Monster Fringe Post

We opened Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead today for 170 some people. The most important of which was my son, but other people whose opinions I respect were there. I admit, there was a tiny piece of me that was “afeared” that our somewhat Shakespeare soaked performance wouldn’t be able to keep an audience, but when the audience started laughing, it was honest laughter. Gut laughter. Laughter that makes the world go ‘round. And they didn’t stop. They laughed for the intelligent witicisms and the stupid jokes alike. It was HOT. 

So far, the only critisisms I’ve heard are that it’s a pretty geeky show, and I don’t think that was so much a critisism as it was a fact. I mean, the title pretty much tells it all. Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead. No title has been more straight forward about the contents of the show since Snakes on a Plane. There will be Shakespeare. There will be zombies. If you are surprised by either one of these events occuring, it may lead to me defriending you on one of seventeen social networking sites. And I don’t mean Myspace either. I mean somewhere you would notice and/or care.

The other complaint I heard was from my son, who didn’t think I was very manly. He said it was the hair that tipped him off. Come judge for yourself. U of M Rarig Center Thrust on these dates:

Sat., Aug. 2 @ 1:00 p.m
Sun., Aug. 3 @ 5:30 p.m
Tue., Aug. 5 @ 10:00 p.m
Wed., Aug. 6 @ 7:00 p.m
Sun., Aug. 10 @ 7:00 p.m 

If you would like to read a couple of reviews, there are some on the right-hand side at Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead page at the Fringe Festival site. We have been rated 4 1/2 kitties. This has us sitting pretty with An Inconvenient Squirrel, Mortem Capiendum, and An Intimate Evening with Fotis: Part Two, which are a couple of shows that come up under the “Users Also Scheduled” area that seem to have connected followings.

A review forwarded to me: http://nattienatnat.livejournal.com/57374.html

I admit it. I read reviews to see if someone is going to call me out on not being a man. I expect to read something along the lines of “SLotD was an absolutlely brilliant masterpiece of a performance, except for the chick trying to be a dude.” My Brilliance is probably right. It’s the hair.

I was invited to see 21 Fringe shows this year. I don’t have a pass because our cast is huge, so I will not be seeing any of them. I do not have $250 or at least 42 hours out of the next 168 that isn’t already dedicated elsewhere. I am sorry to all of you who invited me… had I the ability, I would see them all.

*Last night, my child beat a large group of adults in a game called werewolf, where logic and bluffing are used to sway popular opinion. I have a feeling one or two adults may have figured him out and let it slide. I goaded the crowed into taking me out right away because I was pretty sure that he was a werewolf, and I am a mom first and foremost. Getting taken out early meant that I was available for him to talk to about strategy, and wouldn’t have to out my own son. But he didn’t really seem to need advice. I was Hella Proud of my boy’s game last night.*

Tags: hair, chick, dude, Fringe, MN+Fringe, Shakespeare, Zombie, Brilliance, review, laughter, games, cross-dressing, werewolf, Shakespeare’s+Land+of+the+Dead, Myspace, wit, Land+of+the+Dead

One Man’s Trash

I promised you two cute kid stories last night, but only posted one. I got really tired and started dozing off…

Yesterday, after the baby shower, my child and I made a quick trip to Target to pick up some essentials for moving (and living. I mean, being out of toilet paper is a real pain in the ass). I looked at plastic tubs… when did those things get so damn expensive? Seriously. I think I’m just going to keep using boxes until I have some REAL disposable income. $20 for a decent sized bin… And I had just missed a sale on bins– half the shelving was empty.

While we were shopping, I was showing my off spring how to compare prices for the best value. We had a field day in the paper towel aisle. If this 12 pack costs $15 and this 6 pack costs $8.50, which is the better deal? We got it narrowed down to two packs– a 6 pack for $6.29, or an 8 pack for $5.99. My brilliance told me that the 8 pack was a better deal, but just to mess with him, I said “but the rolls in the 6 pack look bigger.

Don’t say that to an analytical 8 year old if you want to leave the store in a timely fashion. You will end up figuring out the total square footage of paper towel in a pack to determine which pack is the better value.

