tavie.com

Today is Andrew's 18th birthday. But, no! But, he was just in his crib. In his blue footie pajamas. In the yellow room in the house in Brooklyn. Soft brown baby-hair and fuzzy blue baby-feet in room full of admirers and confused little playmates-to-be. How is he 18 now? I could swear I just saw him for the first time in his crib, honestly. Now he's this wonderful college man with a darling, beautiful girlfriend and a highly developed aesthetic sense. It's puzzling, this life thing.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:44 AM | shower me with attention

I'm coming down with something. That whole "I have to leave early today to go to a doctor's appointment" alibi so I can go see Scooby Doo here may turn out to be ironic, like the time Beth from NewsRadio called in sick to go shopping, got caught in the rain and actually got sick.

Oh, my sweet Jesus, did I just tell an anecdote about a television character as if it were from real life? This is worse than the time Gilligan and I were arguing over the last coconut...

I am so not funny.

I feel sick. Just crummy-sick. Could hardly sleep last night. Tossed, felt like all night. My Southern Gentleman caught me online last night at one a.m. and shooed me off to bed. I made him promise to give him a wake-up call, but he and I are too much alike; I knew he'd probably oversleep. Luckily I heard my alarm and was dressed when he called me, fifteen minutes late. He's the pumpkin, he is.

My mom, dad and sister left for a weekend in Chicago. They left last night at 4 a.m. They called from the plane just now. It's been rerouted to Indianapolis. HA ha! They're sitting on a plane, doing nothing! Why I so mean? That's not funny. Gah.

During my fitful sleep I dreamt about Kirsten and Nina, and Mark, and puppies, and bombs. The nice dream turned really scary when the bombs started dropping. Nina and Kirsten were still in this big house where I'd left them to go outside and chase puppies, and bombs fell and the house blew up. That's not a good dream. My scary dreams are almost always about bombs. Funky, eh?

Me no feel good. But... tonight: Scooby-Scooby Doo!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:40 AM | shower me with attention

Thursday, November 15, 2001

I want to leave now, I want to leave now.
I want to leave now!
I WANT TO LEAVE NOW!

CAN I LEAVE NOW?

No?

But...

I want to leave now...

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:05 PM | shower me with attention

Sometimes life is beautiful.

I've become obsessed, suddenly, with the idea that I have to start this particular knitting project immediately. And so I've been searching the web for knitting shops reasonably near my school, thinking I can leave a little early and buy the yarn I need for this project. But not coming up with much.

And I just now see that there is a yarn shop exactly two blocks away from my school.

How beautiful is that?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 3:19 PM | shower me with attention

Oh, hey part II. I got a call from my temp contact last night. I've been extended until January.

I don't think Jason has.

But I have.

Also, apparently American Express (blue) is charging me 24% interest or whatever. That fucking sucks. I'm never using that credit card again. I'm paying off the 2-odd thousand dollars I owe them and then I am sending them a used snotrag in the mail as a goodbye present.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:15 AM | shower me with attention

Oh, hey. I forgot to take my Gleemonex again today. That's not gonna help my headache, eh?

Bitch, bitch, whine. Oh my aching head. Oh, my poor withering body. I am such an old woman. I wish I'd brought knitting to complete the picture. I should dye my hair grey.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:01 AM | shower me with attention

Oh, and, you should go look at the video for "Red Vines" that some artist made for Aimee. It's weird and cool and disturbing. I likes it.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:44 AM | shower me with attention

Yesterday I had to sleep. I'm having sinus issues and tiredness issues and jaw issues (don't ask, honestly.) I called in saying I'd be in by 10:30 but then I never called back, just fell asleep. My boss hasn't arrived yet but I heard she was looking for me yesterday. Wuh-oh.

Anyhow, I'm back at work. So. That's good.

Did I have anything of interest to say about yesterday or Tuesday night? I had a lovely dinner with erin at Cabano's, a Carribbean (?) restaurant on 59th street. I do love their octopus salad. Oh, and on the subway on the way to school I was sitting next to two teenaged girls who were critiquing each other's poetry. I read over the shoulder of the one next to me. It was a love poem about a boy she liked. Oh, and, it was so bloody awful that it was beautiful. I actually read one line that so begged to be remembered that I whipped out my own notebook and jotted it down:

Whenever your [sic] near it makes me wanna stutter
One glance from you and I turn into butter...

Isn't that godawfully fantastic?

