Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Sorry. Up way late casting a show and doing the post casting paperwork. I’ll get back to you on Friday!

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So, this weekend I ran the auditions for the next show I am directing: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are about 28 roles.

The last play I directed had about 15 roles, and I had somewhere around 30 actors come out to audition.

Because we had 11 roles for kids we held our “Kids” audition on Saturday at 1:00. The artistic director told me we’d get “dozens” of kids out for this show. I guessed somewhere around 30 or so. When my scenic designer told me to expect 100 I told him he was nuts, and in a scary sociopathic way, not a funny-kooky Aunt Mildred way.

By 1:00 we had 193 kids. You read that number right. We were seven shy of two Benjamins, as they say on my side of town.

I was up in the rehearsal hall which sits about 75 when one of the volunteers came up and said, “Can we start sending them up? We’re running out of room in the foyer.” My assistant director and I looked at each other. We knew we were in trouble, but we didn’t really know how much.

We moved through a swift succession of changing plans like … honestly I can’t come with an appropriate simile for this. The first thing I had to do was ask the parents to move so that we could give all the seats to the kids.

Then we had to move the whole audition to the main floor of the house and the stage, which still had a huge set on it (the final performance of Sweeney Todd was running that night).

Then we had to ask parents to move to the balcony. It was ridiculous.

One of our volunteers — who were rock stars, by the way, which I’ll get into later — anyway, one of our volunteers told me that her favorite thing was watching my facial expressions during the first fifteen to twenty minutes of this fiasco. I can imagine I was pretty comical if half of what I was thinking was getting out through my face.

TANGENT: I was so busy this weekend with auditions and rehearsals for another show, that I am writing this blog post at 8:00 Monday morning. My kid just woke up, so Daddy-time begins.

Sorry, I will have to continue this post for Wednesday. Write to you then.

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Felt your hand last night,
fingers soft as air.
We held hands as we walked along the beach.
You and me,
happy and free,
as we walked along the beach.
Touched your face last night,
Moonlight in your hair.
The warm wind blew as we danced by the sea.
You and me,
happy and free,
as we danced down by the sea.

You and me on that long deserted beach,
holding hands in the night,
listening to the waves rolling in and rolling out,
falling in love under the moonlight.

Kissed your lips last night,
senses rolling ’round.
Looked deep in your eyes and you kissed me again.
You and me,
happy and free,
as we made love in the sand.

You and me on that long deserted beach,
holding hands in the night,
listening to the waves rolling in and rolling out,
falling in love under the moonlight.

Woke up in my room,
my dog right by my side.
He looked at me with his sad, sleepy glare.
Him and me,
alone as we could be.
Baby, you weren’t anywhere.
Dreamt of you last night.
Shook to clear my head.
I took your picture from inside my pillowcase.
You and me,
never to be.
I sat there staring at your face.

I cut your picture from a Cosmo that I bought:
A low-cut neckline, velvet, red.
You don’t even know that I just might exist,
So I put you back and went to bed.

Felt your hand last night,
fingers soft as air . . . .

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Heading to Minneapolis for the zoo, the aquarium, and the second meeting of our son and his new friend BabyKai.

Estimated Time of Departure: 12:30pm — to both facilitate an earlier arrival, pool time, and our son who usually falls asleep (hopefully in the car) around 1:30.

Actual Time of Departure: 2:30pm — with a 22-month-old kid who needed to sleep around noon, instead of his normal 1:30.

Son’s actual in-car nap-time: 30 minutes.

Screaming crank-time: 2 hours 47 minutes.

23 rounds of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”

12 rounds of “Kaeru no uta” — Kero Kero Kero Kero Quack Quack Quack

¼ round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” — No! Nooooooo! Noooooooooooo Roooooooooooow! No Row! No Row! No Row!

Arrival Time at Day’s Inn: 7:45pm.

8:16pm — Discover we left son’s toothbrush and our earphone splitter (so wife and I can watch Netflix stream together after exhausted son falls asleep) back home.

8:27pm — Arrive at closest Target store to pick up children’s toothbrush and earphone splitter.

8:32 — Notified that all three of the store’s merchandise slots for earphone splitters are, in fact, free of anything that might actually act as earphone splitters. But the SuperTarget 5 miles away has some.

8:45 — Happily find 30 available earphone splitters at SuperTarget. Eschew the SuperTarget’s beer selection for a wider selection at a liquor store near our hotel.

9:08 — Park at the liquor store. But I’m in Minnesota. And it’s 9:08. I stare at the darkened store until 9:10.

9:13 — Enter hotel room to the sound of screaming, still awake, child and frazzled wife. But I have the toothbrush for son, and the earphone splitter to watch Netflix stream for when exhausted son falls asleep.

9:18 — I rip a three inch hole in the seat of my pants, my only pants on this trip, getting up to check my kid for a fever.

