Kim's Domain

You're lookin' swell, Dolly!

Hey all,

For the (few) of you who actually read this, thought it might be time for an update.

Monday I start rehearsals for an educational tour of Cinderella through the Ryan Opera Center, the educational arm of the Lyric Opera Chicago.  Yes, step by step, as they say.  I am also in the middle of running shows as the ASM of Hello Dolly at Theatre at the Center.  They generously are allowing me to miss 7 matinee performances to do the Lyric gig.  I still have to drive down to Munster after Cinderella rehearsals for Dolly understudy rehearsals and put-ins, however.  We have several actors going out for other gigs so there will be many put ins.  At least Cinderella only rehearses for 2 weeks and then we just do shows 3 days a week.

Anyhoo, so that's going to keep me busy.  And I'm feeling better about my chances to get work during all my gaps coming up.  I know something always comes along, but it's always scary not to know where you're paycheck will be coming from in a couple months.

And to update the BP situation since I got a comment on it, BP has agreed not to increase the amount of pollution that will dump in Lake Michigan.  However it is a verbal agreement and not contractual, meaning they can break it without penalty.  I have always preferred BP gas myself, the problem is that while it's important to be choosy about which oil company you buy gas from, it's also crucial to preserve the Great Lakes.  Um, we get our drinking water from it here in the midwest.  That's a little more immediate to me than buying BP gas instead of Shell. But the real culprit here is the governing body that gave BP the permit in the first place, which I believe is the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.  I can totally see their point of view - expanding the BP plant will create a lot of jobs for Indiana.  But we absolutely cannot afford to dump more waste into our lake.  Already the beaches are closed what feels like a good third of the summer because of toxins.  If Indiana wants to create more jobs, they should find another way than polluting our precious (and ever more scarce) fresh water.

Oh, and I am totally addicted to Facebook.  I'm not on Friendster much because Facebook has taken over my life.  So if you want to find me, that's where I'll be.  But I'll still come back once in a while to update the blog.

BORN AGAIN

No, not in the way you might think.

I have re-discovered the joy of the Swiffer.  Cat hair, begone!  I thought there was no way to ever get up all the cat hair that accumulates faster than the speed of light in this hot and humid weather.  But I bought a Swiffer mop today and some refills, and the joy has begun.  I can walk around my apartment in my bare feet without feeling a little ew.  It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve also had a rebirth of sorts in my career.  I had a little crisis at the beginning of the summer where I was almost ready to just give up and start a job in administration or something.  But, as always happens, things have worked themselves out.  In fact, things have worked out so well that I actually have 2 gigs overlapping this fall.  So if you haven’t seen me or talked to me in a while, as most of your haven’t, which is as much my fault as yours, now is the time because starting the end of this month I will be extremely busy.  Right now my show is running at Steppenwolf with only 2 shows a week so I have loads of time.

And one final note – if you’ve had your head under a rock and haven’t heard about the fight between Illinois and BP (British Petroleum) PLEASE do not buy gas or anything else from BP until this mess is cleared up.  There's a link below.

http://www.environmentillinois.org/newsroom/clean-water-news/clean-water-news/12000-call-on-bp-to-halt-planned-dumping

Supreme Court Challenging Abortion

The following is a post I started over a week ago in response to an article in the New York Times titled "Abortion Foes See Validation for New Tactic" and never completed until now. Unfortunately, the original article is only available now in the archives.

I find the following article in today's New York Times very disturbing, and yet another step toward dismantling Roe v. Wade:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/washington/22abortion.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1179846299-V+IhgSNVLlgR0x3cTXh3hQ

Let's put aside the argument that Roe v. Wade is a bad law and we should do a public opinion vote which would undoubtedly keep some forms of abortion legal. What I find so disturbing about this article is that it describes a movement to portray women as victims of abortion, with the State as an entity with their best interests at heart - one more step toward completely illegalizing the procedure.

Apparently, a couple thousand women have come forward saying they feel depressed and a loss of self-esteem after having an abortion. I feel for these women. I think abortion is an awful, traumatic thing. What gets my cheese is that still the Right is so focused on abortion instead of focused on education and prevention (and we all know I am NOT talking about only abstinence). Their solution? To pass legislation called "informed consent" laws requiring that women be told that their fetus is a whole, separate living being. How is this comforting to a woman facing a really difficult decision? I can't imagine any woman gets an abortion without a little personal grief. But hello, sometimes it's just not feasible for a woman to carry a pregnancy to term and that should be a decision between her and her doctor.

I'm not saying I don't think women should be told the full possible consequences of their decision. I think they should know the possibility of depression after the fact. My feeling is that these side effects, if you will, should be told to a woman by her doctor while she is making the decision, not forced upon her by the clinic she is turning to for help. The ruling by the Supreme Court is a scary step toward legalizing scare tactics. Sure, we're not talking about fire-bombing clinics and harassing women as they walk into clinics, but to me it's even scarier to think that a woman who walks into a clinic to get an abortion could be faced with pictures and charts and graphs of the fetus in her womb and make her feel like a murderer.

Uh, hi.

Okay, so it's been a really time since I've posted, so here's a little update for those I haven't spoken to recently.