Anyway. So. Yeah. And slept yesterday. And sinuses ache today. Good times.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:42 AM | shower me with attention

Tuesday, November 13, 2001

10,700. Not as good as yesterday, but still! Geez! I'm on a roll, baby!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 1:27 PM | shower me with attention

I'm reading the Sunday Times Magazine, having exhausted the crossword to the best of my abilities (rat *$(&#% bastard this week) and the theme of the magazine this week is "rebuilding New York". One of the features consists of various prominent New Yorkers-- writers, poets, choristers, anchorwomen-- describing their favourite things about New York, their favourite parts of the city or what they consider the essence of the city.

These are some of my favourites, � The New York Times:

Hal Sirowitz, poet laureate of Queens

Samuel Parsons planted New York City's oldest weeping birch in Queens. It was made into a landmark, and an iron fence was put around it. If one so much as touched the fence, a woman at the historical house next door would run out and order that person to leave. Once I was practicing Zen meditation there, and a squirrel jumped on my lap and took a bite out of the cupcake I was saving as a reward for deep concentration. In 1997, there was a celebration for the tree's birthday. Shortly after, the tree was found to be diseased. They cut off so many branches that it died. Luckily, before dying it gave birth to some saplings. They were not as big as the original, but they did cover up the stump, which looked like an elephant's foot.

Amy Sedaris, actor

If I decide I need a last-minute stethoscope or a skin-disorder book, I can go to the old Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue. They sell medical supplies up on the very top floor. Not a lot of people know about that. And if it's the middle of the night and I decide I want a tooth or a taxidermied weasel, I know where to go: Wandering Dragon, on East 10th Street. I went there at 2 in the morning once with my older brother, David, and he bought a brain, and I bought a stomach. It's a really creepy place, and it smells bad. They have a two-headed calf and old whooping-cough posters, and they always play rip-roaring 20's music.

Tina Fey, television writer and actor

Every Saturday before I go to work at ''Saturday Night Live,'' I go to Bonjour Nails above McDonald's on Sixth Avenue. I know it's a good salon because it has a poster of a beautiful Asian gal with very long nails holding a violin. I am told to ''pick color.'' I always choose No. 123, ''Delicacy,'' a sheer pink that is not to be confused with No. 68, ''It's Delicate,'' which is a sheer pink. The first time you get a manicure, you're very aware that you're holding hands with a stranger, but after a few hundred times, you just feel like a New York lady. My manicurist is a smiley teenager who massages my hands while the radio plays, ''If I could turn back time, if I could find a way. . . .'' She looks up. ''Oh. This singer is . . . Chair?'' ''Cher, yeah.'' She listens for a minute. ''Man or woman?'' ''Cher? She's a woman.'' ''Hmm. The voice is so low.'' ''She has a low voice, yeah.'' She wipes my hands with a Kleenex. ''But Cher body is beautiful.'' We laugh in agreement. ''Yeah, she's got a good body.'' So visit Bonjour Nails. For $7.00 plus tip you get a manicure, a hand massage and the chance to discuss in an open forum whether Cher is a transvestite.

Mark Morris, choreographer

From my window I have a fabulous view of the skyscraper that a child I know calls the Entire State Building. Each evening, beginning at dusk, tiny lights twinkle near the top. After a long time, I finally deduced that they are camera flashes from the observation deck. I don't know much about photography, but I do often wonder how all those pictures turn out.

Paul Auster, writer

Riding the subway at a busy time of day -- morning rush hour, evening rush hour -- and having the good luck to find a seat. Counting the newspapers not written in English, scanning the titles of books and watching people read (the mystery of it, the impossibility of entering another person's mind), listening in on conversations, sneaking a look at the baseball scores over someone's shoulder. The thin men with their briefcases, the voluminous women with their Bibles and devotional pamphlets, the high-school kids with their 40-pound textbooks. The variety of skin tones and features, the singularity of each person's nose, each person's chin, the infinite shufflings of the human deck. The panhandlers with their out-of-tune songs and tales of woe, the fractious harangues of born-again proselytizers, the deaf politely placing sign-language alphabet cards in your lap, the silent men who scuttle through the car selling umbrellas, tablecloths and cheap windup toys. The lurches, the sudden losses of balance, the impact of strangers crashing into one another. The delicate, altogether civilized art of minding one's own business. And then, never for any apparent reason, the lights go out, the fans stop whirring and everyone sits in silence, waiting for the train to start moving again. Never a word from anyone. Rarely even a sigh. My fellow New Yorkers sit in the dark, waiting with the patience of angels.

