arweena's very first blog

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

:(

it is totally NOT okay with me that the Embarcadero Center is FULLY decked out in Christmas splendor. I would say 'Holiday' splendor, but that may give you the false impression that perhaps it is decorated for Thanksgiving - which has not even HAPPENED yet. This is very troubling and just makes me feel stressed when I go to work. do. not. like. at. all.

i mean for fucks sake - could we please at LEAST have thanksgiving before they shove this shit down our throats.

and by the way - i actually like holidays - i like the spirit of them - i like a lot of the fundamental ideas/ideals of them (i.e. NOT consumer WHOREdom). i like feeling happy and jolly and merry and festivusy and like there are fun things to do with fun people that i love and feel thankful for having in my life. but. really. it is november 19th - i should not be humming along with 'rudolph the red nosed reindeer'.

i do not believe i am alone in this either.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

yet another boyfriend...

ok. i know, i know... i have quite a nice little handful of boyfriends. But lately I feel like as I add them to my list, I am just as often taking them off. For example, after seeing Neil Gaiman reading from his superfunandawesome new book for young adults, The Graveyard Book, live and in person at the Kabuki Theatre here in town, I decided that he is no longer my boyfriend. I still love him dearly and think he is talented beyond belief, gush gush gush, but he's not my boyfriend anymore. ani difranco recently came off the girlfriend list. Same thing - LOVE her LOVE her LOVE her to death, but just watch a behind the scenes DVD and you'll see why she is not girlfriend material. ANYWAY. Mark Morford has been a boyfriend for awhile and today he provided yet another good example of why I love him and why he gets to stay on the list: Permagrins for Obama

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

a random photo journey

greetings on this lovely tuesday! :) why is it so lovely, you may ask? because today I finally kicked a circus nemesis of mine in the ass. and after i kicked its ass once, i kicked it 4 more times. i am talking about a sweet little circus item called "skin the cat". it was the ONLY nemesis I had left (except for fear of heights and that's never going away), as I have wiped out many many many nemesii (?) through the years, but this one just never clicked. until today. and i had to keep doing it to prove to myself it really happened, so before i knew it, i had done FIVE. I will try to find a video of one, so that you can know what the hell I'm talking about. but basically, for me, this was a big ass deal and now I can finally feel like a real teacher. ;) (more on that later - I have lots of news...but it deserves its own post...)

as for the show.... my darling show, "Current Nobody".... i'm actually really excited to start TECH tonight. I'm a really strange actor in that I generally LOVE TECH. :) Did I mention that this is a really cool show. Ok, good. If you want info, just look at the previous post. :)

now for something completely different...

i feel lazy, so here is a pictorial of some of the things that have been going on in the lives of the tarts....

I went back east in late September to visit family and friends... twas also my mom's birthday. she and I went into NYC and walked through Central Park, went to the Museum of Natural History (one of my favorites since childhood) and had dinner and saw 'Spring Awakening', which was fine, but not great.

Here is mutti in the Museum with the Stegosaurus:



I also went on a day trip with my father to the massively huge original Cabelas store (they are an outdoor recreation and hunting superstore). People actually TRAVEL to come to this store. They sell postcards of their store. It was something else. I learned a lot about trophy deer and the way antlers are judged. As you can see from this picture, they have every horned/antlered animal that you can hunt along the wall:



they also have a really cool aquarium where the fish, thankfully, are alive... AND they have this crazy super mountain structure in the middle of the store with ALL sorts of stuffed things. Here's my dad with the Polar Bears:



in continuing to try to follow a good number of Michael Pollen's food rules in his awesome book, "In Defense of Food", I have been learning all sorts of new things about cooking and spices and the amazingness of the shallot and on and on and on, but one of the most fun new things has been cooking beets. Here dave and I demonstrate how fun Beets can be:





I was a fairy for Halloween. I had a gig that was supposed to be a trapeze gig for a big fancyrichpeople halloween party where I needed to be a fairy, so I just went as a fairy to Halloween as well. Dave was, um... something, no one really know what it was and sadly I do not have a picture. But we went to Carrie Paff and her husband Jeremy's party and had a grand ole time. We won comic books. it was pleasing. :)



and finally - I wanted to show off Sorsha's new tires. honestly, she and I are not sure if maybe it's too much... does it make her look like a hipster? or like she's wearing a matching leisure suit? we are not sure. but we went riding in the headlands with Elizabeth yesterday and had a grand ole time, so maybe they are stylish and functional, which is something I appreciate. ;)

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Current Nobody

Hey - I'm about to enter TECH week for my next show. Why have I not told you about this earlier? I dunno.... we all go through blog phases, I guess. ;)

It's pretty durn wacky and smart and imaginative and well-written and the cast and crew are REALLY nice and talented and it's affordable and it's totally elitist. ;) It's called Current Nobody and it's a sort of contemporary re-imagining of The Odyssey with the genders flipped (see below). I play Pen. Pen rules.

