Welcome Back, Sucker

You can all rest easy. My baggage was delivered two days ago, safe and sound. I can't tell you what a comfort it was to receive all the useless bullshit I've accumulated over the years. Even better was that it freed me from my Bronx exile. As soon as I scrubbed my pits with some Radox body wash, I jumped on the 1 train and headed into Manhattan - the borough where most of the movie Big was shot.

I met with my people. Not "people" in the folksy, traditional sense of nation or race, but "people" as in "individuals who want to take 10% of my income." I've got two groups of agents: one who submits me for videotaped grinning exercises and another who scours for productions that call for a very pissed-off, ethnic-tinged white guy. How do I resolve this existential dichotomy, you ask? Hmmm, never thought about too much, but I suppose my Daily Defamations help. That's when I stare into my bathroom mirror and repeat things like, "You're a vessel for writers" and "Think of a happy place, and imagine it shrouded in pain. That's you!"

I'm a Rocket Person

(PICTURED: An impromptu drug store at Heathrow security.)

Ironic that after two months spent looking for myself in Europe - and finding a fair portion of an actual person - I arrive to confinement. The cast got to London's Heathrow airport yesterday, prepared to board a KLM flight to JFK, including a three-hour layover in Amsterdam. We gave ourselves a couple of hours to check all our baggage - the physical kind, since most of us will surely lug an emotional suitcase throughout our lives. Between personal luggage and that of the set and costumes, we checked 14 bags. Checking in as a group put us on the "Fast Track" security line, so after discarding our water bottles filled with liquid nitrogen, we strolled to the gate and waited to board. Foreshadow...

After about a half-hour, an announcement came over the PA system. It said that the flight to Amsterdam was on the fritz and a new craft would be ready in 5 hours. Not the best possible news. But soon came another announcement, summoning Andy Boroson(musician, Civilian, partridge connoisseur) to the help desk, where he was assured that we'd all be placed on a direct British Airways flight to JFK ASAP. This news made us happy. Even more comforting was that all of the Heathrow staff operated this transition with such patient, friendly competence. Foreshadow, foreshadow...

The flight itself was long, packed, and warm. And despite having individual screens on the back of each seat, the entertainment was poorly thought out. Rather than sitting in a digital library, itching to be selected - a la Jet Blue or HBO OnDemand - the film and TV options they presented ran in a dimly lit loop. Though I must say that the stream of free food & wine and lax attention to seatbelts gave the international flight a clubby feel.

We landed bumpily at JFK at around 8pm. The plane crawled along the tarmac for another half-hour before we finally de-planed. We trudged into the terminal and through Customs - each pretty quick trips - and headed to baggage claim. The shadow is now upon us...

I stood right against the carousel, hoping to yank off the company's luggage as soon as it came around. The belt rolled along, teasing me with abundant bags at every turn, including the most suspicious looking package ever - a cardboard box tearing at its edges with an ominous bulge, reigned in with dozens of bungee cords and a magic marker scrawl of Mohammad Rahman on its front. I saw it pass me four times before the PA system called Andy Boroson to British Airways Baggage Services.

Each of the 14 bags didn't make it to New York.

So now, due to a sublet snafu, I'm stuck waiting for this luggage delivery at my folks' place in the Bronx. My company is 2 deeply stupid dogs, 1 pair of boxers, and 3 cartons of ice cream. Dad says the ice cream helps him get to sleep.

King's Breath? It's called oxygen, you peasant.

As this final week in London follows the Thames out to sea, I should give an account of a minor crisis I'm having. From the theater I've seen on this entire trip - nearly a show a day in Edinburgh and a few expensive matinees in London - I can't help but feel more and more irrelevant. Like a pawn caught in a king's prideful battle or an electric light bulb enslaved into a series circuit, my calling from Thespis has begun to feel like a tangent. A writer scribes a play. In it, people are assigned to perform physical, emotional, verbal tasks alongside/against others. A look of the production is intimated on the page and a director carries out that vision as he harnesses the particular qualities of the people onstage. The public pays to see this artificial universe and sometimes it rings a bell long dormant in their hearts. This concludes the earnest portion of my entry because I'm about to puke into my hand.

More to the point, I've had two very different takes on theatre (the "re" is a nod to the limeys) in the UK. In Scotland, there was an exciting roughness to it all. The plays and comedy were all self-produced efforts with committed, at times desperate, performances. The theatre I've seen in London has been of the pristine variety. A couple of days ago I saw the much-fluffed production of Brecht's "Life of Galileo" at the Royal National Theatre, starring Simon Russell Beale, the UK's short and puffy theatrical deity. The show must have cost a fortune: a cast of thirty, a rotating set, incredible projections, and a live, unseen orchestra scoring the play. This was a complete vision, no doubt. Yet most of the actors seemed more interested in the cheese & pickle sandwich backstage than in breathing life into a very obvious, redundant narrative. More disconcerting was how emboldened I felt by their lazy work. Their incompetence inspired me and that made me pretty sad.

