Decidedly Uninspired

I'm only posting so that Katherine will not give me a hard time. :-)

The weekend was very low key for around here - yesterday I was decidedly domestic: Trader Joe's, laundry, packing and catching up on some TV on Hulu. I was supposed to go to a movie out in Maryland, but Maryland is far from here and when you get there...you are in Maryland, so I bailed. Bailing also allowed me to have a wonderful skype date with friends in Toronto. So wonderful to see and hear you!

Today I went to the matinee of August Osage County. I saw it on Broadway and didn't love it but I thought I'd give it a second chance (since it's free and all). This is the same tour that just left Toronto FYI. Well, still didn't love it. I still feel most of act one doesn't need to be there and the thing could be a good hour shorter (this is not asking that much since it is 3 1/2 hours long!). I think I liked it even less than I did on Broadway as there was some atrocious acting - a couple of stand-outs as well of course - however this seems to be the theme of theatre in DC.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what this week will bring. Next Sunday night is Honors and next Sunday morning I move - so that's all very exciting. The lead up so far feels calm, but I'm not sure if it's calm-before-the-storm calm or just regular calm. So I enter the week slightly apprehensive!

It's a Ghetto Watergate Christmas

Yes it is 1974 and this is the best they could do...

The 600

I feel perhaps I've been remiss lately in not talking about the time I spend in bars. It's what the people do here!

The 600 is the bar that is physically closest to the KC without actually being in the KC. It is in the Watergate building on street level and if you were to dine at the 600 it would be remarkably expensive. Especially considering that the food isn't very good and the service generally speaking worse. However, because of it's proximity to work, we go there a couple of times a week (hey, if you are seeing shows at the rate I'm seeing them currently you'd need a drink too!). And if I've only learned two things in my time in theatre, then i thought they should be good ones. The first, as I believe I've covered here before, is to be nice to your box office staff, the second, is to be nice to, and get to know, your bartender and if it's somewhere you ever want to go again, try and tip well. I find that DC folk tip badly so the latter isn't too hard to do, even on what I'm making now.

So there are several regular bartenders at the 600 - Matt and Andre are the only two to deal with though and if they aren't working, you might as well just leave. I achieved a milestone this week in the bartender/patron relationship: I have reached free drink status. A few of us had been in there on Monday briefly after work (in light of the rotation debacle - which has now all been sorted out fortunately). Neither were working - as it's the dark night at the KC, the 600 is dead dead dead. Anyway, the service was beyond awful - and I mentioned to Matt on Wednesday when we were in there before the Nutcracker how relieved I was to see him. I ordered the usual happy hour red wine (swill as I like to refer to it because it's pretty awful) and he said that he had something better for me to try and low and behold, a free round of really yummy wine!

Tonight, before the NSO Pops concert (Marvin Hamlisch conducting the music from the Music Man - lovely) I paid only happy hour swill price for what I was pretty sure was the yummy wine. Far more drinkable. My work here is done.

Football

I would be remiss if I did not speak about football on American Thanksgiving. It's everywhere.

I was told, when I asked a real live American why Thanksgiving was on a Thursday, that FDR tried to move it but that would have interrupted the football schedule so there was great protest and hence nothing changed. America is weird. And actually the whole Thursday thing comes from Lincoln, but my friend didn't know why.

I could also go to Target at 5am tomorrow if I wanted to (I'm not). Also weird. Some stores are opening at 3. Crazy.

Will write more tomorrow but am at my FFFs place tonight on her funky french keyboard!!!
Happy Thanksgiving all y'all.

Another week, another stat holiday

Yes indeed tomorrow is American Thanksgiving so that would be two randomly placed mid-week stat holidays for this month. I'm going in to work on Friday but I think it will be a fairly deserted place - I just didn't see the point in using a vacation day when I wasn't going anywhere. And this way I can slack. And maybe even wear jeans to work (imagine!). For tomorrow, one of my fellow fellows has invited the stray fellows for dinner at her parents' home so I think that should be quite lovely. I am really still baffled by why Thanksgiving is such a big deal here. I mean people hugged me before leaving today (now I am very huggable of course :-) but still).

