K-tel Catholic Christmas

I hope some of you are sitting. Well, I assume most of you are sitting, but if you happening to be standing, sit down.
I, Frances Eileen Kathryn Mary Curry, have started going back to church.

(leaving time for people to put their eyes back in their sockets)

I remember back in the 90's when the Northridge earthquake happened, people started running back to church, and then after a few months it sort of died down. I have gone and come back 2 times in the last 20 years, and while it wasn't inspired by world events, much like those people, after a couple of months I stopped going as well. Will I continue going? I think so, but who knows.

Now I know some of my closest and dearest who have issues with the church ( there are at least 3 of you and you and I know who you are) are rolling your eyes or worse, and I can't say I blame you. The Catholic Church certainly hasn't done much to clean itself up, and with the loss of the last pope, well, it's looking pretty grim. However, I find peace and constancy there, which is more than I can say for any other section of my life, so even if I have some doubts about the Transubstantiation, which makes me a questionable Catholic at best, I am going anyway. Cuz it's quiet and I can think, and for one hour a week, I can make myself focus on the positive. So get over it.

Anyway now that that shocker is over I can get to what I wanna say.

Where the hell are the Catholic Christmas Hits???
My favorite part of church has always been the singing, and at Christmas time especially. I love Christmas music, always have. I have gone to mass about 5 times in a row now, and NOT ONE Joy to The World, or O Come O Come Emmanuel, not even a Greensleeves!!!!
They are singing songs I don't know at all!!!
Hell, I know the alto part for almost all those songs and they are singing stuff I have never even heard of!! Prince of Zion??? What IS that?

Gimme some Ding Dong Merrily on High!, or The Infant King (Instant King to you Beechwood folk). I want my Hark the Herald Angels Sing! All those songs with the exclamation point at the end.

When one has returned to church after a long absence, one needs these things to feel comfortable. Like an old sneaker, these songs are all worn out and haggard, and I love them all, so I better get my K-tel catholic Christmas pretty soon or I am just going to start singing them in the middle of mass.

It's NYC, they have to be used to crazy people anyway.

So Long Fidelity

I was going to write this long blog about how much I loved this gig. About
how much fun it was to work there, and how everyone was so cool. There was this whole great bit about how during load out it was like a Barney's Fire Sale, and my close friends have added some lovely articles of clothing to their wardrobes. I was also able to take all the U2 records that were on the stage, completely replacing the vinyl I had lost after high school. SCHWING!

I spent a couple of days on it, but during that time, I was also trying to secure work for myself
so I wouldn't be living in a card board box.

What I am trying to say here is

Well

I don't give a crap anymore.
LOL. I crack myself up.

I mean, everything I said was true. It was a great place to work. I enjoyed it completely.
But it only lasted a minute and I hafta keep rolling.

So, adieu High Fidelity.

Hey, anybody got a job for me?

P.S. My opinions on Ben Brantley still stand. Jackass.

A Review of A Reviewer

photo by Brent Murray/ NYTimes.com


Ben Brantley is an asshole.

Don't know who he is? Well he is the main theater critic for the NY Times. What a jerk. I mean, ok my new show High Fidelity may very well suck. I mean, I like it. All my friends who have seen it liked it, but I am willing to except that some people will hate it. It certainly isn't going to change the face of American Musical Theatre.

But I am so sick of reading his venom filled, excessively mean reviews. It is as if the guy has a personal vendetta. Maybe he wasn't picked to play Harold Hill in the Durham, N.C. community theater production of Music Man or something. That is the only reason I can come up with for why he is constantly representing himself as such a jackass.

The Daily News and The New York Post also had problems with the show, but at least they had the decency to be respectful of the people who work there everyday. Mr. Brantley believes that being cruel sells newspapers. When was the last time a theater review sold a paper??? Perhaps in the 80's and 90's it did, but since the dawn of the internet, everyone reads the shit online for free now.

