It's The End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Fine

The end of tour world, that is. And I feel pretty damn fine, indeed. Like over the MOON! I'm going to be honest - a lot of tour was misery. I edited out a lot of the backstabbing/bitchery/sex, drugs, and rock and roll for the blog's sake, but if you want to hear about all that, call me - we'll brunch. There's nothing I won't spill over a long, gossippy omelette session. Or you can just wait for the book to come out - just kidding. Sort of.

To be fair, it wasn't all bad. Some of it was good. In the truck the other day, Sound Boy asked me what my favorite part of tour was. I thought of Myrtle Beach, where we watched the waves crash over the dunes all weekend long. Milwaukee, where I danced alone at the indie rock pop folk electronica concert and all the hipsters thought I was crazy. Detroit, where we first played an audience of over 3000 and the dressing rooms looked like they were on the Titanic. Driving through Wisconsin in the fall. Even Elkhart, Indiana, where in the midst of my personal hell, I found a mini horse farm. But then I realized there was only one answer - anytime I was onstage. And that's what really matters - I was lucky enough to do the thing I love more than anything else five days a week, every week, for three months. And even though I was basically a glorified teamster 80% of the time, that's still pretty fucking cool.

Also, I learned a lot.

10. Breathe from your diaphragm, speak from your WOMB.
9. The middle of the country is not totally unfortunate. Mostly. But not totally.
8. People are more likely to carry things for you if you smile at them.
7. If I can drive a truck, anyone can drive a truck. Although it is better to befriend people who will drive the truck for you than to actually drive the truck yourself. And Pilots are the best truck stop.
6. When at the Cracker Barrel, order either the grilled chicken salad or the chef salad with peppercorn dressing.
5. A gold duvet in a Comfort Inn is a sure sign of a good night's sleep.
4. Strawberry margaritas are cheaper at Applebee's, but better at Red Lobster.
3. A Katy Perry dance party cannot solve every problem, but it sure helps.
2. Trust no one.
1. Shoot for the balconies - even if you miss, you'll end up in the mezzanine.

Now that I've conquered the highways and byways of middle America, what's next for the interstate ingenue, you ask?

Why, just what you'd expect -The Interstate Ingenue Takes Manhattan. Look out, big apple - here I come!

If the Fates Allow...

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

Here I sit, in the lobby of the North Dartmouth, MA Comfort Inn, laptop plugged in next to the faux poinsettia-pinecone floral arrangement. Man, if you asked me in any college december where I'd be post-graduation, I never would have guessed here. I think back on pre-Christmas-weeks past - the happy golden days of yore: Freshman year when one of the girls on my hall (who would become one of my best friends) and I drank cider at the tree-lighting ceremony, the Holiday Cheerleading Semi-Formal where we ate midnight breakfast in cocktail dresses, the Holly Ball where my "gentlemen" of a date tried to feed me an entire tupperware of jello shots, the time my girls and I bought a Santa face cake for a friend's birthday, he million and a half Museum holiday parties my friends suffered through to hear me play Christmas carols on the piano in Victorian costume, the time I had too much eggnog at a cheer friend's holiday party and believed that this football player took care of sick kittens, the time I organized a Suck-and-Blow tournament in my hall...(don't worry, it's a card game.) Good times, all. And then I think of the familiar pattern of Christmases at home, with my family: picking out matching pjs for me and my sister, waiting for what felt like forever to run downstairs and gasp at how many presents were under the tree, eating dad's scrambled eggs (the one item the man can cook), watching the ensuing temper tantrum when my sister finished opening her presents way before I did, complaining about having to put on real clothes and go to grandma's, all that.

A lot of this tour has been really tough. And it didn't end on a good note. But the one thing it has made me realize is how incredibly lucky I am to have my friends and family back home. To my girls, who I know will always be there to cut a bitch for me, I love you so much, and to my parents, for letting me whine whenever, and my sister, for attempting to cheer me up from out of my many foul moods, thank you for everything.
I don't want to go all mushball here, but as I look at the scrappy fake Christmas tree in the lobby, I really feel that this is what the holidays are about - faithful friends who are dear to us gathering near to us once more.

Until then, I'll have to muddle through somehow. And believe me, tomorrow (LAST DAY thank you BABY JESUS) will be quite a muddle.

From then on - hopefully - all troubles will be out of sight.

The Time Has Come

I am just so done it is not even funny.

Fa La La La La

Mmmhmm and so we keep on truckin'. It has been a week of early mornings, and frayed nerves, and for whatever reason I've chosen impromptu dance party as my coping mechanism.

Monday in Baltimore (at a very pretty opera house) for whatever reason we had a 7:30 load-in (as opposed to our usual 8:00) and we were ready way, way early. Like insane early. I took an hour-long nap (an hour, people) on the merlot-colored brocade couch. I went out for coffee at a coffee/sushi/pastry/breakfast sausage emporium. (It was called XS. And decorated like a techno-nightclub in an eastern european country.) I did a crossword puzzle (just a Monday, but still.) I threw a Miley Cyrus solo dance party (don't worry, I had my own dressing room) that Frog heard the leaping about from the hallway. I then put on my knickers and colonial man shirt for the Katy Perry portion of the dance party, which made me feel like I should be singing "I Protested the Stamp Act and I Liked It"(it felt so wrong, it felt so right...)

Then, SM and I drove the truck (you guessed it - he drove all 7 hours, I'm an asshole, we know it) and after a bit of Christmas music, we had the most epic singalong of perhaps all time. The entire soundtrack of Legally Blonde: The Musical followed by all of Mamma Mia! And this was no faint humming along, people - no, this was like full-on belting rocking it out. There were hand motions (for me, anyway, as SM was driving, obvi.) Is it sort of frightening that we both know every single lyric to every single song in both of those shows? Yes. Yes it is.
It's times that like that that I almost wish the other truckers could see/hear into our truck. Because I have a feeling we were the only truck belting out "Chiquitita."

Tuesday, we were in Bridgeport, CT, which is only about 10 minutes from my house, and is, unfortunately, hands down the shittiest part of Fairfield County. Like people get knifed heinous. We went on a walk in search of beverages (I am a diet soda addict. Leave me alone) and Frog made us leave every single placed we stopped due to "weird smells." It took us 4 tries to find something with a halfway decent smell, and the whole time I kept thinking how bad it would be to write the letter: "Dear Office - Frog, Ichabod and I will not be performing today, because we got stabbed. Sorry I had to write this note in my own blood. Kisses, Stephanie."
But I made it back to my (slightly creepy) solo dressing room in time for a Hot N Cold dance party!! Katy Perry, you soothe my soul.
The load-in/out was also really bad, as we had the most ancient, feeble crew ever, and then the most FEEBLE oldie was talking shit to me and Other Actress!

Feeble Oldie: Look at you girls, carrying that big thing. You're gonna get muscles.
Other Actress: Yup, we're pretty strong.
Feeble Oldie: Muscles ain't attractive on a woman.

How dare ye, sir! HOW DARE YE. Anyhoo, we escaped Bridgeport with our internal organs intact, and drove back to Boston, for the final Showing for THE PRODUCER (dunn dunn dunn.)

Unfortunately I slumbered too much, and neither my alarm nor Other Actress's went off, and so on today, of all days, the PRODUCER day, we totally slept too late and were awoken at 7 (vancall time!) by the SM (politely) wondering where the hell we were. We made it downstairs by 7:05 (sort of a miracle) and (an even bigger miracle) made it to the Berklee College of Music (our venue) at 7:20. Because if we had been there at 7:31, SM would have disemboweled us. Like I cannot even describe to you the world of hurt we would have been in.

Ah, Berklee...it's a special place. Did you know that the 70s are alive and well? Our crew was like the friggin chorus of Hair. Questionable fashion choices aside, they were very nice, but the real problem was that the space is so tiny, it was nigh impossible to fit everything in, let alone negotiate it down the ramp and around two corners. Oh, and did I mention it was sleeting? Ah, wintry mix: rain, snow, sleet, and hail all at once. That special meteorological cocktail of doom known only to New England.

The show, I must say, I think actually went pretty damn well. By far the worst part of it was the first scene change, because it was like a death trap back there. Frog's trying to put the bed in a teeny tiny corner while I am trying to extricate the fence from that teeny tiny corner and we're both stuck in a curtain and I kicked a light, and had to waddle/sidestep with the bench around the curtains of doom. NIGHTMARE. It was also freakishly dark, and I couldn't find my way back after my Sleepy Hollow intro and kept tripping on my cloak/the half-platform/same evil light/curtain.

Aside from that, it went pretty well. And even that change must not have been TOO bad, because nobody mentioned it.

And then, the unbelievable happened.

The Producer came...BACKSTAGE. Like to TALK to US. There I was, in my saloon girl outfit and smudgy makeup, arms full of mirrors, and there she is, in a smart blue suit, smiling and bopping down the hall. I would have been lessed surprised if Jesus Christ, Oprah and Brangelina came back to say hey. But she just came to personally thank all of us, (people - the woman has never directly addressed me. EVER.) and was just so sweet and wonderful it really made my day.

Also - I got no notes. Nada. Actually, lie - less blush. (What can I say? Once i start making things pink, it's hard to stop.) I still can't believe this. Maybe she lost all her notes somehow? I don't know. I was just put through the wringer SO BADLY in rehearsal for my lack of elegence/short arms/dancing clumsiness etc., I can't believe it.

More importantly, I decided not to come back for the Spring. It was offered to me as a possibility, and although I have learned so much and on the whole, on the whole it's been a good experience, and I'm glad I came, I just cannot do it again. For my sanity, I need to get off the big white van. While I'm doing the show, it's a great job. The best job in the world. But on tour, the job becomes your life. I miss my life. I miss being a person who also, oh, I don't know, has brunch with her girlfriends, and takes yoga, and starts too many sewing projects she'll never finish, and wears high heels to the grocery store, and butchers showtunes on the piano, and goes to Anthropologie "just to look," and bakes muffins for her family. I need to be her.

But it ended very nicely, with me thanking them for everything, and with the Artistic Director telling me how they were proud of me, and very pleased with my performance.

Praise? From the Company? A Christmas miracle.

