Looking back

Hello again!  I'm in the midst of frantically trying to finish a million things before I head to Portland, OR tomorrow for work.  I'm looking forward to the trip, but I never look forward to the pre-trip.  There's always too much to do.  I've been laying a little low on the theater front, though I have seen a couple of new play readings.  I never like to chat about readings, though.  Those rooms need to stay safe spaces.

I hope to have a good long post about Portland for you next week - I'm spending my birthday there, so I'm taking myself out to a recommended restaurant and I will be taking part in many activities.  Your fingers should be crossed that it all comes out as it should.  Since I'll be away until next week, I decided to share an old review that I dashed off before the blog was a 'thing.'  Since Donald Margulies has a new show coming up this season, this seemed a fine time to share (plus just look at the date!).  See you soon!

3/26/2010:  I went with a lovely gal pal to see Donald Margulies’ new play, Time Stands Still, at Manhattan Theater Club’s Broadway space last night.  With such wonderful company, how could the evening be anything BUT a success?!  But I give this show a big thumbs up.

The play is smart, funny, sad, and about people who are so real to me.  Laura Linney plays a war zone photographer who has been injured in Iraq—the play opens with her coming back to her apartment in Brooklyn with her longtime companion, played by Brian D’Arcy James.  They are very tentative with each other at first, but as the play unfolds, so much that they’ve been hiding comes to the surface.  How Linney adjusts (or doesn’t adjust) to being back is a big part of the plot.  Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone play the other characters (Bogosian plays Linney’s former lover and current photo editor, and Silverstone is his new girlfriend).

All four of these characters are so interesting—they’re flawed and selfish and smart, yet dumb…just like in real life.  They want things (sometimes the wrong things, but that doesn’t stop anyone) and they understand the consequences of their wants.  Well, they understand the consequences most of the time.  Nothing is easy in this play and I loved that.  There are no easy answers and no simple questions.  There isn’t a happy ending and that’s ok.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

All four actors are terrific.  I was really most taken with Alicia Silverstone, though.  Maybe because she surprised me more.  I’ve enjoyed her well enough in movies, but I thought she was really great in this role.  It’s a difficult role, as someone who is, on the surface, the complete antithesis of everyone else in the room.  But she’s not.  She just wants different things.  But she wants them just as fiercely.  And she wants them with such a sunny optimistic disposition that she seems foreign to the other more jaded characters.  Bogosian describes her character as ‘guileless.’  And she is.  And that is hard to play - she pulls it off wonderfully.  Brian D’Arcy James just broke my heart; he’s so guilt-ridden and almost helpless, but when his long-sublimated anger comes out, it was scary and terribly sad.  You can tell he is proud of Linney’s celebrity, but he is also resentful that he isn’t as successful.  Subtle digs here and there are very effective.  Linney is wonderful, as always, and Bogosian is great, too.  They all work terrifically well together and have created an intimacy that is very exciting to watch.

The whole script is really effective.  There was one section between Linney’s character as a rather hard-bitten photographer and Silverstone’s more naïve viewpoint about the responsibility of the photographer (or filmmaker or reporter) to save the subjects they’re observing that I thought was strikingly good.

I was talking with my boss about the show this morning; he was a little less enthusiastic about it, and he thought maybe I was having ‘post-Humana-syndrome.’  That perhaps seeing a good play about something was such a welcome thing, I gave it a less critical eye than I might have ordinarily.  I disagree.  I think I would’ve liked it regardless.  Of course, I am always predisposed to enjoy Donald’s plays.  I just really appreciate the way he writes about the role of the artist in society, and also how he writes relationships between mature adults.  I can’t wait to see the revival of Collected Stories coming up with Linda Lavin.  


So…thumbs up from me.  I wish I had seen it sooner in the run so I could see it again.  That’ll teach me.  Next week:  The Scottsboro Boys, by Kander & Ebb, at the Vineyard.  REALLY looking forward to it.  Have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Review - Hatef**k

Last Saturday, I had a two-show day.  I don't do them very often anymore, I'm just getting too old.  But I saw two really good and thought-provoking plays, so I'm glad I dragged my sorry self out of my apartment.  I also had a delightful cocktail in-between shows, so...woo hoo!

