I can't help it . . .

I've been feeling really compelled by Bunheads, especially since season 2 started. 

(If you like it too, leave a comment because I don't have anyone to talk to about it!)

Recommended: "High Maintenance"

"High Maintenance" is a web series about a pot dealer. It has just begun its second cycle and I stumbled onto it because Michael Cyril Creighton (fellow New York Neo-Futurist alumni and super star of his own web series Jack In A Box), Max Jenkins (fellow Committed Impulse classmate) and Katja Bichfeld (30 Rock casting director who I once met in an Actors Connection workshop she was teaching and thought was SUPER cool) are all involved. Katja is a Co-creater and Executive Producer and Michael and Max star in separate (but equally wonderful) episodes. You know it's good because I'm such an anti-drug nerd that the pot-smoking-neighbor episode of Louie made me wildly uncomfortable and yet I'm energetically recommending that you check "High Maintenance" out. It did not make me uncomfortable; it delighted me.

Here is the "High Maintenance" website.

Click HERE to see Michael Cyril Crighton's episode, "Helen" and Max Jenkin's episode, "Olivia" (and the rest of the episodes as well).

Enjoy!

Recommended: "Tar Baby"

"Tar Baby" is the newest one-woman show written and performed by Desiree Burch.  It's currently running off-Broadway at the DR2 through January 19th.

Here's the blurb:

Celebrated Huffington Post and NY Magazine comedian Desiree Burch presents Tar Baby - the tale of America’s black & white love affair from shotgun wedding to “post-racial” relationship. Speaking to a growing majority of minority experiences in America, Tar Baby effortlessly weaves games, audiences, laughter and insight in an interactive carnival of Race & Capitalism - where no one's a winner, but everyone's still playing!

Backstage just gave it a great review (click to read).

And here's a fun 30-second teaser.

I haven't seen this version yet, but I saw an earlier production and it was AMAZING.  I have no doubt that Desiree has continued to grow and improve the piece. 

I'll be there on Monday the 14th if you want to be my coincidental date.  I am SO EXCITED for Desiree's success.

Happy New Year!

The theme for 2013 is EASE.

2012 made me into a goal-setter when I had never been one before.  A to-do list maker? Sure.  An action-item creator? You bet! A deadline setter for accomplishments? Absolutely!  But I had never really set the goals that all of those to-do list and action-items were serving. 

Then I had a baby.  The time that was MINE was instantly in smaller and more discrete bites and goal-setting, naturally and intuitively, was how I dealt with making every minute of that MINE time count. 

The other thing that happened to the MINE time, though, was that over time it became fraught.  On a great day I had four hours to work on my career; more recently a good day is three hours and that's pushing it.  Soon, as soon as my kiddo was asleep and it was time to work on my to-do list or action items I was increasingly paralyzed by the tension around "I only have a little bit of time! What should I do?! What if I don't get it done?! What if the baby wakes up?!?!?"  I was wasting my precious time - already in short supply - with tension and anxiety.

So in 2013, my watchword is EASE.  It means working just as hard as before towards my goals but skipping over the extra worry that slows down productivity.  So far, I'm mediocre at EASE, but just having the intention has already made a good difference.

Happy New Year!

Latkes!

To be clear: I'm a lapsed Presbyterian.  But I love a Latke (and o.m.g. don't even get me started on hamentashen).  In the past I've been invited to the homes of other, more-expert Latke makers than myself to partake in this seasonal delight.  But, as with so many other things in this first year of having a baby, if I wanted Latkes I realized I was going to have to make them chez moi.

I made the first batch of Latkes, on Saturday night, according to the Gourmet cookbook's recipe - a pound of potatos grated on a box grater, mixed with some finely chopped onion all wrung out and tosed with some salt and pepper and one egg, dropped into a pan with some hot olive oil, pressed flat and flipped.  Salt, keep warm in the oven . . . delicious!!  I also cooked some sausages (keeping kosher not being a mandate for the lapsed-Presbyterian) on my grill pan.  They smoked up the whole apartment but they were delicious with grainy mustard and a really nice Latke-accompanyment.

Last night, I made Latkes part 2.  This was actually a Pomme Paillasson - a skillet-sized potato cake - aka a GIANT Latke.  My friend Bekah came over to help.  The recipe we used, sent to my e-mail from a private chef, involved 2.5 pounds of potatos grated using my cuisinart, wrung out and mixed with salt and pepper and then pressed into the bottom of a large pan into which butter had been melted.  Caramelized onions were sandwiched between the bottom and top layers of grated potatoes and the whole thing was elaborately flipped using two plates and some chutzpah in order to cook the other side.  We cut it into wedges and served it with a frisee salad that involved endive, radish and apple, the recipe for which I found on epicurious.com.