Red, White and Blonde

"You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are? Anchor chains, plain motors, and train whistles."
~ George Bailey, It's a Wonderful Life

That was exactly what I was thinking as I stood, poised to go, in Baltimore's Penn Station. It's a beautiful, big old station, with a giant Christmas tree in the middle, Frank Sinatra crooning carols in the background. I still think there's something sort of romantic and exciting about train travel. Or maybe it's just that escaping from tour is always exciting.

I practically leapt onto the Amtrak, and a mere 45 minutes later, I was in Union Station, greeted by a giant tree decorated with American flags. Red, White and Blonde: the interstate ingenue does DC!

I metro-ed to Dupont Circle, to make sure I got in a trip to my favorite bookstore, and obvi to check out the gay holiday cards at Lambda Rising (I JUST missed the Gay Men's Chorus Baby It's Gay Outside holiday show, there are no words for how upset I am). I was so happy surrounded by all the cheery, attractive gay couples in expensive sweaters: it truly felt like home for the holidays. I walked from Dupont to the mall, saw the White House decorated with Christmas garlands, and the National Christmas Tree!

In 1923, Grace Coolidge wanted to decorate a national tree, so they got one from the President's home state of Vermont - yes, the first national christmas tree was donated by none other than MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE! I was so excited. Like embarassingly excited. Like one voicemail away from being an official middlebury alumni stalker excited.

In addition to the big tree, each state (and rando territory like Samoa) does a little tree. For the first time, it hit me just how many states I've been to, and I started to get a little mushy. There was Connecticut, with its slightly stodgy Harriet Beecher quotes. Michigan, with perfectly quilted mini-mittens. Wisconsin, with sequin popsicle sticks. Indiana, with a hot mess that I think was supposed to be calico log cabins. I have seen so much of this country, and although all of it so different, I feel like I understand it better. More than ever I feel like I know what it means to be an American, and standing in all those Christmas trees, surrounded by the arts and crafts glue-stained blood, sweat and tears of a hundred elementary school art classes, at the dawn of a new era in American politics, and I felt...hope. Pure, simple, hope. From Maine to Michigan, we're all just people stuck with shitty popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue, trying to make something better, you know? And I feel like it will be better. It was a little christmas miracle.

Before I started crying on the tree of American Samoa, I headed over to the Lincoln exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, then Museum of American history, which just just JUST reopened in November, so I spent nearly three hours geeking out. I then met up with a friend from highschool who lives in Dupont, and works distributing pediatric AIDS care/preventative medicine to Africa (yeah, it's sort of amazing, she's sort of amazing, the clusterfuck that is the current administration's policy towards AIDS prevention/contraception is amazing in the bad way), and we had a girly sleepover/long, gossipy 2 martini dinner at a little Italian place.

The next morning, I saw the Christmas trian at the National Botanical Gardens/Conservatory, gave the Museum of the American Indian a second chance (I really think it could be much better done), and spent a fifth of my paycheck on shoes. I know, I know, I'm bad - but they were blue faux-suede! And the brand was "Poetic Licencse of London!" And they had Leopard-pint heels!" And as the salesguy shook his dreads and told me, "it is all about the heels, girl!" He said, "put em in box, stick em under your tree, and say 'Merry Christmas to me, you fabulous little thing you!' You deserve it!" He's right. I do. Cha-ching.

On the way to the metro, I strolled through the Dupont farmer's market, and ran into a friend from school, of all things. Long story short, I got kicked out of a farmer's market for being too loud. I think that's pretty special. But really, what do you expect when two theatre majors unpexpectedly run into eachother in the streets and start catching up from their diaphragms?

All too soon, I was back on the Amtrak, then back in Baltimore. I will say this for Towson, MD: it obviously has a sense of style, as people love my clothes here. The girl at the Bel-Loc diner wanted to know where I got my pink coat (J.Crew Outlet in Lancaster, PA, bitches!) One of the front desk girls wanted to know where I got my alpine-y jumper (Charlotte Russe in the Asheveville NC Mall, hos!) As she said, "I like me that hookup. I need to get somethin for New Year's, and I like that hookup." I like my hookup too.

I leave this weekend four books and two leopard-print high heels richer.
Land of the free and home of the brave, baby.

Shanghaied Snow Day

You know that magical moment when you were little, when you hoped and prayed and dreamed for a Snow Day, when you wore lucky snow pajamas to bed, or put a wooden spoon under your pillow (my mom swears it works), and then you woke up to a magical winter wonderland and the two most delightful words in a fourth grader's lexicon: SNOW DAY? Well, guess what: if you pick the right career you can keep that magic alive! Yes, become an actor and you never have to grow up. Here's yet another reason why. When the Worcester Mass schoolboard cancels school, the kiddies just can't make it out to the nation's premier educational children's theatre. Darn. So as I was brushing my teeth and I heard a gentle knock at my door at 7 am, it was SM, who was prancing down the halls with a beatific smile on his face, and then he sang out "SNOW DAY!" Immediately, Frog and LightingGirl and SM and I started dancing around yelling SNOW DAY SNOW DAY

Three hours later, Brom and Other actress driving/naving the van hit the road with Soundboy in the front, me and Frog in the middle, and LightingGirl in the back. We were passing a delightful time of it, Frog was reading my tarot cards and I was reading bad Christmas-themed romance novels (A Wallflower Christmas? Snowy Night With a Stranger? You're not familiar? No?), and had just taken our first stop at a Sunoco/Dunkin Donuts (those egg white flatbreads are surprisingly delicious!) when we recieved an emergency call - the truck had gotten pulled over and it didn't have paperwork. We sped to the rescue of SM and Ichabod, but it turned out we didn't even give them the right paperwork, because this tour is concrete proof that Murphy's Law is incontrovertible fact, and those poor guys were stuck there for an hour. Rough.

Ah, rough was only just beginning. We were driving through New York, and Brom and Other Actress really wanted to stop so Brom could get a new key and SoundBoy could get money from someone and Other Actress could talk to her friend about getting an apartment. LightingGirl, Frog and I were off towards a street with restaurants.

We flirted with the idea of going to Sissy McGinty's to drown our sorrows in a pint,but decided to go for Thai instead. As it was like 3:40, we were the only people in there, and had a truly phenomenal feast. So much peanut sauce...the three of us had a really nice time together. It was so fun, and relaxing.

Mega-unfortunately, the route Garmin took us out of the city drove us through...the middle of Times Square. In rush hour. In a fifteen passenger white van.

I thought we were going to die many, many times. Eventually I just smushed a pillow next to Frog, totally hogged the seat and lay down, closed my eyes, as I felt it was better not to know. I would actually prefer not to face my own mortality until absolutely necessary. I listened to the faint hums of Frog's Christmas playlist, and went to different Happy Places in my head. Like Pemberly in the BBC Pride and Prejudice. And Epcot Paris. And the Wonderland of Ice. Basically, anywhere that wasn't that motherfucking van.

I spent the rest of the drive falling in and out of sleep. I need to stop reading bad Regency romances before I go to sleep, because I keep having weird dreams in which all I see is brocade.
Anyway, we got in to the Towson Maryland Comfort Inn at just about 10.

God dammit. I need to stop drinking 2 liter bottles of orange soda in bed. I always wake up orange and sticky.

Back to the East Coast

Crew Guy: How's the show going?
SM: Well, we've got some loud kids...
Crew Guy: It's New York.

True dat, my friends. We've been rerouted, taking over Encore 3's route for the week, which took us to Long Island on a waaay too early morning the night after the Truck Debacle. We were at Queensborough Community College, which was a fine space, and an easy enough load-in, and the Crew Guys had accents thick enough to cut through lox, which was enjoyable. And yet, even a trip to the College bookstore with Ichabod, Frog and Soundboy to buy The Tales of Beedle the Bard and not one, not two, not three, but FOUR wild cherry diet pepsis wasn't enough to fully wake me up.

The audience, however, was far from dead. SM decided to bust out the "loud and rowdy" emergency speech for the first time, which I guess was good, but I was sad it cut down on the fun comments, such as when a couple girls yelled "Hey hey hey!" when the TellTale Narrator (aka Brom) took off his jacket.

Man, we just cannot catch a break this week. For whatever reason, the sound was totally messed up. Poor SoundBoy - it wasn't his fault (I don't think), but he must have been miserable. He's sick anyway, and spent all of the Truck Debacle night when were stuck in the van asleep on a pillow in my lap. It was comfortin, in a weird way- like having a very large cat who smells like cigarettes and 20 year old boy. Anyway, the sound came out verrrry verrry quietly - like so quietly we could barely hear it onstage, let alone in the house. This resulted in SoundBoy trying to do some of the cues himself, like making clicking noises with his tongue for the hoofbeat sound cue. It also resulted in one of my favorited improv-ed moments. Frog, doing his Schoolboy dance as Katrina's Rustic Admirer, felt like he needed to fill the silence, shimmied over, shouted "Ya like that?", plopped down on the bench, and promptly hit me in the boobs with the bouquet. Surprised, I immediately looked at my boobs, then looked out at the audience in horrified giggleshock, and we all had a moment of boob giggles together. It really wasn't that saucy, except that the number one rule of children's theatre is NO BOOBS. You cannot acknowledge boobs. You cannot see a hint of boobs. You cannot even see shoulders, as they are too close to boobs. That's why all my costumes have giant bows over the boobs. If anyone accidentally touches or references them, it's not about the boobs, it's about the bows. (Except for my Necklace ballgown, which has a silver lace cleavage blocker.)

Today we were in Springfield. I have now officially completed the entire Small Squad Co-Ed Competitive College Cheer Circuit - for the second time. We were in the Symphony Hall (not the Basketball Hall of Fame this time) which was a nice space. It was sort of Federal-architecture style, and there were Christmas garlands up, but everyone is just kind of testy and grumpy and sick of eachother and freaking EXHAUSTED so it's hard to enjoy anything. The show was good, and it was a pretty easy day.

Now, Repercussion Number A Million from the Truck Debacle is that Brom and Other Actress are now no longer the truck. Keeping in mind that The Office lost Frog's trucking license, this means we are now down to only 5 truck drivers. Which SUUUUUCKS. Because I freakin hate driving the truck. Luckily, Ichabod volunteered to sub in for Brom (who was supposed to be my nav) AND on top of that, even offered to drive. Don't let the curmudgeonly exterior fool you - it's all a front. He's the best.