I mean look at that picture of him. He LOOKS like an asshole. That is an official NY Times photo of him. The look on his face says to me that not only is he an asshole. He enjoys and is fully aware that he is an asshole. He seems to be proud of his assholeness. Reveling in his sphincter like reputation. Look at that face again. That has got to be the face of a lonely human being. I can't imagine he has any friends at all, except for coat tail riders, and Michael Reidel. ( for those of you outide NYC, Michael Reidel is another known asshole that the entire theater community hates.)

Mr. Brantley knows his name on a review is powerful. It is true. It is. His written opinion has certainly helped close many shows over the years. But with power comes responsibility. You would think that he would respect this power and his ability as a writer to not resort to the lowest denominator of written expression to publicly voice his opinion.

I think instead of a paper as intelligent as The Times, he should consider going to work for The Enquirer or The Globe, whose papers profit off of the incriminating, salacious writing he favors.

Kiss My Ass Ben Brantley, you balding pissed off at the world wanna be. Whoever is dating or partnered with this guy had better start putting out and take one for the team already. How's that for cruel and salacious, you hack.

Mail Fraud

In the mail yestrerday, I got the strangest postcard. It was plain paper with a Carlsbad Carverns National Park stamp that was printed onto it with a one cent stamp added next to it. The time stamp said it was from NYC, but there was no return address.

Curious.

I look on the reverse side and there is this quote:

"Give no more to every guest
Than he is able to digest

Give him always of the prime
And but a little at a time

Carve to all but just enough
Let them neither starve nor stuff

And that you may have your due
Let your neighbor carve for you"

- Jonathan Swift

Then at the bottom it says
"Looking forward to seeing you next Wednesday ... Ricardo"

Heh?
Who the hell is Ricardo?
What the hell is this crap?

I must have turned this card over and over looking for some hint as to who or what it is associated with.

Maybe Ricardo is a friend whose name I have forgotten with the effects of early onset Alzheimers
or maybe
Ricardo is going to come to my house next wednesday and use one of my own kitchen knives to "carve" me up and turn my apartment into a blood bath.

If anyone else has received this card and knows what the heck it is all about lemme know.
Otherwise,
Ricardo
whoever you are,
I am most decidedly Not coming to dinner.

Have a Happy Period.

This is the message I found on the strip that covers the adhesive on my Always feminine maxi pad.

Now I am sure this isn't really the topic that appeals to the males out there, but c'mon...you have to see the humor in it.

Have a Happy Period.

That is like saying Have a Rockin Root Canal or Have an Awesome Colonoscopy.
What bonehead thought this genius marketting plan up?

I can see it now... A crowded conference room on the 50th floor of some major NYC building. The Ad-men sitting around..the Always deadline slowly approaching and still no big hook. Coffee and pizza has been ordered because the big man has decreed that no one leaves the conference room until someone has a brilliant plan for the new campaign. It comes down to the new "feminine cloths" which would come with every single pad (basically a wetnap for your cooch) and this dumb ass slogan.

But these brilliant Ivey league people decide that both ideas are just too good to pass up
And the brilliant Ivey League people at Always think it is a great idea too so they put both out on the market.
Great cheers resound from the conference room because no one will get fired and the company has kept the extremely lucrative Always account.

Then one of the bigwigs decides to move to Vermont and make a billion on baby food. Oh wait. That's "Baby Boom" with Diane Keaton. I love that movie.

My point is, is that when I am sitting on the can having a very private moment with myself, bemoaning the fact that I have to go through this process every month when I have absolutely no intention of ever having children, the LAST thing I need is to rip off a sign from my necessary but unappealing product that says
Have a Happy Period.

I would love to find out where that CEO is having his next doctor's appointment and leave a note on a rubber glove that says
Have a Dynamite Prostate Exam!

I mean really.

