Can we talk about how in England, they apparently call the big trash can on the street a “wheelie bin“? Brits are so precious.

Here is a picture of Trash Cat Woman being escorted into a police car. I think we all know, however, that the real story here is the ridiculous getup those cops are wearing. WTF???

*This photo and all my info on the topic is from www.dailymail.co.uk

Did you all hear about this woman in England who was caught on video putting a stranger’s cat in a trash can for seemingly no reason? The article says she has no idea why she did it — that she doesn’t know what came over her. It made me wonder, why do we sometimes do things that even we can’t explain to ourselves?

I’ve heard that vertigo isn’t the fear of falling as much as the fear of jumping. Although I’m not afraid of heights, I understand that. Having spent the vast majority of my life living in cities in the mountains, I’ve often been in high places and had the thought, “I hope I don’t jump off the edge.” Sometimes I’ll even picture myself jumping off, or worse, pushing someone. Mind you, I don’t want to or intend to, even for a moment. It’s just a fleeting thought that I have: “I hope I don’t.” So… did this woman think, “I hope I don’t put this cat in the trash,” but the difference is, she actually did?

One time I did do something kind of similar. Different in that it didn’t hurt any animals, but similar in that I made a really weird choice for no apparent reason. I have no idea why I did it, but I did. This was probably about a year ago or less. I was somewhere kind of nice, like a movie theatre or a restaurant — I don’t remember exactly — and I went to the bathroom. As I turned to leave the stall after having flushed, I glanced in the toilet to make sure all was well, and in fact there remained a single, small, round turd. I had already partially opened the stall door, and I could see the woman who was waiting for the stall, and she saw me; and as I slightly jerked toward the toilet to flush it, in a split instant, I thought, “Nah,” and I didn’t. I just left, and didn’t flush it. The woman entered after me and gave me a disgusted look as she flushed it herself. Why did I do that? I have no idea! I just didn’t feel like it. I just made that decision based on nothing at all, and it really went against the very fiber of my being. I am a very clean person and delight in having a pristine bathroom at home; I believe we each have the responsibility to be considerate of those around us; and I ALWAYS FLUSH THE TOILET, for crying out loud! It’s the most basic of civilized human behaviors! So why didn’t I give it a second flush? I can offer you no answer to that, except it was one of those times where vertigo took hold, and I just did something that I’m not programmed to do. It’s like that one time a robot expresses emotion and everyone stands there shocked, like, “Did this just happen? This is an aberration; this should not be. Take this robot back to the factory and program out the emotion, immediately.” And as the scientist slaps a sticker on the robot’s forehead and carries it off to be re-programmed, you see, if you look very closely, a glint of victorious rebellion in the robot’s eyes.. It did it. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did.

Everyone is saying this woman is an evil animal hater, but she and her family insist that she loves cats. I don’t know what’s more disturbing — the thought of an angry cat-hater torturing friendly felines or the realization that in the case of Trash Cat Woman vs. Vertigo, Vertigo won. At least she didn’t push anyone off a mountain.

The woman at Trader Joe’s looked at me like I was crazy when I went for the cart behind the cart that was in the front. Does that make sense? I pulled out one cart, then pulled out the next one and took that one. So naturally I felt the need to explain, so I said, “I like the red ones,” to which she gave me an even crazier look, because they are all red. But what I meant was, the solid red ones. Because they. are. awesome.

Side note: I’ve been using the word “cart,” because I want you to know what I’m talking about. But growing up in N.C., we called them “buggies,” and I frankly prefer that, so I’m switching now and bringing you along with me. Yay! Here we are. We’re talking about solid red buggies, and you’re in for a treat.

So, historically, when I’ve gone to the grocery store, I’ve always gotten the bad buggy. You know the one. The wheels squeak; or one of the brakes is permanently in the locked position so it drags across the floor making a noise like a dying hippo; or it veers to the right or left so that in order to keep it going straight, I have to throw my entire body weight into it. On the way out to the car, if the sidewalk is slanted one way or the other, it careens toward that side, dragging me with it until I swing around and block its trajectory or race over to the opposite corner and pull it, lurching to and fro until I finally arrive at my car in a full sweat. I always got that buggy.

