jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

Last night we took Jeremy over to the Little Shubert to see ‘Shockheaded Peter.’ It was… arresting. The sight, the sound, they were both hypnotic. The set made use of forced perspective brilliantly as I pretty constantly disoriented as to the size of the people on stage. The puppeteering was fantastic and ran the gamut from ultra-simple (plainly visible woman holding a tiny stuffed rabbit) to highly complex (a giant moster inhabited by three people). The music by the Tiger Lillies first made me squirm and then pulled me in. So all said I was dazzled, but not emotionally involved.

Jeremy’s visit has been terrific. I haven’t seen all that much of him since I’ve been working during the day while Damon runs around the city with him. (Damon’s days off are Thursday and Friday). He’s smart and sweet and Damon is over the moon to have him here, which is enough for me.

Our houseguest is sleeping in today and when he wakes up he’s going to head off to the bus station and I will spend the afternoon in splendid silence. I’ll take a walk, clean up this disaster of an apartment, stare out the window, read a few more chapters of ‘The Beauty Myth.’

On a different note: I’ve had dog fever lately. No unwary dog owner is safe from me stealing his or her pal. I don’t think I’ll do it. Realistically, having a dog is a bad idea for us. And, most importantly, it’s a bad idea for Zoe. I think. But I sure do want one.

I’m having a hard time convincing myself that I’m not off work for the next few days. It’s not that I’m particularly in need of a break, this week has been much gentler than the last few. Maybe it’s just work hangover. But today I left at noon and went home to finish my day on the couch.

Part of my confusion must be that Damon’s little brother is coming for a visit starting tonight. Damon’s days off are Thursday and Friday so we’ve been laying out fun things to do with him. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in that I’m not actually going along on the daytime portion. But it’s going to let Damon and Jeremy spend some nice alone time and then can talk about whatever brothers talk about. I like Jeremy. I keep wanting to say ‘He’s a nice kid’ but he’s 22 now, so I guess I’m going to have to surrender that soon. I spent some time touching up the office so that he’ll be comfortable. When I say ‘office’ it sounds like a lousy room to sleep in. But our office is possibly the cosiest one in the apartment. I’ve got an overstuffed chair in there and a little carpet and walls and walls of books. Just in case you were thinking of visiting and then reconsidering when realizing that you’re going to have to sleep in the office and that it would be unpleasant.

Oh man, I should have logged out. I’m getting messages from work that they need me to write something pretty please right away. And now our Horoscopes partner (on the west coast) has “a few quick questions…” Off I go!

Or at least that would be nice to hear today since I just finished the MS walk. Clearly, God wants MS cured because today was unbeatable in its gorgeous, cool sunniness. The sun was always present, but never overbearing. I walked with my friends Kari and James, who are excellent strolling companions. And strolling is all you can do when there are a zillion people on the route at the same time. But we did thin out after a bit. There were three courses of varying lengths, but rather that commit only to one we did the shortest one first (2.5 miles) and then cherry picked the two longer routes for the places we thought we’d like to hit. The high point of this was that we ended by walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and totally abandoning any route to walk around Brooklyn Heights. The organizers wouldn’t care, they already had our money. Once we were over the river John came and met us and we grabbed lunch at a weird little barbecue restaraunt before grabbing trains back to our respective homes.

The whole weekend has been fun and productive. Yesterday Kari and I went to see the closing of Damon’s showcase. Prince Humperdink was indeed there. He asked to meet the cast and went back to tell them that showcases are usually awful and that they had defied his expectation and been very good. He runs a theater company in town and asked for their head shots, so it’s exciting to know that he knows Damon exists. Because if you use the safe sex model of you’ve had sex with the partners of your partners then that means he knows I exist too.

The show was packed with a responsive audience and we went to some poshy restaurant for a post-show dinner/drink. We sat down at the end of the table with Nick, the guy in the cast who’s English. I absolutely love him. He just moved to the states because his wife is American, and they have a 7-week old daughter. He used to work regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company but now he’s basically starting from scratch. He’s a terrific actor, so I hope he doesn’t have too much trouble. His accent is charming, as is he, and I hope we become friends. We may have a good chance, as the show got funding to go for another month if they can get the time booked at the HERE Art Center.

Damon got home just a few minutes ago and he’s already asked me twice what’s for dinner. I guess I’ll get on that.

More later.

Inspired by electricrocket, I decided to see what Google has to say about me these days. I get about two pages of results, all but one of them are about the real me. As far as I know, there aren’t any other Jillian St. Charleses out there.

It’s a smattering of restaurant, book and concert reviews, some going as far back as college. And oh man are some of them bad. There’s also a new one, which is a letter I wrote to the city of Schenectady in support of a law banning backyard animal slaughter. Some council member entered it into the record when the law was up for debate. So that’s nice to know that when someone writes a letter like that it might actually get read.

I read an article once that suggested that you can get an idea of what your first name means to people by doing a Google image search. Just your first name. Believe me, the Tiffanys come out a lot different than the Gladyses. I searched for my first name and found a nude someone painted of me. Apparently it won an award!

Damon’s showcase opens tonight. He called from backstage and told me the zillion ways he could have done better. So it’s probably going great. I’ve got some flowers waiting for him when he gets home. Although if it’s not soon they will have to greet him for me, as I’m very sleepy.

Oh my gosh, Lloyd Bridges is on Battlestar Galactica… gotta go!

As can be inferred from my headline, I’m absolutely delighted about the weather. I’ve struggled with sharing this, as weather conversation is pretty much the definition of banal and trite. But I justify it in that I don’t have a car — I walk everywhere. So the weather has a material impact on my life. I’ve got a big bowl of popcorn from last night and I think soon I will walk to the park and feed it to the squirrels.

I failed to look at my last entry before I started this one, so I’m not sure where I left off.

I’ll just cover the weekend for now.

Friday night was fantastic in an oh-so New York kind of way. Damon picked me up after work and we headed over to a deli and grabbed a snack. Then at 7 we met Anne and Bart, who were visiting from Atlanta, at the St. James Theatre and we all saw ‘The Producers.’ It’s a fun show for sure, and a good time was had by all. A good time was definitely had by the women in front of Anne and Bart. They chatted and laughed and poked each other through the whole show. My favorite part was when one of them threw out the Nazi salute during the Springtime for Hitler number. Two shows for one! But truthfully, they were awful and Bart gave them what-for after the show.

After the show we went to a cozy little restaurant and stayed there eating and drinking until just after 1am and then wobbled on home.

Ah, just got a call from Damon. He’s been released early from rehearsal so I’ll wait for him to return to go to the park. It sounds like his show is going really well and he just told me yesterday that the director works with Chris Sarandon, who will be coming to the show. So the rest of the day was dedicated to me begging Damon to make sure I get to hang out with Prince Humperdink.

Saturday night we had a nice homey night — Chinese delivery and a DVD of ‘Master and Commander.’ Both were excellent.

Today I’ve been wandering the apartment in my pajamas, which is right up in the top three best ways to spend a day. I’m watching DVDs of ‘Farscape’ and the old ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ Next up… ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ I’m sure it will leave me cringing with paritally surpressed memories but it still seems like a good time.

I’m also not too proud to admit that a fair amount of time has been spent playing Diablo on my computer.