Tonight I saw the Pennsylvania Ballet version of The Nutcracker. It was Ballanchine's choreography which I thought somehow would make it more interesting. It didn't. Not really anyway. I mean it was very pretty (lovely snow - Alistair would have liked the snow) and the music was gorgeous of course, but I just find the dance itself a bit...random. And dull. Act one is more dull, act two more random. So I suppose the randomness is at least somewhat interesting to watch. I apologize to all the ballet lovers out there, it's just not my cup of tea.

However, I felt I should take advantage of the opportunity since it was there to be had.

Goodnight y'all.

OH, I said "uh huh" today instead of thank you the way Americans do!!! Ack!!

Work was pretty dire today. Everyone is all stressy about Honors (which is only 10 days away). The big thing currently is seating. Who sits where for the show and where for the dinner etc etc etc. For those of you who worked on it with me, picture the Lion King opening night seating times about 12 with two Presidents thrown in for extra fun (as yes, it is believed that President Clinton will be attending with his wife the Secretary of State...so that's two Presidents in one room). This happened once before when Bush Senior attended with Bush Junior, but it wasn't quite so politically charged as you can imagine. And of course everyone and their next door neighbour want to be here this year with the Obamas. I think I'll end up seeing it from the parking lot we are that over-booked currently...

All the Fellows are in a twitter because we got our rotation assignments yesterday and many people are not happy. We'll see how it all comes out eventually but there are major rumblings. I actually did pretty well and got what I asked for more or less. I had requested to do a theatre programming rotation around our McNally festival which is happening in the spring. Because of the weird timing though, this meant that I had to fudge dates as it doesn't work with the rotation schedule. So the plan for me is to go next to marketing but only for half a rotation when I will then go to theatre and stay there for the duration. I absolutely love our VP of marketing so am quite pleased to get to work with him a bit more but am also pleased to not to have to do a full rotation in marketing. We do some interesting stuff, so there is much to learn, it's just not an area I want to focus in long term.

As for the others, I think some really poor decisions were made and I think that there needs to be an explanation given for them. Hopefully this will be forthcoming. Ultimately, I think the structure of the program needs an overall - and I've said as much to the program manager. However, that won't happen this year for sure. Hoping for a less tense tomorrow and that calmer winds will prevail heading in to the holiday on Thursday....

One of the places we discovered this weekend was a different and far superior, sculpture garden. I believe there is jazz in the summer at this one. It is part of the Hirshorn Museum (I think I'm spelling that wrong...) which is part of the Smithsonian. It's just on the other side of the Mall - really just across the street from the other one. This garden is full of Rodin and Henry Moore and just really beautiful and peaceful work. It's a place I hope to visit again and where you could go just to sit for a while and be...

We also had gelato

It was yummy. And next door to a Lululemon store...

Le Weekend Canadianne!

Visiting the Obamas

My first two Canadian visitors! Yay! :-) of course I stayed with them in their hotel, rather than them staying with me. Full weekend where I tried to play tour guide and not get us horribly lost in a city where I'm still finding my feet. (stupid diagonal streets...)

It's funny because it didn't feel unusual that they were here at all - we were just hanging out at a restaurant having some drinks. It was all completely normal. My two besties and me hangin' out. (It's so weird that I live here.)

I wish I'd taken my lap top to the hotel and could have commented on the fly (my iTouch was not really cooperating with the hotel WiFi) because now it's all a blur. We did Georgetown and Eastern Market and some monuments and some sculpture and shopping. A little jazz at the Kennedy Center to show the place off a bit. Food and drink was the full range from DC Coast which was named DC's "best seafood restaurant" (and it was really good - not that I had seafood mind you, but really unbelievably good kale of all things) to finally going to Ben's Chili Bowl, the DC institution loved by Bill Cosby. We sat at the counter and ate chili half smokes (again not me!) and veggie chili fries (me) and watched the complete crazy-calm as they served dozens and dozens of people - they just kept streaming in.

This was just before the crowning evening of the weekend at the Elliott Brood concert. There was a lot of Canadian in our weekend as we also went to the Edward Burtynsky photography exhibit Oil at the Corcoran Gallery (fantastic - a real hi-light for me I have to say).