Until…

One day, I took my roommate to the airport right around rush hour. After dropping her off, rather than spend my day on the freeway, I chose instead to go to a shopping center and kill some time. Well, there is a Trader Joe’s at that shopping center, and much to my surprise and delight, upon entering I noticed that all the old red and chrome buggies had been replaced with sleek, solid-red ones. And folks, not only were they beautiful, which they were — a sporty shade of candy-apple red — but the way those buggies handled — well, it was, quite frankly, a dream come true. Sporty suspension. Razor-tight turning radius. Responsive handling. Light and zippy, yet sleek and fast. All in all, an exhilarating driving– er, pushing experience.

I was so stoked that I took a picture. Ahem… two pictures. And did I get some crazy-person looks? Yes, I did. But it was worth it.

Since then, my own neighborhood store has started replacing old buggies with the new ones. Unfortunately, many of the old “bad buggies” still remain, but when I’m lucky enough to get a new one, it makes it that much sweeter. But don’t take my word for it. Go take one for a spin today!

Please read the title to the tune of Aerosmith’s “Love in an elevator.” And now that we have that taken care of:

I’ve been reading a self-help book, as I am wont to do, that told me to look for love everywhere I went, and to look for the connections between others and myself, and between others and other otherses. This was very good for me, because lately I’ve been witnessing a lot of hate in the world, and it’s started to get me down in a major way. I’ve gotten so tired of experiencing all the aggression that occurs 1,000 times a second on the freeways, for example, and it all culminated a couple weeks ago when someone put a pre-printed business card on my car that said it hoped I got cancer, because I was parked a little bit over the line in the tiny compact car space that my compact car does not fit into properly. Yes, I will repeat that: Someone went to the trouble of ordering and purchasing business cards that say on the front, “Way to park, asshole.” And on the back, “I hope you get cancer.” It was actually quite a visually appealing card, with a lovely combination of fonts printed on a nice brick-red color. But the point is, feeling that malice directed at me was the straw on the camel’s back of hate that I’d been witnessing, and it made me really, really sad.

So, back to the self-help book. The day after I read the section about looking for love everywhere, it was “one of those mornings” where all forces of the universe were determined to slow me down, and after running to catch the metro, I got there a minute too late, and had to wait, all sweaty-like, for the next one. When I finally got on, a woman using a walker (with difficulty) got on, too. A youngerish woman and a blind man both got up for her to take their seats. (Side note: The question has been raised as to how the blind man knew to get up for her, and my guess is that the youngerish woman said something, or maybe he’s just that good.) Well, the walker woman (henceforth referred to as Walker Woman or WW) took the blind man’s seat and began talking with him and the youngerish woman (YW). When the blind man got off, he said goodbye to YW, and she and WW kept talking. Throughout their conversation, I unabashedly eavesdropped and exchanged eye contact and smiles with both of them at various points. When it was time for me to get off at my stop, I said goodbye to Walker Woman, and Youngerish woman got off there, too. And here comes the best part: Youngerish woman crossed to the other side of the platform to wait for the train going in the opposite direction. She had gone past her stop, and I believe it was out of love, because she didn’t want to prematurely end her conversation with Walker Woman. She wanted to make sure WW was taken care of, and then and only then did she get off and make her way back to where she needed to go.

Love.

I’m so glad I missed my train that morning and ended up on the one I ended up on.

That day marked a new chapter for me, one of looking everywhere for love and kindness, and finding it. I make a point to make eye contact, smile at, and talk with more strangers, and I’m making new friends all over town. I still see the hate, and it still bums me out, but now I have something with which to balance it.

I think you should try it, too. We’ll fill the world with love, one person at a time. Then one day, we’ll realize that we don’t see any hate, because there won’t be any.

(Do I sound like a hippy, or what?)

Y’all, I am fa-REAKING out about nuclear energy. I know this sounds weird, but I am. I don’t want it. And lots of powerful people are calling for government funding to go toward developing nuclear energy in the US. WTF?? This scares the ever-loving s@%t out of me, and would you think I was crazy if I told you that all the way to work this morning, I was in a state of near panic thinking about it?