For the traveler...

I've been in London for the last couple of weeks, on the second leg of the Civilians' UK tour. Culturally, it's a grand old city with beautiful houses, cups of tea, bridges and other stuff that piques the interest of Americans. From a sociological standpoint, the people either speak like uppity garden gnomes or Winston Churchill. Now as a favor from one traveler to another, I thought I'd write up a list of some useful terms. These twenty "translations" may help when you're faced with blinding indifference from the weary citizens of the old empire. You can print this up, fold it four times, and stuff it into your wallet (in front of the photos of your illegitimate children)...


WE SAY........................THEY SAY

Bathroom.....................Loo
Subway........................Tube
Yes..............................Bangerdoodle!!!
No...............................Swishybutt!!!
Cash Register...............Till
Baby............................Jiggybit
Dollar...........................Pound
Comedy........................Fart Session
Happy...........................Snickywishing
Sad...............................Doobywishing
Dog...............................Bonnyrat
Tired.............................Skinned
Nose.............................Prince Hal's Hose
Bad...............................Brilliant
Good.............................Brilliant
Great............................Brilliant
Food.............................Drinks
Take a walk...................Smash the clubs
"Care for a smoke?"......"Can I fag you up?"
"Nice to meet you."......."Tis a pleasure we've acquainted our pale palms."
"Good Night!"................"Bubble up the tinkersnout!"

If I keep my ears open, more handy terms should follow. Have a great tinkersnout!

'ave ya got an 'anky?

'Ere and there when I'm feelin' down in me 'ed and me 'art, Oi think about a big man - a big 'unky man oo can take me off inah country. We'd 'ave a picnic onah cliffs ah Dover anah bright globe o'tha sun would shine o'me! The man, ee'd tell me, "Ya see that there? At's inah palm of me 'and." An Oi'd look back at'im and see his big white beard and eyes awl aglow and ee be wearin' white robes too! Oi'd ask 'im, "Are you a gawd or somethin?" And eed tell me, "Honey deah, I'm nojust a gawd, I the big gawd. Wouldja care for a steak an' kidney pie? Oi made the cow meeself."

The Peephole

I was at a premiere for the new documentary, "Blowing Up Fat in America." The film ostensibly followed one man's struggle to go on after losing his wife and children to voracious overeating. Once the film began, though, I soon realized that it's central event was completely at odds with what the posters and press had described. In actuality, the family died because of an overnight gas leak from the fast-food restaurant next door.

After the film ended, I decided to go the premiere party. At the open bar, I fell into a conversation with the bereft man, himself. He had a repulsive, fleshy mouth with two teeth, sraw-like black hair, a scaly face riddled with blisters, and hands with gnarled and stubby fingers. I didn’t speak to him, really. He did all the talking, trying to convince me to come over to his house for a late-night support group meeting. He told me that with eyes as dead as mine, communal support could "enliven" my "stinking heart." Once another mingling pack of people approached, I shimmied out of the conversation and left the party.

I arrived at my girlfriend's apartment and told her about my night. She listened, then described an incident that befell her that same evening. She was in the parking lot of her housing complex, walking from her car to the building. Two visibly drunk men in suits approached her with a stack of Polaroids. They asked my girlfriend if she had seen the lady in the photos. They held one up for her eyes to scan. The picture was of a bare-chested woman who had been singed all over her body. The men said that the burning was due to her being unknowingly drugged by her husband before she stepped into her private tanning bed. She had woken nine hours later. Her home had been fleeced of all it's furniture, apparel and windows. She was left naked in a shell at the top of a hill.

My girlfriend had never seen the woman, but the photo reminded her of some of the graphic, gruesome photos in a book of dermatology her parents had stored in her bedroom when she was a little girl.

There was a knock on her front door. We looked at one another before she inched toward the door’s peephole. Through it, she viewed the two men in suits. Each held a polaroid of the singed woman at their chests. My girlfriend backpedalled quickly as possible, nearly tripping over her own feet and ignored the following knocks. They continued for another few minutes, each one quieter than the last. We both let our breaths go once the knocking had stopped. We decided to just get to bed and were under the sheets within a few minutes.

Before we turned out the final lamp, I went to look through the peephole to be sure the men in suits had left for good. I looked through the fisheye lens and there he was. The bereft father smiled wide and knowingly into my eye.