Sunday, November 18
The not-so-morning-anymore sun streams through Rebecca's window onto my naked and slightly sore back. Mmm. I just went through the guest list and counted sixty-eight people that were here last night, including people that weren't on the list. That's a lot of people. Especially for the first two hours or so, when almost everybody was in the common room, the place felt really crowded. The hallway also got extrememely crowded at various points, thanks to the fun "personal trivia" that we put on the walls. There's not a whole lot to say about the party without going into extreme detail (such as listing the guests); as a host the experience is always so oversaturated as to become monolithic. Suffice to say it was good.
Of course that lack of detail never suffices here at ross talks funny. Let's see, where was I. Of course yesterday was all taken up by preparations. I was planning it that way, but Rebecca and Ester weren't. The former ended up spending almost the whole time here anyway, and was unable to make it to the shop; the latter escaped to the city with her friends, they caught a flat, but were able to help out with groceries anyway. As much as we fought along the way, I think they had come around and gotten into the idea by the time of the party. I was anxious sort of for the sake of being anxious, which probably wasn't a good idea; of course it was all going to come out fine. I'm really glad and grateful that they were willing to help out, even though I wished that I didn't have to feel grateful because I wished they felt it belonged to them just as much as to me.
What made it even worse was that Rebecca was in an illness-induced snit for most of the morning. Even Stephin Merrit felt it. But no matter, I don't mind Billie and cream of wheat and peach tea, and the baking (or something) made her feel better. She turned out an endless quantity of delicious banana "muff-cakes," while I put out a pan each of lemon squares (delicious, though they were cut too large for many people to eat them) and nanaimo bars (which turned out extremely messy and overly sweet; this recipe was not nearly as good as my old one.) We also served a veganized artichoke dip (seemed to be a success), chips, cheese and crackers, grapes, and got rid of some things that had been sitting around - mango slices, choco cookies, roasted peas and corn nuts. I cleaned my room (stuffed everything into my desk, made the couches, swept), listened to A Break from the Norm, which is as fun as you would think, and '77.
Waited outside Olde Club for forty-five minutes, balancing Mason & Dixon on my head (which is really easy, especially while wearing a hat. It's easier than reading it.) and talking to Evan Moses about it. I kept the book on my head as I sat down, in the front row on the floor, listening to Sarah Fritsch and Amelia talk about Grapevine. Having auditioned for the play many months ago (it was funny to have it re-enter my life now in this way), I was particularly attuned to the casting decisions. Mara Gustafson was excellently cast as the mother, even though she was essentially playing herself; tortorously deadpan and unassumingly manipulative. She was holding a martini glass the whole time, which was a nice touch. Alex Edleman was also himself, very convincigly, but it didn't work quite as well for the role; he was excellent as the sincere, caring fiancé, but a bit too precise and hypernormal as a member of the demented family, and too self-aware to have only just started questioning his life. Amy was not very pleasant at all as the fiancée; her sweetness was okay, but had too much bile, and the sudden vagaries of her moral compass were poorly explained and confusing in her reading of the character. It's kind of a tough role. Sarah Walsh's role is especially difficult, and I wasn't sure what to make of her performance. She looked a fair bit like Parker Posey, if by looking like Parker Posey you mean looking like Meredith, thanks to a wig (couldn't they have just used her real hair to achieve a similar effect) and a constant glower. She was leaning back aggresively the whole time, which was unsettling but certainly made her seem manic. Her reading was fairly one-dimensional, but it almost made sense to play it that way. She was certainly actress-ish. Finally, stranger Ben Camp did a commendable job as the whiny, sex-obsessed younger brother, the role that Rebecca had picked out for me. The ensemble worked nicely together, and the staging was fine, it made good use of Olde Club's limited capabilities. The transitions between the scenes (many of which are fairly short) were not very effective; they could have been served well with a melodramatic score and more sudden blackouts, but the delivery of the final lines was often simply weak. This detracted a lot from the sinister quality that I could imagine in a different sort of production. Irregardless (a word I heard someone somewhere use yesterday), it was very enjoyable.