My matinee performance was Hatef**k, by Rehana Lew Mirza.  I know Rehana slightly and like her very much.  I've seen one or two of her previous plays and I very much enjoy her characters and the way she tells a story.  I think we need Rehana's stories now more than ever and she gives us much to think about in her new play.  More on that in a bit.

At the start of the play, we can hear a party going in the other (unseen) room and we see a beautiful young woman wandering around an apartment's living room, looking at the books and various awards that are displayed there.  An extremely handsome young man comes into the room and asks if he can help her.  We discover that we are in the young man's apartment - he is a famous novelist.  The young woman is a professor at a nearby university.  She has come to the party, ostensibly to consider adding the young man's work on to her syllabus, but we come to discover that she's there for entirely different reasons altogether.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

The novelist, Imran, is a mainstream best-selling writer of thrillers that all feature Muslim terrorists as characters.  The professor, Layla, accuses Imran of using ugly stereotypes to be famous.  I should probably also mention here that both Imran and Layla are Muslim.  Layla is offended that Imran doesn't use his talent and his platform to lift Muslim stories and Imran is glad to be famous and thinks his fame is enough to ennoble Muslim voices.  At the end of the first scene, they start a contentious sexual relationship that deepens and grows more painful as their arguments grow more personal and painful.  The shifts in the power dynamic were terrifically depicted and at times I was rooting for one, or the other, or both, or neither character, depending on what I was learning at that moment.

I thought Hatef**k was so smart and really compelling.  There were so many things that were said in the play that piqued my interest and hit me hard.  Ideas of representation and identity - personal and sexual and religious and cultural - were fascinating.  Ideas of gender and opportunity, through a different lens than I usually see, were also terrifically interesting to me. I will admit that there were times when the play got a little too didactic for me, but I also completely admit that could be just be how I received it.  I found the scenes where the two characters were engaging in intellectual arguments at the same time as sharing character development were more interesting to me than the scenes where the characters were mainly explaining their arguments to me, if that even makes sense.  The actors were extremely beguiling, and, if I can be shallow for a moment, incredibly beautiful to look at.  Their story was one I haven't seen on stage before and yet at times I wasn't completely committed to them because the intellectualism took me out of the emotion.  That probably doesn't make sense either.  I also thought a few questions that were raised weren't answered - not that that's a problem in theater, necessarily, but I was kind of reminded of Chekhov's adage that if there's a gun onstage, someone had better use it by the end of the night.  Not that this play has guns, but there are ideas and/or questions that aren't completely answered which left me the tiniest bit unsatisfied.  Unless I just missed their answers, which, of course, would be on me.

Ultimately, even with my quibbles, I highly recommend Hatef**k because it's a story that needs telling, because ideas of how art should be shared with the world are interesting to me, and the contrasts between religion and faith are always compelling.  Plus, Rehana is a fantastic storyteller who writes gorgeous dialogue for fascinating characters.  On a side note, I saw the play a few days after the heartbreaking massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand.  After the play ended and the actors took their curtain call, they stayed on stage to speak to the audience a bit longer.  They dedicated the rest of the run of the show to the victims of the massacre and pointed us to an insert in our program from the playwright.  The insert beautifully articulates why this play is necessary at this very moment and why Rehana Lew Mirza's voice should be amplified.  I hope you'll listen.

Review - Surely Goodness and Mercy

Since we last chatted, I've seen three new plays!  Whee!  It was a busy end of the week.  I briefly thought of putting them all together in one post, but then I thought each was worthy of discussion, on its own.  And even though I could probably draw parallels and make comparisons, it seemed reductive to lump them into one container.  Therefore, I present the reviews separately, which means I'll fall behind in my future reporting since I have more shows this week, but...ah well.

Last Thursday, I went to see Keen Company's production of Surely Goodness and Mercy by Chisa Hutchinson.  I know and love Chisa, so again I'm sure I'm predisposed to enjoy her work, but I was simply knocked out by this play.  Chisa is a person who is filled with light and heart and powerful positive energy and it's amazing to me that she could write a story about real pre-teens with real problems in our real world that can still reflect her heart, light, and positive energy.  Surely Goodness and Mercy does that.  Here is Chisa's note in the program:  "This play is my answer to the White Savior Narrative, a simple assertion that you don't have to be a particular race - or age or class, for that matter - to be a blessing to someone else.  That's all.  Enjoy."

