A Grain of Salt

Something Amusing, Something Confusing, A Comedy This Week

Hello folks,

Long have I been absent from the Salty dunes.  Why you ask?  Well, I have been buried deep in etc... (experimental troupe comedy), my comedy troupe for the last 11 years.  Our new show is opening tonight at the New York Fringe and it would rock my socks off if you could haul your asses downtown for l'il ole me.  Here are the details:

The government has declared that murder is legal for one hour, one magnificent hour. For 60 minutes, everyone, the audience, the actors and the characters are on a rollercoaster of doom as the Magnificent Hour plays itself out in real time.

The Details:
The Theatre at the Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place (bet West 3rd and Bleecker st)
Tuesday 8/23 @ 9:15pm
Wednesday 8/24 @ 7:00pm
Thursday 8/25 @ 5:15pm
Friday 8/26 @ 3:00pm
Saturday 8/27 @ 9:15pm

To get tickets:
phone:  inside NY: 212-279-4488
                outside NY: 888-FRINGENYC
online: go to http://www.fringenyc.org

Also rock out at magnificenthour.com for an inside look at what I've been doing for the last couple of months.  There you can find videos, bios, commercials and much much more.

GENE

Things I Don't Recommend Doing Include . . .

Catherine here. Yesterday I decided that I would take a lunch break, oh, around four in the afternoon, to give myself a chance to relax outside and eat the potato salad that I had brought from home. It was one of those moments where, driven by hunger, you don't really *think* about what you're doing. For example, while it crossed my mind that I hadn't refrigerated the potato salad since the morning and that oh, the last time I ate bad mayonnaise I ended up puking all over Grand Central Station, I decided to live on the wild side and eat it anyway. I also thought to myself, "I should probably bring a spoon" while I was leaving my desk but, again, did not act on it. So several minutes later I found myself downstairs, standing outside of an HSBC bank, eating slightly spoiled potato salad with my fingers. Perhaps not surprisingly, people stared at me ("Is she eating potato salad with her fingers? Shouldn't she have refrigerated it?") but I stared right back at them, trying to act like they were the ones weird for staring. ("What are you looking at? Don't *you* eat potato salad with your fingers?")

Anyway, their condescending stares proved justified several minutes later, when I started sorting mail and realized that things did not feel quite right in my stomach. On the contrary, they felt all wrong. The sensation continued until that evening, when I had brilliantly planned to attend a gin tasting (things that also do not go well with upset stomachs include puff pastries and drinks by the name of "Soho Sunsets," but I was so far beyond logic at this point that it didn't matter).

I'm not really sure what my point is here, but let me attempt to recap:
1. Refrigerate your potato salad
2. Always bring a spoon
3. Do not, under any circumstances, mix mushroom quiche with gin and peach nectar

The Russian Ballet

Catherine here. Oh my god. I am horrified right now. If you read ahead to Party Roaches, you'll see that I have a huge fear of waterbugs. If you then read the comments attached to that posting, you will see, in quick succession, Nazli commenting that flushing them down the toilet doesn't kill them ("They're called waterbugs for a reason," she quips) and then Kyoung says that a waterbug crawled down her leg WHILE SHE WAS SITTING ON THE TOILET. This is horrifying, and a. will mean that I can no longer pee in my house and b. has now convinced me that yes, indeed, as soon as I turn out the lights in my room to go to sleep (on the floor, I might add), there is going to be a steady procession of waterbugs crawling out of the small hole in the wall next to the fireplace, marching single-file into my bed to dance merrily on my face while I sleep. Oh my god.

My other story of the day has to do with a trip yesterday to Studio 97 in Park Slope to get certain bathing suit-sensitive areas of my body waxed (you do the math). Fine and good--any woman will tell you that you breathe through the pain, ideally with the help of two advil ingested prior to the appointment (I forgot the advil, but I do a lot of yoga). Also the pain is worth poolside embarrassment--anyone who's been waxed at the hands of the Russian ladies of Studio 97 know that their treatments, while not always enjoyable, are quite effective.

However, they really kicked it up a notch yesterday, when a stocky woman named Diana walked into the room where I was sitting and said, in a thick Russian accent, "Are you ready for the pleasure?"