We finished both Latke meals with these cookies which have gotten more delicious with age (maybe that sounds gross, but it's true).  My friend Rob who came for Latkes #1 suggested they would also be delicious with fruit and nuts instead of chocolate.  In any case, these cookies mixed up easily and are a treat!

I hope you're enjoying the holiday season and it's many treats and traditions!!

Quick Crafty Roundup

So I attended the Bust Craftacular earlier this month.  Because this year I went with a baby strapped to me, I spent less time lingering over the various wares than in years past, but I can assure you that the event - and the crafting community - is thriving and bursting with festivity.

With the $3 price of admission, I was given a gift-bag which was full of a lot of surprisingly awesome stuff!  We got:

• A copy of Bust Magazine
• A copy of Knit Simple Magazine
• A cool Queen Elizabeth cuff bracelet from BlueQ.com
• A Softcup (it's a lady product)
• Dead Batteries (these confused me but I'm pretty sure they actually work.  And they're cool looking)

Additionally, I stumbled across the following compelling vendors:

• General Assembly - funny & cute t-shirts. I could probably have found the perfect shirt for almost everyone I know at this one table.
• Two Arms - affordable and attractive prints and printed products.
• The Chocolate Swirl - I just got some of their bark as a treat for my husband. It was delish!
• Bicycle Paintings - Paintings, yes, but also great t-shirts.  Really attractive stuff.

Happy Holiday Shopping!

Mom Humor

Here's a joke my mom texted me last week:

Q: Why didn't the snow come to the party?

A: Because it was a bunch of flakes!

Tee hee. 

No real snow here in NYC yet.  Here's hoping . . .

you gotta know your type. . .

. . . and, though I sorely wish I could submit myself for this role, "Warrior Woman" just isn't for me:

[ WARRIOR WOMAN ]
Female, age 18-35, all ethnicities. Lord of the Rings kind of Dwarf. Warrior woman who is capable to do things like some stunts, willing to get dirty with soil, to run in the forest & fight.

For the record, I will run in the forest & fight ay day.

Recently, via this post on Mightygirl.net, I stumbled across this video:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siu6JYqOZ0g&w=560&h=315]

It resonated with me as an artist, a mother, a sister, a daughter . . .

When I was much younger, I always thought that if we could all find and follow our true passion, the world would be a better place. I realize it's naive, but the video inclines me toward that sort of optimism.

On The Future . . .

Hey, The Blog! I didn't forget about you! I've been busy going on a bunch of auditions and working on this: On The Future is the New York Neo-Futurists Fall Prime Time show. This time around, instead of one 75-90 minute piece of theater, the Neos decided to create an evening of six 10-minute plays and I wrote one! All of the plays somehow reflect the authors' visions of the future. Mine is about preparing for the future . . . Click Here for more info on the New York Neo-Futurists' website. Click Here for the Facebook event. And let me know if you're going - I'll try to arrange to bump into you.

Elevator chit-chat

Today I rode down in the elevator of my building with a delivery guy who'd been bringing lunch to my neighbor. Looking into my stroller he asked, "Is that your baby?""Yes." "How old?" "Five months." "I have . . ." "You have a baby?" "Yes." "How old?" "Five" "Years?" "Yes." "Wow! Boy or girl?" "Boy." He had his head in his blackberry. A pause. And then he showed me: a photo of him holding his little boy on his knee, both smiling. "He looks like you," I said. "Yes." He beamed.

Six floors. Human connection. Hard to ask for more than that from an elevator ride.

Overthinking

Over the weekend I had an audition.  Atypically and inexplicably I got really stressed out about it.  I was right for the part, I was prepared . . . what was my problem?  The audition went fine.  I left and stressed out even more, picking apart the experience. 

Today, via Gretchen Rubin's Happiness project blog, I read the following excerpt which she pulled from the book The How of Happiness:

Many of us believe that when we feel down, we should try to focus inwardly and evaluate our feelings and our situation in order to attain self-insight and find solutions that might ultimately resolve our problems and relieve unhappiness. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, I, and others have compiled a great deal of evidence challenging this assumption. Numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that to the contrary, overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person’s ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative. Moreover, although people have a strong sense that they are gaining insight into themselves and their problems during their ruminations, this is rarely the case. What they do gain is a distorted, pessimistic perspective on their lives.

