Blog happens

Hey Readers and Lurkers Alike --

Blogger's been driving me nuts for a while now.
And, amongst my blogging friends, there's a wee bit of an exodus from blogger to wordpress happening...
So, like the irritated sheep I am, I'm switching..
As such: This blog will be moving to a new address and host!

Please update accordingly -

http://thekidsgotmoxie.wordpress.com

I'll be deleting this blog in the near future.

Holla!

Jamie

Dylan Moran on Smurfs & Dishonor

Old Fashioned Book Nerd

I feel the last days of summer are upon us, as evidenced by the smell of the morning air when I leave my apartment for work these days. It's not that muggy summertime grass and sunshine smell anymore, but rather it's crisper, browner, and more like a warning that it's time for leaves to fall and sweaters to be worn. While, like any sane person, I love summer, my heart belongs to fall - and I've been saddened the past few years with the fact that the world's weather is changing and fall is getting shorter and shorter. In 2007, I feel it was 3 weeks long and I was horribly deprived.

When falls rolls around, it brings memories and associations with it.

I think of sweaters, and pumpkin spice lattes, and boots, and skirts with scarves.

I also always get the craving to spend some time with some old friends.

Like, OLD friends.

As in, the 19th Century English Romantic writers - The Brontes, Austen, Mary Shelley and her crazy gang. William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins are also on my list of English literary heroin. (I also include Bram Stoker in this, even though he was Irish. Whatever. Bite me.)

When I was an English Lit major at MSU (What? I didn't study theatre in college? Yeah, I decided to go with an equally useless but more enjoyable - to me, anyway - degree, thank you very much.) I remember fall as being the time of year when I'd drive to campus, grab a coffee, and head to a fairly empty and huge room in that wonderful (and now destroyed for a parking garage) brick building and settle into an afternoon of classes about the Wordsworths, Percy Shelley and The Sublime & The Beautiful, Rousseau, and other crazy opium addicts from the era who turned out amazing works by candlelight and quill. I loved absolutely every minute of it.

My favorite Professor - of my actual "English Romantics" class, which I had to fight to get into because it was for grad students - wore tweed jackets and golfcaps every day, carried a pipe he didn't smoke, and would stay after class talking about the writers with me nearly every day. He thought I was the bees knees. We had class on Tuesday and Thursdays. Each Tuesday, he'd toss a blue book at us and an essay question, and we would have to write about it for twenty minutes. Then, on Thursdays, he'd make the three best at answering his question get up and read theirs aloud. I think there were only three times I wasn't up at the podium (and honestly, those would be the weeks we spent on William Godwin. I know he's Mary Shelley's dad, but ... seriously.)

Though modern writers can occasionally entertain me (Christopher Moore comes to mind as someone totally modern who I'm totally enamored of..) nothing ignites my heart like the Romantics. Their works, their journals, and their real-life stories are all incredibly riveting - Like the Wordsworths and Coleridge bailing on England to write up at Dove Cottage and, between daily duties and marital problems, churning out things like The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Tintern Abbey and Kubla Khan. The Brontes had to publish their works under male names, originally.

I can't tell you how many copies of Jane Eyre I have anymore, or how many times I've read the book. And every time, I find something new. Jane Austen continually amuses me, without fail (and, for shame, I haven't even read Emma yet! I feel like I'm saving it for a day when I need something to be brilliant. That's how much confidence I have in Jane.)

Long story slightly shorter - I get off on this stuff. Obviously.

Tonight's my night off from POC, Radium Girls, and all things of the sort. I'm loving every second of directing Radium Girls, but like anyone, sometimes I need a night to myself.

I'm also more than a little exhausted, and can think of no better way to re-energize than to head to the Harold Washington Library (God, I'm glad I live in Chicago sometimes. BEST library ever.) trek up to the 7th floor, drop my bag, and get lost for a while.

I also have this theory that I need to meet James Joyce. I have high hopes it'll be the beginning of a long relationship.

Happy Reading, kids!

Love,

Jamie

Dylan Moran - On Austrailia

:)

MeMosaic!

(BECAUSE I always do what Bob and Kari do.)

INSTRUCTIONS: Type your answer to each question into Flickr search. Using only the first page, pick an image. Copy and paste the urls into Mosaic Maker.

1. What is your first name? JAMIE (Ha!)
2. What is your favorite food? SPAGHETTI (Which is a general term for all things Italian, I've decided)
3.What high school did you go to? ALPENA HIGH SCHOOL
4.What is your favorite color? PURPLE
5.Who is your celebrity crush? DYLAN MORAN
6.What is your favorite drink? TEA
7.What is your dream vacation? ROMANIA
8.What is your favorite dessert? CAKE
9.What do you want to do when you grow up? REHEARSE
10.Who/what do you love most in life? CREATION
11.Choose one word that describes you? OVERWHELMED
12.What is your Flickr name? CONFETTIGIRL

:) Heee!

Bank of America continued!