I'm not kidding. "The pleasure," defined as coating my skin in hot wax and then ripping hair out by its roots (what? Are we still in Russia? I ask, offensively) was multi-tiered--after doing a quick surface job she then instructed me to assume "second position in the Russian ballet"--again, not kidding--which was something along the lines of a horizontal tree pose from yoga, except with more pain. Next she barked "45 degrees! 45 degrees!" while I, confused as to which axis I was supposed to be pivoting from, waved my leg wildly around the room, only to have her grab my foot and place it behind her head ("third position," she told me).

For what it's worth, though, she said she was impressed by my tolerance for pain. "You are a big girl," she said, approvingly. "A big, big girl."

I'm still not sure how to take that.

Party Roaches

Catherine here.  I must make this quick, as I am on my way to a pedicure. Yes, that's right. A pedicure. What the hell is happening to me? Next thing you know, I'll be getting exfoliating facial scrubs and buying L'Oreal night creams. Dear lord.

Anyway, I just want to follow up my tales of arachnophobia by an irrational fear of mine that was brought into high relief last night at a barbeque at my old house in NYC. See, while I don't mind most elements of nature--mice, rats, whatever, mosquitoes, I'll just smack the fuckers, I have a deep-seated fear of waterbugs. (Or, as the rest of the country calls them, "big-ass roaches" that, in New York, at least, have a charming habit of popping out of the woodwork when the summer heat becomes too much to bear and resurfacing oh, I don't know, on top of Catherine's clean laundry, resulting in her father spraying her entire high school wardrobe with pesticide . . . but that is neither here nor there.)

So last night I was sitting on my stoop after a frustrating incident in which police officers came by and gave  a bunch of people summonses for drinking "within public view." I picked up my empty wine glass, which I had hidden behind a trash can, and started waving it around, saying "oh, wouldn't it be funny if the police officers came back and gave me a summons for having an empty glass? Wouldn’t that be like, hysterical?” So distracted was I by my own supposed wit that I almost failed to notice that my wine glass was not, in fact, empty. Oh no. What looked for a moment like it could be the remnants of red wine turned out, on closer inspection, to be an inch long water bug that had crawled into my wineglass while it rested on the ground. “Oh my god,” I said loudly, and then, without thinking, shook the glass violently in the general direction of the house, shaking out the roach (it banged against the wall with a satisfying smack, prompting Gene, who’s frustrated at the house’s waterbug population, to demand that it pay rent).

So this was satisfyingly disturbing, and I thought I’d had my evening’s fill of roaches the size of cigar stubs, until I went up to my room/aeromattress to go to sleep, only to discover a similarly sized waterbug lying on its back directly next to my bed, legs gently wiggling, as if to mock me. This was too much. It was NEXT TO MY BED, people. For all I know, there could be roaches having a little party in there as I type this! I made my roommate, Salt contributor extraordinaire Nate, to come in. In a fit of girlish pique, I then hid my face in the corner and made him pick it up by its antennae (after a failed Tupperware experiment ) so that we (read, he) could flush it down the toilet.

One waterbug in my wine glass; another in my bedroom. Thus ended another party.

Celebrity Sightings

The Mama and Gene Perelson are quite the avid celebrity watchers.  We are constantly regaling our friends and family with, "so I saw a surprisingly wide Grant Shaud with five women in at a bar in Hell's Kitchen" or "Guess what? I saw Tammy Littlenut from Strangers with Candy in the East Village." 

One of the more bizarre sightings I've had was last weekend.  I went to Hecuba at BAM with my family.  Fantastic production by the way.  I sniff loudly at the naysayers.  I thought it was excellent. 

Glancing through the Playbill before the show, I noticed there would not be an intermission in the show.  As Saltines know, I have a problematic bladder, so I decided a pre-emptive stike was in order. 

There was a short line in front of me at the urinals.  The BAM Opera House is quite old, so the urinals have an old fashioned feel.  No dividers, and also exceptionally deep.  The distance between the wall and the urinator creates a bizarre visual for those standing on line:  five men peeing, synchronized.  Odder is knowing soon you'll be part of the spectacle.

Imagine my shock when one of the Urinating Five was Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner.   On one hand, one's first reaction is "wow! there's a celebrity!" But then one realizes that the celebrity is peeing, and probably not looking for approbation. 