So from what I understand, this oil spill in the gulf of Mexico has lots of people finally realizing that we need to get off oil as an energy source. And that’s great news, because we really, really do need to get off that shit for so many reasons, including, oh, I don’t know, war, and the destruction of our whole planet, and at first I was like, “Well, this oil spill really sucks the big one, but at LEAST it will get people’s attention and we can finally, seriously start developing alternative energy sources.” But then I realized, Hey, I bet now people are going to want to go nuclear even more, and that SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF ME! Last night I was feeling scared about it, so I brought it up to my boyfriend (I have one, Blog! I haven’t told you yet, but I do!). My boyfriend is not only cute, funny, smart and sweet, but he also works in environmental policy, as though he had read the handbook on how to woo me. So he knows all about this stuff, and I was really hoping he’d tell me that nuclear energy will never happen here, but he didn’t, and instead, he told me some stuff that made me even scareder (although I assure you this was not his intention, because he is sweet, as I mentioned earlier).

Things that I find spooky about nuclear energy include:
1. Things can go wrong, and we might blow up the world.
2. The more nuclear plants and nuclear waste-storage facilities we have, the more targets we have for terrorists (eeeek, terrrror!)
3. Speaking of nuclear waste, do you want it near your house? I don’t. It never breaks down. Ever. And it will kill you.

Why do we think creating this stuff is a better solution than what we’ve got? Maybe it works temporarily because it doesn’t release greenhouse gases, but I’m telling you people, down the road, we’re going to regret the shit out of this decision. If I had my druthers, we’d power everything with wind and solar power, and we’d all travel by train. With the billions it would take to build one single nuclear plant, we could build a giant, slightly creepy-yet-adorable army of windmills! And I’ll be the first to tell you that solar power is awesome, because my last apartment building had hot water that was solar powered, and I’ve never seen water that heated up that fast or stayed hot that long. Every time I showered, I felt like I was at a swanky hotel (except for the peeling paint on the window frame and the cat scratching on the door to get in). The fact that Southern California isn’t completely powered by the perpetual sunshine that we have blows my mind to smithereens.

So what do we do? Write letters? Start a Facebook campaign? Does anyone get the shivers like I do when you think about this?

If I haven’t convinced you yet, think about this: If we get more nuclear power, we’ll have to endure years and years of people who should know better pronouncing it “nucular.” If that’s not ghoulish enough to make your teeth chatter, you must be a robot.

I was just cleaning out my email inbox, if you can count reducing 2,400 emails down to 1,688, and while dragging things into the trash folder, I happened to open one of the first emails I received from someone I went on one date with last year. This email chain was exchanged before the date, during the “we’ve met once and are going to flirt a little bit via email before our first date” period — and as it happens, there was only one date, because this guy turned out to be filled with douchebaggery from the top of his douchebaggy head down to the bottom of his douchebaggeriffic toes. And do you know what I saw just now in that email? The thing that should have been a red flag from the very beginning? The thing that could have saved me at least two hours of my life that I’ll never get back? He confused “you’re” and “your.” Dear People, what was I thinking?

I was just reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago that reminded me of how much I hate being talked down to. There aren’t a lot of things I enjoy less than being patronized. I get it a lot, being a. a girl, b. a girl who has a young, innocent-looking face, and c. a girl who is polite and not too loud. Not many people are scared of me, and a lot of people think this gives them clearance to treat me like they’re my kindergarten teacher. And then, there are the people who talk that way to everyone, and I think the woman I’m about to discuss falls into the latter category.

This woman works at a place that does casting director workshops that last for several weeks at a time. So basically, you pay a few hundred bucks up front, and you go every week or whatever and take these workshops with casting directors. It’s a pretty cool idea I guess, but I’ve never heard of actors getting work from these particular workshops, and furthermore, they’re pretty expensive, especially if you’re trying to pay for other classes and whatnot. Sooooooo, a friend of mine had given this woman my information as someone who may be interested, and you know, I’m always up for hearing the details about an opportunity, so I was happy to listen and consider, but it was pretty annoying from the get-go. She was quizzing me about my talent and experience, emphasizing that they don’t just accept any Tom, Dick or Harry off the street, and you know, you have to take this seriously and you have to really be doing this as a career and have real potential, etc. But the most annoying, nails-on-the-chalkboard, whistle-in-your-ear, telemarketer, Jehovah’s witness-level of annoyance came from this: After everything, everything she said, she then said, “Does that make sense?” Everything. After every single sentence. I know that she must do this with everyone and must not even realize she does it at this point, but it comes across as so condescending, like, “Do you understand the meaning of the really simple thing I just said? I want to make sure, because you seem really dim, and it’s probably pretty hard to wrap your head around ideas. That must be tough.” Or maybe it’s more like, “Do you understand me? Because I know I’m talking way over your head right now, because you’re just a layperson, not a genius like me.” Either way, she must not have had any idea how irritating she was, so I thought I’d help her out by repeating it back to her to call her attention to it. So our conversation sounded a little like:

