A Tense Present Tense

I am working on an ending to that comparison piece that looks at the evolution of Euripides’ Hippolytus to Seneca’s Phaedra,to Racine’s Phèdre.

Wait. Wait, weren’t you working on that, like, weeks ago, D?

Yeah, well, piss off. Our Italian artistic associate showed me the Italian way to flick someone off with a brush of the hand off the chin. She did it so nonchalantly, I thought she was trying to catch a stray hair that was tickling her face. That is what I am doing to you. Right now. As I type this . . . don’t try to figure out the mechanics of it . . .

I haven’t finished it yet because I haven’t had time! We always knew January was going to be bad. And it is going to be. We’re celebrating our 100-year-old theater (the most beautiful theater in the United States) on the 9th, followed by the opening of Phèdre and then three weeks of First Look (our new works festival, which for budgetary reason has no public component, but that’s cool. I’ll write more about the amazing line up we’ve got going later). I’ve told Rachel I am kissing her goodbye the day after our anniversary (New Years) until Valentines Day.

But I don’t think we realized January was going to smack us in the face so early into December. The deadlines for the centennial are overwhelming the publications department while the new works festival is making unplanned-for-demands of the non-existent literary department. And, of course, marketing still hasn’t hired a copywriter. It’s been 4 months . . . I’ve never been so scared of a week of work as I am about this week coming up. Luckily, over the summer we moved down to an office with its own door. And that door is going to be closed until the Holiday Party on Friday (oh, did I mention that I’m helping get that whole thing together too? The joys of non-profit theater! what. the. crap).

Why are you writing on your blog then, D? Why aren’t you getting ahead on either work or sleep or something?

Well, I was working on that comparison piece, but then I realized I didn’t know what to do when writing about the fictional lives of characters in a work that no longer exists (namely Hippolytus Veiled, and the conundrum was too good to not write about. Racine wrote (past tense) Phèdre. But in Phèdre, the unfortunate queen swoons and loves and lies and dies, all in the present tense because it is always happening. It is happening right now, as I write this (and flick you off Italian style). But what if the fictional action to which I am referring happens/ed in a piece of work that no longer exists . . . is it still happening? Even though no one can see that it is happening? What was the conclusion of that tree falling in the forest philosophical riddle?

Is this the kind of thing you think about at work, D?

Well, yeah, sometimes. We have debates over prepositions too . . . and get angry about people who think lead is the past tense of lead (it’s “led,” people!). I mean, I do other stuff too. Like, a lot of other stuff.

But you do this stuff too, right?

. . . Yes.

Would that have anything to do with you being behind.

. . . No.

Really?

Fftttppt.

What was that?

I was doing that chin thing to you.

Mature.

Look, some people take smoke breaks. We take nerd breaks, when we geek out over the intricacies of the English language.

You wrote a play this weekend, didn’t you?

. . . Maybe

And that’s why you’re writing in dialogue right now, isn’t it?

. . . Maybe.

I hate it when you write plays.

Fftttppt.

Sigh.

LEGION OF EXTRAORDINARY DANCERS

Dance plus superheroes? How would I not post about it . . .

I am ridiculously excited for this. Watch for LXD in 2010.

The Craft of Writing (while sick)

Apparently we caught something somewhere between St. Louis and San Francisco and Rachel and I are home sick for the second day in a row. The publications intern is ill as well, so our small but mighty office of three is down to one fearless wordsmith. God’s speed, Elizabeth! Actually, having a legitimate excuse to work from home is rather nice. It has given me a concentrated time to work on this comparative essay of Euripides’ Hippolytus (as well as his earlier Hippolytus Veiled), Seneca’s Phaedra, and Racine’s Phèdre I have had to put off for one reason or another. I am about to transition away from the depiction of Artemis exonerating the innocent Hippolytus at the end of the Euripides to the godless adaptation Seneca wrote 400+ years later. And I already know how I am going to segue from that segment to Racine’s politically charged telling! So, breaktime:

I like writing. Sometimes it feels like I imagine building a house would feel like: laborious but gratifying. Creative with an underlying logic. I was feeling this way a few weeks ago when I wrote that adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s A Hairy Ape. Despite my initial hesitation about the casting, the presentation went very well. Was it a successful adaptation? Yes, I think so. Was it a good play? Probably not. Was I proud of what I put up there despite that fact? Certainly. This paradox is one that I associate more with craftsmanship than artistry, which  requires more of a emotional investment. Right?