Then one realizes how bizarre celebrity sightings are.  My brain may registered Tony Kushner, as someone I know, but there's no way on God's greenish earth that he'd know me, and certainly not why I was staring at him pee, nodding appreciatively and thinking to myself, "Caroline, or Change" was a really amazing piece of work.

Oh, Snap!

Catherine here. So, in case anyone has not already heard about this, yesterday Snapple attempted to break the world's record for the largest ice pop. Here's a description:

"Snapple is attempting to break the existing Guinness World Record for the "World's Largest Ice Pop" on June 21 by erecting a two and a half story, 20-ton kiwi strawberry-flavored, edible Snapple on Ice pop in New York City's Union Square. New Yorkers and tourists alike will be overwhelmed by the immense "ice scraper" which will stand 24-feet tall, 5-feet wide and 5-feet thick. There will be free samples for all who attend."

I read about this last week in Time Out and had two thoughts: 1. huh, that sounds like a stupid idea and 2. I'd really like to go. I figured that anything involving 20-tons of frozen snapple, especially when molded into popsicle form, would be exciting. Apparently how right I was!

The ice pop, perhaps not entirely frozen, quickly became to melt. What is nothing more than a minor-inconvenience with, say, a peace pop, is apparently quite an issue when you're dealing with 20 tons of frozen Snapple. Suffice it to say, as rivers of kiwi strawberry gushed down the street, the fire and  police departments were called in, the streets were shut--and the giant popsicle only made it to a 25 degree angle before the organizers got scared that the pop, now hollow, would snap and kill someone, so they called the whole thing off. 

Being crushed by a giant ice pop? That, surely, would qualify for a Darwin award.

 

Spring has Sprung

Gene here. 

New York is beginning to resemble the Bay Area, weatherwise, that is.

Just wanted to keep you in the loop.

On Satuday night I went to a goodbye party for my parents' nextdoor neighbor of more than 30 years.  The neighbors are off to LA to spend more time with the grandkids. 

The party took place at a restaurant on 3rd Avenue and Union Street.  The portions were ungodly.  Three courses took four hours.  It started innocently enough, antipasti consisting of mozzerella, olives and roasted peppers.  It gave way to a pasta course, tasty and large enough.  It was the third course, the meat course, that blew my gasket: 7 porkchops arrived at the table, each approximately the size of a baby's head accompanied with several plates of steak and a couple of piles of chicken francese. 

It tasted good enough, but holy macaroni, those bastards were big. 

Sometimes it happens

Gene here with an  act of random violence.

Last night I was having dinner with my friend Chris followed by a quick drink at Decibel on E 9th st.  We parted ways, Chris jumped in a cab, and I made my way down to the 2nd Avenue train station to meet Ms Toolbox. 

As I strolled down 2nd Avenue, I noticed ahead of me two women, who made an abrupt right turn; it seemed like they were evading some dudes. I couldn't see or process exactly what was going on, and continued walking.  This was unfortunate,because next thing I know as I am crossing 7th Street, one of the two dudes headbutted me.  Straight-on headbutt.  His head landed somewhere west of left eye, missing the eye.  Luckily my glasses  slammed into my eye.  They didn't break thankfully.  The dude followed this with a "sorry."   I thought this was insincere. 

My first thought was to go find a cop, but it occurred to me: what exactly was I going to tell him?  For all I knew these two dudes were Harmid Karzai and Harvey Keitel out on a bender.  All I saw were two dudes, taller than me.  Shocked, befuddled and bruised, I went to meet Ms Toolbox. 

Sometimes people really suck.

No Pants, Continued

Just a quick update on the pants-less subway experience I wrote about a while back. Thanks to a comment by a guy named Todd (hi, Todd!) I have both a url and a picture to prove that I'm not making this shit up. Check out:

http://improveverywhere.com/mission_view.php?mission_id=45

Snow Days

I do love writing about the trains. And the trains have been old-fashioned f*cked this weekend. The F has been totally derailed (ha!) by the precip. (Precip is what the kids are calling it these days). I am happy to say, however, that the R, the slightly slow younger brother of the MTA system, came to the rescue to this weekend. For that, I promised I would mention it on the blog. The R was really insistent on this point. It went on for great length about how no one respected it, etc. Well, consider this a kudos to you, R Train. You "R"ock my world!