New Show

The new show arrived early, unloaded before lunch. Did have time to paint the walls (we're very fast painters) and move the tables out of the theater. Cooking. After lunch (free, because Jim thought it took to long for us to get served) we brought out two of the sturdy six-foot tables and covered them with a blanket, ready for unwrapping. We sneak a smoke in the basement first, where it's cool and we can sit down, because it's hotter than hell outside, hottest day of the year, then unwrap 57 photographs. The smallest are tin-types, 6"x6", the largest are 3'x2', and everything between, can't tell much about them yet, won't be able to until they're hung and lighted. Several of the larger images are striking, the tin-types are wonderful, had no idea anyone still did them and need to read up on the process. D retires to his office, to nurse tired dogs and work on the newsletter, I make a half-hearted start on cleaning the theater. With a kid's show, there's going to be a mess, and the theater, the back hallway, and the classroom-used-as-dressing-room, are testament to clutter and trash: fast food wrappers, colored pencils, paper airplanes, feathers, bits of faux flowers, headbands, a cell phone, candy wrappers, pop cans, what seem to be crushed Cheerios, parts of scripts (in that final stage of deterioration that working scripts achieve), a rubber lizard, a plethora of various bobby-pins, one empty beer can (a parent I hope), bits of aluminum foil, and one origami stork. I might list the prop table for you because it's spectacular. Another day. Also, the Moms have covered the gate and frame in multiple layers of real and fake ivy, it's supposed to be hidden and EVERYONE brought stuff, huge garbage bags of ivy. It looks great, they've done a really nice job, but there is fucking ivy everywhere, and I'm talking large quantities here. I'll have to bag it up and take it home to compost, probably two of the 55 gallon bags we use in the large (49 gallon) trash-cans full. Grubby clothes to work one day, maybe tomorrow, because I need to get down on my knees and vacuum under the seats with the little shop-vac we bought for just that purpose. Last time I did this I found 57 cents. I often find rolled up baby diapers which is not as bad as it sounds. The new generation of disposable diapers roll into a tidy ball and seal well, so I use them as an opportunity to practice my jump shot. I bring one of the smaller trash cans into the theater when I'm cleaning beneath the seats, there are always a lot of those single pieces of candy with the paper rolled at the ends, and I can shoot them really well from about 20 feet. At Janitor College there was a course, "Walk Or Shoot", a four-hundred level philosophy course, where we actually shot diapers from the free-throw line and kept score. What it comes down to, is there are two kinds of people (I take no credit for this, I merely took the course): those that walk a piece of garbage to the can, and those that shoot. Distinctions are always so apparently sharp, knife-edge, I mean, they appear clear, and yet most things are gray, muddled. I was watching the ducks, on the way home this afternoon, I stopped and rolled a smoke, no one was there, way to hot to turn on my black Dell and write you, so I lingered, I looked at sticks and pine cones. Sometimes I think I'm crazy, because I'd rather look at sticks and pine-cones than look at anything else. Is Below The Spillway somehow similar enough to Below The Floodwall. I would need to ask my co-conspirators. There's some great stuff there. It's my show, I could cheat. Wanted you to know. We all lie. The Wrack Show is going to be pretty pure, but there will probably be some embedded lies. Even if we didn't intend them. Why do women shoot free-throws better than men? Pegi and the Deputy were 'talking loud' between offices and I was collecting trash, Pegi didn't know I was there, and she made some horrid sexist statement about males, something about childbirth, and the pain, I wondered if she'd ever smashed her thumb, nailing those impossibly small roofing nails. Yes.Yes.Sure. What I think I might be capable of thinking about.