Her: We want to make sure that our actors are serious about their careers. Does that make sense?
Me: Yeees, yes, that does make sense.
Her: We need to know that you’ve worked, does that make sense, and that you’re taking active steps to get yourself more work, does that make sense?
Me: Yes, both of those things make sense, and I have, and I am.

And then came the part where she asked if I wanted to sign up.

Me: I’ll definitely keep it in mind for the future, but right now, unfortunately, I just don’t have the money.
Her: Well, we suggest that you have a separate bank account where you save money for acting, does that make sense?
Me: Yes, that does make sense, but you know, right now is just not a good time.
Her: Well, because if you’re serious about your career, you really need to be setting aside some money for it, does that make sense?
Me: Yes, it does make sense. Believe you me, if I were making enough money to have even a penny to set aside, I would.
Her: So we really suggest that you save some money, does that make sense?
Me: WELL, I SUGGEST THAT YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF; DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

And then she was silent, and I said, “Make sense of this!” and hung up and smiled peacefully in the beams of benevolent sunlight filtering through the windows.

Just kidding. I didn’t say it. I didn’t say it because I’m polite, remember? Damn it. Damn it all. I’m so polite. But I thought it. You can bet your bottom dollar I thought it. I positively screamed it in my mind. But I didn’t say it, and now, thanks to my politeness, this awful woman is probably going around right now making sense of everyone she comes across.

So I apologize to you if you ever cross her path, and if she ever talks to you like you’re just now learning English and how to tie your shoes. Maybe someday when someone else is being a condescending jackass, I’ll say what I want to say, even if it’s not the politest thing ever. And if it doesn’t make sense… who gives a shit?

Hi Blob! Blob! OH MY GOSH, I seem to be incapable of typing “blgo” OH MY GOSHOHMYGOSH, I promise you, I’m really trying to type it correctly! B L O G. There. Phew.

It’s been a long time. I keep meaning to write, but it’s like the friend you haven’t talked to in months, and even though you really want to talk to them, you feel overwhelmed because you feel like you have SO much to catch up on. That’s kind of how I feel about this. But I’m just diving in, and instead of giving you some long-winded life update, I’m just going to tell you what’s going on now.

I’m sitting at my dining room table in my newest apartment (Mary and I moved again in March) and looking out the windows at the streets below (we’re on the 2nd floor). About 15 minutes ago, a guy in a green shirt walked by on the street that runs perpendicular to my street, and he reminded me of Kenneth from 30 Rock, which is why I noticed him. It wasn’t him, but anyway, he was carrying a manilla folder, and I wondered if he was on his way to some type of audition or interview and was glad it wasn’t me. Even though I should wish I were going to an audition, right at this very moment I’m tired and have a sinus headache and am happy to be sitting at my table looking out the window. So anyway, that was like 15 minutes ago, and just now, like one minute ago, he walked by on my street, still carrying the folder, but now carrying a water jug in each hand. What is he up to? What do y’all think he’s doing out there? The worst thing is, I’ll never really know.

Another thing that happened the other day while I was sitting here was that I saw on that same perpendicular street a girl who I at first thought might be this girl I kind of know who we’ll call Marjorie, because she had a similar haircut and distinctive style of dress. But it wasn’t her, BUT about half an hour later, old Marjorie really DID walk down that very same street. WHAAAT??

Here’s another thing: I was just writing an email to my sketch team, and I cut a sentence out, then decided to paste it back in — BUT, I guess I had maybe deleted it instead of cut it, because it wasn’t on the clipboard. What WAS on the clipboard and what I ended up pasting in was… well, I’ll see if you can guess. Here is the real email with the real sentence that I pasted:

Hey TSP Actors!