Elliott Brood is a Toronto band who is a favorite of ours. I think I've seen them 10 times or so in concert. It was amazing seeing them in this tiny dive bar on a dive street in NW DC with only a handful of others who knew their music. And I know I'm a big loser for being so excited by this but I admit it freely, a truly memorable moment for me of my whole time here is that we spoke to one of them after the show. Never could have done that in Toronto now they are playing to 2000+. So yes, call me a crazy groupie or whatever but it made me giddy.

A lovely full weekend :-) I'm sure I'll have more on it as this week goes on...

First visitors in town! Next post will be on Monday! :-)

The wrong side of the tracks

There are worse parts of the city than where I was this evening, but I'm not running to go find them.

Tonight I went with two FFs to an event at a gorgeous new(ish anyway) theatre in a really not so good neighbourhood. Interesting for me to experience this on many levels. The theatre was more or less walking distance from a metro stop (a metro stop where you could see the Capitol from - I mention this for geographical context) but my friend said he wouldn't walk it (and he's a decent sized black man) so that means you don't walk it. We took a bus - the bus had a hole in its roof. An actual hole. The third fellow and I were the only two white people on the bus. These are things I have not experienced before in an urban centre. Why don't the people traveling to this area get a non-broken bus? (that is a rhetorical question, for the record) The bus was actually highly entertaining (though over-crowded) as there was constant lively banter between the passengers and the driver and amongst themselves. I felt completely comfortable, it's just odd to become aware of things like colour and economics. DC is very segregated. There are good areas which are more mixed and poorer areas as well, but for the most part the really poor neighbourhoods are entirely black or entirely latino. It's really disheartening.

The theatre was on a stretch of road where everything was boarded up except the dance studios attached to the theatre and a Popeye's Chicken across the road. This is of course how gentrification starts. The theatre could afford this neighbourhood, and some day people will want to go to dinner there before seeing a show and so a restaurant will open etc etc etc (I'm not sure how long this facility has been here though the dance studios apparently opened 15 years ago). This theatre was really beautiful and I hope they make a go of it. I fear this neighbourhood has a ways to go before you could really even consider it "in transition".

(I took a cab back to the metro Dad FYI...)

I curse my discovery of peanut butter filled pretzels. Damn you Trader Joe's!!!!

Safeway

Washington tidbit #324

As you may know, Safeway is a grocery chain here in the US. They are all over DC and somehow or other each particular Safeway has a nickname. And these nicknames seem to be universal - it's not just KC people referring to them this way, but it's in common usage. So for instance, there is one in Capitol Hill, near a place I almost rented but I thought the neighbourhood needed to transition a little more before I would be comfortable living there. That Safeway used to be called the UnSafeway. Now it has been upgraded to the Not So Safeway. The Safeway in my new neighbourhood you will be relieved to hear is called the Communist Safeway as it is in the gay village. Gay = Communist in this country I guess.

Go figure.

The one I think is funniest is the Safeway that is on the ground floor of the Watergate building. This is called the Ghetto Safeway. The Watergate itself you would think of as a glamourous sort of place - and maybe the condos are - but the mall part of the complex really doesn't look like it's been touched since Nixon last visited. The Safeway is in fact very ghetto. (for geographical reference the Watergate is right next to the KC so we spend a fair bit of time over there). I imagine the owners of the million dollar condos above the store would not appreciate the cleverness of it all....

Another night of Awesome

Tonight's awesome was brought to you by Marvin Hamlisch. Marvin Hamlisch is the current Pops conductor at the NSO but is better known for composing such gems as A Chorus Line. He's won Tony's and Emmy's and Academy Awards (and a Pulitzer so he's no slouch). He wrote the score for A Spy Who Loved Me (Bond movie!), The Way We Were, Sophie's Choice, Ordinary People and the list goes on and on. Basically any vaguely cheesy movie theme or love ballad from the 70s, he probably wrote it.