My favorite assignment from when I was teaching Freshman Writing a few years ago aimed at separating my students from their writing. This wasn’t so much about making them distinguish between the art of writing and the craft of writing as it was making them realize what lazy writers they had become in high school. They relied on a series of rhetorical defaults: phrases, words, and rhythms that had worked well enough in the past. I knew this because that is what I had done my first three years of undergrad. The actual file has since been lost (if I remember correctly, it was a last minute idea that I threw together on the computer in my shared office), but it began with the students free writing for 10 minutes which was then followed by 10 pages of guided deconstruction. How many periods did you use? How many semicolons? What is the average word count of each sentence? How many times do you use the word “and”? It was painstaking. They hated it. Then they loved it. Well, those who cared loved it. One of my best writers—who was on his way to becoming the editor of the school paper—thought it was the only useful moment in the semester, which may or may not have been true.

The whole term focused on one simple idea: writing is choice. I wonder now if I would amend that to say: writing is building with choices.

Thanksgiving: When Dramaturgy and Reality Collide

One of my favorite recent research projects was uncovering the truth about the presidential Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony for David Mamet’s November, which (like both Prez. W. and President Clinton) gets the history wrong. Despite popular belief, the actual tradition of the president officially pardoning two turkeys (the National Turkey and the Alternate National Turkey) only goes back to the first President Bush. Folklore says that Lincoln spared his son’s pet turkey, Jack, and Kennedy apparently did suggest he would let live the turkey he was gifted (just days before his own assassination). There are some great photographs of a number of presidents with their Thanksgiving (or Christmas) turkeys, but they all ate them. Reagan was the first president to use the word “pardon” in reference to a Thanksgiving turkey, but he was making a joke to dodge more serious questions about the Iran-Contra affair. You can read all about it here: Turkey Pardoning.

I was very pleased to hear Obama get the history of turkey pardoning right yesterday, when he spared Courage and his substitute Carolina!

President Obama: Now, the National Turkey Federation has been bringing its finest turkeys to the White House for more than 50 years (True). I’m told Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson actually ate their turkeys (True). You can’t fault them for that; that’s a good-looking bird. President Kennedy was even given a turkey with a sign around its neck that said, “Good Eatin’, Mr. President” (True). But he showed mercy and he said, “Let’s keep him going.” (something like that) And 20 years ago this Thanksgiving, the first President Bush issued the first official presidential pardon for a turkey (True).

Today, I am pleased to announce that thanks to the interventions of Malia and Sasha — because I was planning to eat this sucker — “Courage” will also be spared this terrible and delicious fate. Later today, he’ll head to Disneyland, where he’ll be grand marshal of tomorrow’s parade. And just in case “Courage” can’t fulfill his responsibilities, Walter brought along another turkey, “Carolina,” as an alternate, the stand-in (True) . . .

You know, there are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office. And then there are moments like this — (laughter) — where I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland (True). (Laughter.) But every single day, I am thankful for the extraordinary responsibility that the American people have placed in me. I am humbled by the privilege that it is to serve them, and the tremendous honor it is to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the finest military in the world — and I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to every service member at home or in harm’s way. We’re proud of you and we are thinking of you and we’re praying for you . . .

In more tranquil times, it’s easy to notice our many blessings. It’s even easier to take them for granted. But in times like these, they resonate a bit more powerfully. When President Lincoln set aside the National Day of Thanksgiving for the first time—to celebrate America’s “fruitful fields,” “healthful skies,” and the “strength and vigor” of the American people—it was in the midst of the Civil War, just when the future of our very union was most in doubt. So think about that. When times were darkest, President Lincoln understood that our American blessings shined brighter than ever. (Ok. Yes. But to give Washington his due, in 1789 our Union’s first president proclaimed that the people of the United States should observe Thursday, November 26, as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” Granted, while Washington’s proclamation mandated a specific day of celebration, it did not establish a recurring annual holiday.) . . .

