First off, I only won 40% of $600 last week. A perfect ticket don't get you much in these hard economic times.
Vegas has been perfectly autumnal this week. Kind of. I mean, there's no trees on which leaves may be changing their hue, it looks the same as it did when the weather was in the 100's. But last week we went from days in the 90's to nights in the 40's. A rather drastic switch which I was not prepared for in the least. We had the AC running during the day, then I was trying to figure out how to turn the heat on that night. I like a little more subtlety in my seasonal shifts. However, after complaining about the heat for my first month here, I will keep mum on my cold complaints. At least until November.
Still haven't made it on my bike, but the cool air did inspire me to take an 8-mile walk the other day, opening my eyes to some new Vegas locales. Monday morning, I went to an open call for "The Lion King", which will be opening in Vegas in the spring. The audition was in a brand-new part of town for me, way out east near the Boulder Station Casino. Alex was able to give me a ride there at 9:15 for a 10am call. It was an Equity call, and I'm not in the union, so I was just gonna hang out and hope they had time to see me after all the Equity folks. I was very pleased when, after a few minutes of sitting in the waiting room, the talk turned to the election and why it's important that everyone get out and Barack the Vote. Once again, I was engaged in conversation with my "competition" at an audition. So un-New York! Everyone was chatting about the election, then we were moved to another holding room where I bumped into a girl I met at the Tony & Tina audition, and the chatting continued. I'm telling you, I LOVE auditioning in this town! If only I could do it more than every 3 weeks. I suppose if I was willing to do the many topless auditions around town...Anyway, I was finally seen, did my 16 bars, got the "Thank you" send-off, and I was out of there before 11am. No callback, but that's no matter. I was feeling good when I left the studio to walk to the bus. And there was no bus to be seen. So I just kept walking. And walking. I walked past some really cute houses with big ugly foreclosure signs. I walked past huge sections of town where all of the signage was written in Spanish, I walked through neighborhoods where I was the only person on the street not drinking out of a brown paper sack. At about the 4-mile mark, I walked into a shopping mall and headed straight for the Lady's Foot Locker so I could give my blistered feet a break. The woman who was helping me said, "You're not from around here are you?" I told her no, I was from New York. Her face widened into a smile and she said, "See, I knew it! I knew you were from New York!" Now, this is the 2nd time this has happened to me. A few weeks ago, I was at Home Depot trying to buy some kind of keep-em-out door stopper (this was shortly after my neighbor's hand found it's way to my ass; I was feeling a bit unnerved). The Home Depot guy said, "You're not from around here, huh?" I told him I was from New York, which he said he knew. When I asked how, he said, "You got that New York chick attitude." Huh. I took it as a compliment. When I asked my Foot Locker lady how she knew, she said she wasn't sure, she just knew. "I didn't think I had an accent," I said to her. And she said, no, it wasn't an accent, she didn't know what it was, maybe it was because of my long coat, but her boyfriend is from the Bronx and I reminded her of him. Huh. Anyway, I got fitted with some new cross-trainers then headed back to the streets. I was in more familiar territory at this point, so I decided to take some new routes. More brown-bag territory, as it turned out. "For Rent" signs that screamed of the housing crisis: 2-bed, 2-bath, all utilities included, furnished, free premium cable, sparkling pools, $799 a month, first month free. Complex after complex with similar signage. I found some good corners, too, should I decide I'd like to get back into the high-life of the drug scene. Easy pick-ups, and no concern about fixing on the street (at least, there were a few people fixing who didn't seem concerned). Understand, this section of town sits blocks behind the big elaborate Strip properties, like Caesars and Palazzo and Wynn. I found myself thinking of New Orleans, how when I was touring there and staying in the Garden District, I would take long walks past gorgeous old homes and cemeteries, then I'd turn a corner and suddenly be walking on broken glass and seeing trash piled up in the streets. Here in Vegas, the wealth of the Strip sits surrounded by drugs and poverty and gangland. Now, I know enough about bad parts of town to know that I wasn't really in the BAD 'hoods the other day. I've driven through some of those, and talk about depressing. But it was striking, nonetheless, to be walking towards the towering luxuries of the casinos while walking through blocks of broken windows and liquor stores. As I had been at an audition, I was definitely looking out-of-place, with my bright red coat and my super-big hair and my face-covering shades. No one messed with me, but I did get some rather bashful smiles. The rest of the walk was pretty dull. As I was crossing the bridge over I-15, I thought of my many walks across the East River bridges in Manhattan. I miss living in a walking city. But I certainly do not miss auditioning in New York. Hells no, I don't miss it!