I think I've discovered what the KC does well, or at least what I like best. It's this whole Explore the Arts series - educational yet entertaining evenings aimed at adults (edutainment!). Tonight was an interview with Marvin with performances by three Broadway stars singing some of his greatest hits. Top moments however were when he took up the piano himself. First was to show how you write a song. He just started playing and making up lyrics based on a suggestion from the audience - song writing improv! The man was accepted in to Juilliard at the age of six. No kidding. And the last moment of the evening was when he played the overture for A Chorus Line which actually never made it in to the musical. They decided that since the play starts with an audition, that it structurally didn't make sense to have any music before the first scene. So hearing this overture which is never performed was really quite something. The whole evening was just extremely well put together - and well, awesome. It does remind me of how much a love musicals. I love musicals and I am not ashamed!!

Today was spent at a coffee shop in Eastern Market doing finance homework. Yes, we get homework from our finance class - which would be fine if I felt the class was focusing on what we need to know. We've spent weeks on the minutia of accounting -T accounts and the like - whereas I would argue that a one or two week overview covering basic terms and what we should look out for is actually what we need. We need to be able to speak intelligently to an accountant or finance person, not become one (which this won't do anyway). I think the class structure will be changing after our Christmas break as things have been alluded to but not actually expressed out loud. We shall see...

However, it was not a bad way to spend the afternoon - 20c here again (mid-November, I seriously could get used to that), with some people watching thrown in between problems.

Lang Lang

Last night I went to see the NSO special presentation with Lang Lang, the piano virtuoso. After being told it was unlikely that we'd get in, we ended up with fabulous seats on audience left so we had a perfect view of Lang Lang playing. He plays a bit like a caricature of someone playing the piano - arms and hair flaying around the place. Apparently he's not like this at all in rehearsal so it's just part of his stage persona. He's young so gets away with it (though it was funny hearing some in the audience comment on how he wasn't wearing a tie with his tuxedo jacket. Shocking! and cool looking FYI) If you'd like to get as sense, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b85hn8rJvgw

(sorry I can't get the link to "embed" here...will have to figure that out...)

I have to admit that 3 of the 4 pieces of the evening left me cold. The NSO played two on their own and they were their usual lack luster efforts. The first piece with Lang Lang, Beethoven's Piano Concerto no.1 in C major, sounded like they'd never played it together before. Now, this is not a piece of music that I'm familiar with but it did not sound like the piano was meant to be played with the rest of the orchestra - when of course it is. The couple of orchestra people I was with (who did know the music) agreed with me.

Fortunately the evening was entirely worth it for the last piece, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto no.3 in C major, which was brilliant and exciting and had the audience on its feet at the end. It was truly breathtaking playing. I would love to see him play again with a somewhat less...regimented orchestra. The NSO never quite feels to me like they love what they are doing...

A brush with Cate

Had my first up close and personal encounter with Ms Blanchett tonight. :-)

I basically walked into her (I know, this will not shock most of you!) at stage door. Not realizing who it was I looked up and said "oh excuse me" quickly followed by "oh, hi". Very articulate. She said hi back. She is very tiny but tall. I'm sure we will be BFFs now!

A beautiful Sunday

Okay, these posts are now out of order and I should have written this one first but oh well.

We had an absolutely stunning weekend here so I and a couple of fellows opted to see the outdoor offerings of the Smithsonian - the Botanical Gardens and the Outdoor Sculpture Gardens. Both were lovely and will be stunning in the spring. I've included a few snap shots for you. And yes, those are flowers blooming OUTDOORS in November. Not so hard to take really.

The first shot is for my Little Shop peeps - I found the original Audrey in the Smithsonian Botanical Gardens!

One thing that is pretty neat about DC is that you randomly happen upon interesting things all the time. I was waiting outside a metro stop for the other fellows to arrive, and discovered the US Navy Memorial (above). It is fittingly partly a fountain and just there, peaceful and unassuming. It is wonderful to make little discoveries like that.

apologies!

We have been experiencing internet issues here in Old Town which seem to be resolved - fingers crossed. Many exciting things happening - most important on my mind is that I'm moving. Yay!

So this happens early December and I will officially become a resident of the District. So if you were planning on mailing me something, please wait until I am safely housed in my new venue. I will forward that address to however would like it.

We had Veterans' Day off yesterday, as I am a federal employee of sorts don't you know (almost as good as working for the CBC...). I went to Arlington Cemetery in the morning with a fellow fellow and had a lovely walk - albeit in the rain. It's a very beautiful place and I will try and go back on a better weather day...