(here is the link to the full blog post on the subject)

I had, indeed, been guilty of overthinking both before and after my audition.  Not helpful and certainly not conducive to the joy I like to feel (and generally do feel) when I get to participate in my career - in this case, by going on an audition.

It's a good reminder in general.  Sometimes I feel like I have to suffer in order to demonstrate to the universe how badly I want/am working towards something.  I'm pretty sure the suffering actors aren't the ones getting the parts.

Nostalgia

The other night I had a pang of missing life pre-baby. Mostly what I was missing was my giving my husband my undivided attention and vice versa (and a little bit going out to dinner on a more casual basis). Tonight my husband's off on a man date seeing a friend's show (it's my turn Wednesday) and I'm feeling some nostalgia for my single days.

It was great to be single and I'll be really happy when my husband comes home tonight. It was great to be just a couple but I'm looking forward to seeing my little guy when he wakes up in the morning.

Having It All

I was pointed to this essay, What My Son's Disabilities Taught Me About 'Having It All,' by a blog that I read (Mighty Girl). It's worth the read. I read the article in the Atlantic (like everyone else) and, since having my son (in truth, to some extent, before I even became pregnant) I have been as concerned as the next lady about work/life balance. For most of my life, Acting was the number one most important thing to me, my biggest passion and priority. Now it's number two, snuggled close up behind the new number one: my family.

I don't mean to brag, but I have the most wonderful baby. And it isn't really bragging because, honestly, he just showed up like that. Beyond taking my pre-natal vitamins and staying away from the obvious hazards, I swear I had nothing to do with it. He doesn't even really look like me. Since having him, I have felt more capable and ready to succeed as an actor than ever before for reasons that relate entirely to what the author of this essay is saying. I appreciate how great my life is, how lucky I am, and while I still hope to "have it all" - a family and a successful career as a working actor - and I fret regularly about whether I'm doing what I need to get myself there, not being there yet doesn't get me down the way it used to.

Teach, baby!

Addictive

If you have work to do, stay away from the NY Times' GORGEOUS photos of the Olympics. If you have some time, check them out here.

I love a good nap

I remember in college having close friends who often took naps and thinking that napping was a really lame use of their time - there were things to do: work things, fun things . . . things! How could they give up time to napping? I'm a little softer on naps these days - I still don't like them and still rarely take them - but I'm less judgmental of those who do. No, the naps I'm talking about are the naps of my little boy. Not a big fan of going to sleep during the day, my guy. Like his mom, he seems keenly aware of everything that's going on and wanting not to miss a moment. So we've been working on naps and, hopefully, we're making a little bit of progress. Today, he took an epic nap. It was so long I got worried. But I also got a LOT done.

These days, my baby's sleep time - during the day and in the evenings - is my time to work on art. Days that he takes a good long nap let me get a ton of work done towards my arts/career goals which, in turn, lets me be significantly happier and more present with him when he's awake because I don't have the nagging sense that there's so much else I *ought* to be doing. It's kind of satisfying to be able to switch roles so clearly: awake baby = mom; asleep baby = actor/writer. And knowing how precious my work time is (most days) helps me not waste it.

This is not the first, nor, I'm sure, will it be the last surprising and life-improving lesson of parenthood. Thanks, kid. Sweet dreams.

Pinterest

I love Pinterest. There. I said it. It's true. I find it so relaxing that I can save all of the interesting or helpful things I find via the internet in one organized place instead of adding bookmark after bookmark to my browser which I, inevitably, forget.

Thank you, Pinterest, for being such a value-add to my life.

(If you like, you can follow me on Pinterest here.)

Rambling back . . .

It all started with the interview for the really cool job that I very-nearly-but-then-didn't get.  I was asked if I blog.  I do, I told them, but not much.  I explained that there are *so many* blogs out there, I feel some sense of obligation to *contribute* something if I'm going to blog.  I'd like my blog to be a value-add, not just more of the same.  

It's a tall order, especially when the blogosphere seems already saturated with every possible blog-type, blog-entry, blog-opinion under the sun. 

It occurred to me that maybe I need to lower the bar a bit for what it means to "contribute" or "add value."

I remembered the thing (is it John Cage's thing?) about how you can't create and judge your creation at the same time.

I thought about the blogs that I enjoy reading, mostly written by ladies not unlike myself, and considered that what I enjoy are the writers' voices and then fun little things they bring to me - ideas, photos, gadgets, goofy websites.  And I remembered that a decision to blog is not a decision to rise to blog-fame and meet their levels of blog-success.