After a minor truck-wouldn't-turn-on panic, we made it to Worcester. There's not much to do here. Not that we have the energy to do much. Most of us took a field trip to Target, where I discovered, unfortunatley, that not even snowflake bras and hot cocoa undies can warm my heart.

Not on a rainy day in Worcester, any way.

From Capitol to Catastrophe

OMG.

Wait - let me rephrase that. OMFG. OMFG. OMFG.

That's Oh MY FUCKING GOD, btdubs.

I'll get there. And I can promise this post ends with a bang. And a whimper. But for now, we're going to rewind a few days, so visualize that swirly screen thing that happens on sitcoms for flashbacks. Doo doo doo dooo.

Like I said, I finished my Pennsylvania Experience this weekend. Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market in Lancaster PA with my parents. I love farmer's markets. They're basically an excuse to eat cookies and feel like you're doing something quaint and cultural. This one was no exception, and was especially awesome because it was all Amish and shit. I bought the aforementioned three cookie (they were little), an Amish quilted apron with a harvest squash motif, and a Pennsylvania dutch hex sign embroidery kit. Hmm - those are special purchases. I am a special girl.

In the afternoon, we collected Babysister from her dorm and headed off to Hershey, PA. Hershey is sort of weird. The town is kind of bleak, and it didn't help that it was a grey day and cold as fuck. The actual Chocolate Experience itself is pretty much a giant chocolate store. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We sort of wen on a kiss-buying spree. (there were pumpkin spice kisses. PUMPKIN SPICE, people!) More importantly, we went on a magical Disney-style ride complete with singing cow animatrons in which we learned the story of the journey of the cocoa bean. It is the milk that makes Hershey's so special - didja know?

Pennsylvania completed, I headed off for our nation's capitol. Unfortunately, it was pretty heinous. We couldn't find the right loading dock and were 15 minutes late for call time due to lack of directions/people not telling us where to go, then SM and lady in charge got in sort of an ugly fight. There was stuff in the way in the parking lot AND on the stage (hello, baby grand!) and our crew (when they were around - they kept wandering off) had absolutely no idea what the fuck they were doing. At one point they almost made us rehang entirely new lights after telling us we didn't need to because they thought they *might* want to keep them focused for the Holiday Show on Thursday. AUUUGHH. Finally we're at places, waiting in the wings, and we hear...nothing. Silence. I start to wonder if there's some kind of plague that's hit the audience and is slowly spreading. Or if there's a silent monster killing them and on its way back for us. No, just turns out we're missing...400 kids. Yup, FOUR HUNDRED. Who of course come trooping all throughout the first act. To be fair, they did try to be quiet. But still - they're 400 kids. And just when you thought it couldn't get worse, the cops show up backstage. Why? One of the ladies who works at the venue can't find her wallet, and accuses Soundboy of stealing it. Um, quoi? Soundboy has many faults, but kleptomania is not among them. The cops actually try to take him away WHILE HE IS RUNNING OUR SOUNDBOARD DURING THE SHOW. I know. He finished the show, thankfully, and it turned out the lady left her wallet at home. Thanks, crazyface!

I then drove the van all the way from DC to Purchase, NY. That might be the longest drive I've ever done - it's like 5 hrs. God, I'm such a bad driver, it's almost unethical that I took this job. But whatevs, we made it there in one piece. On the drive there was much discussion about how this was the worst day on tour (bad load in plus bad crew plus accusations of thievery plus longass drive), and how this was going to be such a bad week. We were scheduled to go to Boston on Wednesday, where the Powers that Be from the office (producer, artistic director, etc.) were to see the show and give us pages and pages of horrifying notes. I was dreading it like crazy. I knew my arms hadn't gotten any longer, and I am as unelegant as always. But at least there was no way things good worse, we told ourselves.

I'm gonna teach you a word. Hubris: pride which tempts the gods. I learned this playing Cordelia in King Lear at a Cambridge summer program junior year. Lord, what fools we mortals be.

Today was an easy load-in. Sure, we accidentally loaded in to the wrong theatre (Purchase College has 3 theatres. We were supposed to be in B, not A. Whoopsie!) which was actually not that bad, as we were in a nicer theatre, but I did feel really bad for SM who got a beatdown from the office. But the space was nice, the crew was good, we had our own dressing rooms (Katy Perry dance party!) and the audience seemed really into the show. I was looking forward to seeing my friends in Boston (I even stole the hairspray from the makeup box for the occasion) and was bopping around with a Katy Perry song in my head during load out.

We then went to the Hub, the campus eatery, which is delicious, and I was just placing my delicious-looking turkey/pepperjack/honey mustard spinach wrap on the table, when I see SM on the phone, everyone looking worried, and Frog whispers, "they crashed the truck."

Heart. Stopped. Thank God we quickly learned that Brom and Other Actress (who were in the truck) were ok, but they'd driven the truck on the Hutchinson parkway, gone under a bridge they didn't have clearance for, and ripped the top clean off like a tin of sardines. As the cop at the scene of the accident said, "the stone wall always wins."

Oh, the madness. We finished lunch, and after some searching, found them on the side of the road. The truck looked awful - the top was completely off and crinkled away. We waited on the side of the road for awhile, then went to a Mobil rest stop (the Connecticut Welcome Center, in fact) and waited there for a while, then drove to the towing place and waited there for a while. Frog and I went in to find a bathroom, where we bonded with Tracy, the desk girl. The couches were really comfy, and we had a nice chat with her and the cop (who was there for an unrelated reason) about how this happens with trucks about once a month. The office decided to reroute our tour from Boston to Long Island, which is good because it's a shorter drive and we don't have to deal with 1. the scariness of getting notes tomorrow and 2. the fury at the truck situation that would have awaited us, but I was really upset about not being able to see my friends from school. I mean I saw these people like 24/7 for a year, and now I never see them, and I miss them, and who the heck knows when I'll be back in Boston....sigh.

We escaped for a little bit to a diner, then returned and waited some more, finally went to the Ryder truck place, waited there, then had to completely unload our truck and repack it into a new truck, waited to figure out directions to the hotel, then finally, finally got there.

In Conclusion:
6:30 am - Wake Up Call
7:30 am - Load in to theatre
10:30 am - Perform Show
12:30 pm - Load out of theatre
1:30 pm - Truck hits bridge
10:30 pm - Finish towing, waiting at tow yard, driving to Ryder Truck Center, ripping door off old truck, and crossloading into new truck
12:30 am - Arrive at hotel

LONGEST. FUCKING. DAY. EVER.

whimper.

Got Liberty?

The Week In Review aka Roundup of Mistakes I Routinely Make:
Items Broken: 1 shattered coffee carafe
Clothing Items Lost: ALMOST 1 pair of boot covers (returned at last minute by eagle-eyed crew member)
Falls: 1 Running during The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Opted not to stand up after I wiped out, but instead crawl offstage on all fours like an embarassed puppy. Probably was not the best decision.

At this point I've seen so much of Pennsylvania that I'm practically Amish. Or a cheesesteak. The good thing is, it just keeps getting better!

Yeah, Allentown is bleak and a HALF. Ugh at our first theatre, there was a double ramp load-in situation with a drunk crewmember at load-out. In all fairness, the seconde day in Allentown was much better. We played the Symphony Hall/Lyric Theater, which was really pretty, and the dressing room was on the same level as the stage which makes my life a lot easier. Plus it was one of our youngest (and by default, more attractive) crews, which I always enjoy. Yeah, yeah, I know I'm bad, but sue me - I'm 22, blonde, and a little bit shallow. More importantly than quasi-attractive crews (surprising how much cuter they get the longer we're on the road...), Frog is from right around there (like 20 min. away in a town known as East Stroudsburg), and on our second night in the Soviet Gulag of Allentown, he drove us away into the Poconos Mountains. And let me just say, it was BEAUTIFUL! Loves it, totally loves it. Frog took us to the Shawnee Playhouse, where he used to work. As we drove in, we passed a golf course - ah, just like home. Shawnee is a beautiful old inn with a golf course and a theatre nestled in among the mountains - it felt like White Christmas. We got to run around the theatre (fireplaces and timbered ceilings oh my!) and then walk to the cutest general store for delicious sandwich snacktime. It was all so picturesque and holiday spirity and I was just happy. Which is nice - that's not a sensation I enjoy offstage all that often. We then went to this crazy cave that has a cold draft due to some weird underground lake situation. It was cool - badumching! The evening finished off with meeting Frog's dogs and having dinner with his family (fun deliciousness.) It was just a great day.

Next stop on our Pennsylvania whirlwind was Philadelphia - city of brotherly love. Well, actually, we were staying in glamorous Fort Washington, but lucky for me, my 'rents were in town (to transport me to my sister's dance show), so I got to drive into the actual city.

I've never been to Philly. And let me tell you, my little history dork heart was pounding in perfect time with the overture to 1776. We saw the square with all the Continental Congress buildings, and the Liberty Bell, which was cool, although I really didn't get to fully appreciate all the Liberty Bell displays because I had to pee like a mofo and apparently, the right to pee is not inalienable, and all the bathrooms are in one bizarre freestanding bathroom complex which necessitated a dash accross the green. By far the best, though, was the Betsy Ross house. It's such a nice house and they did a great job restoring it and basically, I just live for that shit. History PLUS needlecrafts = excellent. Philly only got better, as I got to have dinner with a friend I've been in school with since 8th grade (yep, that includes highschool AND college.) And he's now teaching, which is funny, as he was a big part of my Social Studies experience too. Ha ha. It was really nice to see him, and to hear all about his school and life in the real world (you know, not alterna-tour-reality.) Although he didn't need to sound QUITE so astonished at the fact that I drive a truck...although really, only people who saw me go through the horrors of driving school really understand just how ludicrous it is that I drive a truck on major roads.

The show in Philly (ok, actually Glenside, which is a suburb) was just fine. The crew was awesome, which always helps. They had funny nicknames, like "Emo" and "Igz." I especially liked the dressing rooms, as they were cozy. Mine and other actress's said "Hospitality" on the door and was decorated with a sunflower theme, including several fake sunflower potted plant arrangements. Charming!

So my parents picked me up after the show and we drove to yet another town in PA, Lancaster, so see my little sister's dance show.