My 8-mile walk had me all tuckered out, to the point that I didn't make it to the Santa Fe show Monday night. I was asleep before midnight. Missed a good show, but my feet couldn't handle the dancing. Besides, the Monday Night Football game took all my energy. For the first time in 5 years, the Cleveland Browns were playing on MNF. For those of you who don't know football, the Monday night game is the big-deal game of the week. It's generally reserved for teams with good records and/or large fan bases (large meaning extending beyond state borders). The Browns have neither of these qualifications. They had a 1-3 record going into Monday night, and seeing how they haven't been a good team for decades, they don't feel the love outside of the Cleveland area. But Monday night, they were meeting the undefeated Super Bowl champs, the New York Giants. Now, it can sometimes be difficult to live with a sports bettor. Alex has money riding on all of these games, and usually he's looking for very specific things to happen. On Monday, he needed the Giants to win by 3 points. I can't root against my team! Even if the Browns had been playing Brett Favre (who won his game on Sunday, woo hoo!) I'd be rooting for the Browns to win (while still rooting that Brett would play really well). But Monday night, I was all about the Browns, even while knowing that it would be in our financial best interest for them to lose. But lose they did not. In fact, they destroyed the Giants! Derek Anderson (Browns QB) had his best game EVER, and the team as a whole looked great. The game was in Cleveland, so finally that city had big reasons to cheer! It was hard seeing Alex look so distraught as the Cleveland score continued to grow, and we certainly could use a big win. But my boys kicked ass, so I'm good. Oh yeah, I'm good.
This week's Tuesday with Van was a lovely visit, as always. We discussed the state of the economy (frightful), the state of politics (bitchy), the state of Vegas (drug-fueled). I got to learn some bits about Van's stints in tech support, where he scored big in customer satisfaction (angry customers easily soothed by his no-nonsense approach and high-knowledge of all things tech, not to mention that smooth-as-butter voice) and very low in playing-the-corporate-game (he didn't use the scripts provided him by his employers when speaking with real people with real issues). Ah, bureaucracy! When employees use their own unique abilities to get the job done, it is seen as a slap in the face to the machine. Individuality does not a happy bureaucracy make! My favorite tale was one he told about some nasty higher-up at Western Union who did not like Van's "attitude" and managed to lay him off, even though all of his customer AND supervisor reviews were stellar. Van left the job by letting the higher-up know that, "Someday, you'll be working for me." And sure enough, years later, when Van's business was having issues with their Western Union service, who was it that was dealing with Van's case? Oh, you KNOW it was the schmuck who laid him off! And you KNOW that Van let him know that, yes, indeed, "you are now working for me." Oh, how I love a good bitch! And Van is a stellar bitch. Not only does he have the confidence to make bitchiness work to his advantage (and confidence is necessary if you want to succeed as a bitch), but he's smart as hell and therefore can support his moments of letting the bitch come out to play! I can only imagine how big a presence Van would be on a stage. Sitting behind a desk at the Postal Center, there's already a larger-than-life quality, made even larger when he stands, in pumps or flats, my 64 inches suddenly seem puny in his presence. On stage...Van is looking to put together a show for herself, new material in an acid-jazz vein. Sounds divine. Though I would love to see her Anita Baker...
