You Don't Know Until You've Tried

Chock another one up for Facebook. I believe the official tally is now 4–1 . Despite my previous contempt for all things FaceSpace-y, it has helped hone my vocabulary and geography skills , reconnected me with friends of decades past—including most recently, the Prince from my Indonesian dancing photo, who I’d published an article about, one that he may have been unaware of… until now (gulp)—and now Facebook led me to the best one-(wo)man play I’ve ever seen, The K of D by Laura Schellhardt.

I actually haven’t given anything away yet because it was the first one-person show I’ve seen. Never seeing a one-person show isn’t from lack of theatre exposure actually; I was quite the thespian in high school and even co-wrote a show. I guess it is like when people don’t like food… that they’ve never tried, or how I didn’t like Facebook… before I joined. I didn’t like one-person plays… and so I never went to see one.

Facebook changed that in a rather unusual way; I stumbled across the “Are YOU Interested?” app on several of my friends’ profiles, and decided to try it. While the app is probably one of the worst executed on Facebook, it serves its purpose of connecting you to people you wouldn’t otherwise have an excuse to talk to (without being a stalker). The app lets you browse through women (or men, if you are into that sort of thing) who are interested in finding out if you are interested in them (well interested in their photo at least since that’s all you get—unless you take the time to look up her their profile outside of the app). From the amount of participants who list themselves as being in a relationship (or married) I’m thinking the app may be viewed more as an ego booster than a tool to connect people. Nonetheless, as I clicked through photos I came across one that was clearly taken on stage, and which looked vaguely familiar. Her name was Kimberly Gilbert, and I’d seen an advertisement for her show during last week’s theatrical frenzy.

After confirming where I knew the photo from, I contacted her to offer encouragement for the ambitious project she was undertaking… to spend two hours alone on stage performing all fifteen characters. She sent a friendly (if self-promoting) message back and since I didn’t have specific plans during tonight’s Pay-What-You-Can performance I decided to put aside my prejudices against one-person plays and hope that it would be more like trying mussels for the first time the other day (pleasant) than clams (which taste exactly how I always imagined—sometimes you can know you don’t like a food without tasting it)

As it turns out, you do need to be in line by 6:15 for PWYC performances at Woolly Mammoth… and my 6:30 arrival was one person too late to get the last of the tickets. But Laura (my friend, not the playwright) was sport enough to wait for the half hour until we’d know if any of the reserved production tickets would be available. Eventually we were told that the production tickets were all used, that there wouldn’t be any more, and that the best they could do was half-price tickets to a show in a couple of weeks. We only stuck around to phone James with the bad news… which turned out to be just long enough for them to come up with two (though not three) of the tickets we wanted. James sacrificed to stay longer at work and so Laura and I filed in with the last two tickets to the sold out show…

“This could either be really good… or really bad” Laura commented, echoing my thoughts as the lights went down. I just hoped it was funny at least. And why wouldn’t it be funny; after all, let’s see, it’s a show about a girl whose brother dies… uh oh.

I know, I know, after a ridiculously long lead-in even by my standards… what did I think of the freakin’ show already!?! I loved it. Read her blog. Go see it. I have no reservations about this show (unlike the previous show, Nutshell, at Woolly Mammoth that I discovered I’d seen Kimberly in). Then, come back and read the rest of this entry because a) it might contain spoilers and b) remaining in a sitting position as long as you’d need to read this could result in an air embolism when you stand up.

As I mentioned Kimberly plays all 15 characters who take part in this urban legend set in a small town in western Ohio. A town which is described as [having drive-in movie theatres… which are closed because not enough people drive in, and having drive-thru liquor stores… which don’t have that problem]. Yay! It was going to be funny. But even funny shows, actually especially funny shows, can be terrible when they suddenly get serious. And while there were quite a few serious moments, they were never jarring, and they were quite often poignant. Listening to the scene in which a starving dog dies literally left me breathless—thanks in large part to the impeccably chosen sounds for the barks and yelps as the dog transitions from rage, to fear, to madness, to desperation.