I hadn't realized that the President would be there - I should have of course, but didn't think about it. So we missed the window where we could have gotten to the wreath laying ceremony, but his motorcade did pass us (see above - he is in one of these cars!) so that's nearly as good. My first near brush with the Obamas. I would just like to note that I think it's awful that people are protesting outside the school where his two daughters are going. They are just children and are not responsible for their fathers decisions - the good ones nor the bad ones. People are awful.

I had a very full Sunday and Monday (today included a group sales event for the Mary Poppins tour which arrives at the KC next summer - I got an umbrella!!) and a very moving play reading this evening. However, it's late and I'm tired so more details to follow.

I will leave you with one story from our finance class this morning. We were discussing depreciation and writing off bad debt/damaged inventory etc. Our Russian fellow often tells stories in finance about Russian accounting. Today's was (please picture the appropriate Russian accent):

In Russia(pause) we would buy the carpet (pause), say we used it (pause), say we bought it again the next year, but just use the same carpet over and over.

It's the Garth Drabinsky school of accounting!

Hmmmm, I'm thinking this is losing something in translation when written down, so you may just have to trust me that it's funny. I'll do it for you next time I see you.

Seeing George Washington

It was a perfect fall day today so I changed my original plan of an art exhibit downtown and decided to walk to the other side of Old Town to visit the George Washington Masonic Temple. As you can see above, it is quite a beautiful building. I arrived just as a tour was starting so I joined in. I know very little about the freemasons and I kept thinking that my dad and brother would have gotten a lot more out of this tour than I did. The building was built as a memorial to George Washington who was very prominent in the Alexandria chapter of the freemasons. GW is really big in Alexandria, well in DC too - go figure. There are chairs he sat on, mugs he used, papers he wrote, all over the place.

I asked the very young tour guide (who himself was a mason) if there really were aliens in the basement. This is why Hollywood is filled with Canadian comedians. Americans have no sense of humour. My talents were wasted.

We didn't get to see any of the building that they actually use, but still it was quite a grand structure. I did find it funny that the guide kept stressing how the freemasons were not the same as the knights templar and that was all just pop culture mumbo jumbo, meanwhile, he referred to some rituals and practices that the masons follow that were directly taken from the knights templar. There was also a painting of some important person from the original knights who had sacrificed himself for his beliefs that was in their chapel. But no, the two groups aren't related at all. If he says so...

I asked about women in the masons and he said oh yes, yes they can join. Not the actual group of course but their own one run by women and called something else - and then only if they have a relative (male) who is a mason. Now I'm not saying that women should have to be allowed to join the masons, but if they aren't, just be honest about it.

We did get to go up to the observation level at the top of the tower. The temple sits on top of a hill and so has a wonderful view of the surrounding area. Unfortunately the fall here is not like at home so the colours are quite muted and not the golden yellows and brilliant reds of autumn in Ontario....

Some of the mason brotherhood have very funny hats.

A Streetcar Named Desire

I wonder what it means when I say I think the definitive production of Tennessee Williams' classic piece has been created by an Australian theatre company. Paid for by Americans, but not created by them.

I have only seen two productions of Streetcar before last night. Most recently in Toronto by Soulpepper (a good 10 years ago), in an absolutely horrific self-indulgent version. So perhaps my sample is not large. But what I do know is that too often people play up the obvious. Stanley tries to be Marlon Brando. Stella is just a one dimensional victim. Not so in the Sydney Theatre Co. production.

Cate Blanchett is divine as Blanche. She seems so easy on stage somehow. So at home there. There isn't a false or artificial moment in her work. It's interesting, in her talk earlier in the week, she mentioned accents and the discussion they had had surrounding the southern accents in this piece. She spoke about the rhythms in Williams' writing and how without the accents the dialogue did not flow as he intended it to. The all Australian acting company's accents were of course flawless. But it is the rhythm of this production that they got exactly right. Nothing is forced, every moment is honest. The design is perfect. Dingy enough but allows for some clever staging. Mostly muted colours with a couple of noted exceptions in the costumes.

