Ordinary Extraordinary

Er, quoi?

Observe the conversation that I had last night during rehearsal with the new band.

Producer: The band keeps losing tempo.
amandarin: I think it's because they're so busy trying to read the charts, this is the first time that some of them have seen the music.
Producer: You're going to have to conduct them.
amandarin: Er, quoi?
Producer: The Music Director isn't here, won't be here tomorrow, and someone has to keep the tempo consistent and make sure they hit the big moments.
amandarin: True...
Producer: So you're going to have to conduct them.
amandarin: Right. OK.

And that's what I did for the next six hours.

I am a Stage Manager. I call cues and make people get onstage on time and solve a variety of production-related problems, but I have never conducted a band before.

Let me tell you, after six hours of keeping the beat and flow of the show going with my entire upper body, I have a whole new respect for professional conductors. I always knew that the job was complicated from a musical standpoint, but I had no idea that it was so physically demanding. Conductors must have the most well-toned arms on earth.

The percussionists said I did well, they had no trouble following me, but I think my right arm is going to fall off. I have no idea how I am going to do this for two shows tonight.

Funky Format?

amandarin.net looks all funky when I bring it up in Safari... anyone else having problems??

Air Guitar

My friend Chris is on tour with Metallica at the moment so he's always full of entertaining stories. Tonight's story was my favorite, though:

Chris: last night in the audience....
Chris: for some reason unknown to me they had a sign laungauge interpreter signing the show to the audience.....
Chris: it had to be the funniest damn thing i have seen in a long time.....
amandarin: I can't imagine interpreting for metallica
Chris: she did air guitar for the guitar solos and everything....
Chris: it was awesome
Chris: very funny

I would pay to see video of that.

Photo Friday: Furry

Furry Face, Summer 2004

'Tis Almost the Season

My apartment is filled with Christmas cheer.

The Faboo Roomie's caroling group is having their first meeting of the season so I've been listening to them work through holiday songs all evening. With the change in weather and the seasonal music, I suddenly feel as though we've fast forwarded to December.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas 
Just like the ones I used to know 
Where the treetops glisten, 
and children listen 
To hear sleigh bells in the snow 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas 
With every Christmas card I write 
May your days be merry and bright 
And may all your Christmases be white 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas 
With every Christmas card I write 
May your days be merry and bright 
And may all your Christmases be white

Sunday Walk

The weather was unbelievably gorgeous on Sunday afternoon so I took a few minutes (between football games, of course) to grab my camera and snap some pictures of my neighborhood: Sunday Walk.

My Favorite Season

I love fall. bronxelf and I would surely go head to head over this opinion as she loathes autumn, but I love it.

Although living in Los Angeles means that I miss the turning of the leaves and the chill in the air, there is one surefire sign of fall that happens no matter where you live in the United States: the start of football season.

I. Love. Football.

I have always loved football. When I was young my parents and I would spend entire Sundays watching football, often eating homemade chili or beef vegetable soup off of TV trays in the den. Oddly, my mother is actually the more vocal fan in the family and I learned the art of yelling at the officials from her. (On second thought, that's not odd at all if you know my mother) I surprise my male friends by being as much (or more) of a fan than they are.

In spite of the lack of fall-like weather, one of the major advantages of living on the West Coast is that there is football on from the moment I wake up on Saturday and Sunday mornings - I can watch football while I eat my breakfast! Coffee and play action, what better way to start a morning?

Too bad Los Angeles doesn't actually have a team. Yet. If all goes as planned, we'll have one by 2008.

Though I am a die hard Trojan (I never missed a home game while I was in school) and a Giants fan from birth, I'm not the type of fan who cheers for one team to the exclusion of all others. I love the game and I prefer watching a great game over watching one of my favored teams blow out their opponent.

Unless of course that opponent is UCLA, Notre Dame, the Raiders, or the Cowboys. Those teams can all get blown right out of the water every time.

Man, I love football season.

Photo Friday: Domestic

Boy 2 gets domestic, 2004

LA Insight - Drive Me Crazy

This week's Los Angeles Insight, from the fine folks over at LAblogs.com, is about every Angeleno's least favorite hobby: driving.

1. How many hours a week are you stuck in your car?
15 hours a week at the absolute minimum - I spend at least 3 hours a day commuting. I'm working on that.

2. What music is in your car, right now?
John Mayer, Rachmaninov, a jungle CD that one of my puppeteers mixed for me, the Harlottique rehearsal CD (just in case the choreographer forgets his).