I imagine it’s not easy for an actor to develop accents and mannerisms for fifteen characters, but it’s essential when the actor has to switch between them, sometimes for as little as a single word, and often in the middle of another character’s line. Kimberly nailed them all (well 14 of the 15 at least, her intonations for Judith “Actually” were too similar to my favorite character, Steffi Post, though it was obvious from the context who was who). In addition to the verbal gymnastics, Kimberly’s yoga apparently paid off because she was able to continue acting while essentially imitating the Karate Kid’s Crane Kick, balancing on one leg while swirling the other in a circle.

One of the things that I don’t like about one-person shows is that they tend to be rather boring from a technical standpoint. This show wasn’t and I was as impressed with the designers, Marie-Noelle Daigneault (Set & Costume), Andrew Griffin (Lighting), and Matt Otto (Sound) as I was with Kimberly and Laura (the playwright this time). The set was projected onto white sheets strung across the front of the theatre, through which they successfully conveyed chopping down a tree, capturing a firefly, light reflecting off the surface of the lake, rain, a villainous silhouette, and the flight, perch, and ultimate demise of a heron. The mobile of origami boats, which are a symbol in the show, is also a nice touch on the otherwise bare stage.

The sound was just as impressive, and required timing with (or by) Kimberly to kill a buzzing mosquito, silence a croaking frog, and repeatedly ring a bell. And I’ve already mentioned the sounds of the dying dog which stole the show for me.

And now since we are both tired, I’ll end with some of my favorite moments from the show:

• The secret pygmy language which the twins speak, reminiscent of the poem Op-Talk by Rives.

• The playwright’s observations that urban legends are usually rural, are always told by someone other than the person it happened to (well maybe), always contain enough detail to be believable but never have any proof, and rarely focus on what happens afterwards.
  
  
• Herons tempt their prey by swirling the water in front of them with their leg.
  
  
• Children travel in packs… like wolves… and this pack contained some memorable characters.
  
  
• Becky Ray Voss who moves [from candy cigarettes, to pall malls, to packs a day… with an occasional hit of Meth, and eventually to standing reservations at three hotels on the rowdy side of town].
  
  
• Brett, who records everything in his notepad and is constantly flipping back through it to recall previous events. I actually went “awwww” when we learn that Brett’s notepad was stolen.
  
  
• Quisp, who names periods of time by taking the most memorable event and putting the word “the” in front as in, Summer of The Death.
  
  
• Steffi Post, the “like” addict whose father owns Chrysler. Steffi obsessively pulled her hair when she spoke, often spoke in Darrenisms (or at least mispronunciations), and quivered orgasmically to any prospect of violence.
  
  
• Mrs. McGraw’s character is another great one. She’s the local school teacher with an unhealthy obsession for maintaining her teacher-of-the-year streak (kind of like the unheathly obsession I have for noticing that the teacher who corrects her husband's grammar describes an upset person as "mad" instead of "angry") even staking out the new teacher who has taken her idea for a summer reading program. Mrs. McGraw seems to be primarily interested in keeping her 10-year streak going in order to accumulate more silver bracelet prizes which she tries on one after the other in a disturbing manner that is one of the funniest scenes in the show.

Christian & Gospel? That’s not what iLike!

A cautionary tale…

I nearly had an accident on the information superhighway last night (yes, I’m aware no one calls it that anymore). It all started when I added the iLike Facebook application in an effort to find out when bands I like are touring through DC (previously this hadn’t been much of a problem since most of my favorites—e.g. Morphine, Judybats—had disbanded during my post-college musical hiatus). iLike seemed rather promising. It was free unlike Pollstar and a bit more polished than tourfilter, and most importantly it seemed to have an entry for every band I like (except for Matt Palka—get on there Matt!), along with most of their concert schedules (though not, for example, tonight’s Ceann show at Murphy’s). I finished selecting my favorite artists and it took me to a page that listed headlines about my selections… and that’s when the trouble began…

Imagine my delight to see the headline that James had released a new album called Journey on January 1, 2008. James is one of those college bands that disbanded, but that I knew had recently reunited. And so here to kick off my new favorite year was this long anticipated album. Brilliant! iLike even had a convenient link for me to purchase the album from iTunes or Amazon. Having sworn off DRMed music from iTunes, I went to check in on Amazon’s MP3 download service, which a friend had mentioned just days before. One click of the direct link from iLike I was looking at the new James album on Amazon… albeit in CD form, but prominently advertised was a link to the MP3 download version. BAM, there it was, the new James album in all its 256 kbps DRM-free glory for just $9.99 (exactly the same price as iTunes even). And there hovering tantalizingly before me was Amazon’s revolutionary patent-worthy (yeah, right) “1-click” button. Just like that, in three clicks from my facebook profile to downloading a new album. Cyber syzygy I tell you!