I thought about how, to act, I need someone else's permission or stamp of approval: I need to be auditioned and cast.  But to write, I need only write. 

I looked around and noticed that my life is mine to make, shape, create.  I noticed that I'm privileged to have a computer, a home, electricity, enough food and free time to be able to blog.

I realized that my baby has been napping for a while now so maybe I'd better hop to it before he wakes up and I miss my chance.

And I noticed how good it feels to say what I have to say - however big or small or serious or silly - instead of keeping it to myself.

I'm not a fan of "oh I've been away from my blog so long, I promise to write more regularly."  That's not what this is.  This is more of an out loud hope to myself that I make more use of this space for my own pleasure and benefit.

Due

It has been quite a while since my last post owing to holidays, buying a home, prepping the new home (painting, carpet shopping, light fixtures, oh my!) moving into that home, and getting ready to have a baby.  In the new year I also rehearsed and performed in a two-week run of a new play called Flying Snakes in 3-D (by Leah Winkler; Everywhere Theater Group) as a psychic pregnant ninja (of course) not to mention presenting the first draft of the Hip-Hoperetta I've been working on to my fellow ensemble members at the NY Neo-Futurists.  It has been a genuinely busy time, personally and professionally. Today is my due date.  For giving birth.  It's true that only 10% of babies come on their due dates but still, it's a reasonable guess and as today has approached there has been some concerted winding down.  Some of it has been intentional - like stepping back from my role in the Hip-Hoperetta so as not to slow down the rest of the team - and some has been unintentional - like the social calls we seem not to be getting, the e-mails that aren't rolling in, the Oscar and super-bowl parties we weren't invited to.  In fact, this morning is the quietest I can remember.  The to-do list is laughably non-urgent, there are no deadlines for me to meet, not a whole lot of the usual for me to do.  It's kind of eerie.

I realize that all of this quiet is about to change drastically and in entirely new and as-yet experienced new ways.  For the moment I'm trying not to chafe against the stillness and to look optimistically forward to the ways in which parenthood will enrich the art I will create in the future.

The girl is crafty like ice is cold!

I fancy myself a crafty lady.  It's true.  But I can't hold a candle to the Uber-Crafters at this year's Craftacular (sponsored by Bust Magazine).  Here are the vendors I especially loved (some of whom I've already patronized and others I hope to patronize in the near future): in the seam.  Amazing, adorable pillows of . . .  probably whatever you want . . . but generally, lots of adorable pets.  Know someone who loves their pet?  Your gifting-search for them can end right here.

Black Lamb.  Had attractive edgy-yet adult t-shirts.  Hipsters would wear these, but non-hipsters will also think they're great.  I especially like the T-Rex and the embroidered shirts.

Boto Designs.  Robots, robots everywhere!  Adorable art, t-shirts, baby things that will make you feel happy.

knitknit.  Beautiful jewlery created via needle-crafts.  Think necklaces where the pendant is a tiny, lovely work of embroidery, beautiful felted pieces . . . and more!  This might have been one of the hardest booths to walk by, observing the "no buying presents for yourself between Thanksgiving and Christmas" rule. (additional stuff at their etsy shop here)

Made in Breuckelen.  Man I want one of these chunky cowl things so bad!  At Craftacular they had many more colors than are currently featured in their etsy shop, so if you don't see the color you want, I'd encourage you to ask.

Hortensia. This was another stall filled with knitted things I wanted to wear.  Cowls, infinity scarves, hats and more.  And, according to their card "Hortensia is entirely handmade by skilled knitters who are lifelong craftswomen." So that's cool, right?

lil'fishy.  OMG. This is some of the cutest baby and kids stuff.  It was hard not to buy one of everything on the spot for my as-yet-to-arrive kiddo.

H.S. Chocolate Co. These folks make super-amazing-delicious candy-bar-style chocolate.  I got the Minnesota Marvel which was full of maple and peanuts and the chocolate itself was extra delicious.  If I'd known how good it was going to be, I probably would have purchased much more on the spot.  Yum!  (Bonus: their candy is hand-crafted from local ingredients & preservative-free!)

Liddabit Sweets.  Delicious sweets, especially their homemade caramels.  My mom makes caramels that are, frankly, equally delicious, but she only makes them once a year and then she gives them away to everybody else, so it's good to know where I can get a fix beyond my small annual allotment from mom.  Also, Liddabit make many more flavors than my mom (like the scrumptious beer & pretzel caramels) and they also make non-caramel sweets that are also wonderful.

Post your crafty favorites in the comments!