9:20 — Teething / Earache discovered/diagnosed. Wife cannot leave son’s side or there will be utter meltdown.

9:27 — Target has store brand children’s Tylenol-styled medication. But they don’t have a fat-man clothes section. By some miracle I find the only pair of jeans in the store large enough to fit me, my newish-a little bit smaller me. Yeah for that.

9:31 — Wife texts me to tell me she brought her CPAP machine (for sleep apnea and my sleeping sanity) but forgot her mask, so I might want to pick up some earplugs.

9:52 — Enter room to the sound of screaming, still awake, child and frazzled wife. But I have the medicine for son, new pants for me, my earplugs, so I can sleep, and we still have the earphone splitter to watch Netflix stream for when exhausted son finally falls asleep.

10:00 —Give son medicine and second bottle of milk (he asked for it and didn’t’ eat much of his lunch).

10:23 — Wife steps away from crib to take a shower.

10:23 and 42 seconds — Wife comes back to crib due to total, utter, unadulterated meltdown … my son, not me.

10:28 — I go to crib because son actually cries for Daddy.

10:30 — Wife goes to shower.

10:30 and 12 seconds — Wife returns to crib due to total, utter, unadulterated meltdown … again, my son, not me.

11:02 — Wife brings son into bed with us in hopes that all of us lying down together will calm him into submission.

11:03 — The writhing and attempts to crawl off the bed begin.

11:31 — Wife tells son that if he doesn’t lie down she will put him back into crib.

11:33 — Wife puts son back into crib.

11:33 and 2 seconds — Son begins the preliminary stage of super-human meltdown.

11:38 — I begin putting on clothes to take son for a usually soothing midnight ride.

11:39 — Son completes super-human meltdown with dramatic release of partially coagulated milk and children’s Tylenol-styled medication in the form of a frothy fountain onto his crib, pajamas, and mother. Then says sweetly, “I made mess.”

11:41 — I begin to clean mess while wife changes son.

11:53 — Son quietly lays in bed with wife and me, using my arm as support.

11:58 — Both son and wife are asleep. They snore. My earplugs lay in the pile of stuff that was hastily moved when my son vomited.

12:12— I slide out of bed, move my son tremulously to his crib. I lay back down and insert earplugs.

The toothbrush and the earphone splitter lay unused.

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Pathetic admission: I love the idea of Atlantis. The lost city, not the resort, although I wouldn’t eschew an all-expense-paid week-long vacation there.

My love for Atlantis is rooted in the same source as my love for tombstones and theatre. It’s the impermanence that intrigues me. It reminds me that I am here now, but tomorrow could be freely unencumbered with all things me.

I have had a fascination with tombstones for a long time. I was on a photo jag for a while, even. I love the futile sense of permanence that they afford the dying and the grieving. Their immediate monument to our existence recedes certainly by the second generation after our passing. I would hasten to say that few of us could pinpoint our great-grandparents’ cemeteries, must less their gravemarkers.

As it is with Atlantis. It was really only originally mentioned in one text: Plato’s dialogues of Timaeus and Critias. Most people think it’s only a myth. But that’s what people thought about Ilium, otherwise known as Troy. Very few archeologists believed that Troy existed. Even after Schliemann discovered it, people fought the very idea of its existence. But it does exist.

I want someone to find Atlantis. And I want the Atlantis they find to be mythos made real: The greatest town of its time, the most advanced civilization (some even say it they understood electricity as we do). And then it’s just gone. Crazy.

That is really the thing that makes me know I’m alive. Impermanence. Here today…but tomorrow?

Live today, man. Good little plan.

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So this will probably be a short one, as I just got home from taking Hiroaki, our Japanese man, out to see what our St. Patrick’s Day festival is all about.

We went to bar that I have gone to before. Usually when I go there it is filled with people my age drinking beer and talking about their portfolios. It is where my writer’s group sometimes meets.

Well, tonight it was a different story. I knew it would be a little different when, as we drove by, some young lady lifted her shirt toward the car, exposing her shamrock bra. I’m pretty sure that Hiroaki missed it. My driving, I think, terrifies him into a momentary coma.

So we went in, got our hand stamped —another sign of something new — and went upstairs to the 90° room swirling with college boys who were definitely getting laid that night and the bubbling young ladies who had their pick of those lucky college boys. It made me, a fat, bald, 42 year old man, feel somehow unwelcome and a little dirty.

We took the only seats available at the big window and I proceeded to stand in line for fifteen minutes to order our drinks: two black and tans, a good American-Irish draft for my Japanese friend.

I finally got back to him and gave him the drink. It was no more than two sips before he said, “I sorry. But can we just have only one drink before we go?”

I said, “Sure, that’s fine. Is everything okay?”

He leaned and yelled, “Too loud. Loud.”