Ok, so I don't really like dance. There's no talking! I can handle a line of tappers. Or sailors doing highkicks. Or chorus girls in sequins. But I really, really don't like modern dance. I went to one modern dane show at school, and there was a giant bowl of pudding, and they all yelled "pudding pudding pudding pudding" and hopped around throwing pudding on themselves. Yeah...once was enough. I also have this weird prejudice against dancers, where I constantly judge/assume they're all shallow/stupid. I think it comes from back in my performance/competitive children's choir days, when we had to share adjoining dressing rooms with a dance troupe at the West Point Christmas Concert, and they were BEYOND obnoxious and moronic and stuck on themselves and mean to us and my two best friends (who were boy sopranos) and I HAAAAAATED them and made fun of them for being stupid behind their backs. And we were like in fourth grade - so I guess that left a mark at an early age.

So suffice it to say, I was a little apprehensive. The first piece, Coat of Arms, did not reassure me. There were like 30 people running around putting coats off and on. Grrreeeat. The second piece was a girl doing a monologue about her heart stopping and hopping around. I always feel vaguely uncomfortable when dancers incorporate some sort of spoken word poetry/attempt to act. I imagine it is much like a dancer would feel watching me try to half-ass waltz/stumble my way through The Necklace. And then, the lights went out, and came up again, and there was my sister, looking absolutely stunning in her black leotard and pink shiny skirt and expertly applied stage makeup! (hmm, I wonder what talented girl did that for her...)

I think the last time I saw my sister dance, she was twirling around dressed like a pumpkin singing "nothing fills my tummy like pumpkin pie!" Boy, has she improved. As in, she is now really good. Like really, really good. And who would have thought it - we struggled through Miss Susan's dance school together, and it didn't look like either of us had a particular aptitude for dance. I spent all my time singing along to "Peppermint Candy Canes Are We" at the top of my lungs until a crew guy said "man, that kid can yell" and I was told to tone it down. Sister spent all of her time looking at the girl next to her to copy the moves, or if she was particularly unhappy, i.e. wearing a bow tied-barber shop quartet looking leotard, folding her arms, glaring, and refusing to do anything.

But there was no trace of that unhappy 4 year old monster tonight. The ballet was absolutely beautiful (it was a recreation of a Dorothy Humphries or something like that, which is apparently kind of a big deal), and I couldn't believe that leaping, long-armed graceful twirler up there was MY SISTER! I was so proud. During the bows, I yelled really loudly - as always, my one contribution to the danse.

Alas, that was not the last piece. The finale was a representation of plate tectontics through dance. A horde of girls in brown bodysuits with aborigine looking white stripes painted on them crawled accross the stage like they were in the trenches or something. They formed a Pangea like clump. There were lots of weird jerky movements. The knelt. They stood. They bopped around. They rolled and crawled. At one point it looked kind of like a rave full of white girl aborigines on coke. I don't know what was going on, man.

Next stop: Amish Country and Hershey Park. I wasn't kidding about seeing all of Pennsylvania...

Well We're Waiting Here in Allentown

As Ichabod wryly noted in the truck yesterday, my burst of optimism faded fast. Yeah, that was like less than 24 hours of positive attitude. And now I'm done.

Yesterday, I woke up in Trenton NJ under a mini cloud of doom - for no real reason, just the same old "ugh here we go again tour never ends!" And really, I should have been happy. I was in much better conditions than my last stay in Trenton, which was at a Howard Johnson's across from the Trenton Arena for the United Cheer Association competition. The hotel was really shitty and we were sleeping four cheerleaders to a room, which is just a lot of hairspray to have in your living space. Although Cher did perform at the Trenton Arena, which was cool. Cher did not perform at the Patriots Theater at the War Memorial of New Jersey, however. I liked it because there was a ballroom with big Tiffany blue curtains behind the stage.

Anyway, before I knew it, everyone had gotten into a big fight about where to go for lunch and when to get on the road and who was going in what vehicle and blaa bllaaaa balaa - business as usual. Although I will say that the area of Trenton we were in was actually quite cute. Trenton has quite a Revolutionary War history, and there were all these nice little old brick buildings (I don't know if they were actually Revolutionary, but they LOOKED like it.) The sandwiches at the cafe came with fortune cookies, and Soundboy gave me his, because he said it was really meant for me. It said: "Others will take notice of your positive attitude." I must be a better actress than this company gives me credit for.

Ichabod and I escaped to the truck, and pretty soon we were whizzing down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, singing along to "Fatbottomed Girls." We pulled into our Quality Inn in Allentown, which resembles a Soviet Gulag and is even more by-the-side-of-the-road-in-the-middle-of-nothing than usual.

But even with me being a whiny beeyotch, I still honestly feel that things are better than they were before break. We went on a group Target run, and I practically danced around the Christmas trees they filled me with such joy! As always I enjoyed watching House with Ichabod and Frog, and stealing their cheese. I didn't even mind driving to the doctor to pick up Soundgirl (she needs all these shots because she took a job on a cruise) because Other Actress, Soundgirl and I took a girly trip to Riteaid to look at sparkly lipgloss gift sets. We didn't buy them. But we looked.

We were in another Scottish Rite Masonic Temple today, and as usual, it was creepy as shit. We're talking paint-peeling dark dark dark subterranean dressing room situation. After wandering around a dark, shadowy corner, I final found the light switch, which illuminated...A ROW OF CREEPY OLD BARBER CHAIRS. It was like the set of a movie!! A HORROR MOVIE. I obvi did NOT put us in the barber room - thankfully there was another. When I went back up to get the boxes, I saw...A CREEPY BUG. How is there a creepy bug??? It was so cold this morning at loadin my snot froze! Shouldn't this harsh Pennsylvania weather have KILLED the CREEPY BUGS?? But no. And then Frog and Other Actress found a mysterious box of wigs (I think they were men's but Frog thinks they were butch lesbian wigs) which was also a little weird.

And now we're back in our Soviet Gulag for the second day in a row, waiting here in Allentown for the van to get back from space run so we can escape to the Poconos. I hope it gets back soon, because it's getting very hard to stay...

This Feels Like High School, But Nothing's New

I don't tend to dwell on my highschool days too much. I think of them as a blur of AP flashcards and kneesocks, and leave 'em back in the recesses of my memory. Yet because I saw a bunch of friends from highschool over Thanksgiving weekend, I've been thinking about it more. My 5 year reunion is coming up this Spring, which is incredibly bizarre. Almost as bizarre as the fact that four of us, getting together, realized we'd forgotten way more people than we'd remembered. After 5 years in a graduating class of 62. More than anything, it helped me remember that all pain is passing.

When people ask me what social life on tour is like, I usually compare it to middle school...with a class of 8...stuck in a van. And yet, suddenly, somehow, it feels more like highschool. Primarily because Thanksgiving break gave me a new lease on life. Like highschool, I now feel like the end is in sight. There's a goal - not graduation, but December 24th. And I can totally, totally get through that. While we were rolling the sound cable box up the ramp, Other Actress said "you just seem so happy." And compared to where I was last week, I am so much happier. I feel like we're all getting along better, or at least everyone I had been upset with is pissing me off a lot less. Granted, it's only Monday. But I seriously feel like I'm back in senior year mindset - body in highschool, head already at college. If you know what I mean.

We were in Dover, Delaware today, and the show was sort of a challenge...due to what I'm going to tactfully refer to as "transit complications" Sound Boy didn't make it back. And our crew didn't show up. That puts us down to 7, and no crew. Did I mention it was a 7:30 load-in, not an 8? Yeaaah. But we all pulled together and everyone just got that shit done. With surprisingly cheery attitudes.

The show was kind of like highschool too - in that the stage was scuffed blond wood, the set didn't fit on it so we were doing an awkward side-scootch ballet the whole time, most of the sound cues were late (no judgements SM did the best he could filling in), the audience was small, and unresponsive. Mmm, just the Bedford Gymnasium/Auditorium of my youth.

Maybe we just needed to get away from eachother. Maybe it's the holiday spirit. But as we sat at the cutest restaurant in downtown Dover, under the pressed tin ceilings and next to the christmas, slurping our giant bowls of soup, I was happier than I've been on tour in a while.

"It Couldn't Have Happened Anywhere But in Little Old New York"

I hope from my silence over the internet airwaves, you, my vast legions of readers (as if) intuited correctly that I did, in fact, escape from the big white van and return to civilization!! For one brief shining moment, I was tour trash no more!

I wore high heels, I curled my hair, I glossed my lips. There was glitter in my eyeliner, tofu in my salad, and a bellini in my hand. It was as if I awoke from a weird dream and suddenly remembered who I was. I got to spend Thanksgiving knee deep in pies with the family, Friday night in the city wining and dining with the most fabulous people in the history of the world (aka Midd alums), Saturday night with friends from highschool, sitting on big comfy couches and gossipping about what had happened to everyone we'd forgotten about, and Sunday eating pancakes with mom and dad and plowing through more than a thousand pages of Twilight books...yeah...sorta embarassing...

Someday soon I will once again be that girl! Once more, I'll belt up my navy Banana Republic trench, leave the boys at the bar and head uptown to see my girls. I have a dream. And that dream is the big shiny apple.

Until then, it's back to the daily grind. Goodbye, Manhattan. Hello, Sleep Inn.

"May His Pernicious Soul Rot Half a Grain a Day!"

Mr. White: If you could have another three wishes, would you have them?
Mrs. Morris: I don't know...I don't know! Better to let it burn!

"It" refers to the magical, wish-granting monkey's paw. "Burn" refers to the stove into which I (Mrs. Morris) am supposed to fling said monkey's paw. Ah, but what then, Mrs. Morris, does one do if there is NO STOVE.

Yep, they forgot to place the stove at the top of the act. I spent the first six minutes of Paw in a cold sweat dead panic. WHAT TO DO?! Not only was I supposed to throw the thing in the fire, my lines not only referred to the "burn", but go on further with "I threw it on the fire!" and "Pitch it on the fire again, like a sensible man!"

Even though deviating from the script is frickin unbreakable commandment number one around here, sometimes a creepy widow's gotta do what a creepy widow's gotta do, and wing it. I took a deep breath, and what came out of my mouth was:

Mrs. Morris: I don't know...I don't know!
(Honestly, this time, I didn't know. Truth in acting, people. This was a 'real' moment. Stanislavski would have been proud.)
Mrs. Morris: Better to let it rot!

"Rot." Genius, eh? And thus I chucked it under the platform, as if I were trying to bury it in the floorboards of the home. I then followed it up with "I won't, I threw it away!" and "pitch it away again, like a sensible man." Hoo-ha!