John Cameron Mitchell, actor

For an entire year, I performed in ''Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' at a theater in the ballroom of the Hotel Riverview, a beautifully decrepit semiflophouse on the Hudson River patronized by drug addicts and European backpackers. In its 94-year history, the ballroom has been a thousand venues -- bars, theaters, rock clubs, cruising spots. The age-slanted steps of the Riverview lead up to a lobby entrance guarded by a vending machine (Trojans next to the Snickers) that partially covers the bronze plaque honoring the surviving Titanic crew, who took shelter there in the hotel's early years. I'd walk in every day and wave to the sweet-natured Jamaican widow-owner behind the bulletproof glass. Antoine, the elevator operator, would usually be moving a mattress or a corpse, so I'd have to walk six floors. It was not unusual for me to bump into a down-on-her-luck tranny on my way up. I was often the first person in the dressing room, an octagonal loft in the Rapunzel-esque cupola that crowns the building and offers -- offered -- a view of both the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty. I'd usually arrive at sunset, the room filled with shafts of gold light. I was suddenly in Chartres.
--
They should have asked me mine. Okay, so I'm not a prominent New Yorker, but I love this town. I could have talked about the exquisite mint tea at the Hungarian Pastry shop across the street from St. John the Divine, which is crowded always with Columbia students and peacock-fanciers; about the view at sunset from the roof garden at the Met; about the view of Manhattan, Queens, Roosevelt Island, and all the river in between from the airborne Roosevelt Island tram at sunrise when everything is still haze and hardening yellow light, and one can see both the sun and the moon in the same scope of vision; about the traffic cop at 59th and second, directing cars onto and off of the Queensboro Bridge as she dances to the music inside her head and waves her white gloves in time to her personal beat. I could say plenty. They should ask me.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:43 AM | shower me with attention

Dave was adorable on Becker last night. I just sat there, adoring him. Rolled-up sleeves AND freckles; was it my birthday or something??

I forgot to take my Gleemonex this morning and I was already 20 minutes late so today will be an Experiment in Dizziness.

Since I left late I walked with my dad to the subway and we rode a few stops together. We walked smack into Grandpa Al, who, despite the early hour, was puffing away at one of his signature cigars. So I got a delightful wake-up of cigar smoke in the face as we exchanged our neighbourly pleasantries.

To deflect the course of conversation from Boring Stories of The Old Days of Sci-Fi Fandom as we walked, I asked my dad, "So, are you looking forward to the Lord of the Rings movie?"

"No!"-- the immediate and forceful response.

"Oh! Why not?"

Followed was an incomprehensible rant-- something about taking a minor background character and making her major, whilst giving a major character no screentime, and betraying the fans, and hogwash, and all sorts of stuff that is only interesting to Tolkein Geeks.

"Wow. I think it looks kind of good, and I didn't even read the book. I found it boring."

"That's because you didn't get past the first hundred pages..."

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:35 AM | shower me with attention

Please note my correction for the 11/12 entry.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:28 AM | shower me with attention

Monday, November 12, 2001

Make that 11,545.

I am so damned impressed with myself right now, I may throw up.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 3:44 PM | shower me with attention

Great googly moogly.

I just scored 11,075 on Tooswords.

Holy mother of Will Shortz, I am amazing.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 3:06 PM | shower me with attention

Fuck. Another plane went down. Jason told me an hour and a half ago but we couldn't access any websites to get information so I've been reading blogs all morning instead of working. Theresa said we can go home if we want, but the bridges and tunnels are closed and she doesn't know if the subways are running properly. I said I might as well stay.

What caused it? Oh, god, I don't want anyone I know to fly. I've been so scared about Gina going to Israel this month. I don't want her to go. I know I need to get over it. But now this. What caused this?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:57 AM | shower me with attention

It is fucking scary how right on the results of that Colorgenics quiz was for me.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:52 AM | shower me with attention

I copied Jess and submitted tavie.com to the weblog review. I find review pleasing, but my reader's rating displeasing. Such is life.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:41 AM | shower me with attention

Tired. Coffee. Good. Cold. Bad. Coffee. Hot. Good.

Today was the first day I wore my winter coat.

This coming weekend will be good. Will see Scooby-Doo with Gina and Erica, Cheryl and Mike, Nina and Jim. Will see my little love in A Winter's Tale. Must remember to get scrambled-egg scarf from Mint Manor.

This past weekend was scrumptious. Bundled into Gina's car with her and me mum. Got to Toronto in 8.5 hours including stops for food and gas. Fell into bed and slept (except for Gina, who, typically, got no sleep at all!!). Woke up and met Kitana and my friend Tommy the Canadophile, who was also in town to see Mark's play. Had breakfast at the Golden Griddle (b.y.o. S&M gear!). Finally learned about peameal bacon. It's delicious.