It was, I must say a bit of a relief.

We watched a little of the Wofford BYU game. He would talk and I would nod politely because I couldn’t hear him.

I would talk and he would nod politely because he couldn’t hear me.

Then we finished our drinks and left.

We got in the car and, honestly, I was feeling pretty silly. I had sort of built up St. Pat’s as kind of a big day. And here we were, two guys who just an hour ago felt pretty young and hip, rolling away with our tails between our legs.

“Did you want to try another bar?” I said.

“Irish bar?” he asked.

“No.” I said a little pathetically.

“Loud?”

“No. It’s a bar for old people.”

“Hai, let’s go,” he said, a little more eager than I thought he would be.

We rolled into the parking lot and there were three cars. Three. It’s fricking St. Patrick’s day and there are three cars in your bar’s parking lot? I’m going to tell you the name, because if you live in my town it will tell you everything you need to know.

It’s a little lounge called Read Books. That’s right a bar called Read Books. Actually, if you don’t live in my town that should tell you everything you need to know.

Hiroaki looked at the window and said, “Is this library?”

I was actually a little depressed. I was getting ready to call it a night. “No,” I said, “It’s a bar. We call it a lounge. Not many people are here. We can go home.”

He said, “No! No, I like. This looks good to me.”

So we went in.

We were the youngest in there, at least by five years. We sat in those 70’s sofa chairs they have where your’ knees are actually higher than your butt. There was Van Morrison on the very light speakers. I think he was followed by Bob Marley.

I ordered some black and tans. We sat back and took pulls on our pints.

Hiroaki looked at me and smiled. “I like.”

Sadly, I did too. I am so boring. But I was very content. More importantly, my guest was content. We talked without yelling. And we learned a good deal about each other. And, the most important part of the evening, it made his final departure from our house a very sad and unwelcome event.

I guess that’s how I gauge a visit. If the parting is sad, the visit is successful. So huzzah to the Geezer St. Pat’s festival. Job well done.

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Hey, sorry for the late posting. I had some surprising computer issues this morning. It sort of mirrored my physical state. Not too surprising, considering the weekend we’ve had.

I bet most of you are like me, in that I never use my city like I should until I’m hosting someone who doesn’t live here.

You know, most people who live here bemoan the “fact” there is nothing to do in the area. Often I fall into that mindset, though I am truly a home-body. But when I am hosting I am always on the run, because there is truly a good deal to do here, even in the tail of winter.

Friday we took Hiroaki, our guest from Okinawa, to a hockey game. It was an absolute blast. American team gladiatorial combat at it’s best — with two fights, so what could be better? Cowbells, cursing, and “Sweet Caroline.” Getting excited about a game you don’t understand. It was great.

Saturday night we took him to Sweeney Todd at our amazing community theatre. Now, when I say community theatre, I know what most of you think. But I’m telling you, you come here and watch one of our plays, then head out to most of Chicago’s theatres, and you will be pretty impressed with what this little Podunk city can do theatrically.

Anyway, Sweeny Todd was wonderfully emotional and disturbing with one of the most stunning sets we’ve had on our stage.

Finally Sunday, it was a perfect way to top off the weekend, sitting in a local bar listening to our friend Dan Bern singing on his whirlwind acoustical tour of the US. Hiroaki told us that he had never seen live music in Okinawan bars, so this was particularly cool for him. Plus, Dan had some really fun new songs about baseball, of which Hiroaki was a huge fan.

It was a great transportive weekend in this city with “nothing” to do. And it needed to be. Because unless you have had your head in a hole, you know what is happening in Japan.

Now, Hiroaki and his students live in Okinawa, which is about as far away from Tokyo as you can get and still be a part of Japan. They did not have any damage from the earthquake or the tsunami. But like we in the Midwest during Katrina, they are mired in the emotion of their country.

This weekend was, I won’t say a balm, but a welcome distraction to my new friend who is far away from his country in crisis.

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If you read my Monday post, you know that my wife and I are hosting a Japanese man for a couple of weeks as part of the exchange program my wife’s high school has with a school in Okinawa.

So far, so good. We’ve fed him the best pizza in town. He’s had chicken noodle soup and chili. He’s been to a grocery store and our SuperTarget and seems to enjoy our solid American sense of excess.

But tonight…oh, tonight. Tonight we are taking him to a professional hockey game. I cannot wait! This is contemporary America at its apex. Footlong hotdogs with chili and plasticized nacho “cheese.” Half-pound jalapeno burgers. Drink cups the size of my thighs. An onion ring box with enough in it to bangle your arm from wrist to pit.

But wait! There’s more. An anthropomorphic horse mascot. At least two fights. A post home-team goal video (playing for a stunning full minute and a half) which could have accompanied the Vandal’s feast celebration after they sacked Rome. The stultifying enigma of “Sweet Caroline” at the first interval. Two faceless full-body green suited gimps (who might as well sport ball-gags) whose job it is to simply mock and distract the visiting team for the full three periods.