Man, it is always darkest just before the dawn - and by dawn I mean the sweet, sweet dawn of Thanksgiving break, where I will return to home and hearth and friends and civilization!!!
And by darkest, I mean yet another subterranean dressing room sitch. (This one wasn't too scary, though.) Likewise, it is an uphill battle. And by uphill I mean that the load in-dock was up a 45 degree ramp that necessitated a PULLEY SYSTEM to tote up all of our evil road boxes and platform carts. (Like the subterranean dressing room, it also wasn't as scary as it sounded. The pulleys were surprisingly effecient, and the crew did all the pulleying. I concentrated on prancing about in my new Wonder Woman tee and trying not to slip in the rain.)

Even with the general clusterfuck of today, as always it was sort of a relief to get back to work. Sunday was a long, long day. I hiked up a mountain to a target. I browsed the TJ Maxx homegoods. I spent a couple hours (yes, hours) reading baking books at Books-A-Million, then did the exact same at Barnes & Noble (there was a different selection.) We spent the late afternoon at a coffee shop in downtown Asheville NC, which is actually pretty charming. And full of delicious vegan-y green coffee shops. Never thought I'd see tempeh again in this lifetime...

Here I am now in Hickory, NC - a town synonymous with Freedom. Ah, sweet sweet freedom! Don't get me wrong. The show is great. Socially...tour is wearing on me. Let's just say that the ABC Family Original holiday movies in the Countdown to the 25 Days of Christmas are the only thing that's keeping me together at this point.

And So the Lion Fell in Love with the Lobster...The Red Lobster, That Is

And we are out of Tennessee. Which is too bad, really, because apparently I had some fans there. On Thursday someone wolf-whistled when I came out as Katrina, and then again on Friday when I came out in my Matilda ballgown. If I honestly thought either of them was a dashing young English teacher with a penchant for tweed jackets with elbow patches and D.H. Lawrence, I would have leapt over the first few rows into the audience. But I'm pretty sure they were just obnoxious thirteen year old boys. Actually, I had a fan backstage on Friday too. As per usual, the crew was comprised primarily of spry septuagenarians, including one awesome ponytailed fellow named "Stash"; however, there was also one guy under the age of 30. I call him Flirty McFlirterson, as he was totally chatting up me, Other Actress, and LightingGirl. Boy does not mess around.

My first Matilda costume has giant sleeves. Like girl in Napoleon Dynamite huge. Because I'm wearing the purple paisley day dress over my ballgown, the sleeve situation is just ginormous. So I'm sitting backstage on one of the road boxes in my paisley dress, waiting for Monkey's Paw to finish as the zombie son returns home.

Flirty: So...can I feel 'em?
Me: Um...what now?
Flirty: Come on, let me give 'em a squeeze.
Me: Excuse me??
Flirty leans over and starts squeezing my sleeves.
Flirty: Ohhhh yeah.
Me: Heh heh (awkward laugh)
Flirty: You see this, Stash?
Stash: I got me a paisley shirt. Almost 40 years old. The 70s. You know.

Yeeeah fun times. Me and my sleeves got the hell out of Tennessee and are in Asheville, NC for the weekend. As we do on many a friday evening, we headed for the local movie theatre. And hold on tight, spider monkey: we went to see Twilight. It was, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining movies I've seen all year. In the most unintentionally hilarious way. A good 60% of the movie is INTENSE EYE SHOT CLOSEUPS. Very dramatic. The other 40% is genius dialogue.

Edward: And so the lion fell in love with the lamb...
Bella: What a stupid lamb...
Edward: What a masochistic lion...

Did you know that vampires glitter? Sparkly!

Today was actually a pretty good day. One of the top tour Saturdays, I'd say. I went for a jog this morning which was ummm not as much fun as I'd hoped. North Carolina is hilly as shit. UGH. And COLD. There was snow! Haw Creek was entirely frozen over. But the minimart I stopped in on the way back to the Best Western had the best snapple selection I've seen since we left Boston, which brought me great joy.

The van was gone, for further repairs, but nothing stands between me and my mall. Especially when there are christmas decorations involved. A bunch of us headed down the highway to the Asheville Mall, where a festival of cardigan and sweaterdress shopping and mani-pedis at the Golden Nail ensued. Red sparkly toenails! Sparkly as a vampire in the sun! Good times. We finished off the day with dinner at Red Lobster. It was a freaking battle royale for a parking space - there were literally 8 cars circling like vultures in a packed lot. And yet, somehow, because the man is a genius, Ichabod managed to snag one AND maneuver our giant dumb white van into a teeny tiny spot. Seriously - medals should be awarded and statues should be erected. Yes, the new wood-grilled favorites are beyond delicious, and the conversation and the company was lovely, but that wasn't the best part. After I explained to our waiter about my freakish diet coke consumption, not only did he manage to outpace me (no mean feat), but he brought me a little to-go cup filled with diet coke with my check.

I fell a little bit in love.

"Dancing, as Fred Astaire Said, Is Next to Ditch Digging"

Knoxville, Tennessee - forget Connecticut, their motto should be "we're full of surprises!" Delightful surprises, that is. Firstly, last night, Ichabod, Frog, Other Actress, Brom and I had the most delicious mexican dinner across the street from our Sleep Inn, at El Chico's. Unfortunately we were NOT there on 2.99 Ladies' Margarita Night, but neither were there on 99 cent Kids' Night, so I think that evens out. After an endless parade of Cracker Barrels and Wendy's and Bob Evans', I really cannot emphasize enough just how wonderful that Chicken Monterrey was (mmm cheese and mushrooms and onions and peppers and pico de gallo and oh my my.) Plus our waitress had the type of flattened blonde hair and heavy black eyeliner that always puts me in the comforting mood of being at a cheer competition. Speaking of, I forced LightingGirl to watch a cheer competition on ESPN in the Spartangburg SC Best Western Gym the other day, and these minis did a routine to a Christina Aguilera "Aint No Other Man"/Jonas Brother "Burnin' Up" remix which was AWESOME.

Despite the delights of El Chico's, I was sort of grumpy when I woke up, because I'd been up way too late blowing my nose every fifteen minutes (damn you cold, damn you mucus swapping germy child audiences, damn you november). Plus the cold weather, the constant makeup application and removal, and my runny nose, have formed an unholy trinity of bad flaky skin. I thusly have
not one, not two, but three different moisturizers in my purse at any one time. I will beat you, winter skin. But anyway that made me grumpy too. Staying up till 1:30 blowing your nose isn't that big a deal, unless you have to get up for work at 6:30. Oh wait. I do.

And yet, the minute we entered the doors of the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum, all grumpiness was instantly dispelled. The place was covered floor to ceiling with wonderful old memorabilia from the Auditorium's long, illustrius career. We're talking old movie posters, signed star photographs, a suit of armor, an actual piano bolted to the wall with sheet music around it, toe shoes from the Knoxville Ballet, vintage soda can displays, everything. My drama dork/history nerd/classic film buff heart skipped a beat. I ran straight into a signed photo of Bernadette Peters - Bernadette Peters! Around the corner was Dolly Parton - Dolly Parton! Ah, Dolly...so close, and yet so far. I've been chasing her every step of the way this tour, from the Dixie Stampede in Myrtle Beach to Pigeon Forge, the home of Dollywood, and today to a stage where she's performed, and I do feel closer to her, but I fear I will never be actually close to her. Like hugging distance.

The wonders didn't stop. There was an ice rink around the corner - yeah, a giant hockey rink. Then I looked down at the floor, and it was painted in a yellow brick road!!! SoundBoy turned to me, offered his arm, said "Shall we?", and we skipped down the yellow brick road, like a blond Dorothy and Scarecrow. (This did much to redeem SoundBoy, following various coffee-mug-urination and losing-dvd incidents.) We followed the yellow brick road to the stage (closer and more beautiful than ever before!) and then up the stage to the dressing rooms. A handful of them were named after old movie stars. I put myself in the Ann Miller room, partially because it had a couch, but mostly because I love Ann Miller, particularly in On the Town. I am so totally her, dancing around in that museum. Ask me to sing "Prehistoric Man" sometime. I know all the words. It's only the greatest cobination of museum studies and musical theatre in the history of western civilization. Turns out, it wasn't just named after her...she was there. THERE. On a tour of Sugar Babies with Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rooney!! I have shared a stage with Ann Miller. ANN MILLER! I did a time step in her honor on stage when I thought no one was looking.

The less delightful surprise was that our van is being weird, so we spent like 2 hours at the Firestone getting the tires rotated. We passed the time at a delightful pizza place decorated with black and white new york photos, and at a Walgreen's where I bought festive christmas pj shorts and knee socks. (So much holiday joy it's a little hard to handle.) But eventually we were on the road, and of course sooner rather than later...

Frog: I need to pee!
Stage Manager: Can't pee at the scenic outlook. Well we can.
Frog: Stephanie can't.
SM: She can squat.
Me: I don't pee outside.
Frog: She's like "I do not squat. I am not an Indian, thank you. I'm not a savage."
Ichabod: "I'm not from New Jersey."

Whatever, boys, laugh it up.

Huntsville to Hotlanta and Onwards

'Bama is behind us, as Ichabod and I drove the truck from Alabama through Tennessee to Georgia. Largely the drive was through NOTHING, which made finding lunch difficult. We pulled off literally on the Alabama/Tennessee border, by the Fireworks Wholesaler and Big Daddy's Outdoors (that would be guns, bait, ammo, all the essentials.) We pulled up to Stone's Dairy Bar, which had not changed one iota since Margie Stone opened it in 1972. Faded wood paneling, front porch, framed family photos on the wall, the world's oldest cash register. Margie Stone herself was our waitress, and we were the only people in the place who weren't Stones. For serious. Great grandchildren kept trooping in and out. I ordered the taco salad, which featured lettuce, tomatos, the famous homemade chili and much to my suprise...fritos. Although in defense of their inclusion, they were chili cheese fritos. So I guess that makes them very taco salad-y. Pretty much, it was awesome.

My exposure to Atlanta consists of Gone With the Wind, the Buckhead Betty episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen, and Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta (in my humble bravo-loving opinion, by far the best of the franchise. Orange County has nothin' on Hotlanta.) My time in Peachtree Central was not as exciting as any of these shows would have led me to believe, but enjoyable none the less. We spent the evening at the Georgia State diner watching Dancing With the Stars.

