the Invisible Flying Cow's Journal

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Inheriting the (electronic) kingdom
My father got a Wii.

Every time I talk to him, he mentions the Wii and how much he and Gail enjoy it with a hint of childish glee in his voice. It's adorable. My dad, a true geek, has never outgrown being enthralled by The Shiny of new electronics. He doesn't hop on every new blinking, beeping trend, but when he discovers a new technology that tickles him, he's... enthusiastic. I remember when he brought home our first CD player -- Mom was skeptical and I was young enough that I was just confused, but he was all, "No, no, believe me, this is the future! Cassette tapes are on the way out -- and some day, they'll be putting VIDEO on discs this size!"

Even better was Christmas 198...8? 1987? I was either in kindergarten or preschool, I can't remember clearly. What I do remember clearly is that Santa got me a Nintendo, and it was awesome. Of course, looking back, I now understand that what really happened is that Santa got Santa a Nintendo; I just got first dibs on playing it. And while my family likes The Shiny, we're also pretty frugal and like to take care of our stuff and make it last, so that was the only game system we had until we added a Playstation in the mid-90s. The NES and PS1 lived happily in our basement and were a cherished part of father-daughter time. Dad and I would laugh ourselves silly making aliens fart in Abe's Oddworld on the Playstation one day, then resume our vicious Dr Mario battles on the Nintendo the next. Dad actually bought a backup NES just in case the first one died, though the original 20-odd-year-old console is still chugging along just fine.

But now there's this Wii, and Dad's running out of room in the little entertainment area in the basement. So, he decided to keep the original console and the 15 or so games he still loves, but get rid of the rest.

Well... not get rid of, per se.

I am now slowly finding room in my apartment for the Backup Console, the Backup Gun, 3 Backup Controllers, and the 44 (!!!) games Dad doesn't play so much any more. Granted, some of those are Backup Copies as well -- Zelda, Tetris, Dr Mario, and the three SMB games. You know, the really good games.

So, if anyone wants to come over and kick back with some old school Duck Hunt or Dr Mario, drop me a line. I even have Bart vs The Space Mutants, A Boy and His Blob, Little Nemo Dream Master, and since I was once a pre-teen girl, so help me, The Little Mermaid.

Life is good.

Current Mood: happy

Little moments
Some days, nuzzling a thick, fuzzy blanket smelling fresh and warm from the dryer is the best thing in the world.

This is one of those days.

Current Mood: content

On Sexism and Restroom Signs
Yeah, this is going to be a weird post.

In any given year, my company makes hundreds of restroom signs for dozens of businesses, hospitals, museums, and colleges. They come in many shapes, sizes, colors, materials, and fonts. Most clients with large buildings that need many signs go the simplest route, an ADA-compliant photopolymer with the appropriate symbol and "WOMEN" or "MEN". Fenway Health chose acrylic panels with a neat, light-diffusing finish and applied tactile graphics. Goldman Sachs opted for flag-mounted, double-sided, 15-pound glass-and-stainless steel behemoths. But no matter the form these signs take, they're all the same when you get right down to it:

Men wear pants. Women wear skirts.

In any polite setting, that's what you see. After all, you have to make it unambiguous for people who can't read (or who just can't read English). It's only fair, and I would say that the restroom door is second only to the fire exit in being the door whose purpose needs to be most universally understood. In fact, sometimes designers will omit the words altogether and just use the symbols. I've never heard of clients having a problem with that -- after all, everyone knows that men wear pants and women wear skirts.

It bugs me.

One time, I, wearing jeans, was assembling some restroom signs next to a guy wearing a Utilikilt and remarked how funny it was that both of us were using the "wrong" restroom. I'm glad that our society is at a place where, in most circumstances, women can wear pants without comment. However, men don't have this same freedom -- even though several men in my shop now wear Utilikilts, it's still An Occasion when they wear them, and rare is the guy who will comfortably go out in public in something other than pants. I don't think that's fair, either. Even as society is trying to progress, it feels like we cling to these old symbols that tell men where the line is and tell women that they've already crossed it. Sometimes, especially if I'm feeling out of place for other reasons, I'll imagine the Women's symbol mocking me as I walk by. What is that you're wearing? Go put on a nice skirt and get back into the kitchen where you belong.

There are variations on the most widely-used traditional graphic, of course. I saw a coworker putting together some restroom signs for a high-class hotel that featured a man in a tuxedo and a woman in pearls and an evening gown. Still man-in-pants, woman-in-skirt, but a nice change. And thinking of the above-mentioned Utilikilt situation, Utilikilt has an amusing restroom sign variation for sale: man-wears-kilt, woman-has-boobs. I've also seen man-wear-loafers, woman-wears-high-heels; man-has-short-hair, woman-has-long-hair; man-drinks-beer, woman-drinks-wine; and man-thinks-about-sports, woman-thinks-about-shopping.