And, God please, if we’re lucky, the morbidly obese guy behind us who, well into his cups, yells, “Hey Chesnik, you fuck! You suck! Go back to Boise, you useless shit!”

Honestly, I can’t wait.

Now, I’m not really a hockey fan. I don’t understand much of the game. I think I get icing and maybe high-sticking, but much of the rest of it is frosted over in blissful ignorance. What I love is unexpected spectacle of the thing. It’s one of those things that I wouldn’t necessarily watch on television. But live, boy howdy is it something.

It’s about as crazy-gladiatorial spectacle as it gets. And I can only hope that it spawns some post material.

We who are about to die salute you!

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I want to create and own a restaurant.

How insane is that?

I’ll tell you how insane. I don’t have any culinary training. I don’t have any money. I live in a city that is notorious for it’s eschewing of gastronomic creativity.

But hey, I love food. So I’ve got that going for me.

I have wanted to own a restaurant for ages. I remember in middle school we had a unit in some class where we created a business. Maybe it was high school — I can’t remember that detail. But I created a restaurant. Andrew’s I called it. I had a menu — I think my dad still has it in a file (I’m 42 years old). I even had a floor plan on graph paper. That was just the first restaurant I dreamed up.

Later in high school — I can’t remember if it was for a business class, maybe Econ — I created F. Scott’s. This was my favorite. I had just come off reading The Great Gatsby, which I hated. But I loved the setting.

F. Scott’s was, I admit, a probable money-pit. It was a Roaring Twenties theme, complete with band, singer, roving photographer, and (then) cigarette girl. Steak tartare, foie gras torchon, filet mignon, rack of lamb, stuff like that. I’m sure the overhead would have been a killer.

There was a great restaurant here in town called blend. It was so good, so creative. A couple of venture capitalists, a culinary teacher from our local culinary school, and a couple of young turk chefs. I heard they’d get together, watch Monday Night Football, drink some beer, and make up their menus.

They changed their menu each month or so, which I think is brilliant. And it was wildly creative. They also had an option for a tasting menu of their most popular items. It was so good.

But we had that unbelievable flood, and they were flooded out. Then our city government couldn’t’ pull their heads out of their asses and our downtown still hasn’t recovered. But blend was one of the first places to reopen, really trying to get downtown going again. And that was their downfall. People just weren’t willing to head back down yet. It was the best restaurant in town, and I if I had the money I would have invested in it to try and keep it going.

So here is my new food-kink: a healthy fast food joint. My new eating style is really making eating on the fly impossible. McD’s, BK, Hardee’s, Taco Bell: even their “healthy options” aren’t that healthy.

It can’t be that hard to design an incredibly tasty menu of healthy wraps and sides. How about a tofu chimichurri wrap with a side of roasted sweet potato spears? Or a veggie garlic aioli wrap with a side of raw carrot batonnets? Or a balsamic chicken roasted-veggie wrap with a side of fried carrot chips? Or pear, banana, Nutella, cinnamon, and ricotta wrapped in a cocoa tortilla?

If I were running errands and got caught short on lunch, I would go out of my way to drive-thru at this place rather than tuck into a Hardee’s Six Dollar Burger — which I not only love, but have actually dreamt about. Sad, but true.

But alas, I live in a meat-and-fried-potatoes city (if not state). I would give the establishment about six months. But with the right location, I bet it would be sizzling.

Oh, there are more restaurants I want to open. With the funds and gumption I could probably become a serial restauranteur.

Just another form of gluttony I guess.

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Today I met a possible new friend.

My wife teaches Japanese language for a local high school. Every year she has a bunch of Japanese kids come over from Okinawa to stay for two weeks. When I was teaching I loved those two weeks. There was such a fun and opening environment in the school.

Well, this year we are hosting a teacher: Hiroaki.

I am so excited. About ten years ago I hosted a teacher named Moriatsu Asado. It was so much fun.

Anyway, Hiroaki is a young guy, newly married. He seems pretty excited to be here. And, most important, he seemed way stoked to try my chili. What more could a guy want?

There are several things I love about hosting, but the one that really gets me going is the opportunity to see my town with different eyes. I take him to places I don’t normally go, so everything becomes a treat. It makes me think about the positive quintessential “American” experiences (mostly food!), because that’s what they want.

We’ll hit my favorite diner, hot dog joint, and pizza place. We’ll take him to Sweeney Todd and, hopefully, a hockey game. They always, always want to go to SuperTarget to see how it stacks up to their “American style stores.” And I’ll fix chili, roast, chicken soup, some cookies, and any other kind of “Americanish” dinner I can think of.

What a great way to force a little self-reflection.

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