Hard Knock Life rehearsal

For my family. Everybody else can go have a sandwich.

our house is a very very very fine house

Dear house in San Diego where my family has lived in since 1989,
I hear you're in danger of burning down. Please don't.
Love,
Jen, who really doesn't care about much else right now

this story doesn't change

I was in the shower and I heard the phone ring. I had just set up my phone the day before, and the only person who had my number was my mom. It was 6 am in California, so I was like, who died? My roommate, Janet, answered the phone and went, “oh no… oh, that's terrible... I’ll have her call you.” Who died? I got out of the shower and threw some clothes on. Janet was eating cereal and watching tv. Two planes had hit the World Trade Center. We were four blocks away and somehow hadn’t heard it. We grabbed my camera and went up to the roof. I took three pictures, then we came back downstairs. My mom called again. I told her we didn’t have to evacuate. When I hung up, the building shook so hard I thought the windows would shatter. According to CNN, one of the towers had collapsed. My mom called again immediately, and I lost it, telling her we were getting out of the building. We grabbed bags and t-shirts to cover our faces with. The power was out, so we had to go down nine flights of stairs. By the 5th floor, the stairwell was full of dust and we couldn’t see. When we got to the lobby, the doorman desk was deserted, one of the doors was shattered and the revolving door was stuck in a foot of rubble. Outside, you couldn’t tell it was daytime. A guy from our building and his neighbor and her dog were behind us. I grabbed Janet’s arm, she grabbed the guy’s arm, and the guy grabbed the neighbor’s arm. We had to cover our faces to avoid getting hit by shrapnel. Something lodged inside my eyelid and made it bleed. The guy indicated that we should go toward the east river, away from the towers. We headed east, then up through Chinatown. We stopped at a bodega and the guy, Jim, bought us all water. We would take a sip, spit out black sludge, and repeat until our throats appeared to be clear. I poured a capful of water in a stranger’s eyes, which were pasted shut by dust and tears. Jim caught a woman as she passed out. Somebody knelt down to kiss the neighbor’s dog. We heard screams, and looked up as the second tower collapsed. We were too far away and too exhausted already to run. We continued up through Chinatown, stopping to listen to radios and figure out what was going on. I was certain the ground was going to blow up under my feet. It took us an hour to get to Dojo on West 3rd. Jim bought us lunch and Janet and I got in line at a payphone. Nobody said so, but you weren’t supposed to stay on longer than to say “I’d like to make a collect call… Hi.. I’m safe, I love you, I'll call you later.” I called my mom. We left Dojo and headed toward the west village, where Jim had friends. We spend the next several hours connecting with his friends at restaurants, none of which were serving anything more than water and chips. Janet got in touch with brother’s fiancee’s brother and I got in touch with my cousin’s fiancée. We would stay with the brother that night, and I would go up to my cousin’s apartment the next day. I managed to reach Angela on my CA-based cell phone, and called home again from payphones that night. My parents had gotten dozens of phone calls and had stayed glued to the tv all day. At the brother’s apartment, we watched CNN, then Comedy Central, then CNN again, and went to bed. I spent a week with my cousin, then two weeks in a hotel before I could go back to my apartment.

You can dance forever

I've been neglecting this blog for way too long. I've gotten tags in the last couple of months from Jeff and from Brian, and didn't remember to follow through until now. Oh, and per Brian's directions, one of these stories is not true.

I saw 'Career Opportunities' in the theatre. Twice. Both times were by default because I was outvoted by two different groups of pushy friends. And both times I totally hated the movie and was so bitter about being forced to see it that I refused to laugh at anything. But it's nice to know that Jennifer Connolly has rebounded nicely since then and that her career can't possibly ever hit a lower point.

I pulled a duck out of a magician's pants while he was wearing a straitjacket. And it wasn't just any magician- it was Ed Alonzo, whose spotty career high was playing diner owner Max (totally the poor man's Nat) on "Saved by the Bell." He was much surlier in person than I would have guessed, and I regretted having volunteered to be his assistant almost the second I got on stage. But I did lose sleep over how that damn trick worked.

I used to think that if you were a flower girl in somebody's wedding, you had to be their daughter. When I was about 4, my uncle married a woman with two kids. Her daughter was the flower girl. I, however, made the connection backwards: Amy was the flower girl. Now she's Tom's daughter. Two years later, my mom's cousin (who at the time scared the bejeezus out of me) was getting married and there was talk of me being the flower girl. I absolutely refused, not telling anybody that it was because I did NOT want to be this couple's daughter. Everybody chalked my refusal up to shyness and the honor went to the fiance's niece.

I once had a missing-persons report filed for me when I got lost on the way home from a drama club council meeting. Our advisor's house was in the sticks, and one of the other council members told me I could follow her to the freeway. At one point, another car got between us and I lost her and turned where I should have gone straight. I only ended up 15 miles out of the way, but I kept trying to get directions at various restaurants and convenience stores and just got more turned around. This was pre-cell phone, and the meeting had run 2 hours too long, and by the time my parents called the police, I was 6 hours late getting home.

When my family visited Scotland in 1992, we had this homeless old guy stalker who used to wait outside the hotel door in the parking garage so he could follow us around and point at how tall my dad was (6'2, hardly staggering). There was a sign in the garage that said "Check Your Height," and anytime my dad walked under it, the guy would start screaming "Check your height!" and laughing like a maniac. My parents gave us strict instructions not to discuss him until we were safely in the car.

why not you?

(If you look closely, yes, that is the UK version of the show's emblem. I rather like it!)

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