Now, before this turkey gets too nervous that Bo* will escape and screw up this pardon—or before I change my mind, I hereby pardon “Courage” so that he can live out the rest of his days in peace and tranquility in Disneyland. (* Interestingly, Bush the 1st mentioned his pet dog during the first turkey pardoning ceremony: “Millie has been put upstairs, looking wistfully out of the window, I’m sure. But let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy—he’s granted a presidential pardon as of right now—[he will] live out his days on a children’s farm not far from here.”)

And to every American, I want to wish you, on behalf of myself, Malia, Sasha, and Michelle, the happiest of Thanksgivings. Thank you very much, everybody.

Happy Thanksgiving!

“I am sent with broom before / To sweep the dust behind the door.”

When planning to go to bed early, one should not open one’s high school yearbooks and begin reading the scribbles of long-forgotten teenage selves. Being in St. Louis is both calming and nerve-wracking in terms of the wedding plans: I feel I’m better able to get things done being in the city where this shindig is going to go down, but at the same time I feel like I must get things done quickly because my time here is limited. Contributing to that stress, Rachel isn’t here yet. She flies in tonight. Needless to say, there are some decisions a groom-to-be cannot make without the bride-to-be lest he value not his lasting happiness. For these reasons—and because I am sleeping on a futon without cats or fiance present—sleep has come reluctantly. Why I thought turning through pages of old memories of a boy I don’t recognize would have a relaxing effect, I don’t know.

A dear friend of mine dramaturged a day of her life in college. She took a video camera around for an entire day and then watched and researched everything that happened. Why, yes, she is in fact a genius. It would be an interesting project to expand, dramaturging who you were throughout high school. Researching who some of these people were who signed your book, and who they are now. Trying to decode the semantics of inside jokes that aren’t inside you anymore; there are whole passages people wrote that I cannot interpret, slang I have forgotten, cultural allusions that are now meaningless.

Just from the progression of four entries—one for each year we were classmates—it is weird to see the evolution (and sometimes de-evolution) of characters and friendships and odd to see hints of who these people would become and how we would grow apart. It is difficult to read any of these entries, except for those of two or three people, without imposing a certain degree of sadness, regret, and nostalgia. I don’t talk to these people anymore. “I know we will always be great friends,” but we aren’t. “I’ll see you over the summer,” but we didn’t. “Hopefully we’re not strangers in the future,” and that’s exactly what’s happened?

And, of course, the predictions about myself, none of which had anything to do with theater. The only hints of theater in the future of this apparently flirtatious, scrawny, kind-hearted boy (the words “good person” come up a surprising amount) are the reminiscences about the musicals and the randomly selected senior quote from Puck’s final speech in Midsummer Night’s Dream. A quote that I didn’t even understand then, and probably still don’t really. Everything else seems to point to the future of a painter or printmaker. Or emperor: “I’m sure I’m going to come home one day and go downtown and not recognize it—it will have been transformed into a beautiful, cultural place by St. Louis’s very own Augustus.” No small order to live up to, especially since we moved away.

Maybe someday we’ll return though. St. Louis is such a strange city. It always seems to be between what it is and what it wants to be. A city overflowing with potential energy just waiting to go kinetic. If we move back, then maybe we’ll reconnect with all these people who we’ve lost touch with, a number of who stayed, and a number of who (like Rachel and I) are engaged to their high school sweethearts.

Until then, maybe it is best to put this dramaturgy project on hold and focus on dramaturging the wedding. I am off to “the space” (this is such a theater term, and yet I cannot help using it to refer to our ceremony / reception site) for the second time this week. Apparently, I never took my parents when we picked it out last summer. I have no idea how that happened!

“Oh, and P fucken S”* I’m thinking about starting a wedding blog called From the Male Perspective (or something) simply on principle. Are there really NO wedding resources written by dudes? Come on. That’s stupid. I cannot be the first man to take point on wedding planning. It is 2009 people.

*My favorite line from David Mamet’s November.

False Deadlines

I’m back in St. Louis for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving and wedding planning. I am sitting in my parents’ backyard enjoying real autumn, not that fake stuff the Bay Area has. I just crunched a pile of dry leaves beneath my feet. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you San Francisco?

Taking off three days from work is a bit nerve-wracking, and, really, I should not even be thinking about work at all! I should talking to caterers and figuring out if we can afford a photographer! But, oh well. Theater is on my mind, so I might as well set the demon to rest before I go meet with the dude about the tent. Tent? Yes tent. Circus Wedding! High wire acts. Elephants . . . No. Not really.

