Displaced

Rockin’ Christmas tree? Check.

Discount reindeer? Check.

Stockings for European relatives who don’t “do” stockings? Check.

Hooray Christmas!

What did I get, you may ask? I got the Jeanine Payer Dale necklace which makes me look like a high-end gangsta when I wear it with my new Breuklyn T-shirt. And I got this hyper-designed cheese board – hooray cheese! I also got one of these bad-ass T-shirts – thanks, Seth!

What didn’t I get? My Lapinator.

I open the refrigerator. Light goes on. Open the freezer. Nothing.

I have no idea what’s in our freezer. With no light? Still don’t.

What’s the logic? Stuff in my freezer’s frozen ergo not gonna spill? Whatever. That frozen stuff weighs more than…more than…weights, for God’s sake.

Get. An. F’ing. Light. Seriously.

Edward Albee is the man. He was my gateway drug into modern theater. When I read The Zoo Story in high school, it almost convinced me to go to Rice because that’s where Albee was teaching at the time. Rice. In Texas. Texas, people. Where the weather is hot and where our President picked up that phony accent. And we all know how I feel about hot weather and our President.

Anyway, a few years ago, Albee wrote a lead-in play for The Zoo Story called Homelife. It covers the hour or so Peter spends with his wife at home before he goes to the park and meets Jerry. Homelife and The Zoo Story are up as a double bill at Second Stage in New York and, if you can, you should go. They close this weekend, so you’ll have to get on the stick quickly.

Oh – and avoid a matinee if at all possible. I didn’t manage that and was subject to a long line of horrifying, substantial matrons waiting for the bathroom and saying things like, “Well, that was strange,” “What happened?” and, “We can talk about it in the cab.” I know these women are the life’s blood of the theater – they like an afternoon out and the play’s the thing – but Lord save me. Also, these women take forever to pee, with their wraps to unwrap and girdles and jackets and pantyhose. So help me God, when I am 70, I will be trim and quick and wear excellent, bold jewelry, swish pants and well-cut sweaters.

The Zoo Story is just as good as it’s always been and the acting is top-notch. Dallas Roberts* carries the day with a pitch-perfect, insistent Jerry. He threatens and sulks and dodges around the minimal set looking scruffy and sad and frightening all at once. It’s a performance to remember. Bill Pullman as Peter is appropriately conventional and nervous and uses his long stretches of silence to good effect.

I can understand why Albee wrote Homelife. The subjects of The Zoo Story – alienation, artifice, failures of communication – attract expansion, as does the nearly silent character of Peter. Despite very good performances by both Pullman and Johanna Day, the execution felt too explicative, which seems to be a feature of the aging male, onstage and off. The pauses in the conversations between the married couple felt more like failing momentum than breakdowns laden with meaning. However, I was glad to have seen the piece and it is still a far stretch better than a lot of what’s out there.

(A day later, I talked to a young actor who had seen the show and thought the reverse – that The Zoo Story was the weaker link and Homelife a triumph. He was by far the most pretentious person I have met in the last few months however, so I’m sticking with my opinion. Perhaps it’s a guy thing, this preoccupation with bringing the point home. I’ll have to think about that one…)

*Google would have us know that Dallas Roberts is also the name of an Academy of Hair Design and Aesthetics in Provo, Utah. In case you look up Dallas, let me remind you that I am referring not to the hair design but to the actor. Despite being preoccupied with Aesthetics, the Academy does not feature in this production.

We are driving, headed for a Starbucks. R rummages in his pocket and pulls out a $10 bill that looks like it’s been through a lawnmower.

me: What happened to it?
R: The Euro kicked its ass.

I remember with nostalgia the days when I was only four weeks sick. Back when milk was only a nickel and I walked to work uphill with no shoes in the snow. (Maybe that’s how I got sick…)

Now I’m going on six weeks sick and the suggestions are becoming more far-fetched. Last week, I was diagnosed with whooping cough. This was cool but since the guy who sits across from me is a product manager and not a doctor, I didn’t get any proof or any prescriptions, so the coolness wore off fast.

Today, the suggestion is the adeno virus which sounds terrible and deadly (which is redundant, I guess, since anything deadly has got to be pretty terrible). This is not cool but since I’m sure I don’t have that, I’m not that upset.

What I do have is an inhaler, the kind they give asthmatics. I’m going to get a chain to hang it on around my neck. Then I’m going to stop by the orthodontist’s and pick up some headgear. Now that is what I call cool, my friends.

Ingenious. The butter bell. Keeps butter at room temperature without letting it spoil. Not that it does spoil at room temperature. Not for a while anyway. But boyfriends who shall remain nameless insist that it does, so butter bell it is. Also, the bell looks nicer than room temperature butter in a melty brick.

Not so ingeniously, Lucky is discontinuing my favorite jeans, the Easy Rider, so get ’em before they’re gone. And don’t let the salesperson tell you that the Classic Rider is the same because they’re not: no button fly means Not. The. Same.

Pardon me if I’m being obtuse, but why does this eBay listing for a Jell-O mold contain the specification “no burn marks”? God knows I’m no cook but what exactly would you be doing to your Jell-O mold that would leave burn marks? Fall asleep smoking in it? Jell-O with hot coals, hold the pineapple? Flaming Jell-O? See, flaming Jell-O would be sweet. I get it now. Forget I said anything.

My co-workers are amazed. I can hardly believe it myself. People look at me with wide eyes and laugh nervously as I talk to them. I offer them Munchkins which I imported carefully back from the east coast. They smile and their hands move but when they leave somehow I have the same number of tiny round donuts in my orange and white Munchkin box as I had before. I sit in the back in meetings. I sip at my coffee, my water, my juice. I lean away. They lean away. We are all leaning away.

What is the source of our collective repellence? I’m sick. I am approaching the four-week mark. Jokes about pneumonia and child-bourne illnesses have been replaced with less funny jokes about SARS and consumption and asbestos in the newly active heating ducts above my office.

How can I still be coughing like this after four weeks? I keep myself up at night with the coughing. People can hear me coming. I am like a cat with a bell.

I pulled a muscle in my abdomen I was coughing so hard last week. This is not good. The last time I was this sick for this long was fifteen years ago and it ended with me having my tonsils out and being sedated for a week over my Christmas break.

I have no more tonsils and I categorically refuse to give them any other little bits of me on spec. Plus, I don’t want to be sedated. It’s coming up on Christmas time and I love me some Christmas, so sedation is off the table. I have Robitussin and Chussitussin (I kid you not, the name for Robitussin with codeine in it). I have Dayquil and Nyquil. I have Vitamin C and Airborne. I have aspirin and vitamins and a pile of other pills with vile names I will not repeat here.

This has got to stop sometime.

Overheard in front of the impressive bonsai exhibit at Longwood Gardens:

Eight-year-old boy: What was the favorite thing you’ve seen today at Longwood Gardens, Dad?
Father: Well, I did like some of the orchids a lot.

I’m sorry, what??

How do you honk at the guy in front of the guy in front of you?

Twice in the last two weeks I have been irritated at the car in front of the car in front of me. In New York, everyone behind that front car would be honking, creating a chorus of justified displeasure. I admit that the tenth cabbie in the line doesn’t know anything about what’s going on except that he’s not moving, but who cares? Not moving in New York is bad.

In San Francisco, no one honks except to be annoying. The justifiable honk is almost unknown. So when I honk as the second car up from me sits at a green light, the driver in front of me – who should also be honking but isn’t – glares at ME. Like I’m the one making the mistake. Where’s their sense of civic duty? The greater good? Come on people, get it together. We all have to live in this town.