photo credit: Carol Rosegg

The play centers around Tino, a twelve-year-old boy who is ostracized at school and ostracized in his home (his mother was killed and he doesn't know who his father is; he's being raised by an aunt who clearly doesn't want him there) and he has turned to reading the Bible for guidance.  His one friend at the start of the play is Bernadette, the 'lunch lady' at his school.  She sees how he is treated by the other kids and although she has a brusque manner, she does tiny kindnesses for him, like keeping some chocolate milk behind for him, or making him a peanut butter sandwich on hot dog day, because she knows he doesn't like hot dogs.  Tino mainly keeps to himself, but having one person in his life who treats him with kindness begins to open him up.  He takes himself to a church and hears about 'being a blessing' to the world; he takes in the sermons with his whole heart and he also begins to share with a schoolmate, Deja, who seems to be having troubles of her own.

Bernadette is clearly ill and Tino is obsessed with trying to help her.  He 'borrows' his aunt's cell phone to do research on doctors and possible diagnoses; once her illness is diagnosed, Tino and Deja take matters into their own hands.  At the same time, Tino is undergoing a crisis of his own, and he needs a little care thrown his way as well.  The ideas that simple acts of kindness will multiply and the good you give will come back to you are explored in a beautiful way during this play.  

photo credit: Carol Rosegg

The acting in Surely Goodness and Mercy is first-rate.  Jay Mazyck as Tino was just fantastic.  He had such charm and pain and goodness shining through him; not in a cliche or sugar-coated way, but in a very authentic young person way.  Chisa's dialogue was one of the reasons why - each character had straightforward dialogue that was to-the-point, yet as big as the universe in character development.  I just kept being startled at the authenticity of each character's dialogue and nodded in recognition more than once.  I was so invested in these characters' lives and so moved by their honesty and sincerity in the face of uncertainty and brutality.

The physical production in the tiny Clurman Theatre was very good, though at times I did feel some of the shorter scenes got rushed because the actor was already thinking about heading to their next scene change, but that didn't happen often.  I was especially taken with the sound design and pre-show music, which got me energized and ready for what I was about to see.  This is a terrific new play being given a terrific production all around and you should get a ticket right now.  Discounts are available, so please go to see and support Chisa's work.  You won't regret spending time with these characters and perhaps thinking about finding the blessings in yourself. 

Preview Thoughts on Nantucket Sleigh Ride

After spending my last post talking about my preconceived notions, I will admit that I entered last night's performance of Nantucket Sleigh Ride with many biases - I am a big fan of John Guare's writing and I am inordinately fond of the man himself.  He has been kind and generous to me over the years, so I am probably constitutionally incapable of not liking his work.  I freely admit this bias and submit a few thoughts about last night's preview performance of his new play.

I will also admit that I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the large ticket price for an Off-Broadway production, even though I knew it would be a first-class event at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre.  I had been debating not going to see the show, sort of out of a monetary protest, though I'm sure I would've relented at some point (there's no way I would miss a new John Guare play).  So I am extremely grateful to have been offered a discount through one of the many theatrical e-newsletters I subscribe to.  I could eliminate my sticker shock and concentrate on the work.

If internet gossips are to be believed, Nantucket Sleigh Ride is a revised version of an earlier Guare piece that played out-of-town a few years ago.  The Lincoln Center website doesn't make mention of this, interestingly (at least I didn't see any references), but a Google search turned up reviews from 2012 of a piece that must be the first draft of the play I saw last night.  It seems as if many of the themes and ideas are still there, but the storytelling methods are completely different.

Photo credit: T. Charles Erickson

John Larroquette stars as Edmund Gowery, who wrote a successful play in the 1970s, but left playwriting behind and now seems to be some sort of financial wizard.  The play begins as Gowery is subtly gloating over the fact that his name was a clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle (which drew a lot of chuckles from the audience).  Two other people saw that clue in the Times and have come to Gowery's office to confront him about what happened to all of them in the past (I'm being deliberately vague because I don't want to say too much, since this is in previews, and the unfolding of the story is part of its delight).  Much of the play, then, takes place during the height of Gowery's fame as a playwright, the 1970s.  Jaws is king, the rotary phone cracks up one member of the audience in an odd way, and leisure suits are a fashion statement.  The bulk of the play is a memory play, with increasingly strange memories.  Themes about the fear of intimacy, the loss of innocence, and how art can change lives, are explored.

