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News of the Gourd
Mar. 17th, 2011 04:06 pmI took my cat Tynchre to the vet this morning because (a) he hasn't had a visit in 18 months and (b) there's an alien monster from hell growing inside his left ear. I thought it was an abscess or a bad reaction to a tick bite or something, but the doc took one look and said 'tumor'. Then he said 'cyst'. So until biopsy results come in (doc says chances are very promising for benignity), it's not clear what sort of alien monster it is, other than expensive. Estimated damages (admittedly including a general exam, dental cleaning, and bringing shots up to date) = $1,060. Owich. Movie Marathon is necessarily back to M&Ms and potato chips. [ETA: The doc just called; Tynch's bloodwork is all fine; platelet count a little low but not worrisome. The doc will do the surgery tonight.]
After dropping Tynchre off I wended my way to Maryland MVA. It took just about 90 minutes to convince the State of Maryland that I was who I said I was and that I lived where I said I lived and that I was born in New Jersey not Kenya and that I have a Roman numeral II after my name and I don't have a son named after me.
Honestly? They need to move TSA out of airports and into DMVs everywhere. That way the TSA idiots and the DMV idiots would end up killing each other and making the world a much better place.
Anyway, I'm now a licensed driver in Maryland. And all I want to do most every day is move back to D.C.
Taxation for 2010 will be an issue. I was supposed to have transferred my driver license to Maryland within 60 days of moving here, despite not owning an motor vehicle. Also, despite my informing Chisanbop HR that I had moved across a border, they did not complete the requisite paperwork to pay half of 2010 taxes to Maryland. So I can either pretend I was a D.C. resident all year—which everybody should believe because there's precious little official evidence to the contrary—and thereby forgo the tax benefits due me by virtue of becoming a first-time homeowner; or I can fight what promises to be a very long and exasperating battle to convince everyone I lived in D.C. for half of 2010 and Maryland for the other half. Oy.
Séain and I have been going to the theater rather a lot lately; last night we saw Steppenwolf's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Arena Stage. It's the fourth time I've seen the play staged: the first time, Albee himself directed, circa 1989; a student production at University of Delaware; the Kennedy Center stint of the mid-aughties Broadway revival starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin; and this one. Here, George is played by Tracy Letts, whose own Albee-esque play August: Osage County won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama. What interested me most was Albee's continued excision of material from his original script: notably, George's Act I warning to Martha not to 'start in on the bit about the kid'; and George's and Honey's scene that used to end Act II, in whose absence the retained stage business about ringing the door chimes (Martha's epithet 'goddamn bongs' is also missing) seems really weird.
I'm not sure why Albee chose to excise that scene; I like George's collusion with Honey in the setup of the last (son-killing) game. It was never fully explained, but I always figured Honey knew precisely what was going on, despite her being 'something of a simp' (according to George); she knows there was no telegram proclaiming the death of Sonny Jim but she must corroborate George's story because he knows that she has, at least once, purposely miscarried for fear of the childbirth process. Of course she grasps the truth of George and Martha much earlier than her husband; after all, she peels labels.
Séain and I had already seen Albee's At Home at the Zoo, an expansion of his career-inaugural The Zoo Story), maybe 2 weeks ago? Albee basically grafted onto the 1959 play a first (and chronologically immediately preceding) act with Peter and his wife bantering about their apartment: in the process of which they share secrets and disappointments and fall in and out of love and say a lot of things like 'You're not the only one feels that way' without a 'that' or a 'who' in the middle introducing the relative clause. And I mean, they say things like that a LOT. Yes, yes, I suppose there are people talk that way; but here it's used to such an extent that there are only two viable explanations I can see: one, the characters decided at some point in the past they really both like that sort of construction and so take every opportunity to employ it; or two, Albee's full of shit. In fact, reviewing phrases of this sort in my head, I cannot help but hear Rebecca Pigeon reciting David Mamet. (Ooooh! No he dih-uhn!)