Last night at the writers’ meeting we discussed a new potential system of paying Kevin in which the writers would pay him for writers’ meetings, writers and actors would both pay him for the initial read-through, and then actors would pay him for the actors’ rehearsals. Would you all be ok with that? It seems like it would come out about even for all of us. Marie hugs Jane and gives her a bouquet of flowers.

Thanks!
Marcy

Oh man, email hijinks, right?

Well, this has been a thoroughly weird blentry, but you’ve gotta just jump back on that horse. Except not literally. I’m done with horseback riding after a fateful “adventure” on the last horse I ever plan to ride. But that’s a story for another time.

Recently someone suggested I get some plants for my room. Since I value this person’s opinion and since I could always use an extra dose of Oxygen — hey, who couldn’t? — when my friends Mike and Rebecca offered me a peaked-looking plant in their living room window, I eagerly agreed. He was a spider plant, so I immediately named him Peter Parker and resolved to nurse him back to excellent health — this being opposite of my usual M.O. of taking perfectly healthy plants and killing them in record-breaking time.

I brought Peter home, watered him and left him in the sink overnight, and the very next day, instead of procrastinating for weeks, which again would have been the usual protocol, installed a hook into my bedroom ceiling, tied a pretty ribbon onto it, and hooked his pot onto the pretty ribbon, where he has been hanging for the last few days and at least in my imagination seems to be improving health-wise.

But tonight I got home and something unsettled me a little bit. Nothing even tangible, but something about his leaves gave me a very, very slight case of the willies. And this reminded me of why I didn’t already have a room full of plants, why I’ve never even purchased one single houseplant, at least not for myself. I will make no bones about it — plants are creepy! I look at Peter, and it’s like his leaves are tentacles lurching out at me, or maybe they’re strands of hair on the head of a tiny troll submerged in the dirt of the pot. Either way, there’s no escaping the fact that plants are alive, and just because they don’t speak doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t plotting a coup against all animal life. It makes me shiver.

Mind you, I’ve never gotten anything but friendly vibes from Peter. I assume he must be grateful to me for rescuing him from the negligent parenting of my friends and giving him water, sunlight, and his own hook in the ceiling where he can swing merrily all day and observe goings-on from high up. I mean, he should be grateful! But plants need more than water, sunlight, and prime real estate, from what I’m told. Like animals, plants, I’m told, also need love. And folks, I’m just not sure I’m ready for that. I’m just not sure I’m ready.

*****

Update: I wrote this about a year ago and didn’t post it for whatever reason. I’m pleased to announce Peter is still alive and has accompanied me to my new apartment (new as of last March). The bad news is, my plant-care habits have waned down to a level that keeps young Pete alive, but barely. I regret to admit that he is much less full than he was at his peak. (His health really did improve at my last house; I’m thinking it was all the sunlight. Oh, and the watering). In fact, about a third of him died altogether. There were about three sets of spriggles planted in his pot, and one set completely died. Also, he had a baby! Who died. Not sure how familiar you are with spider plants, but when they’re healthy, they form baby spider plants at the ends of their tentacles; and he did, and I intended to plant the baby and let her grow up and name her M.J., but alas, she died, and it’s all my fault. I did find her pretty creepy, but I didn’t mean to kill her. Sigh.

One time recently I was at the gym and ran into a male person whom I know from the comedy theatre where I took improv classes and spend a disproportionate amount of my time. And when I saw him, I cleaned my proverbial glasses (“squeak, squeak!”), because “improv” and “the gym” are two worlds that rarely collide. Too often for my comfort, men who are comedians (or in a band, for that matter) seem to have an excercise phobia. It’s such a widespread phenomenon that it caused me to coin a term for it: “improv arms.” I think it’s a shame, because funny guys and musicians have a degree of automatic hotness because of their talent, so if they’d do a bicep curl once in a while, they could likely be an unstoppable force of hotness. It seems like a waste.