Gowery is a very Guare-ian figure, in my opinion, with wit and blunt charm to spare, who seemingly lives life outside of, or above, the rest of us.  The character makes you feel smarter, and dumber, almost at the same time.  Jorge Luis Borges is a character in the play and there are references to Magritte and other auteurs of the day.  Gowery is an inveterate New Yorker, who is completely out of place (at first) in Nantucket, and his fish-out-of-water experience there grows more and more surreal as the play progresses.  Like a lot of Guare's earlier absurdist work, Nantucket Sleigh Ride is more fanciful and less linear than, say, Six Degrees of Separation, but Guare's genius in dialogue and character development is plainly evident.

In thinking about Nantucket Sleigh Ride, I went back to look at an old review I did of a revival of John Guare's Landscape of the Body; I think my words are pretty indicative of how I felt last night, too:  "No one does dialogue like John Guare, that's for sure.  This production, though very much of the time it was written (late '70s), is full of the whimsy and pathos of Guare's best stuff.  The production is a real roller coaster ride, and I have to admit, I wasn't along for the ride the entire way, but when I was, I loved it."

I was puzzled some of the time and enchanted at other times.  I had belly laughs galore and confused chuckles, as well.  Parts of the play tickled me to no end, and parts of the play put me off.  So...there you have it.  A completely confusing review.  Sorry.  The bottom line is, I guess, I recommend seeing the play, because, hello, new John Guare play.  But, also, this cast is first-rate (Larroquette is perfection and Douglas Sills is also an especial favorite of mine; he has more than one line/line reading that nearly made me choke with laughter), the design is fascinating, most of the themes will tickle your brain, and the experience of seeing the show is just fun.  Maybe confusing, but goshdarned fun as well.  There's one running gag that makes me smile as I'm remembering it.  I'm thinking, if another discount comes my way, I may try to go back at the end of the run.  Now that I've seen the play, I would love to try to understand how the construction works and try to untangle some of those puzzles for myself.  Maybe I won't figure them out, maybe I don't need to.  But as long as John Guare writes new plays, I'll go.  No one writes like he does and I will always hang on every word.

Acknowledging My Biases

quote from Marsha Norman about gender disparity in the theater

I have mentioned before that I'm trying to be more conscious about where I spend my theater dollars - I'm trying to support as many women and writers of color as I possibly can.  One, I want to prove to the community and to producers that people will buy tickets to these shows.  Two, these writers generally tell stories that are new to me, in ways that are new to me.  Three, I'm increasingly bothered by seeing so much art presented through a white male gaze.  Geez, I can hardly believe I just typed that sentence.  I never actually thought of it so starkly before.  Maybe I'm just finally breaking free of something, I don't know.  Or maybe I'm just going off some sort of artistic deep end.  I'm not sure if that way of thinking is why last night's theater excursion didn't ultimately appeal to me, but it's something I'm pondering.  I totally acknowledge that these biases are on me and not on the creators of art, but they're something I'm trying to come to terms with.  Maybe I have so much pent up angst about other things that these new ideas needs to work themselves out somehow.  We'll see if I can figure this out while I talk about the show I saw last night...

I was very fortunate to be given free tickets to the new musical Alice By Heart.  I didn't think I would be able to see it, since it sold out pretty quickly.  The writing team is the pair that wrote Spring Awakening, which I greatly enjoyed, and it's based on Alice in Wonderland, which is of course a much-loved story from my childhood.  I didn't really read anything about the show beforehand, though I did have the sense that it didn't get great reviews (which doesn't ever really matter to me, I just note it).  But I was excited to go to a new theater space, see a new musical, and spend time with a handsome pal.  

MCC's new theater space is lovely, though ohmygod, getting all the way over there on a sore foot (that's a story for another day) was quite a slog.  As I generally tell it, it's like walking to New Jersey.  But the theater itself is very modern and attractive and the staff is extra-pleasant (the concessions gent was especially delightful).  The set for Alice By Heart is fantastic and I enjoyed looking around at everything before the show started.  If I live to be 200, I will never not get a thrill of being in a theater, looking around and getting myself into the spirit of discovery.  And being at a new show just ups the excitement and anticipation.  Unfortunately, that spirit of discovery and excitement lasted for maybe the first 20 minutes or so of the show.