I planned this “vacation” back in August when I was making the master calendar for the season because, on paper, this week is actually a pretty decent one to take off. We just sent off one program to the printer and we are not yet jamming up against the deadlines for our slot 4 show. Are we ahead? Hell no. But we are, as of this moment, where we need to be. Knock on cyberwood . . . wait that probably means something else . . .

Apparently last August, as I was figuring this trip out, I did something very clever. I gave us a false deadline for the program we just sent off on Friday, which actually needed to go to the printer today. False deadlines are great. It is manager’s equivalent to setting the clock in your car ten minutes fast. Of course, I completely forgot that the deadline was false. It was like that scene in Momento when Leonard—who is unable to create new short-term memories—purposefully writes down false information to fool himself. On the plus side, we beat our deadline by a weekend, allowing us and our publisher a more relaxed Thanksgiving week. On the down side, we certainly stressed ourselves out to last week more than we needed.

False deadlines won’t really work for wedding planning. It just all has to get done, and the sooner the better. And once you finish one small tasks–hotel rooms blocked √–there are a hundred more little things to figure out. Not only have we never gotten married before, we also haven’t really planned a party before. We did have about 20 friends over for a surprise birthday party last month. We made pizza, an experience that squashed our belief that self-catering our reception would be feasible.

We are taking comfort in reading about the wedding experiences of similarly, budget-conscious, artsy folks, especially A Backyard Wedding and 2000 Dollar Wedding. The fact that they made it work gives us hope!

It could be worse . . .

Breaking one of my rules

I have exiled myself to the kitchen. First oat-bran, banana, raspberry muffins for the week’s breakfasts. Then split pea soup for the lunches. Then homemade pizza for dinner tonight, and then chicken–currently marinating in caper juice (an experiment)–for random meals.

I am trying not to think about theater because I broke one of my rules this morning. One of my favorite rules. One of those rules you hold close to your heart because you think it makes you a better, more enlightened person.

There is a myth about Edward Albee, probably true: a theater had the interesting idea to cast Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with an all African-American ensemble. Sounds pretty great. Most people who are going to see the play have seen it . . . well that’s not true BUT, arguably most people who would have seen this production would have already seen it OR they would never have seen it and were only seeing it for the novelty of the all black cast. Regardless, it sounded like a good idea to me (who had already seen it).

Not so much to Mr. Albee, however. He shut down the show.

From that point on, I vowed that I would stay out of the way if a director ever decided to get creative with casting one of my shows. This is easy enough when you’re a half-assed playwright who writes infrequently and is produced only when a blue moon rises in the east. But when I got the email last night with the cast list for an upcoming script-in-hand staging of a show I had written as part of the writing pool for PlayGround, my resolve started to shake and then this morning it broke.

This is my first year in PlayGround as one of 36 writers who gets a monthly assignment for a ten-page play. The six most successful plays are chosen for presentation on a Monday night, an event which an impressive number of patrons subscribe to. This month’s assignment was “The Hairy Ape” with the added optional directive, “While there is no prescription on the types of works we hope to see generated from this month’s topic, we do encourage adaptations of the O’Neill work or plays that tie in with O’Neill.”

An adaptation of The Hairy Ape? Why not? I’d never done anything like that before and sounded like a fun challenge. What I love about PlayGround, and the reason I applied, is that it doesn’t matter to me what the assignment is or, even, how successful I am at executing it. It is making me write. That is the most important thing I need right now: a good old fashioned kick in the ass.

I found myself in the unfamiliar world of computer tech-speak as Yank the hairy ape, who worked in the bowels of a ship shoveling coal, evolved into Blemie the very smart dog, who works in the bowels of Google in the company’s own IT department. Lucky for me I befriended a number of computer geniuses in college and my sister happens to be dating one. Also fortunate is the amount of tech talk on the web just waiting to be tapped. Whole monologues were adapted from help chat-rooms about Outlook and IE8.

As this is a play about Google, Founder Larry Page makes an appearance:

LARRY: I understand what you want to do. I just don’t understand why you want to do it.

MILLIE: I want to visit my roots.

LARRY: If you want to visit your roots, go become a non-practicing Jew in Lansing, Michigan.