I wish there were unambiguous symbols we could use that didn't rely on cultural expectations of how the different genders dress and act. There are some out there, but the most clear ones are probably too crass to use in conservative, polite business settings. There are man-has-penis, woman-has-boobs signs, which is fine until you get to the question of how big to make the body parts in question (yikes), and how does that make flat-chested women and undersized men feel -- and not to mention that relying on body parts probably alienates transgendered and intersexed people even more than the pants and the skirt do. There are the good old astrological symbols, but when you get right down to it, those are also man-has-penis, woman-has-vagina. There are a few man-pees-standing-up, woman-pees-sitting-down signs, but I'm bothered by those for reasons of my own.

I realize that there is no one solution that will make everybody happy. After all, most people probably have no problems with the good old man-wears-pants, woman-wears-skirt signs that are most commonplace. However, it used to be the case that whites-only and coloreds-only signs were commonplace, too, and thank goodness that's over with.

It bugs me.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Snip, snip, snip!
As it turns out, it's tough to take a picture of the back of your own head when you're home alone. So, suffice it to say that my sink looks like this:

And I feel like this:

Current Mood: lightheaded

My latest set (with pictures, of course); Opening Night this Friday!
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown opens this Friday! You may have remembered me angsting about it (and Snoopy's doghouse in particular) a few weeks ago. Well, communication with the dir staff has improved somewhat in the interim and I created a doghouse that works under the prescribed restrictions, even if I find it inelegant. The rest of the set has been built, Load-In went about as smoothly as I expected (with thanks to

flaggday and

proven ), and I'm down to fiddly fixes and improvements on my daily Set To-Do list. Not a bad position to be in at all! By all reports, people like the set and it hasn't killed anyone yet, so I suppose I've done my job.

Also, this show is freaking adorable. I had skimmed the script at the start, but I had never actually seen or heard the show before watching a dress rehearsal earlier this week. As it turns out, it's made of comics, innocence, and warm fuzzy feelings; it is, like I said, freaking adorable. The actors are, as I've come to expect from The Longwood Players, top-notch. Snoopy and Lucy in particular captivate me; I would encourage people to go see the show just on the strength of their performances alone.

( What's that? You want pictures of the set? )

On a somewhat related note, I'm taking next week off from work. It occurred to me that I haven't used my vacation time for actual vacation in the three years I've worked at DCL. Over the years, I've used more than half of my accrued vacation hours to hunker down in various theaters for various Tech Weeks, and I've used hours to visit family (which, while Not Work, is far from relaxing), to help friends move, and to get surgery. I have yet to burn vacation hours to sit around, relax, and catch up on life. I have over 80 hours stored up, and it's high time I used them for an actual vacation.

Current Mood: exhausted

Upcoming Things I Want to See
Because it's fun to occasionally see things done by other groups, and even more fun to see things put on by professionals. Is anyone interested in seeing either of these with me?

The Wonderful World of Dissocia
I got a postcard (hooray mailing list!) promoting this Apollinaire show. The quote that caught my eye was, "If you like Alice in Wonderland, but there's not enough sex and violence in it, then Dissocia is the show for you." There's a picture of a woman in a blue satin gown looking beautiful and mysterious on the front, and a picture of two traffic cops holding one another and looking scared on the back. That's all the information I have, all the information I needed, and all the information I pass on to you. :-) Tickets are $25 in advance, and I'd be looking at going on Friday 27 November or Saturday 28 November, 8pm. It's in Chelsea, but looks easy enough to reach by bus.

The Boston Pops Presents New Year's Eve with Amanda Palmer
Starts at 10pm on New Year's Eve at Symphony Hall. Tickets are in the range of "almost prohibitively expensive" ($80-$160), but dude, seriously, Amanda Palmer performing with the Boston Pops. Not to mention that this would be downtown, smack dab in the middle of plenty of First Night festivities beforehand. Could be awesome. Could be seriously awesome.

A variety of musical and semi-musical things
First off, a signal boost: the Metro Stage Company is putting on a production of Sweeney Todd at the Cambridge YMCA, starting next Friday (the 16th) and running for two weeks. I have friends doing music direction and stage management, and I'm doing run crew just for opening night (heeeere I come to save the day!). Besides, dude, it's Sweeney Todd. Go see it!

Second, this guy beatboxes while playing the flute and it made my day.