So we figured out that it’s the 8 pack that is in fact a better deal as far as quantity (quality will be another lesson later on). We put the 8 pack in the cart, and then my child sits on the shelf where the 8 pack used to be and says “Mama– buy me.”
I say “for $5.99?”
He says “No, Mom, you have to read the tag. The $5.99 is for the paper towels, not me.”
“But I don’t see a tag for you. how much are you?”
And my brilliance says, with a huge grin on his face “Mama– I’m priceless.”

Yes, my love. Yes you are.

Tags: Brilliance, shopping, paper+towel, calculations, priceless, target

Not helpful.

I have two cute kid stories for you… both stories about my own. Because he IS cute, and damned if I’m going to let that kind of opportunity slip by me.

We went to a Baby Shower today. After things wrapped up, it was my little boy playing with the children of one of the hostesses. Since no one else had need of them, the coolers became toys, and water got splashed and ice got thrown.

For those of you who have not met my son, I will tell you right now… sometimes, he is a bit of a pansy. And kind of a cry baby. This is the boy who swore off goldfish crackers for two weeks because he felt guilty for eating them after he had assigned personalities to them and played with them a bit. He was so guilty over this, he cried for about half an hour straight. He is slowly toughening up enough to where he may be able to function in society if he should so choose. But he is still an absolute wimp when it comes to pain.

So my recently turned 8 year old got clocked in the head with a large piece of ice. It hurt. A lot. He cried. A LOT. (Ice is a bitch to get hit with, so I get it. But still) Tears streaming down his face, he comes to me, and I check him for blood and feel to see if any bumps are forming. Not that I expect there to be any but it is reassuring for him. It usually helps when I can do something that should make it all better…

Every parent has this moment. It’s the moment where they feel like they should have their parenting rights taken away. They fight it, but the urge takes overe, and there is nothing to be done…

There we were, my brilliance in tears, me looking for a way to reassure him, me going through the list of things that I could do for my poor child’s bonked but not bleeding, probably-not-even-going-to-get a-bump head, and then I start laughing. I keep going, which doesn’t help. People are looking at me funny, my child’s tears continue, and I am laughing. I sober up enough to offer the one thing I could think to do for a head that had gotten hit by a flying projecile and could possibly cause a bump…

“Jared, *snicker* would you like some ice for your head?”

I really hope I didn’t scar him for life with that. I know the ice didn’t.

Tags: ice, parenting, brilliance, my+son, bump, sensitive, pain, cry+baby, cry

0110100110100101011101001011101000101001110101001

A couple weeks ago, my son asked me about binary. And I explained to him about how in our counting system, when we get to 10, we go to double digits, and 100 (10×10) is when we go to three digits… and then I explained about how in binary there is only 1 and 0, and that once you got to 2, that was when it went t0 double digit. Then I counted up to 8 for him, and explained it all out, and he got it (in his words “11 is the new 3”). Then I explained how computers only understood on and off, or 1 and 0. And how programming languages got interpreted to binary. Like, to a computer, what we see as the letter A, it will recognize as a couple of 0s and 1s.

There is about a 5 minute pause in conversation.

Then my child starts up “Mama, letters and numbers are just symbols we use to tell ideas. And lets say there are a bunch of letters in a row. That makes a word which tells us an idea. and a bunch of words together are sentences, that make up an idea. And a bunch of sentences make a paragraph, and that’s an even bigger idea.” And I agreed, and asked if all ideas were the same or not. And he said “No, or we wouldn’t fight.” Then we talked about my dog analogy… that we can both picture dogs, and both be right, but have two different dogs in out heads. eventually he got bored, but he brought it up again with his father later.

Because my kid is bloody fucking BRILLIANT. He is seriously wicked smart, and he gives me joy. He is my Brilliance.