Then we actually had time to walk around the city at leisure, shop, sit around drinking coffee. That was wonderful. Got myself to Lush, my favourite bath-and-beauty chain (discovered it in Australia, and there are locations in almost every major city you can think of... OUTSIDE the U.S.) and stocked up on bath melts and bath fizzies and weird soaps. Went to a drugstore where Tommy bought 32 boxes of a candy called KinderSurprise. That's a lot of candy. The rest of us all bought issues of Toronto Life with Don "Yummmmmy" McKellar on the cover. Then we went to the Second Cup to get coffee.

This was my crucial mistake.

Right after we got coffee we went to the theatre to see Mark in "Fully Committed", the one-man play by Becky Mode about a reservations receptionist at a posh Manhattan restaurant. We all used the facilities before sitting down, but I also took the opportunity to buy Gina a cookie and get myself a bottle of water. (On TOP of the coffee I had just drunk.)

Then we sat down, after some tense moments involving Gina's purse in the orchestra pit and waiting for Toronto Steph to show up. Finally the show started, and we were lost in the magic of seeing MARK! LIVE! He was brilliant. He was schizophrenic. He was magnificent. He was Mark at his very best-- I don't think I've seen any of the Kids in a solo project that has featured their talents as well as this one featured Mark's. It feels as if this play was written for him. He does almost 40 different characters, and although at first the device of hearing and seeing him talk to himself in different voices is a bit jarring, you soon accept the convention and see all the different people that Mark is creating. It was delicious. It was perfect.

Well, it was almost perfect.

The hard thing about one-man shows, especially when you're seeing them in the front row, and especially when you've driven 8 hours to get there just to see them and don't want to miss a single moment, is having to pee. I am the girl who is notorious for having to get up at least once during every movie and every flight and every show. I am Sir Pee-a-Lot. About half an hour into the 85-minute play, I had to go to the bathroom.

I won't detail my agony. Suffice it to say that I held out, that there was much squirming and knuckle-biting, that dear Kitana's sympathetic glances were an immense comfort to me, and that my physical discomfort was not enough to ruin the show for me. Such is the power of Mark. Certainly, I dashed out of that theatre as fast as anyone has ever dashed after Mark had taken his final bow, but not before being one of a four-person standing ovation. (Which is always fun, by the by. Heh. Me, Gina, Kitana and a woman behind us in the second row were the only people standing. Hee hee.) Mark saw us when we stood, bestowed upon us the Flash of Recognition, gave me a deep nod and bowed again. Mmmm.

Afterwards we had our traditional meal at Marhshall's, and then came back to catch him outside the stage door after his second performance. I am not a fan of the stage door and generally try to avoid it, but this was the best stage-door experience I'd ever had. There was a group of Mark fans standing around also but our groups didn't merge. Pity.

Mark attended to them first, but before signing their playbills, he called to us, "Were you at the afternoon show?!"

We said that we were.

"Were you at the second show?"

Busted!

That was funny. But we did come back, just for him. And he came over, and he kissed me, and he was silly and funny and performed for us like he always does when I see him with a group of people. And I remembered to make "introductions", pointing out Toronto Steph was from the newsgroup, to his delight. And he acted especially charmed to meet my mum.

We admitted we had gone to dinner during the second show, and he did his impression of the comparatively lackluster second audience. The first words out of my mouth were actually something like, "Why are you so good?" I said when he did his Zagat and it turned out to be Lorne that we all lost it, and he said that's when he realized we were in the audience. "I noticed the disproportionate laughter," he told us. For who else would go into hysterics at hearing Don Roritor-as-famous-restaurant-critic?

GINA!!!!!!!! asked about Ade's paper and Mark told us he'd been swamped with press for the play, particularly morning shows, and regaled us with his impression of a morning-show zoo crew. But my favourite part of the conversation came when I rather childishly demanded that he try and do his next show in New York. "You know I'll come to see you, but we're tired!" I whined. To which he replied he would call his agent: "My Tavie wants me on Broadway!"

His Tavie.

Fluttery, fluttery sigh.

After some more chitchat, during which he painstakingly directed us to a potential dessert locale, we parted ways, glowing happily in the chill. We returned to our hotel, where Kitana brought her VCR so that we could all watch The Documentary together.

Wonderful, wonderful, a thousand times wonderful.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:06 AM | shower me with attention

Sunday, November 11, 2001

I am BLOGGING FROM KITANA's WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're about to leave Toronto. :(

I am now going to go swing Kitana around in a circle. Gently, for she hurt her knee in dance class. I will miss her so much, I may cry. But she is coming to visit soon.

When I get back I shall talk all about beautiful Mark and how he called me "my Tavie". {g}

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:01 PM | shower me with attention