Third, building foley devices is turning out to be a lot of fun. Today, I completed a machine gun contraption -- effectively, the front wheel of a tricycle mounted upside down on a base with a plastic card positioned to stick through the spokes. Turn the pedal, and you get rapid fire! Last week, I finished a creaker box -- just a box with two eye bolts and a dowel; wrap rope around the dowel, tie the ends to the eye bolts for fine tuning, and when you turn the dowel, the friction between it and the rope lets out a great creak. Haunted house doors, footsteps on an old wood floor, anything creaky or squeaky. It feels like I'm building musical instruments! This is an entire theatrical dimension I hadn't yet explored. Whee!

Current Mood: satisfied

Do Re Mi
Went to karaoke for my first time tonight. And. I. LOVED. IT.

That is all.

Current Mood: cheerful

Radiohead's "Last Flowers"
( And general music geekery )

Current Mood: peaceful

Things I learned at work *today*
--If I expect a job to take me 4 hours, adding a second person does not necessarily make it take 2 hours. Add the right person, and we'll feed off of each other and it'll take an hour and a half. Add the wrong person, like a newbie whose work I have to keep checking and occasionally redoing, and it'll take 3 hours. Add the wrong person and let Murphy's Law run rampant, and it'll take 5 hours.

--When you touch a fresh sign, you can get paint on your fingers. When you get paint on your fingers, you can get it off with lacquer thinner. When you wash your hands with lacquer thinner, if you're not paying attention, you can screw up the paint job on the next piece you touch. When you screw up the paint job, you have to repaint it fresh. When you have a freshly repainted sign, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT TOUCH IT AGAIN.

--If I'm humming to myself as I work and I discover something that's depressingly screwed up, the word "motherfucker" does not, in fact, work smoothly into "Doo Wah Diddy". Kinda stops it dead, actually. "Doo wah diddy, diddy dawwww, MOtherFUCKer!"

Current Mood: tired

Things I learned at work today
Actually, I guess I only learned one thing at work today. And that is: if I'm humming to myself as I work and suddenly I screw something up, the word "motherfucker" works quite smoothly into Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

...and now all the music geeks on my friends list have a very interesting version of that music running through their heads. You're welcome. :-)

Current Mood: tired

On Glass and Other Materials
Over the years both at work at DCL and backstage in various theaters, I've gotten a chance to work with a wide variety of materials. It's one of the charms of my work.

( Cut for techie ramblings. )

On Stage Managing
But first, obligatory spam:

Come see Bat Boy! It runs for four more shows: tonight, then Thursday-Friday-Saturday next week, 8pm at MIT's Kresge Little Theater.

Bat Boy vies with Sweeney Todd for the title of My Favorite Musical Ever (Rent would be in the running if the ending didn't suck). The music is fairly complex with a lot of neat harmonies, the chorus parts are as fun to play as the leads, it has the best mother/teenage daughter relationship I've seen portrayed on stage, and there's enough blood, gore, and orgy for everyone!

( Also, I'm stage managing for my 4th time (6th if you count ASM positions). And I like it. )

Current Mood: satisfied

Only after Opening Night
This only seems to happen during MTG shows, which have a more brutal Tech Week than any other theater company I've worked with so far:

I wake up. I can't see anything. SHIT! I've fallen alseep in the middle of a show! DOUBLE SHIT! Why are we in blackout? What cue am I in? Is it time to hit GO yet? Is the crew done with the set change? I flail around and hit the nearest button at hand--

which turns on my bedside lamp.

Confused and wholly disoriented, I scan my room for the light board console and check under my covers for my headset, convinced that somehow, somewhere, I am screwing up a cue. Only gradually do I come to the reasonable conclusion that I am, in fact, at home, and should probably try to go back to sleep.

*sigh*

Oh, well, at least it's better than last summer, when I would wake up with the panicked idea that since I was obviously in a blackout, I should be moving a turntable, so I would grab the nearest tall thing I could reach and pull hard. Luckily, at the time, I wasn't keeping anything on top of my dresser...

Current Mood: disoriented

For the 50% of you on my friends list who *aren't* involved with Theatre@First...

So, there's this show! That I'm in! In my first majorly comedic role ever! And it's been such a good time, I forgot to announce it here until the second weekend!

Oy.

Right, so there are three shows left: tonight, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm at the Unity Church of God a few blocks up from the Davis T-stop. Tickets are $12. Details and ticket reservations can be found through the link above. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, come see it!