The Atlanta theatre was our biggest - 5000 seats. It didn't feel as big as I'd thought - it's funny how fast you adjust to big theatres. 5000 feels normal now, the 2000 seaters feel a little small...what? who am I?

This has been a pretty easy week. Loading docks in all the theatres, and crews who really know their stuff. Also the southern crews are (in general) much more likely to go "here now, ma'am, don't hurt yourself I'll carry that fer ya" and I know, I KNOW, I should be all strong woman and say "no, I will heft that proscenium arch alone! HEAR ME ROAR!" but quite frankly I don't like carrying heavy things and if some stagehand wants to be chivalrous, I say chival away.

This week we shared the stage with such luminaries as Bear in the Big Blue House Live!, Care Bears Live!, Dragon Tales Live!, and four fucking thousand teenage beauty queens - every Miss South Carolina/Carolina Teen ever. Care bears and pageant girls...magical.

Sweet Home Alabama

As Reese Witherspoon's character says in Sweet Home Alabama, "people need a passport to come down here." Greetings from a different blonde "hoity-toity yankee bitch" stuck in 'Bama.

All Saturday, Ichabod and I drove the truck from Virginia to Alabama. (correction: Ichabod drove the truck. I read InTouch Weekly and drank copious amounts of diet soda.) We stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home of Dollywood! While we were unfortunately unable to visit Dollywood, I like to think that eating at the Pigeon Forge Cracker Barrel actually brought me closer to Dolly, because I bet Dolly loves her some Cracker Barrel.

And guess what was on USA when we finally got our hotel in Huntsville, AL: SWEET HOME ALABAMA!!! Yes, it's true. I was a little too excited. I was pretty sure it was a sign that both a hot scruffy southern guy in plaid and a hot New York guy in a suit were going to fall in love with me over the weekend. So I put on extra makeup before we headed to the Chili's. But that wasn't all I put on - the plan had been for bowling, and it was time to bust out the bowling outfit. Last weekend, Ichabod, Frog and I formed a bowling league: Downtown Ichabod and the Sassy Van Tassies (frog plays my father, Balthus Van Tassel, in Sleepy Hollow, and I am obvi Katrina Van Tassel, hence the Sassy Van Tassies). Not only did we christen ourselves thus, we bought bowling shirts at a thrift store next to the laundromat. Well, the boys bought black/blue and black/red bowling shirts, and I bought an insane red and blue patriotic bowling suit of FURY. I don't know what cracked out 8 year old boy bought this, but god bless his mother for donating it to that thrift store. (Yes, I buy clothes from the boys' 8-10 section. Shut up.)

Dinner at Chili's with the whole gang was delicious, and mostly uneventful, save for the fact that Other Actress kept poking me to go hit on the blue-eyed/ken-doll-haired bartender who happened to be from Connecticut, and for the fact that I may or may not have consumed 9 diet cokes. Constant free refills are a dangerous things, my friends. I was sort of cracked out by the time we left for the bowling alley. Seriously, 9 diet cokes are better than booze. Or I imagine speed would be. It was AWESOME! I was ready to BOWL!

DI and the SVTs were joined by our illustrious SM. Saturday nights are the ONLY time to bowl because it is rock n'bowl, with all the crazy glow in the dark blacklights and the eye of the tiger soundtrack and Christina Aguilera music videos. I like to view bowling as a dance party with giant diet cokes, and every so often someone makes me throw a ball down a lane, which I'm not that into. The first two games I bowled true to form, spectactularly awful - gutterballs galore! In the third I actually bowled an 86, which I think is a personal best. Of course, I was still nowhere near the boys' scores. All three of those stinkers are actually pretty good. We're talking turkeys all over the place.

Today was a nice, lazy sunday. After a fiesta omelet at the Waffle House, we got our van cleaning duties out of the way, leaving us free to hit the mall alllllll afternoon. I know everyone likes to complain about how it's not even thanksgiving it's too early for christmas bla bla bla but I say fuck that, bring it ON! I love christmas! I mean, I bought a Jessica Simpson REJOYCE christmas cd at a truckstop. I am so ready. My favorite part of the mall excursion today was not trying on cocktail dresses at Charlotte Russe, nor the sweet 2-for-10 belts I scored, but enjoying the holiday season in the Dillard's displays and the christmas trees. I also got a french manicure at the mall, and although I know it will chip in like a hot second unloading the truck, it makes me feel slightly more human. Toss in the fact that I got to go to the 5.75 movie matinee, and it was a pretty good weekend.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm more 'Bama than I thought.

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny

Like a post-Nipplegate Justin Timberlake after his appearance on the Ellen Degeneres show dressed like a dancing gingerbread man, I have redeemed myself. Like JT, I have not only brought sexy back, I have recovered from my wardrobe malfunction debacle. On the long drive from Fayetteville NC to Richmond VA, I sewed a new zipper into my saloon girl outfit. With reinforced thread. By hand. And it took for-freaking-EVER. Like more than 2 hours for freaking ever. But I did it! And more importantly, my spirits were greatly cheered by a driver-navigator Cher singalong starring Ichabod and myself. Who knew anyone else knew all the words to “Half-Breed”? Not that I do. Obvi.

Richmond should have been a dark day. There was a 7:30 am load-in with a freight elevator, for christ’s sake. But when the morning dawned and the hotel lady asked what time I was performing in the Disney on ice show (moi? A figure skater?! My secret dream, ever since the days when I collected Nancy Kerrigan trading cards! I knew things were going to go well.

I didn’t run away to join Disney on ice, but went to our load-in, which was so ridonkadonk fast that Brom, Other Actress and I went out for breakfast. We found the coolest little coffee shop full of breakfast burritos and tofu scrambles and vegan banana muffins and all the magical types of things I’d been craving, all in a cute, comfy, stuffed-chair shop. It was like I was home again.

I packed up my extra tofu and went back to the theater, where we luxuriated in our GIANT dressing room on our HUGE plushy comfy couches until we did the show, in a BEAUTIFUL old theater (the Landmark) with all these cool sort of asain-y murals, the crowd was super into it, and I was having the time of my life. You know those moments when you’re just blissfully, almost inexplicably happy? Like snowball fight and a mug of hot chocolate happy? The cute boy sits next to you in history class happy? This was one of them. When I made my BAM entrance into the ball during The Necklace and stood there glittering in my ballgown and faux-diamond necklace,, under the spotlights with arms raised, all I could think was that I somehow wanted to freeze the moment and let it go on forever.

Of course, time doesn't freeze, the show must go on, life goes on, and you can't stay in Richmond forever. Eventually you trek on down to Wytheville, Virginia, and somehow end up in Jesus' diner...

Sometimes the south is scary.

Apocalypse Pants

I lost my pants. And not in the fun, I-went-to-a-tent-full-of-foam-party-and-somehow-came-back-without-my-pants way. (That didn't happen to me, p.s. You know who you are, pantsless party queen, and you rock my socks.) No, I didn't even lose my own pants. I lost my stupid schoolboy pants. My green velvet, gold button knickers that I wear for all of 15 seconds at the beginning of Sleepy Hollow as one of the schoolboys in Ichabod Crane's classroom. I tore apart the Raleigh Music Hall looking for them. Nada. I upended both wardrobes. NOTHING. Naturally, I was on the verge of panic attack, not so much at the prospect of being a pantsless schoolboy, but more because I HATE having people disappointed in me/failing at anything (it's all rooted in my pathological need to have everyone like me.) So basically, that sucked. I was tres, tres upset. Thankfully, Other Actress, Brom, Frog and I were able to escape to the Fayetteville State University Dining Hall, and once I was somewhat sedated by fountain diet coke, I felt much better. Like the minute it hit my bloodstream. Two glasses in, I was all "Life's too short to worry about pants!" and ready to rock and roll. I managed to Macgyver a pair of knickers out of the emergency black pants and suspenders we have in the wardrobe in case Brom can't play the Tell-tale Heart narrator and Ichabod has to go on. Roll em' up, stick in two safety pins, and the children were saved from having to see my pale yellow and white polka dot lacy undies.

Little did I know my wardrobe malfunctions were only just beginning. The show was going along swimmingly, until we hit the last show, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and somehow, the little thing that pulls up the zipper (you know, the zippy part) got off the track of my saloon girl dress and went flying out into the ether. MASSIVE PANIC ENSUED. There was no way to close my dress. I was half naked from the back. I missed the entire intro hopping around and panicking, then ribbed a velcro sash off of one of Other Actress's discarded costumes to at least hold part of it together, and skittled on to stage sideways like a crab keeping my back away from the audience. Lighting girl had managed to get a clip backstage to Ichabod, who's on my side of the proscenium before we come on as Saloon Girl and stranger. Ichabod clipped the top but it was still a bad situation; he left again and returned with a stapler but was unable to staple me into my costume as it comprises four fucking thousand layers of petticoats and faux corset material. HORRIBLE. In the midst of all this panicking I kept tripping and kicking things and prop brandy glasses were flying everywhere. I somehow made it through the end of the show sidehopping about like a frog/crab but it was...not pretty.

UGH. Children of Fayetteville, North Carolina, I officially apologize. That was a hot mess.

Chill it Out Take it Slow, Then You Rock Out the Show

You know, it's funny - I spend all week looking forward to the weekend, but it's usually during the weekends where I find my darkest days, and the minute I get to work and back up on stage (as Ichabod astutely noted, the minute I have that Katrina hankie in my hot little hands) the world is instantly a brighter, better place. Huh - I guess that means you have the right job when you actually prefer your job to your time off. And yet, that Pavlov's dog response still goes off in my head - "Zing! Friday!" even though Fridays usually just signal the start of 48 hours of milling around Cracker Barrels and K-Marts. Although this weekend I did drag the entire gang on a forced march to the mall - how was I supposed to know it was 3 miles away? Whoopsie...meh, exercise is good for 'em.