So Bank of America FINALLY got around to crediting me the $200.00 for the deposit I made that they had lost.

...And now, they've credited me for it again.

They've given me $400.00

Someone at their facility really sucks at math.

I've got my Chase debit and credit cards. The MOMENT the new rent check clears, it's over.

Radithor: "It is perpetual sunshine!"

Have you ever heard of Radithor?

No?

Don't feel bad - Neither had any of us, until we began work on "Radium Girls." But it's a fascinating product and an insanely interesting story. Radithor was, in essence, Radium water. Supposedly, it would make you feel energized and reinvigorated. But it had dangerous effects.

From RG research -->

"Prior to being emptied, the bottle pictured at left contained one-half ounce of Radithor, i.e., triple distilled water guaranteed to contain at least 1 microcurie each of Ra-226 and Ra-228. The manufacturer of the product, Bailey Radium Laboratories of East Orange, New Jersey, offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove the product contained less than the stated amount. No one ever did.

However, another of the company's guarantees, that "Radithor is harmless in every respect," proved false. Radithor is one of the few radioactive quack cures that can be unambiguously linked to someone's death, specifically that of Eben Byers at age 51.

Byers was the founder of the A.M. Byers Company, one of the world's largest steel companies. In 1928, the Pittsburgh industrialist and one-time U.S. amateur golf champion (1906) injured himself on a party train following a Harvard-Yale football game. At the recommendation of his doctor, he began drinking Radithor, and he continued to do so long after the injury healed - he averaged three bottles a day for two years. Byers stopped consuming Radithor in 1930 when his teeth started falling out and holes appeared in his skull.

Perhaps more than anything else, his death in 1932 alerted the public, and much of the medical profession, of the harmful effects of "mild" radium therapy."

-- Radithor, and William J.A. Bailey, appear in Radium Girls.

Seriously. You should make plans now to see this play.

:) Ah, the dark side of America's excitement over new products.

Radium Giggles

One of the coolest things about rehearsals from a directing standpoint are the wonderful discoveries you get when talented actors go to town with the material.

You're all aware how hopelessly devoted to my amazing cast I am by now, right?

Well, we had a fun rehearsal last night -

After knocking out one of the more serious scenes (easy breezy when everyone understands their characters so well - and these actors do, down to the letter...) we went on to one of the street scene/media circus interludes.

Taking a step back --

Radium Girls contains two kinds of scenes, essentially. There are the very serious, very realistic, human scenes involving the people who suffered from these illnesses and their antagonizers. There are also these very vaudevillian scenes, led by a Reporter and a Sob Sister, that help transition through time and explain the media's influence on the case. Remember the OJ Media Circus? The Radium Girls case was kinda like that - in the 20s. These scenes are, in essence, the spinning newspaper scenes from any movie of the pre-1950s. They feature characters named "Shipgirl," "Customer," "Venecine Salesman," and give my cast a chance to really go to town and create some silly characters in the middle of a tremendously dramatic piece. The scenes are musical theatre, without the music.

I laughed a lot at rehearsal last night. Good times, good times.

Oh, and thanks to Bob - for finding us a hilarious jingle that now HAS to go in the show. :)

I can't wait until the beginning of September, when we start putting all these puzzle pieces together.

Vasovagal Syncope (or how I became a "fainter")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_syncope

I had a doctors appointment yesterday - totally standard physical and female exam, right? No worries. Totally good. I adore my doctor, she's whip-smart and has an accent and is on top of her game. She diagnoses your problems the second you walk in her door.

Blah blah, regular physical goes great - My blood pressure is awesome.
Blah blah, female exam is great - and super fast and efficient (another reason I like her)

So, we're set and I'm sitting up, and chattering with my doctor about botox for some inane reason, and the next thing I know I'm lying on the hospital bed, totally covered in sweat, feeling like I just woke up from a 5 hour nap. I remember that I had a really vivid dream, though I can't remember anything about it (except that some dude had red hair? I think?) and staring at my doctor.

My Doctor said I'd had a Vasovagal episode and been out for 30 seconds. Apparently my blood pressure had plummeted (she re-took it right then and it was SO much lower) - So she made me stay laying down for about 20 minutes, and let me go only when I felt better.

I was also supposed to get a vaccine, but she (Rather brilliantly) realized that sticking me with a needle at that point was dumb, so she referred me to Northwestern's injection clinic (ew) and told me to tell her when I was going so she could call ahead and tell them I'm a "fainter."

I'm a "fainter," y'all....

She then prescribed me Corner Bakery, seeing as how I hadn't eaten since 8:30 yesterday morning. She told me to have starch and protein - and by god, I obeyed.

I also had a cookie - I'll show YOU, Vasovagal episodes!

So then I felt fine, got on the bus to go home, and started feeling super tired and nauseous. So I went home, and crawled into bed and spent the rest of yesterday either in bed or on the couch.

All in all, just another strange adventure in the life of Jamie.