3. What do you do while stuck in traffic? Eat? Sing? Primal scream?
I do a lot of thinking while stuck in traffic. When I'm not solving the world's problems, I'm usually singing along to the radio or trying to catch up with my friends via cell phone.

If I'm trying to keep myself awake during a long or particularly slow drive, I scream really loudly and thrash around in my seat. I've gotten more than one bizarre look for the routine, but it works.

4. If you could give citations to other drivers for bad behavior, who/ what would you ticket?
I would ticket motorcyclists who split lanes recklessly (there is a safe way to do it and there is a death wish way to do it, I would ticket the latter), drivers who are incapable of finding their turn signals, and people who think that alternate merge means "gun my engine and ride that person's bumper so you can't get on the freeway and slow me down."

Actually, I don't want to give tickets. I just want free reign to shoot them.

5. What's your favorite place/freeway to drive in LA?
My favorite freeway is the 210 extension that goes from Foothill Blvd to the 15. It's outside the bounds of Los Angeles but it is smooth, new, and largely undiscovered (read: empty). It shaves almost an hour off the drive to Vegas!

My favorite street is the west end of Sunset that winds through beautiful areas from Hollywood all the way to the 405.

6. What's your least favorite?
Any section of the 101 from downtown to Ventura. The freeway was not originally designed for high-volume, high-speed traffic so it is always one of the most dangerous and aggravating places to drive.

7. What's the craziest thing you've ever seen another driver do?
While heading eastbound on the 10 early one Sunday morning, I saw the car in front of me suddenly spin two or three complete revolutions (going 80 mph, at least) before coming to a stop facing me in my lane just a few yards away. There were no other cars around us and no obstructions in the road so I had no idea what had made her lose control of the car. Before I could get out of my car or motion for the other driver to pull over, she put the car in reverse, turned around, and sped off as if nothing had happened.

8. What's the craziest thing you've ever seen left on the side of the road?
A passenger. Driving home one evening, I saw a car pull off to the side of the freeway; the driver got out, hauled the passenger out of the car, dumped him unceremoniously on the shoulder, and then got back in his car and disappeared down the exit ramp. The discarded passenger just sort of sat there on the shoulder, looking dazed.

Come to think of it, I guess that could also qualify as one of the craziest things that I have ever seen another driver do!

Angels in the Green Room

To say that the cast & crew of my show is diverse would be an undersatement. The puppeteers range in age from 20 to 40 and represent every ethnicity, gender, faith, sexuality, and political party; the crew shows the same depth and breadth.

The Green Rooom, therefore, can be very exciting between shows. These three want to play video games, this one wants to discuss the presidential election, those few want to listen to the latest track that one of the puppeteers mixed, still others are doing homework or trying to sneak a DVD in while the video game is paused. Rarely, if ever, is the entire cast and crew involved in the same thing for longer than ten seconds.

Today, every single member of the production sat still, quiet and enthralled, for all six hours of HBO's Angels in America.

We'd canceled the first four shows while we waited for a performer to arrive (a replacement for one who had gone home sick before the first show) so we had four and a half hours to kill before performing even a single show. One of the puppeteers tentatively volunteered that he'd brought Angels in America on DVD if anyone was interested in watching it. I expected at least half the group to roll their eyes and pull out the Xbox, but not one did. Instead, we all settled in to watch.

Several of the puppeteers were too young to understand some of the historical foundations of the story, we had to pause occasionally so I could explain who Roy Cohn is or why Ethel is important, but every single person was absorbed by the story. We took choreographed restroom/smoke/food breaks and no one tried to switch DVDs while we were out of the room. In fact, everyone was so invested in the movie that all of us stayed for an hour after the final show to watch the last chapter of Perestroika.

It was a beautiful and unique day... a rare period of absolute unity.

It's odd to me that Angels in America of all things should be the unifying element. Having stage managed both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika (and having seen the HBO version a few times), I adore Angels in America and am intimately familiar with all of it's complexities. But the film is very long and the language is difficult and unnatural. The topics of homosexuality and a world abandoned by God are repellent to a few of the devoutly Christian members of my production. The younger cast & crew members have never lived in a world without AIDS so the terror and uncertainty of that time is foreign to them. The political framework was lost on almost everyone.

And yet, the greater lessons of Kushner's work are universal. Something in the very human struggles that all of the characters face touches people of every demographic. At it's core Angels in America is about the struggle for life, and we are all addicted to being alive.

But still. Still. Bless me anyway.

I want more life. I can't help myself. I do.

I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much, much worse, but...You see them living anyway.

When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate, but...Bless me anyway. I want more life. -Prior Walter, Angels in America: Perestroika