I finally got a library card! I love libraries, I really do. When I used to tour a lot, I would always find the local library, which usually provided Internet service so I could check my email, but also provided a kind of tranquility that I truly enjoy. As a teenager, I used to hang out at the library a lot, but mostly because it was one of the only places my parents trusted me to hang out. Mostly, I would just kill time hiding in the stacks with my friends. But as an adult, I grew to enjoy the quiet feel of being surrounded by thousands of books. I love to read, though I haven't been doing much of it lately. When I was touring, I would average 2 books a week. Granted, I was usually on tour by myself, so there was plenty of free time for reading. And I would often be reading books about the Holocaust, which made for some vivid dreams. I would read every night in bed, but sometimes I would go to the library to read. Most libraries have big comfy chairs to curl up in, and I like the feel of sinking into a chair while sinking into a novel. The Vegas library branch nearest me doesn't have much in the way of big comfy chairs. It's a fairly small branch, and it clearly caters to both an elderly population (the Large Print section takes up 2 walls) and a non-English-speaking population. I went in with a couple of recommendations for novels, but none were available at this branch (in fact, it didn't seem that these titles were available in the whole Vegas library system), so I just wandered through. Picked up a couple of DVD's (a Judy Garland/Gene Kelly flick, and an Uta Hagen Acting Class docu) and 2 CD's (I'm trying to learn some showtunes, so I got "Assassins" and a "Bernadette Peters does Rodgers & Hammerstein" disk). I also meant to pick up Huxley's "A Brave New World" which was one of my favorite books in high school and seemed appropriate to our current times, but once I cracked it open last night, I realized that I had picked up "WRITINGS on A Brave New World". Not interested. So, I'm reading "The Audacity of Hope" by this guy named Barack Obama, maybe you've heard of him? I bought it for Alex over a year ago, when he knew very little about Obama and wasn't much interested in learning more. But he read the book and became an instant fan. And now that I'm no longer ignoring the presidential race (I stopped watching the news and following politics after the 2004 elections; I was too dismayed to pay attention and frankly I was angry at... well, I was angry at politics and the media as a whole, and I felt that I was generally being lied to and no politician was really good 'cause there's no such thing as a successful politician who has told the truth, right? Or so I felt for years, and the primary season did little to change my feelings. But I have decided that I can't be complacent any longer, because I've got a long time left to live in this country, and if I've already given up on it, what's the point?), I figure I might as well read this book. I'm tired of listening to the candidates repeat themselves endlessly in order to attack and defend, so I'll read what one of them has to say about himself. And more importantly, what he has to say about our need to continue to have hope, to aspire to something greater than what we've become. Because it seems like that's what it comes down to for a lot of Americans, especially the younger Americans who aren't looking at retirement and Medicare and social security as our big concerns; we're looking at being a part of a world that gets smaller and smaller and more and more divisive, we're looking at changes to our planet that may drastically shift our map-lines within our lifetime, we're looking at the end of "if you work hard and put your money in a 401K and play by the rules, you will retire with grace and dignity and enough money to take care of yourself in your golden years." Hell, my generation has never really expected to see it's social security benefits when we reach retirement age, my generation has little faith in playing by the rules because we've seen those rules broken time and again to benefit the rule-breakers and screw over those who tried to play it safe. This election really seems to be about young-versus-old, change-versus-stability. Yes, I want change, but not because of what might happen tomorrow; I'm afraid of where we might find ourselves in 20 years, when this election will be a fuzzy memory. I plan on being alive then, and I can't tell you how many times I've thought, "Thank goodness I don't have kids who are gonna have to figure out how to survive in this planet." Yes, I know that sounds a bit doom-and-gloom, but come on! We've been living in a world color-coded by terrorism! We've been living under a dome of fear for the last 7 years, and no one seems to be feeling any safer. We keep hearing of NEW threats to our way of life, we keep being told that the enemy is always on the hunt and will strike at any time, in any place. And then we're told that the sea levels are rising and in 50 years, New York City may be under water. Our American way of life seems to be centered around fear. And I'm tired of it. Fear leads to hatred and anger and McCain-Palin rallies. Not to say that everyone at those rallies is looking to kill that Arab terrorist who is running for President, obviously it is a very vocal minority who believes that the man who may in fact be our next President is an Arab-Muslim who wants to blow up the Pentagon. (It is a minority, right? I have to believe that.) But it scares me to see clips of these rallies, not just because of the fact that a candidate is being turned into an un-American symbol of fear, but because of the reality that he might actually win, and then there will be all these "Obama Nation" readers who truly fear their President. How do we move forward like that?
Sorry, I ventured into politics. Guess I'm just getting prepped for tonight's debate. Wonder where the DOW will be by then...