The other actors kept pace with Cate too. Especially I felt the Stella. Robin McLeavy, an Australian actress with no international credits, plays Stella with many levels and great empathy. She isn't a victim here - she's made choices, maybe not great ones, but she doesn't regret them and that's a take on the character that I'd not seen before. Stanley is complex. You don't like him at all but he's charismatic and has got that thing that some of those bastard guys have (and takes his shirt off a LOT which is just fine).

The play runs 3 hours 15 minutes but it honestly flew by. I'd go see it again if I could get a ticket.

There have been many Cate sightings now around the building - I have yet to have my first one. I think I should take up smoking as it seems to be the smokers who see her up on the terrace sneaking a ciggy. I do have to admit I've been entering and leaving through the Eisenhower stage door more than normal :-)

As seen on 14th Street....

With helpful tips for what you could need an over-sized pink bunny for. Please note the Obama ornament in the first photo...

Theatrical Highs and Lows

High: Cate Blanchett in conversation. "Theatre at its best is a dangerous and impolite medium".

I cannot wait to see her in Streetcar this Thursday night.

Low: The Worst Play Ever Written, the musical (actual title The Adding Machine). Surprisingly well directed for such a piece of crap.

yoga

Many of you know that I coordinated yoga classes one lunch time a week at Canstage. Well the KC has something similar where a class is held on the balcony lobby of the Opera every Monday. Neat space for yoga with chandeliers, high ceilings and red carpet and remarkably private considering it's open to the Grand Foyer.

I went to class today for the first time and I have to say that I miss Jayme (my old teacher) and class! This class was really geared at the people in our dance department (it is coordinated through them) so it is a very advanced class. That shouldn't matter for yoga really as you can adjust and modify your own practice and go at your own pace. Except this teacher doesn't demonstrate the poses, she only says the names and she wasn't always using a name that I knew or remembered (fish pose? I don't know if I'd every done fish pose...). If you had never taken a yoga class, you would be completely lost in this one. I didn't like that - I like yoga classes that really welcome all levels of experience where there is lots of room to work towards improving yourself without feeling self-conscious (this again is Jayme's influence!)

This teacher also used some weird terminology like "Sun Salutes" instead of "salutations". It made me feel like I was in the military. It was an ashtanga class, so much faster than I am accustomed to with the vinyasas (spelling?) in between poses, which I just don't like (that's partly laziness I admit). So it was fast and confusing until I figured out what pose she meant and not the easiest environment for me to focus on the exercise. Also quite exhausting

- especially for mid day on a Monday. Not sure how often I'll go. It felt good to get some exercise in a structured way but I need to look elsewhere. There is a studio down the street from me which I really should check out at least for a weekend class.

Thank god for an extra hour this weekend. I packed too many things in last week and reached today feeling a tad burned out.

Friday night I ventured to Maryland for the first (and perhaps last!) time to see some modern dance. The dance was not good and the journey was far. Blah. We did however pass a string of excellent strip mall dining establishments - Pollo Primo 2, Don Pollo and my favorite where I wish we'd had time to stop - Pollo Wow! (yes, the restaurant had an ! in its title). Pollo is chicken for my non-Spanish speaking friends and I think Pollo Wow! has a lot of promise.

Saturday night I went to the final preview of the new Woolly Mammoth show (for those of you perhaps not involved in theatre - Hallowe'en is a great night to see a play for free or cheap since no one buys tickets and it is typically a very slow night - this was free). It was an interesting piece and certainly the best theatre I've seen in DC so far. The piece, called Full Circle, takes place in multiple locations around their building (very funky building). It was sort of about the fall of the Berlin Wall except that it wasn't really. It was never actually sinister and was quite stylized in how it was presented - inspired by Caucasian Chalk Circle. It felt a bit likely something we would have seen in Toronto in the 90s, but I think for this town, a noble effort. And very neat to see the space and the different things they did with it. It would be wonderful if when the Theatre Centre's renovations are complete, the building could be as versatile as this one.

Today, I went to a fellows brunch out in Eastern Market. Really nice to see people in such a relaxed and normal setting. I think we are all craving something in our life to be normal. As neat and interesting as everything is, it's exhausting having everything new and different all the time (and still). It's nice to find moments that remind us of how we used to live.