And that leads me to my next point: I love men’s arms. I love them so much. Every day that I wake up in the morning, I love them more than I did the night before. If I could only take one object with me to a desert island, I’d take a man’s arm. I can’t get enough! Men’s arms to me are what boobs are to many men. I love looking at them. I love touching them. Sometimes I stare inappropriately at them. When they’re covered up, I wonder what they look like underneath all that pesky fabric. I love kissing them and squeezing them and rubbing my face all over them. I’m serious, Internet! It’s true! It must be a cavewoman instinct. Probably if you were a caveman, no woman would mate with you if you had improv arms, because you wouldn’t be able to protect her from beasts or wrestle tigers to the ground to bring home for dinner.

If you are a man who has nice arms, you are automatically 75% more likely to get into my pants than if you have improv arms. I’m not saying IAs are a definite dealbreaker… no, if you’re perfect in every other way, I’ll still give you the time of day. But don’t be surprised if you wake up with a set of weights jury-rigged around your wrists, or if I ask you a little too often to lift heavy objects for me. Just bein’ honest.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.9, and it actually seems to be working ok! Now to find some fun new themes, and actually write more often. Yay!

Update: I swear my Archives tab was working fine, or maybe I just imagined that, because now it’s not. But I’m still proud of myself for figuring out the upgrade. And how do y’all like this new theme? I like it for now. Can you tell that I like turquoise and red/orange together? How can you tell?

Today I’m snowed in at my parents’ house in NC, and while I wait for my mom to remember that she was going to bring me some boots so I could go try to shovel the driveway and/or finish her phone conversation so that I can remind her, I’m trying to upgrade this very blog to the most recent version of WordPress. It seems as though someone hacked into it pretty badly and put “pornstuffs” (in the words of the web host tech dude) all in the coding. I’m not even sure how it’s working right now, because for months there was an error message when anyone tried to access it. I haven’t messed with the nerdy side of my blog since I originally installed it and installed a couple new themes in like 2006 (hence the ease with which someone hacked it), so I’m a little nervous that I’m going to break the whole thing, and all that will remain is the pornstuffs. Wish me luck, Internet, and I hope I’ll be seeing you soon!

Today as I was leaving the gym, I turned on the radio and heard the last of a story about a group picking out Hebrew names for all the planets or something. When they got to Uranus, both dj and guest admitted that the English word should be changed, too. There’s nothing good about that name; I think we can all agree on that. And it reminded me of a project in Mr. Hutchinson’s Earth Science class in high school. We were all assigned planets, and we had to give presentations on them. Uranus was assigned to me, and in my presentation, I did what I felt any self-respecting highschooler would and should do: I planned out my sentences to sound like I was talking about your butt. You’d do that, too, right? Things like, “Uranus has a pock-marked surface.” Gold, right? Well, nobody in that class so much as even snickered! Crickets! Literal crickets! I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I was always under the impression that Uranus, like farts, is always funny. Yes, we’ve all heard it before. But it’s still funny! Just like farts! I have no doubt that farts have been funny since the dawn of time, and always will be. And the same goes for Uranus, as far as I’m concerned. And if I can’t count on my fellow highschoolers to laugh at those things, on whom then, can I rely? It’s an unsettling thought. Almost as unsettling as the toxic gases emitted from Uranus.

I just had to check my horoscope for fun to see what it would say, because the last few weeks, and especially the last couple days, have been bat-shit crazy. I feel like it’s time for me to clean out my life like an attic, and time to stand up for myself and assert my rights, which is something I’ve tended to struggle with. People are coming at me like rabid bats in a dark cave (I’m going to try to use only analogies that include bats), and it’s wigging me out and making me think really hard about who I am and how people see me. Right now I’m done being the nice one, and I’m especially tired of keeping my thoughts to myself in order to appease others or keep from making waves.

So anyway, I read my horoscope, and it made me laugh like a bat who’s just read her horoscope and found it very apropos: Here’s what it said:

The world is mad at Pisces today because you will no longer play their game. There will be those that try everything to turn you around. They all have their own reasons that they claim are for your best interests. Your path is in the stars not in the starry eyes of those that wish to control you.

Enough said.

Bats.

Guess what, Friends? I’m going to New York on Monday to meet my dad and see two Broadway musicals! It has been yeeeeeaaaarrs since I’ve seen anything on Broadway. The first one I saw was Les Miserables, and boy, did I fall in love with that show. I still love it with all my heart, as I do a few others I’ve seen. But as I’ve gotten older, I find myself looking at certain storylines a little… differently.

