the north plan

So, there was a moment somewhere in the middle of The North Plan where I laughed that kind of laugh that shoots out of your mouth and echoes over the heads of the people in front of you and you miss the next couple lines because you're thinking about how embarrassed your husband is.

I want to admit that as we were sitting in the theater waiting for the show to start, as I was reading the Director's Notes in the program*, and Rose Riordan wrote that, "the unleashing of the character Tanya Shepke will go down in PCS history," I thought, oh no. I thought,  this is going to be some overdrawn, overacted, overblown caricature who everyone's going to think is hilarious and who's going to get on my nerves. Nothing against Rose Riordan; anytime a character is lauded like that, I get ready to be annoyed. But she was thoroughly enjoyable. Total off the wall ADD motormouth, shooting f bombs with perfect timing. When she was hilarious right away, I thought, OK, when's this going to wear thin, and it didn't wear thin.

Kate Eastwood Norris as Tanya Shepke. So good. [you can't see it, but perfect costume too.] [oh, i just realized she's flipping off the camera in this picture...]

  I laughed through the whole show. All the characters were funny in their own way, all had this great mix of ridiculous and real. The writing was so smart, and the actors each were so good, there was such - again - pitch perfect timing. One of my favorite moments was a great deadpan back and forth between Tim True [always love him in PCS productions] and Ashley Everage in which he said ___ and she said ___ - oh, heck, I hate spoilers. Just go watch it. The play is a modern screwball comedy about conspiracy theories and renegade government, and going into it, I worried that I'd get lost in the plot-line, that I'd have to remember and interpret all sorts of complex and convoluted twists. When the pace of the show seemed so fast right off the bat, I again worried that I'd get lost in things. But in the end, it's a simple plot and the candy in this particular show is its craft. The thing you're sitting there devouring and loving is the craft of the writing, the craft of the acting, the craft of direction.

Brian Patrick Monahan as Carlton Berg. Just enough edge of panic in his portrayal that you were reminded that, as the conspiracy theory guy, he might be crazy. [who set up these pictures? i love how his eye is looking at the camera.]

 At intermission, I told Stephen that now was the time you had to worry if the show was going to jump the shark. All the set up was smart and hilarious, but as the plot started gathering steam and winding toward its conclusion, it might start to strain and become the wrong kind of ridiculous. There was a moment just as the second half started, when Tanya entered the scene, where a few lines were an expected kind of funny, but then it took off again, and new particular, funny characters were introduced, and things were different enough to be fresh.

If I had to take issue with anything in the play, I could take issue with the ending - it was definitely audacious but was it right or wrong for ___ to ___ and then for ___to  ___? I wasn't completely sure. Stephen and I left questioning and discussing, and in the end, isn't that what you want to do as you're leaving the theater? I'd love to hear what others think of the ending, and I'd highly recommend the show. It's at Portland Center Stage through February 5.


*Can I mention that I love the PCS always includes a couple features in their program - the Director's Notes and at least one background article about the show? When I go to plays at other theaters and don't get this extra stuff in the program, I'm always disappointed.

a moment in the day: green star

I get on the elevator with my cart. The cart is empty now but for the last month or two it’s been sitting in the middle of my workspace full of holiday detritus - bits of garland, holiday shelf talkers, wrapping paper rolls. All through the holidays, the cart and the empty holiday decoration boxes, all the clutter have been making my brain feel itchy, but now that the decorations are down and packed away and I’m getting it all out of my workspace, I feel a little sad. At the place where the top shelf of the cart meets the wooden back, the crease is scattered with tiny bits of tinsel and a single green foil star.

There’s one other person on the elevator, a young guy wearing a bright green t-shirt and looking at his cell phone. He looks up and smiles like you do when you forget you’re supposed to avoid people’s eyes on elevators.

“Having a good workday?” he says.

“Yes,” I say, and pick up the green foil star. “I found a star.”

“Nice,” he says.

“It matches your shirt,” I say. “You should have it.” I reach the star out.

“Hey, thanks,” he says, and takes it. The doors open, and he leaves the elevator, looking at the star on his finger.

beast

It wasn't late, but it was dark. Nicholas had the leash on the woman with the lap, and he was leading her down the sidewalk.

Up ahead a Christmas tree lay on its side at the edge of the road. Nicholas stopped short, sniffing. Even on its side, the Christmas tree was much taller than Nicholas, much bulkier, much pointier, but Nicholas put up his hackles and lowered his head and growled his most menacing.