My mouse slid towards the button as my eyes drifted to the cover art for the music that I would soon own (I mean, be licensed to enjoy for personal use etc. etc.). Hmmm. That’s funny. On the cover are photos of five lovely black women… who were most definitely NOT in the brit pop band that I saw at WHFStival fourteen years ago! Thankfully this discontinuity queued up in my brain about one instruction before the neurons would fire to command my finger to purchase… what turns out to be a new Christian & Gospel album by The James’… beautiful music I’m sure, but not what I was looking for…

Now if I can figure out how to tell iLike that James != The James’ and prevent others from being wrongly separated from their hard-earned duckets…

Philolanthropy?

As mentioned previously, I’m going through a phase of minor addiction to online edutainment. A few days ago I thought I might be able to manage my habit. I was coming to terms with losing my first Scrabulous game, and having finally beaten level 12 of the World Traveler’s quiz, I was ready to retire with my newfound knowledge that Vladivostok, Russia is just above North Korea and that somehow Norway inexplicably owns an island midway between South Africa and Antarctica called Bouvet. But then my little pusher, I mean sister, had to go ahead and ruin everything by offering me some of this great stuff she found at www.freerice.com... and I was hooked all over again.

FreeRice is essentially an adaptive vocabulary quiz. Each time you get a word right the next one is theoretically harder. Get one wrong and it gets easier. Nothing too exciting… unless you are a mild word nerd (philologist) like me with fond memories of the now-renamed “verbal” section of the SAT. But what makes FreeRice unique (to me at least) is the philanthropy angle. For every word you get right, the proprietors of FreeRice donate 20 grains of rice to the UN’s World Food Programme. Riiiiiggggttttt. But apparently it is legitimate. Now admittedly it isn’t the most efficient way to donate time or money to a charitable cause, and I think my circle of friends would contract dramatically if I started throwing out some of the higher level words in conversation, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling just a bit vogie each time I get a word right. I figure I’ve donated some food, learned a new word that could help in Scrabulous someday, and gotten one step closer to reaching vocab level 50 (level 48 so far – yeah it keeps track of that too. Did I mention it taps into my competitive vein?). And I’ll admit that the philologist in me enjoys learning a word that we’ve heard through our lives but probably had no idea what it meant, like kith (friends, as in kith and kin). Plus, while my friends may not speak these words, they do write them, like George's satori (enlightenment) and Dagny's affianced (betrothed)…

Facebook Free-Fall

I blame Chris. I didn't know why exactly, but I knew I didn't want anything to do with MySpace or Facebook. I was fairly proud that not only did I not have an account with either of them, I had never actually been to anyone's page on either site (the fact that MySpace is blocked at work probably made that easier). Then I traveled around West Africa this summer and I took my first step down the slippery slope which seems to have tossed me right off a cliff (I just finished watching the 2006 season of Everest on the Discovery Channel so that's the imagery I have in my head right now). I noticed that whenever we stopped at an internet cafe and I checked my email or uploaded photos, Chris seemed to be updating something on Facebook. When I got home I wanted to know how my malaria-stricken friend was faring as he made a solo trek through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote D'Ivore (did I mention he's hard core). Having seen him in operation I knew the best place to find out wasn't his blog... but on his Facebook profile!

The trouble (or blessing, if you worry about stalkers) with Facebook is that in order to view someone's profile you have to have a profile of your own (and get them to accept you as a friend). Despite my reservations I relented and created a blank profile so I could keep up with him. Oh I took precautions. I was very clear in my status message and in a note that I wasn't actually planning to use Facebook and asked everyone to please not "friend" me. And yet I suddenly got a flood of friend requests. It turns out the other trouble with Facebook is that no one can see your status or your notes without being your friend in the first place. Damn catch-22. I ignored the requests for a while (several weeks actually) but as they piled up I figured there was no harm in simply accepting them since then my friends would see my status and my note and realize I had no intention of being sucked into the Facebook world. Wrong again. Soon I was getting emails about people writing on my wall, asking me to compare movie tastes, and even challenging me to a game of something called Scrabulous. Again I resisted. For weeks.