Please notate that we have two pay-what-you-can previews this Friday and Saturday. Those are REALLY cheap.

Just Theater Presents the West Coast Premiere of:

CURRENT NOBODY
by Melissa James Gibson
Directed by Jonathan Spector

"She said the general said this was a
Besiege Becalm Begone type of thing and
she said the general said In and Out and
generals are generally right"

A modern riff on Homer's Odyssey, CURRENT NOBODY reverses the genders to tell the story of an epic long-distance relationship and the ultimate working Mom. While his famous photo-journalist wife Pen is away covering a war for 20 years, Od struggles to raise his daughter and fend off the advances of a trio of indie-documentary filmmakers. With dazzling language and humor CURRENT NOBODY weaves together this famous tale with the very contemporary dilemma of attempting to balance career, ambition and family life.

With Arwen Anderson*, Michael Barrett Austin,* Lizzie Calogero*, Lindsey Gates,* Danielle Levin*, Michelle Pava Mills*, and Ryan O'Donnell
*(Actors' Equity Association Member, An Equity Approved project)

Sets: Logan Granger Costumes: Tammy Berlin Lights: Stephanie Buchner Sound: Dina Maccabee Dramaturg: Maryanne Olson

Stage Manager: Alex Mallory

Produced by: Molly Aaronson-Gelb

Produced in Partnership with Playwrights Foundation

Tickets: $12 - $25 sliding scale
Call 510 421 1458 or http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/46107

Nov. 14 and 15 Pay-What-You-Can Previews


Opening Night: Monday, Nov. 17

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays thru Dec. 13

All shows @ 8pm
Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco

www.justtheater.org

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

ok good - i can have a kid now

by which i mean i can have an Obama Baby rather than a Bush Baby (and this is not to be an announcement that ANYTHING is on the way.....i just like the thought....)

:)

I wrote this yesterday:

"Hm. For some reason, I seem to have woken up in one nasty-grumpy-ass mood today. I'm wondering if I'm just tense about what is a, you know, sort of important day. (yes, I was employing understatement) I feel sort of weird in my tummy actually. Anybody else feel this way? It's like there is a little gnawing anxiety demon in there. *sigh* I think it's also that as I was riding my bike downtown to work today, (where, by the way, I just give up even trying to concentrate - it's just not gonna happen!) I was suddenly struck with the notion that I should have done more. I coulda, shoulda, woulda… It's really lame, but true. Part of it is that it took me a little longer than most to come around to Obama. I'm not going to get into it, but it took me a while to 'feel the magic', which, honestly, I still don't always get, BUT I have been super impressed with the man in the face of the last few months of nasty mud-slinging and lies and 'she who must not be named', etc., etc. Anyway - I hate phone banking and don't want to help that way. I know how annoying I find it personally when I receive calls at home, so I just can't go there… I've talked and talked and talked to lots of people - trying the one person at a time approach - but most of them agree with me, so how does that help? I live in California (NO ON EIGHT!!!!! YES ON TWO!!!!!!), so my state is locked in for Obama, so my vote is just part of a massive flag of support. Honestly, part of it is that I have a hard time with politics in general. I've realized over time that I am just DONE with fakeness. I have no time for that bullshit anymore. It's part of the reason that I have WAY less theatre/actor friends than I once did. Sure - be a great actor on stage/film, but when we hang out, just be you, whatever that may be… I know that politics IS theatre in a lot of ways. I do. But even knowing that, I always get a little thrill when a politician flashes a passing glance of real emotion… I feel like politics takes the ' real you' out of everyone who stays in it for any amount of time. Maybe these things are silly and naïve to say. I'm just rambling because I'm so damn tense."

I can now say for sure that, yes, the anxiety of the election put me in a shitty mood and made my shoulders so tense that they are actually sore today (oh ok - that might be from trapeze, but who knows?). But wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! all things MUCH better today - except for the red wine hangover and this proposition 8 BULLSHIT that is the only thing making today not a perfectly wonderful rejoice-fest. oh - and after hearing Obama last night - I am so please to report, that YES - I get it now. I cried. I sooooooooo get it.

If I'm not carfeul, I'll be running around town on my bike singing, "I'm proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood. ;)

heh.

Congratulations America and congratulations to the world. So nice to wake up to a day of hope.....

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

gobama!!!!

there is light after so much dark.

I don't know about where you live... But people are going apeshit out here.

I'm so very proud of my country. Feels nice to be proud of ones country. :)

I think my little brother put it best, when he texted me simply, "fuck yeah!"

Fuck yeah.

A little bit of hope feels damn good. :)

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