Monday's show went fairly well, except I somehow lost my shoe during Sleepy Hollow. This wouldn't be odd, except for the fact that they are mary-jane style tan character shoes, and thusly, have an ankle strap. I made an extra ambitious hop on "oooo STOP pawing me like a bear!" and somehow hopped out of my shoe, yet the strap remained buckled around my ankle, so I was forced to sort of prance around and try to kick the shoe back into place, which obviously didn't work. I tried to whisper to my fellow actors for aid but there was nothing they could do; at one point I swung my leg up on the bench because I was going to try to do a flirty "I'm gonna bend over and fix my shoe and shake my tush" thing and pretend it was part of the blocking, but the show just kept going, so I did all of Sleepy Hollow balanced on one foot wearing a tan mary-jane character shoe like an ankle bracelet. Le sigh. I was obviously terrible in every other show because all I could think about was my stupid shoe.

We then headed to Danville, VA - at first I thought, lame, but it turns out, Danville, "gateway to the south," was the last capital of the Confederacy! Jefferson Davis learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox in a house on Millionaire's Row in Danville! I was embarrassingly excited, obvi.

Unfortunately, my shoe was not all I lost that day, for on my evening jog I lost my way. Like somehow-exited-the-city-limits-and-was-surrounded-by-cows-and-a-glass-factory lost my way. It was a little scary, because I had no idea where I was, the sun was setting, and I could practically hear the music from Deliverance tuning up. And yet, just when I was starting to panic/give up hope (this would be two hours into the jogging adventure - I KNOW TWO HOURS gaaag me), as my ipod crescendoed to "Proud to be an American" (yes, the American Idol song, bought during my uber-patriotic jingoistic phase in France when I was really homesick and made a country song/american pride song playlist and would blast it in my dorm and danced around in my red white and blue hello kitty underwear. and I wonder why I didn't make any French friends...), I saw the glowing lights of CVS in the distance! Civilization! Right around the corner from the Sleep Inn! Saved by a CVS sign - I was proud to be an american.

For dinner that night we decided to head off the beaten trak and forgo the IHOP for a local joint: "Hams! Good Times Since 1935!" Turns out the times were extra good, because kids eat for 99 cents on Mondays. Not only that, there was a magician, balloon animals, face painting, and Hannah Montana karaoke. Yeah...it was, as I'm sure you can imagine, INSANITY. The four of us were literally the only table there sans child. The food was delicious, and the screaming child ambience could not be beat. Although I swear, if I heard one more kid butcher "Best of Both Worlds," I was ready to get up there and show those bitches how it's done - Miley Cyrus-style.

Sleepless in Raleigh

After a very brief stop in West Virginia (and contrary to its welcome sign, it was neither "Wild" nor "Wonderful!"), we are back in North Carolina. And oh, what a wild and crazy weekend it has been. Not.

Friday night we were in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, the town where the Andy Griffith show is set. For serious. There was an Aunt Bea's Diner and everything. This should give you an idea of just how happening it was. Picture the Andy Griffith show plus fast food and empty buildings, minus the charm. Now, I am a firm believer in "when the going gets tough, the tough go to the movies," and thankfully a lot of my fellow tour-mates are of a similar mind. There is no movie theatre in Pilot Mountain (obvi), so we headed to nearby Mount Aerie, bustling metropolis that it is.

Obviously, I went to see Highschool Musical 3. As any Zac Efron fan over the age of 8 expects, I was getting a lot of shit from the gang in the van. The actor I'll call Brom said, from the row behind me where he was conducting a snuggle party, "I'm sorry, but I just have to judge you a little."

Frankly, I am sick and tired of people judging my delight in all Zac Efron endeavors, particularly those that involve song and dance!
I'll be honest here, kids. Tour is starting to take a toll on me. I'm getting sick of the crappy hotels and the crappy food and the crappy (usually nonexistent) treadmills and the bizarre social construct that is tour and I miss dance parties and cute boys in sweaters and gossipping with my girls and wearing impossibly high-heels. I needed to escape.

I turned to Brom, and I said, "Don't you judge me. I like Highschool Musical for the same reason you like scifi. It's a simplified moral universe with good and evil clearly delineated, with good reigning triumphant. That's why scifi is popular. Westerns, too. Most movies, in fact - people have always taken comfort in escaping to a place where things arent so complicated. And if I want to believe for two hours that dancing can solve all your problems, that music can bring people together, and that love means holding hands in a treehouse, that's my perogative."
Anyway, he stopped judging. Usually reminding scifi nerds of their dorkiness has that effect.

As I was watching the end of the movie, as everyone skipped around in their graduation gowns singing, "I just want the rest of my life to feel as good as my HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL," I couldn't help but think "yeah - me too." And I don't mean my actual high school musical (not that Once Upon a Mattress wasn't a slammin good time, because it was), but the movies. Why does life have to be so complicated? And my life's not even that bad! It would just be so much better if everyone fell instantly in love at first sight, no major problems ensued (minus jockeying for the lead in a musical), there was lots of hand holding, and people danced and sang when they were happy.

It's not that things are particularly awful. They're not. Today was even a nice day. I had a pumpkin muffin at breakfast (and I love me some pumpkin muffins), and got to spend the whole day at the mall with Ichabod and the Frog. It was a lovely mall, too, with outdoor courtyards, and fake ponds, and lots of shoes who were practically begging me to take them home. (Seriously. Shoes are like puppies. I can hear them calling me.) And yet, there aren't enough Strawberry Mangoritas in all the Chilis in North Carolina to take away this general feeling of tour ennui. (keep in mind - this is just me complaining about my social life. I love the show. LOVES IT. And I wouldn't trade being able to do a show five times a week for anything. This is just me whining. And I'm allowed to whine, because it's my blog. but take it with a grain of salt.) There are even some truly wonderful moments of fun fun fun, but a big part of me just misses my life. I mean this is my life too, obviously, but in a weird way...it's not.

This kind of vague dissatisfaction has resulted in insomnia, which leaves me here, sleepless in Raleigh, where I have spent perhaps the most pathetic night of my 22 years, sitting in sweatpants in a Sleep Inn by the side of the interstate, trolling match.com and craigslist.com for imaginary boyfriends/apartments that I could have in my fabulous life in an alternate universe. I know, I know. Seriously - I am like in need of a lame intervention to save me from myself.

The Clue in the Crumbling Wall

As of today, our tour of Ohio is finally complete. Dayton, Colombus, Cleveland, Cincinnati - we've done them all. Ah, Ohio - "So much to discover!" If by "so much" you mean "so much empty space it will boggle your mind." Seriously. I thought Ohio was smallish. What a fool I was. It takes four hours to get anywhere in this state. Anywhere.

In Cleveland we performed in a Masonic Hall, that, while built in 1900, was still functioning. Yes, mysterious Masonic rites and rituals! (and quality children's theatre.) The first dressing room they showed me, on the stage level, had only two mirrors, a single flickering lightbulb, rust damage on the floor, and a wall crumbling before my eyes. Like paint flecks were falling on me. And it turned out I could only walk 2/3 of the way into the room to avoid some sort of toxic mold situation. But they assured me it was perfectly safe. Huh. Yeah. As if. We couldn't have fit in there anyway, so they directed me down to the masonic dressing rooms.

I have seen my fair share of slasher-movie-set dressing rooms this tour. Particularly in the south, actually. All in run-down old buildings, in a dark, dank, basement maze of HORROR full of creepy corners and dripping rust stained pipes and crumbling walls and flickering lightbulbs and I'm sure, I'm SURE psycho killers with axes lying in wait. The Masonic Hall was a special stop on my subterranean tour of dressing room terror.

It was dark, and creepy, and truly, truly endless. The halls wound around and around into and endless series of different rooms and locked doors. I felt like Nancy Drew (plus sewing kit, minus flashlight) trying to solve the Mystery of the Masonic Temple, searching for the secret room full of makeup mirrors but only finding dead ends and locked doors! And THEN I stumbled upon the mysterious "Robing Room." It was filled with asian-looking robes and giant SPEARS. For serious. I quickly left the robin room and ran smack into a giant padlocked metal dungeon door surrounded by cinder block walls. It looked like they were keeping a giant beast inside. Or DEAD BODIES.

Thankfully we made it out alive, and Ned Nickerson didn't have to tackle any mysterious bad guys to free me from the robing room. (That's a Nancy Drew reference, boys.) And today in Cincinnati, there was NO subterranean situation! The dressing room was right off the stage, with its Mulan Jr. sign still on it, and although we were all cramped together in one cozy little room, I was much happier above ground away from the psycho killers. It was said that the coffee tasted extra good today - probably because I made it with a sprinkling of love, not of abject terror.

Cuteness Upgrade

Apparently the acquisition of red and white heart-printed kinda alpine-style pom pom hat, white mittens with applique hearts and matching scarf constituted a "cuteness upgrade" one fine November morning in Pittsburgh, PA, according to the boys packing the truck. Sorry, pink and white striped hat/scarf set from Target - the cuteness has been upgraded. Although I may have to dial it down a notch - I don't know if these kids can handle it. We may go into cuteness overload. Ah, if they only knew how cute I really was, in a normal universe where I'm not forced to exist in sneakers and sweatpants. Grrrrrr...

Today was, if not a cuteness upgrade, certainly a convenience upgrade. Monday we were in the Carnegie Music Hall.
It is, don't get me wrong, absa-fucking-lutely gorgeous, and cute as a button - a really fancy button. It's like a doll's version of an opera house, and I couldn't resist quietly singing a little Mo' (Mozart, that is) in the halls. Nor was I alone - the acoustics are so good it was impossible not to sing, and the boys were all singin' away as well (although, surprisingly, no one else was feeling like Blondchen from Die Entfurung auf dem Serial. Whaddyaknow.) Anyhoo, music hall = good accoustics but also music hall = drums and pianos left everywhere, no curtain, no wingspace. All the set pieces (walls, doors, stoves, etc.) that usually live backstage were just chilling onstage, and we had to run up a flight of stairs for all of our costume changes, as flashing the children is generally discouraged. Add to all this business that we usually have six crew members and today we had...two. Now don't get me wrong, Antoine and Darnell kicked ass, but they didn't kick four extra people's worth of ass.

Now, today, in glamorous (ha!) Dayton, Ohio, we were once again in a sort-of musical hall; the Performance Place, home of the Dayton Philharmonic. However, this was a BIG theatre, with wings, curtains, dressing rooms and (be still my heart) a union crew who had already unloaded half the truck by the time we were out of the van! I know - hot fire. There was naught for me to do but sprawl out on the couch in the Conductor's Room I had generously bestowed upon myself and Other Actress. Ah - turns out it's good to be the Conductor.