The Christmas tree lay in the shadows, quiet but ready.

a taste of the frozen moment: DISCONNECT

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

DISCONNECT by Holly Goodman

I’m on the #75 bus with Baby Lila smelling like a pancake breakfast beside me the morning The Zone slips its hot little hands around my phone and ganks it clean out of my pocket. Way I was always losing things Sam used to say I had a Zone of my own, a personal wormhole that sucked in my things and spit them back at me ages after I stopped needing or wanting or looking for them. Said there was meaning in the things it took and if I listened close I’d get the message. The last three years of our marriage, I wished it would open up and suck him in.

Never came through for me, though. I had to end it the old fashion way with therapists and texts and a double-long U-Haul in the driveway. I got a new apartment for me and the girls and we got to know city bus schedules down to the minute.

Weekdays the #75 runs every 15.

[Holly Goodman lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her short stories, essays and reporting have appeared in The Journal, Literary Mama, and various magazines and newspapers. She is a past winner of The Journal's Alumni Flash Fiction writing contest and is currently at work on her first novel.] 

Holly will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can also order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THE HOLE

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE HOLE by Gage Mace

Dad had a Hole he carried around in him and passed on to me and my brother and sister. It was kind of an heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. A cold, black, raging Hole that was a prison with enough empty space to trick you into thinking it was freedom.

[Gage has been a broadcaster, visual artist, and teacher besides being a writer, and has held every kind of day job from limo driver to museum guard. He is a member of Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writers group and is hard at work finishing his first novel, The Big Happy Later On.]

Gage will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Holly Goodman, Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here. 

a taste of the frozen moment: YOU SAID BOY

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

YOU SAID BOY  by Tori Malcangio

You were hardly showing that day. The minor bump under your t-shirt could have easily been mistaken for a large meal. Though at five months along, you’d probably already Googled “Down syndrome” every morning, every night, every moment the reality grew physically intolerable. I imagine you let your long fingers tap, tap out the two words on your keyboard because it was the closest thing to regurgitating them. In your desperate search did you secretly hope to run across an herb or yoga pose to stop the Syndrome, wherever it was at that point, and hold him steady at almost, not quite full-blown Downs?  Though at that point, everything had already been cast in flesh and bone. 

[Tori Malcangio is a freelance advertising copywriter, mom, cereal expert, ninja, etc. in San Diego. Current Pushcart Prize nominee; Winner of 2010 Waasmode Fiction Prize; Finalist in 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Contest. Publications: ZYZZYVA; Passages North; Smokelong Quarterly; Pearl Magazine; Literary Mama; The Reader; and more. Story forthcoming in Cream City Review. MFA candidate at Bennington College. Oh, the mom blog that's anything but: halfassedmom.com.]

Tori and fellow The Frozen Moment contributors Nicole Vollrath, Andrew Printer and Judy Reeves will read from the Anthology on Sunday, January 21, at The Ink Spot in San Diego. Publication date for The Frozen Moment anthology is December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

new year's picture

And one more picture, to finish up my last post. Actually, this doesn't completely belong, as it was taken after midnight on January first.

We spent New Year's just the two of us, doing what we like to do. Champagne and good food and a movie. For me, the food was cheese. For me the food is always cheese. A bit of delice de Bourgogne, (more than a bit) (and then more), a bit of mimolette, a bit of morbier. Stephen had two things. The first was bacon-wrapped steak. The second was bacon. Oh, and plantain chips. The champagne was two kinds. Cava, actually, for most of the watching of the movie and Veuve Clicquot for the New Year's toast. We opened the Veuve Clicquot at the start of the movie to be ceremonious, had a toast and a glass, and then saved another glass for the end. [hmm, that sounds like we drank two bottles. i want to go on record saying we didn't finish either.]

The movie was Yankee Doodle Dandy, the James Cagney biopic of George M. Cohan. Maybe it seems like a better movie for the Fourth of July, but the pageantry of musicals is always good for New Year's Eve, and there's nothing like ringing out the old year with James Cagney tap-dancing down the White House steps.

I like to play a game where the image that's on the screen when we clink glasses for a New Year's kiss is going to represent the coming year. I did it last year and got Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek. [wrote about it here.] This year, this is what Stephen and I got.

If you look close, in the foreground are two glasses of the good stuff, and in the background are Cagney and costar Joan Leslie as an old couple drinking tea.

Two toasts for 2012. If you wanted to interpret this image, you might look at the whole film and note that in this moment this couple is looking back on a lifetime of accomplishments and about to embark on their greatest accomplishment of all. Or you might note that they're two old people drinking tea. Either way, it's cozy.