Back to the anxiety, as I returned home to find Ester and the weekend visitors in her room, watching the teevee, rather than involved in any sort of preparation. It was fine though; they had gotten most of the groceries and liquor, and laid most of it out, so there really wasn't much left to do. I typed out all of the trivia (more than 20 people responded by e-mail, and a handful in other ways), Rebecca crayoned them on scrap paper, and we taped them to the wall in the hallway, which made them quite festive and colorful. The first to arrive were Kim and Cathy, followed by the masses (oh, you know, Jonah, Sarah, Mariah, Kent, Jenny, Olivia, Juliet, I'm not going to list them). There were enough people here to begin with (eight, remember) that we had an insta-party anyway, so it felt lively immediately, none of the early awkward stage. I did surprisingly little upkeep work during the party itself - set out a contributions bowl (we raked in a whopping $10, not counting the bait), toasted more bread to go with the dip, cleaned up some spilled water, took peoples' coats and encouraged them to add more trivia - just drank a gimlet (which was effective enough, considering I hadn't eaten anything all day) and took care of the music. They rejected the Jungle Brothers, so we started things off with side two of "Get Happy!!" (EC being Joel's latest infatuation, thanks to Rachel's tape of MAIT in the car to the PMA), then Call and Response (great party album), some of the Stax singles comp, the Lounge Lizards, Shuggie Otis (for Matt, but also a terrific party record), a bit of St. Germain and Plaid, then "Look Into the Eyeball" (for dancing with Liza and Blair) and Zero 7 to chill out (Damon said "this is the new Fiona Apple album, right?" Lots of conversations: with Lillie and Kat on my bed about movies, with Rae and Blair in my doorway about rangering, with Jenny, Geoff, and Joel in the entrance to the common room about concerts, with Chris and Amy all over the place about barnlife, singing with Rachel and Catherine, with Jonah, Sarah somebody, and so on. It was an (un)surprisingly tame party - the drunkest people that I saw were Felicia and Kate (who both had these beatific smiles on their faces, it was brilliant), no sex as far as I could tell (although as Rachel pointed out, someone ought to have made out with Nate Wessler's little brother), and only one spill (Rae's water as I stood up to hug Matt goodbye) - the place was so clean afterwards you could hardly tell anyone had been here. ("When you go there, it becomes here." "Really?" "Yes, come on, I'll show you.") The guests managed to put away a bottle of Skyy, a bottle of schnapps, a bottle of Kahlua, the better part of a bottle of Tanqueray and a 24-pack of Corona. They barely touched the sour mix though. There's almost no cleaning left to be done, just some dishes or something. Ester sequestered herself in her room with Jamie and Ilana and Louisa and a few others, as is her wont, and they snapped at me when I tried to go in. Lots of people left between 12:30 and 1:00, so the people who came later didn't stay as long (Jeff Wu, Renee, Annie, among others). Joel spent a long time with his "friend-crushes" Damon and Jason in the kitchen and on the escape (along with a sullen, crutch-bearing individual who was at the poetry slam), and Michelle was offended. I fell mostways asleep on my couch, then came in here for the rest of the way. No meteor shower. Bobby's coming. I'll clean and read and eat. Relax. Try to find some people maybe.
ah, but who saves you?
who craves you?
who hearbreaks?
who love makes?
Of course that lack of detail never suffices here at ross talks funny. Let's see, where was I. Of course yesterday was all taken up by preparations. I was planning it that way, but Rebecca and Ester weren't. The former ended up spending almost the whole time here anyway, and was unable to make it to the shop; the latter escaped to the city with her friends, they caught a flat, but were able to help out with groceries anyway. As much as we fought along the way, I think they had come around and gotten into the idea by the time of the party. I was anxious sort of for the sake of being anxious, which probably wasn't a good idea; of course it was all going to come out fine. I'm really glad and grateful that they were willing to help out, even though I wished that I didn't have to feel grateful because I wished they felt it belonged to them just as much as to me.
What made it even worse was that Rebecca was in an illness-induced snit for most of the morning. Even Stephin Merrit felt it. But no matter, I don't mind Billie and cream of wheat and peach tea, and the baking (or something) made her feel better. She turned out an endless quantity of delicious banana "muff-cakes," while I put out a pan each of lemon squares (delicious, though they were cut too large for many people to eat them) and nanaimo bars (which turned out extremely messy and overly sweet; this recipe was not nearly as good as my old one.) We also served a veganized artichoke dip (seemed to be a success), chips, cheese and crackers, grapes, and got rid of some things that had been sitting around - mango slices, choco cookies, roasted peas and corn nuts. I cleaned my room (stuffed everything into my desk, made the couches, swept), listened to A Break from the Norm, which is as fun as you would think, and '77.