I hate to be negative, but Alice By Heart didn't come together for me.  I did think the idea of setting this show in London during the 1940s/WW2 was fascinating, and the idea of children afraid during the Blitz turning to books to take their minds away from their fears was also meaningful.  Well, actually, I guess they weren't children, but teens, because sexual awakening was on the menu.  I don't know, sometimes it felt as if the team was trying to just replicate Spring Awakening, but you can't catch that lightning in a bottle twice, I don't think.

photo credit: Deen Van Meer

Anyway, I did think the opening number was lovely, with the idea of all of the bad things were happening "west of words" and how throwing yourself into a beloved book could save you, but then they fell out of that storytelling almost right away and Alice began to veer off into sort of throwing herself at her best friend, Alfred, who also was the White Rabbit when the cast started acting out the story of Alice in Wonderland.  Then the musical became about something else.  I mean, it was still a coming-of-age story, I guess, but there was also some clunky sexual undertones as well.  I suppose I can intellectualize why the show should've worked for me, but it ultimately didn't.  Which I think I can also intellectualize...

The songs were mainly lovely, though rather inert - they didn't really drive the story, they just painted a picture.  Which can be fine for a number or two, but it felt as if all the songs did that.  The libretto seemed a little crude to me as well, so...I don't know.  Maybe this musical needed more development to hone its rough edges.  I thought the cast was overcompensating for the holes and, at times, seemed to be a little smug and defensive, as if they were telling the audience that if we didn't like the show, it's because we weren't cool enough to understand it.  I know that's completely projecting, but it's what I felt.  They were all very accomplished, but even in a fantastical story such as Alice, honesty and truth and, well, less is more.

The physical production was quite good and they used the stage, lights, and costumes to great effect.  There were some striking stage pictures that I was totally taken with, I just wish I had been as taken with the story and the storytelling.  And that's where I wonder if it's just that these stories have played out for me by now.  Even though there was a female co-librettist, I still felt the male gaze throughout.  Alice, as a female, was being too emotional and irrational, and the level-headed young man had to set her straight.  She did have a song about how she was the one making the book happen, but it still seemed as if she was reacting instead of acting.  And, again, maybe I don't need to see that type of storytelling right now.  I'm having a hard time articulating what I really mean, and I know who-tells-what-story is none of my business.  Anyone has the right to tell a story, but I also have the right to not respond to it.  I still feel the thrill and the excitement at the anticipation, but maybe during this time of my life (and the world in general), I have more need than ever to hear and respond to stories outside of myself.  To find empathy and connection with all the people not like me.  It's an interesting notion I'm turning around in my brain - we'll see how these ideas play out over the next few months.  I'll keep you posted.

Deep in the Heart of Texas (I think)

I always tell people that if we're playing Trivial Pursuit, the sure way to beat me is to ask me questions about geography.  I have no sense of where anything is.  So I know Texas is in the middle and near Mexico, but other than that... all that is to say that I recently went to Abilene, TX for a work thing but if you asked me to point it out on a map, I'm not your gal.  Anyway, about my trip...

I'm sure that most of this post will come across as a jaded New Yorker making fun of Texas, but hopefully it will just point out the everyday quirks of traveling around this great big country of ours.  One or two of these little things would be less noticeable - it seemed like vaguely wacky things happened all week!  Enjoy my vaguely random musings.

From New York, it takes two planes to get to Abilene - for some reason, on both of these planes, we were delayed by mechanical issues and our pilots were entirely too honest about the issues.  From NY to TX, the pilot told us that the mechanical issue that was delaying us was one that had happened on this plane's previous flight, but it needed to be fully taken care of now.  Uh...ok.  On the flight from Dallas to Abilene, the pilot told us we needed to wait for a part to be delivered from the garage.  He told us there was no excuse for the delay and he took full responsibility for it.  Uh...ok.  I actually don't want all that TMI when I'm flying.  Do I really want to be thinking about a missing part or a possible mechanical issue when I'm in the air?  No, not so much.  Thankfully, we made it there safely.