For example:

Eponine in Les Mis: If you’re not familiar with her story, there’s this whole thing where this guy Marius meets this girl Cosette, and they fall in love and sing beautiful duets and so forth. Well, Eponine has been friends with Marius forever and is secretly in love with him, and can’t stand it when he falls for Cosette. Hence the song “On My Own,” and Eponine piping into other songs singing about how she’s all alone and isn’t life so hard and yadda yadda yadda. Well, when I was in high school, I romanticized the ever-loving shit out of Eponine’s story. Wasn’t it so heartbreaking that she loved this man, and he just treated her like one of the guys? Wasn’t it valiant of her to deliver this letter from Marius to Cosette in the middle of the French Revolution and get shot on the way, and didn’t that just serve Marius right to have her die in his arms? Wasn’t she the most beautiful, the most tragic, the most passionate, amazing woman?

Um… and now I just find myself thinking, “Girl! Pull yourself together! Sure, this dude has a lovely singing voice, but he’s in love with somebody else.” I mean, I’m frankly more than a little embarrassed for her. She’s kind of making a fool of herself if you get right down to it. She needs to stop whining, stop obsessing, pull herself up by the bootstraps, go get some fondue and a glass of burgundy, and eventually meet a man who actually notices her. Geez, right? Seriously, lady, put on your beret and go get on your bike with a long loaf of bread in the basket, and I’m sure you’ll meet someone new in no time. Someone who will make you forget all about Marius and his pesky girlfriend. I mean, you don’t need him! Sure, it may take time to mend your heart, but I suggest getting some fine milled soap and taking a bubble bath. Hunker down with a good Victor Hugo novel to take your mind off things. Go ride a carousel or get a crepe or listen to some accordian music, I don’t know, these are just things I’m throwing out there.  But my point is, when I was 16, this character was like my hero, and now, well… well.

And while I’m at it, what’s up with Rent? I mean, some of the characters I have to admit are really in tough spots, like Mimi for example (AIDS, junkie); and the Collins (AIDS) and Angel (dies of AIDS) storyline is heartbreaking. And it sucks that Roger’s gf killed herself (because she had AIDS). That really does suck. But still… Maureen and Joanne seem fine and in good health. And Mark seems to have had a pretty stable existence up until now, and his mom seems positively delightful — I mean, she sent him a hotplate for goodness’ sake, and she calls him all the time to tell him she loves him — and yet he’s burning posters and screenplays to keep himself warm because he hasn’t paid the heating bill? And everyone’s bitching and moaning because Benny is making them pay…. oh my gosh, say it isn’t so… Rent! Like, because, aaaahhh, what a hardship to have to pay for the place where you live! Oh my gosh, he’s such an asshole for asking us to pay him to live in the building he owns! We would prefer to live for free!

Oh yeah? Would you? Would you prefer to live for free? Because you believe your housing is someone else’s responsibility? There’s a word for that, and it’s “communism,” and I’d like to see you move to a communist country and try to be a professional actress or musician or filmmaker there. Go ahead, Maureen. Be my guest, Mark; Roger. Go move to China and start a band and get some gigs and see how well you do.

Listen, I get it. I’m an artist, too. And I would much prefer to spend all day languishing about, creating, rather than working a day job just to pay the bills. But since I’m not an heiress, I accept that sacrifices must be made, and I get it done. And maybe you should do the same, Cast of Rent. And you know what, Eponine? I’ve had my heart broken, too, and I’ve been into plenty of guys who weren’t into me back. (I know, it’s reeeeeeally hard to believe, but it has happened). And did I moan and cry and sing sad songs all the time? Well… OK, I did write a bunch of bad poetry about boys I liked in middle school, and you should see how ridiculous my journals from circa 1993 were… but I mean, ahem…  You get my point.

So anyway. When I’m in New York, am I going to be a cynical old lady? Am I going to look at these characters and roll my eyes and go, “Puhlease, Billy Elliot. You’re a boy! In a coal-mine strike! Just practice your boxing and for Pete’s sake, put that leotard away.” Or, “Maria! Maria! Can you hear me?! This guy is going to cause you no end of trouble. There are plenty of cute boys in your own gang!”

Will I? Or will I cry my eyes out and love every minute?

I’ll keep you posted.