I figured, it’s the Bay Area. People know who Larry Page is. It’ll be a good laugh. But the casting director didn’t catch the reference, or maybe she did and had other plans. Larry Page became a handsome black man. His daughter, Millie, who I had imagined as a girl in her teens, was cast as a woman in her 30s, who happens not to be black.

Confused, I wrote an email. “Larry Page is not a handsome black man. He’s a real guy. This guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Larry_Page_laughs.jpg. The play is about the IT department of google. This guy’s the founder of google. And his daughter would thus be younger than this actress . . . ” An hour later I am on the phone with the casting director. She spoke the magic words, “Since this is, like The Hairy Ape, an expressionistic play . . . ” It is? Blemie walks around a bar growling like a dog. Some old guy won’t stop singing Johnny Cash songs. Actors personify Norton Anti Virus blocking a dangerous virus right before transforming into dogs who maul a man while he is urinating on Larry Page’s house . . . Yes, yes. That does sound a bit expressionistic now that you mention it.

So what the crap was I worrying about the casting for?

Shamefaced, I return to my kitchen to take the first batch of muffins out of the oven in hopes they will leave a better taste in my mouth than my performance this morning.

This is Theater

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
—Life of Theseus by Plutarch (75 A.C.E.)

It is 1 a.m. and I am riding in the car of our casting director over the Bay Bridge talking about what to look for in an actor. I deal with words most of the time, so this is all new to me, and I am loving it. This is the second time I have found myself in this woman’s car, and it is the second time we have had this conversation. Next Tuesday we go out to Marin for the opening of Peter Nachtrieb’s boom (apparently the most produced play in the States this year), and I hope my education continues.

We are driving back from THE BAR, a student-manned, colleague-hosted watering hole in our theater that opens between 2 and 6 nights a week (depending on the show and interest) from when the show goes down until everyone wants to leave. The drinks are priced at cost. Everyone—cast, crew, front of house, staff, students, board members—is encouraged to attend when they can. When the Brief Encounter ensemble was here, they frequently busted out instruments and jammed the night away. Since they’ve gone, it has been quieter. But not last night, because some of our students decided it would be a good idea to commandeer the space for a poor-man’s production of Dutchman.

It wasn’t a good idea. It was a great idea.

With a budget of nothing and a set made of chairs, they transformed the room in the dangerous subway that contains Amiri Baraka’s brutal one-act. I read Dutchman for the first time in grad school and it is up there with Oleanna as a play that left the most mental scar tissue in its wake. If you don’t know the play, read it, or read a summary of it somewhere else. I am not going to get into it. There is just too much to say about it once you get started. Suffice it to say, this production did Baraka proud.

It did all of us proud.
This is what theater should be. Unapologetic and without excuse. You don’t have a lighting grid, you grab a fucking flashlight. You don’t have a soundboard, you get three extra actors to play the rats in the subway and have them chirp and scamper around the feet of your audience to create the environment.

If there is life, there can be theater.

An hour before, I was in another room of our theater helping facilitate a reading of the plays that won our David Mamet Writing Contest. We are in the middle of our run of Mamet’s November, and to accompany it we held a national contest of write-alikes. We received about 50 entries and cut it down to the best 10 to present in staged-reading format performed by our students. All of the playwrights, save one, showed up. Were they amazing plays? They were three minutes long each: how amazing can they be? But they were fun. And the audience was fun. And the energy was right. And the idea was right.

Two hours before that I am over at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a co-production of L’histoire du solda with 4 of our students and 9 of the Conservatory’s musicians. We arrive early, and I walk the halls of their school. In the basement, some one is practicing on the some instrument that reminds me of a higher-pitched marimba. On the top floor, there is a patio that looks up at the sky. Sound proof rehearsal rooms surround it, and as students come in and out, one catches snippets of their amazing talent. I hear the sad song of a lonely flautist before I leave.

The show itself, known in English as The Soldier’s Tale, was an amazing fusion of music, dance, storytelling, vaudeville, and acting. We were there for the dress rehearsal because tonight’s two performances were sold out weeks ago. It was fascinating to compare the instruments of musicians—so tangible and comprehensible—to those of our actors, but mostly it was just a joy to watch them rejoice in each others’ talents as they watched one another perform.