A brief note about the movie I watched from NY to Dallas:  I finally saw Bohemian Rhapsody.  This was a few days after Rami Malek's Oscar win.  I thought he was good, though omg, why was he saddled with those grotesque false teeth?!  I know Freddie Mercury had a famous overbite, but that poor actor could hardly speak at times.  He literally couldn't get his mouth around the words (speaking of the words: that screenplay - yikes).  I felt like he was fighting the teeth the entire movie and couldn't fully inhabit anyone, but I guess that's just me.  I did enjoy the music and have been listening to my Queen's Greatest Hits cd ever since, so maybe that's all that was supposed to happen for me.  I will say that the movie was edited for the flight, so maybe the edits hurt the movie more than I can imagine.  I guess I'll never know.

Anyway, back to Abilene.  The work event was very good, I met lots of nice people, made good connections, and I think the workshop I led was successful.  Most of the comments I'll be making in the rest of the post are about what happened outside of the work event.  So.  The hotel that my co-worker and I would be staying at said we should call when we arrived and a shuttle would pick us up.  We found the complimentary phone near baggage claim, but someone else was on it.  So I called the hotel from my cell phone.  The operator was a bit confused, so I was put on hold.  It seemed as if the woman on the airport phone was put on hold as well.  It turned out we were all going to the same hotel for the same work event, so we quickly became the three musketeers and soul mates by the time the shuttle finally arrived.  Once we got to the hotel, though, ugh.  What an ordeal.  The poor young guy at the registration desk just didn't know what hit him.  He had three women from the east coast who weren't happy that their registrations seemed to be incorrect and that the billing wasn't taken care of in advance.  He just kept saying, "Excuse me, I have to go check something in the back," and he would disappear into a back room.  I think he just had to go collect his thoughts because we were scaring him.  I could be projecting, though.  When I got back to my room at the end of the night, there was a voice mail on my hotel room phone from the poor young guy, making sure I had everything I needed.  I have a fear that we broke his spirit - we didn't see him for the rest of the week, so we imagined he was using some personal time off to avoid us...

probably should've gotten a photo of the elusive water glass

We finally got checked in and headed off for the work event dinner - we had to call a Lyft car, since the shuttle to the restaurant had already left.  Our Lyft driver was very pleasant and told us a few restaurants we should try while in town.  I will have more stories about Lyft drivers later.  The restaurant was nice and it was good to sit down and have a snack, though I think our meals had been sitting under the warming lamp a little too long.  One interesting quirk that happened - when I ordered my margarita, I also asked for a glass of water, because I like to try to have one glass of water per glass of alcohol.  It stems my headache, or at least I imagine it does.  My two pals ordered their glasses of water after they had finished their margaritas.  After a long while, a server comes up to us and says that there are no more clean glasses, so they couldn't get a glass of water.  Silence.  We just looked at each other, then I said, "Can we get three straws?  They can share my water."  I was sort of kidding, but that perked the server right up, and they went to get straws.  But...really?  No clean glasses at a restaurant?!  We weren't there at last call, this was early in the evening.  No one was willing to wash two glasses for the group in the back room?!  Very strange.

The rest of the work evening went well, then thankfully it was time for sleep.  The hotel room was actually nice, very large, with a bar and a sitting room.  I do so love a hotel.  Quirks about the hotel, though, include a sign that said you can't openly carry your gun inside the hotel and a very large granite statue of the ten commandments in the breakfast room.  I was rather nonplussed that such a large religious item that rather looked like a gravestone would be in a common room of a hotel, but I guess that's the south for you.  More strange than the statue was the stuffed bear and coloring book page that sat under it.  I don't know, it was just all strange to me.  But breakfast was free, so I shouldn't complain.  I also want to mention that nearly every bathroom in every venue I was in had a list of the Top Ten Things to do in Abilene.  The tourism center is on the ball and makes sure everyone knows what to do when they're in Abilene, I guess.  Oh, and the small coffee shop in the hotel lobby was interesting, too - they didn't have any venti cups (they were serving Starbucks coffee), even though "they placed the order for cups," and they didn't seem to know what an iced coffee was.  One gal served all milk, very little coffee, and another had to put on plastic gloves and get the recipe book out before making it.  Iced coffee.  Quirky, right?