Amtrak TB

Maybe it was wrong of me. I am normally a fairly empathetic human being. However, the last month of my mom being actually deathly ill has drained me, and my reserve of general human kindness I use when dealing with strangers is low.
So torturing the man next to me on the train was not only justified, but completely inevitable.

I was taking the train from Albany to NYC. I have been on this route a bazillion times. There were seats all around me completely open and this jackass asks if anyone is sitting with me. Not for Nothin, but I have been riding trains since I was 3 years old and there is this unwritten law that says if there are free seats around with no one in them, you take them first before you sit with someone. Amtrak is one of the last forms of freedom mass travel left on the planet. No assigned seats in coach class. In this day and age, nobody wants to deal with the all the politeness and blah blah of sitting with a stranger if they don't have to. Also, there is the added benefit that at anytime, Amtrak could go belly up because no one rides the train anymore. This allows the freedom of stretching out, taking up 2 seats and working on your computer or catching some zzzzs. 2 seats for the price of one! That's the only reason to ride Amtrak!
Don't get me wrong, sometimes the train is packed and you have to share. I am guilty of the fake sleep...you know...when you lay down and pretend you are asleep and take advantage of the fact that people just don't want to deal with people anymore so they just keep looking for another open seat, walking by you instead of waking you. Yeah, i've done it. Don't lie, you have too.

Anyway
This guy asks to sit with me, which totally cheeses me off. I mean there are empty seats EVERWHERE!! The blow might not have been so bad if he had been remotely attractive or even my age.
Noooooooooooo
He is about 55. Kinda rich-stuck-up-acting, which makes absolutely no sense. A rich person would fly the 40minutes to NYC as opposed to the 3 hour ride on the train. And of course rich people hate mingling with the lower classes - which Amtrak caters to. Well poorer people and people with serious drug habits who don't wanna flush their stash before they travel.
So yeah he's not pretty.
I am so insensed by the fact that he is sitting with me when he could literally sit ANYWHERE. I could have said "Wouldn't you like to sit all by yourself over there, sir?" or "Those 2 seats are free" or even "BEAT IT!!" but in my old age I have become fearful of confrontation and have resorted to using passive aggressive methods of dealing with some issues. So I sighed, mumbled something unintelligible and let him by. And then, just to be evil, I started coughing.
I began slowly. I am just getting over a real cold so it sounded authentic. He slipped passed me to the window seat. I cough more, and louder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at me - surely to asses the seriousness of my tuberculosis and to figure out whether or not the innoculation he had back in 1956 was any good still.
More coughing.
I could feel him recoiling from me. It was fantastic! He wanted to get up and move, but to do that would not only be rude, but would be admitting defeat. He was hoping I would stop.
I stop.
Then I start up again. My coughing having actually brought up a little gift from my lungs which makes it sound like a productive expectorating hack. PERFECT
My friend just presses himself up against the window.
It was terribly fun.
He completely regretted his decision to sit with me.
Then
The Tipper.
I leaned over, touched his arm and asked what time the train was expected to arrive in Penn Central. ( Think the movie "Ghost" where Patrick Swayze and his hot best friend -well before he had Patrick Swayze killed for those bank numbers- are riding in an elevator and they start a fake conversation about some rash his friend has that is terribly contagious and all the people in the elevator freak out as he touched them and coughed)
My inner child was rolling around, laughing.
I was mildly disappointed by his reaction to my touch. I wanted him to jump or startle. He just told me the time. By this time the train had really filled up and there was no where for him to go anyway. My point was made and I can never seem to maintain my anger at anyone for very long. Also the realization that I could have never kept up that act for the entire ride settled in because I have Suduko puzzles waiting for me as well as my U2 albums to listen to. I slowed up the coughing and sniffling, popped a cough drop and started to write all this down.

He stared out the window to look at the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Beautiful sight. One of my favorites in all the world, and on a late October afternoon there is nothing like it. I freed my seat partner from the visions of a tubercular death and decided to point out out my childhood home as it whizzed past.

but every once in awhile, I coughed, just to save face.