The thing about Albee's dialogue, and I'm not knocking the man generally, not claiming he hasn't done great things, but the thing about Albee's dialogue, when you get right down to honest criticism, right down to the meat of things or to the marrow, as it were, to the very marrow inside the skeletal structure of his plays, the thing about Albee's dialogue is that it all sounds like this sentence. And that, as they say, is that.
After dropping Tynchre off I wended my way to Maryland MVA. It took just about 90 minutes to convince the State of Maryland that I was who I said I was and that I lived where I said I lived and that I was born in New Jersey not Kenya and that I have a Roman numeral II after my name and I don't have a son named after me.
Honestly? They need to move TSA out of airports and into DMVs everywhere. That way the TSA idiots and the DMV idiots would end up killing each other and making the world a much better place.
Anyway, I'm now a licensed driver in Maryland. And all I want to do most every day is move back to D.C.
Taxation for 2010 will be an issue. I was supposed to have transferred my driver license to Maryland within 60 days of moving here, despite not owning an motor vehicle. Also, despite my informing Chisanbop HR that I had moved across a border, they did not complete the requisite paperwork to pay half of 2010 taxes to Maryland. So I can either pretend I was a D.C. resident all year—which everybody should believe because there's precious little official evidence to the contrary—and thereby forgo the tax benefits due me by virtue of becoming a first-time homeowner; or I can fight what promises to be a very long and exasperating battle to convince everyone I lived in D.C. for half of 2010 and Maryland for the other half. Oy.
Séain and I have been going to the theater rather a lot lately; last night we saw Steppenwolf's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Arena Stage. It's the fourth time I've seen the play staged: the first time, Albee himself directed, circa 1989; a student production at University of Delaware; the Kennedy Center stint of the mid-aughties Broadway revival starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin; and this one. Here, George is played by Tracy Letts, whose own Albee-esque play August: Osage County won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama. What interested me most was Albee's continued excision of material from his original script: notably, George's Act I warning to Martha not to 'start in on the bit about the kid'; and George's and Honey's scene that used to end Act II, in whose absence the retained stage business about ringing the door chimes (Martha's epithet 'goddamn bongs' is also missing) seems really weird.
I'm not sure why Albee chose to excise that scene; I like George's collusion with Honey in the setup of the last (son-killing) game. It was never fully explained, but I always figured Honey knew precisely what was going on, despite her being 'something of a simp' (according to George); she knows there was no telegram proclaiming the death of Sonny Jim but she must corroborate George's story because he knows that she has, at least once, purposely miscarried for fear of the childbirth process. Of course she grasps the truth of George and Martha much earlier than her husband; after all, she peels labels.
Séain and I had already seen Albee's At Home at the Zoo, an expansion of his career-inaugural The Zoo Story), maybe 2 weeks ago? Albee basically grafted onto the 1959 play a first (and chronologically immediately preceding) act with Peter and his wife bantering about their apartment: in the process of which they share secrets and disappointments and fall in and out of love and say a lot of things like 'You're not the only one feels that way' without a 'that' or a 'who' in the middle introducing the relative clause. And I mean, they say things like that a LOT. Yes, yes, I suppose there are people talk that way; but here it's used to such an extent that there are only two viable explanations I can see: one, the characters decided at some point in the past they really both like that sort of construction and so take every opportunity to employ it; or two, Albee's full of shit. In fact, reviewing phrases of this sort in my head, I cannot help but hear Rebecca Pigeon reciting David Mamet. (Ooooh! No he dih-uhn!)
The thing about Albee's dialogue, and I'm not knocking the man generally, not claiming he hasn't done great things, but the thing about Albee's dialogue, when you get right down to honest criticism, right down to the meat of things or to the marrow, as it were, to the very marrow inside the skeletal structure of his plays, the thing about Albee's dialogue is that it all sounds like this sentence. And that, as they say, is that.