One of the days we were there had a break of a couple of hours built in, so my co-worker and I went to the Storybook Garden right next to the convention center.  This was a charming place (too bad it was so cold out!  I had packed for 70 degrees, but I don't think it got above 50 the whole time we were there) and we had a grand time wandering through.  Memories of reading the books depicted were heartwarming and being able to take a look at the sculptures up close was terrific.  I'll put some photos below - there's apparently another Storybook Garden a little bit further away from the convention center that has Dr. Seuss statues, but it was too cold to walk that far.  Maybe next time.  It was a nice break, though, to get out of the center and into a little bit of local culture.  I really enjoy seeing local attractions, but I need to be better about building more time into my work schedule.  

About those other Lyft drivers:  when we took a car back to the hotel after the last work event (well, the last official work event, we were off to a closing reception), we rode with a gent who told us all about his seven children, his favorite Broadway show, and his favorite food truck, which was essentially a winery.  He was a personable, charming, chatty guy and it was fun to listen to him brag on his seven kids (one of them is thirteen and going to MIT!).  Another attendee told us a story of his Lyft driver, who bragged about their knowledge of Abilene, even though they went to school abroad.  The attendee asked "Where?" and the Lyft driver replied "Nebraska."  Abroad/Nebraska.  Ok.  (Gee, when I'm reading it now, it doesn't look as funny, but when he told me that story, I nearly peed my pants.)

Heading back home was also fun.  The Abilene airport is teeny tiny, with only four gates.  There are two people who work in the front security - one tells you to put everything on the conveyor belt, then they checked ID, then they hand-carried your bags/trays to the xray machine.  There was a boot jack to help you get those cowboy boots off.  The person handling the big body scanner thing was an Elvis impersonator, I'm thinking.  He had the pompadour, the mutton chops, and everything.  He was very nice, joking with everyone, but still serious about his work.  The flights from Abilene and then Dallas were uneventful, though the TSA agents were extra-vigilent in Dallas (is that where the caravans are??) with thankfully no apologies from the pilots about missing parts.  I watched A Star is Born on the way back and, yikes, that screenplay was pretty terrible, too.  The performances were good, and I liked the music, but did anyone else find the movie a little misogynistic?  She says 'no' to him on several occasions and he just goes ahead and does what he wants anyway.  Is that supposed to be romantic?  And that manager?  Just no.  I mean, Bradley Cooper is terrifically handsome, and Lady Gaga can sing like no one's business, but I guess the alterations this version made seemed even more sexist than before.  Again, maybe that's just me.  I do still have that "Shallow" song running through my head, though.  It's an ear worm.  I probably should've rewatched BlacKkKlansman instead. 

Other random musings:  *I am certain I saw a lynx running around near the convention center, though my work chums said it was a cat.  I think it was a lynx and one of our Lyft drivers confirmed it could've been true.  So now it will be a story for the rest of my life that I saw a lynx. 

*I was a bit taken aback when one of the participants in my workshop didn't seem to understand the phrase "gender parity." Seriously?  I had to work hard not to roll my eyes but just to answer the question calmly.  But.Seriously?!?!

*During the work events, I turned off my cell phone.  One day, I turned it back on and there were many texts and voice mails from the super in my apartment building.  Apparently, he had to crawl through my bedroom window, down the fire escape, to check on someone else's apartment where there supposedly was a candle burning too strongly.  Uh, WHAT?!  That is NOT the text you want to receive when you're in Texas!!  I called the super during the intermission and he assured me that all was well, he locked everything in my apartment back up, and put everything back the way he found it (I have a bad habit of leaving loads of laundry on the radiator which is in front of the fire escape window.  Maybe I will break myself of that habit).  After the Great Fire Adventure of 2011 (you can remind yourself of that nonsense HERE), I am terrified of any fire-related things, so imagine my unhappiness at being so far away during that brief emergency.  Thankfully, all was indeed fine when I got home, but still.

*And does Starbucks have some sort of timed test for its baristas?  Maybe they should.  I have never had a week of such leisurely service in my life; not only in Texas, but also in the new Starbucks in one of the new LGA terminals.  Please, people, we're in a hurry!  We have lives to live!  Sometimes I need to remind myself to slow down.  But even with all the quirks, I had quite a good time.  It was fun to travel with my co-worker, it was fun to make new friends (and soul mates!), it was fun to be in a hotel, and it was great to laugh so much.  I had more belly laughs this trip than I have in a long time.  Belly laughs are worth a little quirkiness, don't you think?