In the last couple months, I have stage managed my first dance production, gotten a big refund from the federal government (thank you, Russell!), been rejected by a very large opera company that I finally got an interview with, found out my brother's army division is deploying to Iraq in June, and got hired again by Steppenwolf to do a summer garage production. You know, some bad, some good.

I have decided, finally and firmly, that I will NOT take any out of town jobs that come my way for the way for the fall (unless they are in Milwaukee). Last time I said I wouldn't, I did, and then I had to turn down an ASM gig for Steppenwolf that went on to New York. So this time, seriously, no out of town work. Even when it's August and I'm sweating bullets because I don't have any work lined up for September, I will be stoic. Because finally, one of these days, an in-town company will realize my worth and hire me and I can (almost) be one of those people who knows where their money is coming from each month.

Also, I really need to be in town if I'm going to start my own business. Kind of hard to get and work for clients if I'm not here.

More on that later...

There is no joy in Mudville

With apologies to Thayer, my reflections on the Superbowl:

In Chicago the mood was bright

On that freezing winter night

In the first quarter, the Bears were standing tall

After Devon Hester ran long with the ball

Then Muhsin took a short pass on his own

And held it into the Colt’s endzone

But then the second quarter came

And suddenly it was the Colt’s game

Half time and Prince brought some welcome relief

With the Bears only down by two, Chicago could still breath

But in the whole second half the Colt’s held them to three

Though Gould’s kick through the posts had fans shouting with glee

Grossman had a chance on a second and one

But a sack, a fumbled snap and the chance was gone

Finally, no joy in Chicago would there be

Rex threw a turnover returned for a TD

Two Pains in the A**

My boyfriend reads this web comic called "Two Lumps." Every once in a while during his morning read of his 18 or so comics, he laughs uproariously and calls me to read over his shoulder. Usually, it's to see what kind mischief or mayhem Ebenezer and Snooch, the cats referred to in "Two Lumps," are up to.

http://www.twolumps.net/

That comic has become my life.

Our new roommate came to us in mid-August, bringing two lumps of her own. One of them has since become very friendly with David and I and will often curl up with us in bed if our roommate is out for night, or sit on our laps while we're watching our Netflix. The other is strictly loyal to his owner and occasionally deigns to allow us to pet him.

Both of them are trouble.

Twice in the past two days I have had to clean up water spilled all over the kitchen counter or the floor after the cats - usually the snooty one, also known as "the fat one," - has jumped up where they don't belong and knocked over cups and glasses. I've been spending a lot of time at home recently because of the light rehearsal schedule of my current show, and at least once a day I have to dash out of the office after hearing a crash from somewhere else in the apartment. And because they aren't dogs, I can stand there and look stern and say "no!" – but they look at me as if to say, “Who, me?”

Sigh. I can't wait to get a dog.

Christmas is coming!

Actually, Christmas came early this year. Just when I was losing faith in American people, they wised up, came out to vote and voted the Democrats back into control of Congress. Woo hoo!

Now of course, the message to my favorite leaders is DON'T FUCK IT UP. To put it profanely.

On a side note, if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas, just follow this link:

http://www.freedomisnotfree.com/

Oh yeah, baby.

I want my Bears!

Okay, normally I LOVE Wisconsin. It's a lovely state, one that I enjoy spending time in.

But really, why can't I get the Bears game on TV? Who cares about the Packers? Are they 7-0? I don't think so!

Stupid Wisconsin TV. The radio is nice, but it's NOT THE SAME.

Beer and brats, anyone?

I figured it was proably about time for an update.

The Kentucky Opera gig went well. Despite being in charge of props for Boheme, it was a fairly laid back and easy affair. Part of it was that the PSM and I really gelled. Our management styles are very similar so we got along famously and things ran smoothly on our end. I didn't get to see as much of Louisville as I might have liked, but it is a cute little city and does offer enough to make it a decent travel spot. The one place I visited was the Frazier History Museum. They actually have a neat thing going there - they have a small group of twenty-somethings working there who research and write their own scripts for dramatic re-enactments. The most fun I saw were the two sword fight demonstrations. The first was an 18th century duel with short swords. The second was a demonstration of 16th century sword-and-buckler and rapier-and-dagger fighting. They took a few lines here and there from Romeo and Juliet to act out and it was awesome! I thought they should be fight choreographing, they'd be better than almost anything I've ever seen.

So now I'm in Milwaukee! I got to go home and spend a lovely evening with David on Sunday, and then drove up here Monday morning. Monday night I watched the ridiculous Bears' game (seriously, Northwestern has pulled off some crazy stunts but I don't think I've ever seen THAT before). And now I'm relaxing into prep week for Don Giovanni. The show is going to be a new production and the set and props are being built to tour. So no screwing around on this show, the paperwork has to be good. It's going to be a concept piece. I'm not even sure how to really describe it - there will be supers doing things like crossing the stage in penitent robes, the set looks like the singers will be standing literally on top of the world, these glorified body stockings are going to come in from the rail and the women supers are going to get in them...yeah, should be interesting.

Stephen Colbert = Purple Pride

I know not many of us really care too much about homecoming parades, but this year our own Northwestern University will have Stephen Colbert as the Grand Marshall of it's homecoming event. I'm not making this up. Apparently he's Purple, who knew?

http://www.alumni.northwestern.edu/homecoming/index.html?PHPSESSID=d6b3f34b258c8e65f59e813f6e3ebdc5