Waited outside Olde Club for forty-five minutes, balancing Mason & Dixon on my head (which is really easy, especially while wearing a hat. It's easier than reading it.) and talking to Evan Moses about it. I kept the book on my head as I sat down, in the front row on the floor, listening to Sarah Fritsch and Amelia talk about Grapevine. Having auditioned for the play many months ago (it was funny to have it re-enter my life now in this way), I was particularly attuned to the casting decisions. Mara Gustafson was excellently cast as the mother, even though she was essentially playing herself; tortorously deadpan and unassumingly manipulative. She was holding a martini glass the whole time, which was a nice touch. Alex Edleman was also himself, very convincigly, but it didn't work quite as well for the role; he was excellent as the sincere, caring fiancé, but a bit too precise and hypernormal as a member of the demented family, and too self-aware to have only just started questioning his life. Amy was not very pleasant at all as the fiancée; her sweetness was okay, but had too much bile, and the sudden vagaries of her moral compass were poorly explained and confusing in her reading of the character. It's kind of a tough role. Sarah Walsh's role is especially difficult, and I wasn't sure what to make of her performance. She looked a fair bit like Parker Posey, if by looking like Parker Posey you mean looking like Meredith, thanks to a wig (couldn't they have just used her real hair to achieve a similar effect) and a constant glower. She was leaning back aggresively the whole time, which was unsettling but certainly made her seem manic. Her reading was fairly one-dimensional, but it almost made sense to play it that way. She was certainly actress-ish. Finally, stranger Ben Camp did a commendable job as the whiny, sex-obsessed younger brother, the role that Rebecca had picked out for me. The ensemble worked nicely together, and the staging was fine, it made good use of Olde Club's limited capabilities. The transitions between the scenes (many of which are fairly short) were not very effective; they could have been served well with a melodramatic score and more sudden blackouts, but the delivery of the final lines was often simply weak. This detracted a lot from the sinister quality that I could imagine in a different sort of production. Irregardless (a word I heard someone somewhere use yesterday), it was very enjoyable.
Back to the anxiety, as I returned home to find Ester and the weekend visitors in her room, watching the teevee, rather than involved in any sort of preparation. It was fine though; they had gotten most of the groceries and liquor, and laid most of it out, so there really wasn't much left to do. I typed out all of the trivia (more than 20 people responded by e-mail, and a handful in other ways), Rebecca crayoned them on scrap paper, and we taped them to the wall in the hallway, which made them quite festive and colorful. The first to arrive were Kim and Cathy, followed by the masses (oh, you know, Jonah, Sarah, Mariah, Kent, Jenny, Olivia, Juliet, I'm not going to list them). There were enough people here to begin with (eight, remember) that we had an insta-party anyway, so it felt lively immediately, none of the early awkward stage. I did surprisingly little upkeep work during the party itself - set out a contributions bowl (we raked in a whopping $10, not counting the bait), toasted more bread to go with the dip, cleaned up some spilled water, took peoples' coats and encouraged them to add more trivia - just drank a gimlet (which was effective enough, considering I hadn't eaten anything all day) and took care of the music. They rejected the Jungle Brothers, so we started things off with side two of "Get Happy!!" (EC being Joel's latest infatuation, thanks to Rachel's tape of MAIT in the car to the PMA), then Call and Response (great party album), some of the Stax singles comp, the Lounge Lizards, Shuggie Otis (for Matt, but also a terrific party record), a bit of St. Germain and Plaid, then "Look Into the Eyeball" (for dancing with Liza and Blair) and Zero 7 to chill out (Damon said "this is the new Fiona Apple album, right?" Lots of conversations: with Lillie and Kat on my bed about movies, with Rae and Blair in my doorway about rangering, with Jenny, Geoff, and Joel in the entrance to the common room about concerts, with Chris and Amy all over the place about barnlife, singing with Rachel and Catherine, with Jonah, Sarah somebody, and so on. It was an (un)surprisingly tame party - the drunkest people that I saw were Felicia and Kate (who both had these beatific smiles on their faces, it was brilliant), no sex as far as I could tell (although as Rachel pointed out, someone ought to have made out with Nate Wessler's little brother), and only one spill (Rae's water as I stood up to hug Matt goodbye) - the place was so clean afterwards you could hardly tell anyone had been here. ("When you go there, it becomes here." "Really?" "Yes, come on, I'll show you.") The guests managed to put away a bottle of Skyy, a bottle of schnapps, a bottle of Kahlua, the better part of a bottle of Tanqueray and a 24-pack of Corona. They barely touched the sour mix though. There's almost no cleaning left to be done, just some dishes or something. Ester sequestered herself in her room with Jamie and Ilana and Louisa and a few others, as is her wont, and they snapped at me when I tried to go in. Lots of people left between 12:30 and 1:00, so the people who came later didn't stay as long (Jeff Wu, Renee, Annie, among others). Joel spent a long time with his "friend-crushes" Damon and Jason in the kitchen and on the escape (along with a sullen, crutch-bearing individual who was at the poetry slam), and Michelle was offended. I fell mostways asleep on my couch, then came in here for the rest of the way. No meteor shower. Bobby's coming. I'll clean and read and eat. Relax. Try to find some people maybe.
ah, but who saves you?
who craves you?
who hearbreaks?
who love makes?