After a convivial lunch at Pizzeria Uno, I drove our merry van from Dayton to Cleveland. It's gotten to the point where we've driven across Ohio again and again enough that I recognize some of the rivers (Hello, Big Darby!). Scary. As driver, I subjected everyone to an orgy of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. It was pretty quiet - I'm guessing everyone was busy trying to asphyxiate themselves with carbon monoxide. Despite my best efforts to drive them all to suicide with Disney tween pop, we arrived in Cleveland in one piece, and enjoyed the chinese restaurant on the ground floor of our hotel.

Fortune cookie: You will soon recieve an usual gift.
Hmmm...I'm hoping it's, like, a shetland pony and not, you know, the bubonic plague.

Oh MAN election day is like scary Christmas. The anticipation is HUGE and I can't wait to see what happens but I almost don't want to know...AUUUUGH. Well, now there's nothing to do but sit tight in my Victoria's Secret Pink VOTE! underwear and wait...

"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it"

You would think that now that prancing around in a costume is my job, I would be less excited about prancing around in a costume during my free time. You'd think I'd be more excited about, I don't know, Arbor Day or Teacher Appreciation Day or something. But no, never fear. I can never do too much costumed prancing. Plus there is a distinct lack of glitter in my work costumes. Halloween is the night when all the civilians can indulge their inner actor, because let's face it, doesn't everyone secretly want to be an actor? Ok, fine: everyone secretly wants to prance around in costumes.

Yes, Halloween has always had a very special place in my heart. All of my birthday parties growing up were costume/Halloween-themed, and ever since my kindergarten birthday party where Kenny Fontaine stuck his green-painted ninja turtle face in the cake, I have expected a rocking good time.

We pulled off the highway to Milan, Ohio, birthplace of Thomas Alva Edison and saw...cows. We continued down the road and saw...corn. By the time we hit our first sign of civilization, the Tractor Supply Co., I was starting to panic. This was not Halloween fun! This was not eyeball cupcakes and spooky punch and the monster mash! This was not a slutty costume contest and dance party in the visual arts center! This was Deliverance, but boring.

Thankfully, before I started bouncing off the walls of my corn-surrounded hotel room (seriously, all I could see out my window, far as the eye could see, was corn. three sides of corn, one side of road), someone masterminded a plan to get costumed, and drive to the Cedar Point amusement park. So a fairy, a zombie, a jester, a vampire, the Joker, a redneck, Elton John and Pippi Longstocking set off in a big white van into the Ohio night in search of adventure.

Guess what? YOU CAN'T WEAR HALLOWEEN COSTUMES IN CEDAR POINT. If you're an adult, that is. Yes, we got kicked out of an amusement park. On Halloween. And no, it wasn't for indecent exposure. Our costumes weren't that slutty. It's just a weird, stupid policy. No costumes on Halloween? For serious? HEINOUS. I was worried that Halloween was RUINED. Half of the gang decided to de-costume and stay; the fairy, the zombie, the vampire, the Joker and Pippi headed into downtown Sandusky, Ohio, to see what fun could be had at The Thirsty Pony.

Turns out, the Thirsty Pony was awesome Halloween fun! Bar plus restaurant plus betting tables plus bowling alley plus laser tag equals good times! I had some sort of lethal concoction called the Twisted Pony, following my usual strategy of ordering the pinkest thing on the menu. We had a delicious feast of cheesy bar food (it was sort of a Roman-style bacchanalian barfood orgy) then headed down the hall to the bowling alley. It was BLACKLIGHT bowling, of all things, with awesome music and disco lights and glow in the dark lanes! Fantastic! I of course immediately created an impromptu dance party, as creating dance parties where none are intended is my second-favorite hobby, after needlecrafts.

As if blacklight bowling/dance party wasn't already tons of fun, we learned that we were within spitting distance of the number 4 haunted house in the country. Surprisingly, the table full of frat guys I asked for directions were not particularly helpful in showing me a way out of the bar...hmm...thankfully our fantastic, pink-slutty-cat-costumed waitress showed us the way.

I used to be really, really afraid of Haunted Houses. Like had to leave through the emergency exit because I was hyperventilating afraid. But even though I screamed a LOT and had a kung fu death grip on the hands of whomever was nearest to me, it wasnt nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be. Maybe after two Twisted Ponys nothing is scary. Maybe it was because I realized that all the people popping out at me in zombie makeup are probably unemployed actors and that's way scarier than any Haunted House.

When I woke up the next morning, my sheets were covered in glitter. The sign of a very Happy, Happy Halloween indeed. Mwahahahhaaaaaaaaaa

Time For Me To Just Stand Up, and Travel New Land

There's a Judy Garland-Fred Astaire movie, I believe it's Easter Parade but I'm not totally sure, in which Fred plucks Judy from the chorus to be his new dance partner after hearing her sing a song, bucket in hand and apron on, with a chorus that goes "That's why I wish again that I was in Michigan, down on the farm."

We started off in Michigan nowhere near a farm, but rather in Detroit. I received this lovely email from my mother:

"Did you really play Detroit today?
Did you get to see 9 mile?
Lots of love,
MOM"

I think she was referring to 8 Mile, as in the Eminem movie. Although we didn't see 8 mile, we stayed on 14 mile, which is, like, almost twice as hardcore, I bet. Check out www.motopera.org - we played the absolutely beautiful Detroit Opera House to our personal-record-setting audience of 3,000 kids. I know - awesome, right?? Even more awesome, in my opinion, were the big comfy leather chairs in the dressing room. They looked like something that escaped from the men's club/cigar room Rose's evil fiancee, Cal, would have frequented in Titanic.

From Detroit to Kalamazoo, we actually did see some farms. I went jogging through a wetlands preserve (I saw two white-tailed deer), then out past the farms. From Kalamazoo to Saginaw, the farms only got greater in number, and prettier. The drive was perfect: a gorgeous fall day, sparkling blue skies, endless corn fields, and the Siawassee Nature Preserve for a jogging adventure when I arrived. I'm thinking of publishing a guide: Nature Trails, Targets and Cheap Strawberry Margaritas: The Midwest, Stephanie-Style. Seriously: the only way to survive tour is to escape the strip, find beauty in nature, and happiness at the bottom of a 5 dollar margarita.

I bet my guide would sell pretty well. Actually, in the van yesterday, someone made a comment about how he wished he could buy his very own Stephanie, to just have around all the time to spread sunshine and joy, etc.

Stage Manager: Where would you buy her? Steph-mart?
Me: Oh, please, not a mart. Exclusive boutiques only.
Other Actress: She'd come complete with little pink pillow, letterman's jacket and party heels.
Me: Maybe Target. I'd sell myself at Target.
(entire van snickers)
Me: Wait, not in the hooker way! Dammit!

One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor

Ah, the weekend.

Friday dawned bright and early (actually, dark and early - touring actors rise before the sun, like migrant farm workers) in lovely Grand Rapids, Michigan. Our Quality Inn featured a parlor with fireplace, conservatory with birds (SQUAAAAAWK) and a terrace dining area with hot breakfast buffet. It was all decorated in a sort of faux-victorian manor-house style. Kinda like Clue, actually. The show itself was pretty painless. We were in a performing arts center attached to some sort of arts tech high school. The arts center has different shows come through, like us, Footloose, Bye Bye Birdie, and right before we were there, Church Basement Ladies! A Heavenly New Musical. Yeah...this meant we had a crew of highschool tech kids, who were beyond awesome - way more efficient and knowledgable than a lot of our union crews, and they were all really sweet kids. And apparently, according to the highschool tech boys, we were much better behaved than the Church Basement Ladies, who offered the boys blowjobs for coffee. I assume they were joking, but I was shocked. SHOCKED. These are supposed to be CHURCH LADIES! By the time we were loaded out, it was steadily drizzling, and Ichabod and I hopped in the truck and drove back to...Indiana. Oh, god, why.

We rolled into our destination, Kokomo, Indiana, and I was filled with the sinking sense of dread that always accompanies me whenever I enter the crossroads of America. According to the sign, Kokomo Indiana is The City of Firsts! It looks like, oh, I don't know, the first place you'd get knocked up in the back of a pickup truck, or the first place you'd get busted for making a meth lab in your basement. The first it actually refers to is some sort of car-ignition invention. Thrilling. My dread only increased when we spotted a big yellow sheet by the side of the road with SWORD SHOP scrawled on it, and a silver scrawly arrow pointing down a dirt road. To the sword shop. The SWORD SHOP. What IS this place???

There were free m and m cookies at the checkin desk, and the lobby was cute, and a bunch of guys who just started work at the plant accross the street invited us to a party (although I think that was more of a negative...) anyway I passed on the plant party, watched Princess Cake Challenge! on the Food Network with Lighting Girl, went to the sad little mall with everyone to put the finishing touches on our halloween costumes, ate at Panera, and passed out.

The next morning we drove three more hours through Indiana (nooooo) until we ended up in Clarksville. I somehow found a nature park/trail thing behind the strip mall and the mall mall and the corporate park which was actually really pretty, and felt much better about life/being trapped in Indiana after I ran around the woods. I know. I know, you're thinking WHO are you and WHAT have you done with Stephanie?? I haven't worn pearls in I don't KNOW how long, and I'm RUNNING on NATURE TRAILS? Replace my cosmo with a nalgene and my Anthroplogie giftcard with an EMS rewards card and call me Backwoods Barbie. I don't know what the hell's going on. (Before you worry too much, I did head straight to the mall after all the nature.)

Because my b-day is on Monday, we all went out for a birthday celebration last night at Senor Iguanas, where it was 2 dollar cosmo night. I of course applied myself immediately to working my way through the flavored margarita list. (Mango was the best.) It was a lot of fun. The waiters put a giant sombrero on my head and sang feliz cumpleanos and smushed whip cream on my face, and my friends indulged me in my two greatest loves, never-have-I-ever games and impromptu dance parties in places that were not intended to have any dance parties whatsoever, such as Mexican Restaurants, parking lots, and hotel rooms. DANCE PARTY! The only problem with dance parties involving musical theatre actors is that I cannot keep up. I try to compensate for lack of skill with enthusiasm.
I may have ended up skipping down the parking lot lane singing "I don't know how to LOoOooove him!" from Jesus Christ Superstar before I was toted inside by Lighting girl to fall asleep.

Ah, random acts of musical theatre. A very happy birthday indeed.