you don’t remember why it’s in the show. Then you put it in front of an audience and they are surprised and they laugh and you remember, oh yeah that was a good idea.

It’s weird that we have such a big article (half a page!!!) about our company in advance of a short work-in-progress at small festival. But, as Kendall said, you can’t control when somebody from the New York Times wants to write a story and you take the attention when you can get it.

It was pretty obvious to me that a man wrote the headline over the story by April Dembosky. What woman would write; “Exploring the Bozo Mystique, and Defining Funny on Their Own Feminine Terms’.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/nyregion/29clowns.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Adam Gertsacov posted the article on his site, clownlink.com
Speaking of Adam, and Kendall and women in clowning…

Adam and I were in the same workshop at Studio Kaple in Nectiny Czechoslovakia (some years ago, it was actually about 4 months before Czechoslovakia turned into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We had a heated discussion one evening, other people were included, but Adam

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