I love Theatre@First's annual one-act festival. There's something about the condensed format of one-act plays that forces characters to be enagaging from the start. You don't get two hours to let the characters be introduced, grow and change, and connect with the audience -- you get 10 minutes. And as an audience member, if you don't like the play -- wait 10 minutes. It's like Theater for People with ADD. One-act plays are just... fun. And my character is a beer-drinking, potty-mouthed, sore loser who enjoys abusing her friends. It's been really fun.

Come see!

"Tell the pretty ones they're smart, and tell the smart ones they're pretty."
I just saw Pirates! at the Huntington with

wesleyjenn ,

saxikath , and

vampiretheatre . My immediate reaction was pretty much OH MY GOD I MUST SEE THAT AGAIN. It runs until mid-June. Any takers?

You may want to see Pirates! if:

-- you enjoy... well, pirates
-- you would enjoy watching young men perform acrobatic stunts... while dressed as pirates
-- you would like to see a show poke fun at Gilbert and Sullivan while maintaining their characteristic style
-- the idea of a calypso version of "When the Foeman Bares His Steel" tickles you
-- you wish Mabel wasn't such an airhead
-- you have never watched a Gilbert and Sullivan show and have no idea what those last two points were about, but you like musicals. And pirates.
-- you have spent so much time doing community theater that you have forgotten how sexy professional sets are
-- you want to see a pirate ship arrive onstage while actors clambor on and off it as it's moving
-- it makes you happy when a large cast sings in tune
-- you laugh when people tell jokes

You may not want to see Pirates! if:

-- you're a Gilbert and Sullivan purist
-- it disturbs you when actors burst into song
-- your funny bone has been surgically removed, possibly as the result of fighting an avocado

It looks like the Huntington has some sort of discount program for people between the ages of 21 and 35, which includes a good many people on my friends list. It makes the $67 seats cost $25, and I wish I had known about it before right now and will certainly be taking advantage of it in the future. So... Pirates! Any takers?

Current Mood: theater theater theater wheee!

Tables Turned? No shit!
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? This is a fairly momentous moment for me.

For the first time in my life, I have gone to an audition and subsequently been cast into the role for which I auditioned.

*squeal*

That is all.

EDIT: How thoughtless of me. Of course, that isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed being in shows where I auditioned and ended up with a different, usually chorus-oriented, role -- Fleta in particular turned out to be a lot more fun than I was expecting -- it's just that the sheer novelty of getting the character that I had already felt strongly for is exhilerating!

Current Mood: gleeful

Pros and Cons
Things that are Easy to Do with One Hand:

-Surf the Interwebs. Also, I've now read through the entire archive of Least I Could Do.

-Eat chocolate.

-Sleep.

Things that are Difficult to Do with One Hand:

-Type capital letters. Typing at all would be harder if I hadn't gotten all that one-handed practice during MH3K9.

-Wash the inside of my right elbow (accomplishing this feat required dexterous toes and a lot of flexibility).

-Put my hair into a ponytail (only partially possible, but at least it isn't in my eyes anymore).

-Get the last spoonfuls out of a tall jar of applesauce.

-Tie shoelaces. Anticipated to be even more difficult: put on dance tights and ballet shoes.

-Open the freaking child-proof cap on the bottle of vicodin. I mean, seriously, I would think the HAND SURGERY CLINIC would give you the option of those easy-open bottles.

In conclusion: since the bulk of my time has been spent on the "easy" things lately (mostly that "sleep" thing), I'm actually not doing too badly. Many thanks and love to

puffy_wuffy for taking care of me yesterday, and many mournful apologies to the Iolanthe cast for missing opening night. *sigh*

Current Mood: amused?

I need a friend with a car on Friday
Long story short: as many of you already know, last Friday I had an accident that resulted in a severed nerve and 5 stitches in my left index finger (the running line is: "I had a fight with a kung-fu avocado, and it turned my own knife against me"). After meeting with him today, my orthopedic surgeon thinks that I may have also fucked a tendon as well and wants to do surgery on Friday to give me a chance at ever regaining use of this finger.

The circumstances of this surgery require general anesthesia, which under this hospital's rules requires that I have somebody drive me to the hospital, wait while the surgery is performed, and then drive me home. They explicitly don't want anyone taking a cab, and when I asked about using public transportation, I got the most beautiful "what the hell is wrong with you?" look I've ever seen.

Is there anyone who can do me this huge favor? I need someone with a driver's license (I have a Zipcar membership if you don't have a car either) who can spare several hours this Friday (the 1st of May) to get me to the hospital in Waltham and home again. I'll know the exact appointment time tomorrow afternoon. You will have my undying love and devotion, and also cookies as soon as I can use my hand to bake again. Please contact me as soon as you can.

Current Mood: worried