And then one day I was having lunch with the Scrabulous challenger who berated me for not accepting her request to play. Apparently when you challenge someone you actually start the game and she'd started with a high scoring word and was excited to see if I could catch up. The next day I accepted the challenge. And ever since I've been in Facebook free-fall over that 10,000 foot cliff without the sherpa's safety line.

See Scrabulous is fantastic. It's like Scrabble... but so much better. I've always had a thing for words... and games... and yet ironically while I enjoy an occasional game of Scrabble I haven't played it considerably more than any other board game growing up (perhaps I am still bummed about being denied the word "revoided" in a travel Scrabble game on my trip to the UK in 2000 - here let me use it in a sentence for you: "The cashier scanned my Corn Flakes twice, so she voided one of the transactions... but it failed to clear the charges so she called over her manager... who revoided it". See perfectly valid! But I digress...). So why is Scrabulous better than Scrabble? Well for one thing you essentially have an unlimited amount of time to plot your perfect move. But what really does it for me is the built in dictionary lookup that is available in "regular" games. I can check all sorts of weird combinations of my letters and magically stumble across the perfect word which I never even knew existed! There is just something exciting about typing in an endless combination of letters that you really need (ok so "need" is relative) to form a valid word and suddenly having the valid word appear in glorious green print. Instead of only playing safe words that you know everyone will agree on (like revoided :-p) I can discover that "aa" is a word (a type of lava flow - which I somehow knew from Geology classes), as is "oe", and that "qaid" is a useful "q" word that doesn't contain a "u". Other words I have discovered from Scrabulous (I'll update this list over time... unless I manage to shake this addiction)

• Grister - Someone who grinds things, I believe. This was also my first ever "Bingo" (80 points for that word) where I used all 7 of my tiles (revoided would have been my first which is why I fought so hard for it).
  

• Torii - A word I didn't use in the game but found while trying different letter combos. This was probably my favorite because a couple days later I was looking through Emily's blog about her trip to Asia and she had a picture of a Torii (the Shinto gate shown in her picture)
  
  
• Vogie - An obscure Scottish word used in the 18th and 19th century which means... happy! You can never have too many words for happy, so I am bringing vogie back (and I'm not the only one)
  
  
• Ut - A Middle English precursor to "do" (as in do re mi - the song certainly makes more sense now that they changed it to do). But more importantly it allowed me to play my second bingo "entreat" on the only spot on the board where it could fit.
  
  
• Askoi - The plural of Askos, a modern term for a form of ancient greek pottery used to pour liquids.
  
  
• Oxyphenbutazone - Some molecule that is far more famous as the highest scoring single play word in American Scrabble. No I did not type that in randomly. I saw it on the Scrabulous high score board and did some investigating.
  
  
• Inchers - My highest scoring bingo thus far (for 113 points), doesn't really seem like a word at all until you put a number in front of it, e.g. 9-inchers.
  
  
• Dildoes - Ahem. Scrabble word lists aren't censored, so if you've got the letters... Anyway, aside from the good laugh we got out of this bingo—which incidentally played off of the word "Fakes"—we learned that this word can be spelled as either dildos or dildoes (though blogger thinks they are both misspelled, I guess they do censor). Who knew?
  

I might have been safe if Scrabulous was the end of it, after all I can only play as fast as my opponent is willing to so I should be able to squeeze some sort of a life in between... but today... today Alexandra doomed, er challenged me to the Traveler's IQ Quiz. This was even more fun than Scrabulous, and I could play as much as I want (yes there is a Scrabulous mode where you play against the computer but I'm not stupid enough to try that... I hope). This is a geography quiz where you have a map of the world and they throw out cities (or historic landmarks/battles etc.) and you click as close as you can to their location on the map in under 10 seconds. They plant a flag where you click and then toss in another flag at the actual location and award you points based on how many kilometers you were off (I'm proud to say my closest guess so far was 20KM off... on the location of Fenway Park!). The questions get harder for each of the 12 rounds and you have to score enough each round to advance. All three tries today I missed out on getting the 55,000 in round 11 to make it to the 12th and final round (my second try I missed 55,000 by 197 points!). And now I am off to try one more time before bed to reach round 12...

Somebody please set up an intervention...