Tags: binary, code, computers, son, brilliance, words, symbols, letters, idea, concept

Memorial Day and the Mind

Topher usually picks up our son right before improv a go go, but with Topher working Memorial day and me and my Brilliance with BBQ plans, we rearranged stuff a bit. So my Brilliance and I met Topher at his place, bringing steaks and salad. Topher grilled, I tossed, and we had a regular old family dinner.

Then I went to Improv A Go Go. We talk about improv being the art of getting lost in the moment… You enter a different mental state, where you are hyper aware but singularly focused on the moment.. where you exist in a place without time… you have all the time in the world, but it means nothing because of the moment you are in. And you practice building scenes and heightening and performing until you don’t think about what you’re doing. You simply do it all out of reflex from this aware and focused mental state.

Instead of going to the Mill or Grumpy’s, I went back to Topher’s neighborhood and attended a bonfire hosted by one of my son’s friend’s parent. The man of the house was a fellow who reminded me of my stage fight instructor… A toughness, a caring intensely without caring kind of thing. The kind of attitude a person gets when they’ve seen too much, something scaring and overwhelming, and have learned to take joy in simpler things, cause that’s all they’ve got.

This is the beauty I find in most white trash/ghetto/impoverished communities. Who needs a $150 meal and a night at the opera when I have a 6 pack and a bonfire, and can appreciate that?

I was half way though my mojito wine cooler thing, when the Man of the House started talking about Korea. Choppers flown into rice paddies and his best man shot in front of him (he showed me a scar where the same bullet hit him in the arm). I have seen my share of horrors, things that make your average American squirm, but never to the degree of THIS.

At one point, the Man of the House told the story of how his wife tried to wake him up by the shoulder, and how she got flattened before he was even awake. Practice. Muscle memory. That hyper awareness and singular focus. Act and react.

Memorial day is a day to remember. To remember that our minds can do things, handle things that we aren’t even aware of… through training and practice and muscle memory we can enter a state of awareness that will get us through horrible things. To remember that we all have this ability, and to honor, HONOR those who have used these skills under extreme circumstances for the benefit of others. It doesn’t matter if you believe in a war or not, a battle of not… those people, human beings, are exercising and training their brains in a way you could never even dare, in ways that will affect them the rest of their lives.

I chose to train my brain in comedy and laughter. I took the easy route.

Dear Readers,

What have you trained your brain in? What are your thoughts this Memorial Day? Do you have a war story?

Also, please take a moment to meditate on those who have passed on for the benefit of something bigger than themselves.

Expert Advice

I do not have a psychology degree. I do not have a philosophy degree. I don’t even have a 4 year degree. My degree is in Computers and it’s an AAS. It’s a tech degree, which isn’t really a degree, and it’s an associate’s degree, which is the degree people get when they don’t know where to go from there. It’s an awkward degree, a pretend degree, a confused degree. It’s the degree the other degrees don’t talk about because it doesn’t require as much study to acquire. And that doesn’t really make it a degree, right?

Just because higher level degrees take more study to obtain, that does not mean that the more one studies the higher the degree you have.

For instance, my son is addicted to the My Sims wii game. He can tell you every character and when they’re likely to appear in the game. He knows where every essence is and which characters will ask you for them. He knows the personality types associated with every character and every essence, and even which personality types each character doesn’t like. He can even mime the actions the characters make to a tee.

My child is an expert in the field of the My Sims game. He does not have a degree, but what he doesn’t have in letters he has more than made up for in hours staring at the television set, wiimote and nunchuck in hand, ignoring his chores in pursuit of mastering that which has piqued his interest to obsession.

It would be admirable if there weren’t still a giant pile of dirty clothes on his bedroom floor.

The point is, anyone can be an expert, and you don’t need a degree to be one. If my seven year old can do it, you can do it. In fact, it’s possible you are already in expert at something. What have you spent hours of time obsessing over? Video games? Scrap booking? Movies? Maybe you spent enough time obsessing over it that you decided to pay an institution enough money to give you a degree stating that you spent time obsessing over it.

If you did, I will admit to being jealous over it.

Truth is my obsession. I have looked at the concept of truth from a variety of angles. I have studied philosophy, meditated, prayed, analyzed, and blogged. I have gone through therapy, talked to gurus, and taken classes.