Six hours before that I am at our studio theater in the building that houses our school and offices. Our artistic director has workshopped Racine’s Britannicus with our second years. It is the kind of play you have to be in the mood for, and I am in the mood for it even though it is noon on a Friday. The richness of the language (translated from the French) and the waste-nothing style of Racine impresses upon me the importance of craft and discipline, on top of genius. And once again—or, really, for the first time that day—I am amazed by our students.

Today I am right where I want to be. I am knee-deep in Plutarch, Ovid, and Seneca excavating the truth about Phèdre’s unfortunate love for her stepson. We open Racine’s Phèdre next January, and after yesterday’s reading of Britannicus I am excited.

But I am even more excited by the possibilities our students showed me over the course of 12 hours of theater yesterday. The classics never get old, they showed me, and  language will always prevail, they showed me. The fusion of music and movement and theater is as complicated as putting the right people in the same room; anything is possible for the fearless; the space been the arts is merely the difference between instruments, and it can be easily closed; and poverty will never squash talent and passion. They showed me.

Halloween: what I would do if I were me

Last Saturday I spent two hours waiting in line outside the SF Opera’s costume warehouse for their huge sale. Ask me how it was, and I will tell you: I have no idea. I waited two hours, did the math, and realized that it was going to be an additional two hours before I would be allowed to enter with my 14 closest line-buddies—for only 15 were allowed in at a time, and only after 15 shoppers had exited, per the fire marshal’s demands. The line wrapped around blocks of a Potrero neighborhood. We moved 10 feet every 15 minutes. None of the successful shoppers walked by with their purchases; we were all operating on blind faith that this warehouse did in fact have costumes in it. Teams sent delegates to purchase lunch from a nearby coffee shop. The girl in front of me called her dad to bring her a sandwich. Slowly people started to peel off. The college student behind me who had dragged her friend with her. The girl in front of me, only minutes after her dad left. The costume designer who had been chatting her up, convinced that nothing of any worth would be left. And then me.

Before leaving, I wondered if I should make a sign: “$50 for my spot in line.” As I got closer, I could raise my price. Professional line-waiter . . . those exist somewhere right? But, unable to resolve the ethical debate such a proposal demanded, I simply walked away. Two hours older but no worse for wear.

“But what are you going to wear for Halloween?” Well, actually, unlike most people in line I was not there for a) a Halloween costume nor b) additional garments to add to my theatrical collection. I was hoping to find a cheap wedding suit . . . maybe even a wedding dress for Rachel. Look. Stranger things have happened. I am sure there are operas in which a wedding ensues. And how nifty would it be to wed in appropriate garb styled to look like it’s from the 1800s . . .

Halloween is of course theater’s holiday. For one night, revelers embrace what we embrace everyday: the desire to create a different reality through the realization of fictional characters. On Halloween, you can be anybody, and as anybody you can do anything. For whatever reason, our day-to-day personalities shackle us to a set of rules that we made up for ourselves. I am shy, so I will not meet people. I am lazy, so I will not work. It is a lot of work to figure out what we WANT to do with our time, so we fall back on defaults of “what I would do if I were me.” It’s Saturday. So I will sleep in a little, read some of my David Eddings, probably go to the gym, and clean. Is that what I want to do? Must be . . . right?

But tonight I could choose to put on a costume of some other personality? Who would I be, and what would I do . . .

New addition to the extended feline tribe . . .

Hey, Linus and Mabel! You got a new cousin!

I am happy to introduce you to my kid sister Beth’s new kitten, Miss Admiral Calypso. How excited are you?!

You jerks.

Who knows if it will stick, but I love the name. It’s progressive (since Alene B. Duerk became a rear admiral in the Navy Nurse Corps in 1972, only a slow trickle of women have moved their way up the ranks . . . though knowing a little about Beth’s partner, Will, I have a suspicion it is more a reference to Star Wars than the U.S. military) AND ironic (Calypso was not only a sea nymph—and we all know how much cats ordinarily love water—according to popular mythology, she was also a bit of a . . . lustful, we’ll go with lustful . . . and young Addie Callie [Addy-Cal?] has been properly neutered).

Regardless: good job! There is no greater birthday gift than seeing loved ones happy. Truly.

Quote of the day:

“What will we say when our kids come to us
and ask with a smile on their face,
‘Hey dad, my friends got some new ninja swords:
is it cool if we smash up this place?’”

—”Everybody Get Dangerous” Weezer