I am not an expert. Unlike my son, I cannot tell you about all the nuances of truth or where to find honesty. Truth is not so easily defined. How does one define a concept? When you tell someone you love them, does it mean the same thing to both people? If I say I want justice, will you and I agree to some measurement of how much? Is there a tangible element to freedom that is universal?

Dear Reader.
What is your obsession? What are you an expert in? What is the excuse for the pile of dirty clothes in the middle of your bedroom floor?

Tags: Expert, Truth, psychology, philosophy, education, Brilliance, wii, degree, obsession, laundry

Marvel at This

In my house, we do not watch TV. We seldom watch movies. No- our big vice is video games.

I am NOT as big a video game player as Topher, and Topher isn’t nearly as big a game player as our son is. Our son could play video games until he starved himself. Topher will pause long enough to make a sandwhich. I will pause long enough to actually cook something. Even chicken if it’s pre-thawed.

Between the two houses, my son has his pick of consoles and games. At his father’s house, he has an NES, a PS2, and a GameCube. At my house, our child has access to an Atari 2600, an XBox, and a Wii. I don’t think any other child has ever been as spoild in video games as ours.

For Christmas, my son received a copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the wii. I have to admit, it made me nervous. I really enjoy a good superhero ,and I hate it when a game will try to make a storyline fit where it shouldn’t. So we recently cracked open the game.

I’m in love.

The characters all have their attitudes… nothing is forced; all of it just IS and it is wonderful. Spiderman is as corney as he should be, Wolverine as dark, and Deadpool is, well, um, weird.The storyline and animation are sell done, the controlls ar easy to use…

But as I was playing, there was a sense of familliarity over them… something about the jabbing attacks, the characters, the 3D yet still linear game play. The straightforward buy not storyline…. they all combined to make something that was “Newly Nostalgic” which is not only the best description I can come up with, but also the name of my next perfume line.

Tags: comic, video+games, game, Brilliance, Topher, wii, Christmas

My Brilliance

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Brilliance: (n) the quality or state of being brilliant.

Brilliant: (adj) 1. very bright, 2. distinguished by unusual mental keenness or alertness.

I call my son My Brillilance. A part of that is because I love wordplay, and he is my son, and the sun in the sky is bright, or brilliant… No! Wait! Don’t walk away! It gets better, I promise.

The main reason I call him My Brilliance is because he is just that. Brilliant. And I don’t just mean the fact that he is a super genius. Though he is. They did standardized testing the other week, and it turns out my second grader has the math and reading apptitude of a jr. high school student.

That’s right; my 7 year old is puberty smart. I never thought I’d get to use the phrase “puberty smart.” No, YER and oxy-Moron…

So this has led to the school scrambling around to further assess him and place him correctly, making us parents fill out paperwork that doesn’t always make sense.

NOTE: The following conversation is a simplified one, paraphrased to better get the meaning and feel across. My so used much bigger words, and his parents aren’t quite as dumb as I make them out to be (or are we?)

(mark if often applies) “your child is very imaginative, and often loses touch with reality”

Me: This doesn’t make sense

Topher (my son’s father): This doesn’t make sense.

Me: That’s what I said.

My Brilliance: It’s a logic trap. One does not have to lead to the other; they are putting two seperate points in that sentance. Since they are not both true, the statement is false.

Me: I knew that.

Topher: Me too.

The intelligence is certainly a part of what makes my son brilliant What really matters is not how smart he is, but who he is as a person.. the make up of his character. My Brilliance is a very thoughtful and playful person. He understands how to tease, he is sympathetic, he owns himself and his actions. He gets the meaning and intent of a situation seemingly by instinct, and he does not use this against people or for himself. Rather, he tries to find the best situation for everyone involved. He is loving and compassionate, and strong in himself.

He is my brightness on a dreary day. He is My Brilliance.

Dear Readers, what is it that brightens your day simply by being what it is?

Tags: sun, son, brilliance, smart, intelligence, logic, school, Topher, character, wordplay