Busy day today....scheduling myself lots so I don't get all emo like I did last Saturday when left to my own devices. Distraction is a girl's best friend.... I did four events in three different time zones (sorry, Mountain Time, you weren't doing anything interesting this week).

First activity of the day at 8 a.m. my time was a Hawaiian dance party through some group called Daybreaker. They had a hula lesson, some other hula dancers, and a Hawaiian groove dance party with tunes from Moana and the “Lava” song from the short film.

I am still not feeling super dance-y or super music-y these days, but it was rather nice and I did more or less dance during it, so I did something. It was pretty relaxing, in a sense. I did sign up for their next "staycation party" next week, I believe it's a salsa theme. I did dress up in Hawaiian clothes, which has been nice since I don't feel too many reasons to get dressed up short of plays these days.

They had some Internet difficulties with someone at first, leading to the hostess saying, “We crashed the Internet, which is always a positive thing.” She also said later, “What a time to be alive.” Yup. There was one brief moment of fast dancing where she said, “Get that anger out! I know you need it! I need it too!” There was a virtual group hug. There was a section where you were supposed to hold up a photo of a loved one you can’t see to the camera (sigh). One guy got annoyed that they weren’t somehow paying attention to Black Lives Matter at the start of the show and then someone else was all, “actually this organization does a lot for it,” and then various folks held up signs of it during the dancing, so I guess that was covered.

I then walked around my apartment for 90 minutes, had lunch, and actually put away my groceries or at least took them out of the bags today.

The second activity of the day was a lecture on putting together virtual storytelling events, which had a lot of useful information that I shall hopefully be using or at least passing on to others. There's a page of links I got out of it if anyone cares. I really do need to do a writeup for proposing a storytelling festival to the Virtual Readers Theater crowd...preferably soon.

After that, I attempted to take a nap, which is not really in my skill set.

Activity #3 today was watching Femme Fatale. Tonight's play: The Way It Is. I was surprised to see that Kaitlin, who I met recently through Robert and did the last few Shakespeare plays with, was in this. I was surprised. Not that I saw all of the auditions and I presume if she was auditioning she was in one of the other nights*, but they said in the talkback that the first two women cast in it decided they didn't want to do the part after reading through the entire script, even though we were warned from the getgo that a rape scene was in it. Then Kaitlin stepped in somehow and I have to say, she did an excellent job. The character is certainly ah, difficult and unpleasant and minx-y and definitely Very Mad and she got all of that across very well.

* Amusingly enough, they took photos of the auditions and put them on Facebook. So here are photos of me drinking with Beth and doing a few other parts as well.

The plot of the show is that Yasmine and Cane were together for eight years and engaged, and then Cane decided he couldn't go through with it. Six months after the breakup he comes back to her place to try to get his mother's ring back, and she's hidden it, ah, somewhere... but she openly says she wants to have a baby and doesn't think she's going to be able to date, find a suitable guy, wait the requisite year or so of dating before getting engaged and another year after the wedding to start, etc., etc.... the plea of every lady over 30, really. I don't want to ever give birth myself, but I feel for those people and said so later. But that said, her solution to this is to get Cane to give her some sperm--voluntarily, or a cup of hot jizz, and then eventually she resorts to raping him at gunpoint.

Ah, yes, that did happen, over Zoom, no less. These two had an interesting job of portraying certain things. One presumes they kiss at some point because they lean up to the cameras so you only see their chests. Cane makes a slapping noise at one point so I think he was supposed to be slapping Yasmine, And then there's the rape scene, with the camera on their faces at certain angles. One of the chicks that auditioned (on my night, I believe, she looked familiar) is an "intimacy director" and consulted with them as to how to stage the show. "Zoom intimacy directing, that is definitely something new."

I have to say: the play is disturbing/upsetting, but done well? God knows it's got snappy lines. Stuff I wrote down:

Yasmine:
* "Forgot it was your "blow me" sweater?" Yasmine is ah, turned on by the sweater he wore over. Hooo boy.
* When she doesn't give him back the ring he wanted but some other stuff, she's all "Treasure hunt!" and "Colder...Alaska, baby! You're in fucking Siberia, dude!"
* "Strip search me."
* "You didn't think I could clench a ring in my hoo-ha all day, could you?"
* "The main character has his fucking balls caught in a shredder and dies. Wanna read it?"
* "I want you to fuck me silly, but I'll take a cup of hot jizz."
* "More men would date me with a baby than without."

Cane:
* "No more naked weekends."
* (On talking about how she should go to a sperm bank and read about people's SAT scores) "See, I only got 1280. You don't want me."
* "You aren't the one and you never will be and that's the way it is."

During the talkback afterwards, they asked how to describe the play to others and I think that bit got awkward! Mostly the director wanted to know what people would call the ending of the show and I straight up said "rape." I think a few others did. She posted an article she'd written on the show saying that people have a hard time identifying that scene as a rape, and there's also conversation in it about whether or not Yasmine is called "crazy" depending on which version of the play ending you saw. That last bit reminded me of how when I've told the Hot Water story everyone ALWAYS says my apartment manager is crazy and really, I don't think she's crazy! (If anyone is crazy in that, it's me.) Then I thought, "If she was a guy, would anyone say she's crazy?" HMMMMMMMM. Anyway, I ended up emailing the playwright afterwards because I had some more thoughts on the topic, namely, that we don't really have it in our brains/culture that a woman can rape a man, and we don't see it very often, and it has to be done rather unusually when it happens. Maybe that's why people can't process it when they watch it.

Activity #4: Comedy Crossing: The Animal Crossing Standup Comedy Show, because WHAT THE HECK. Honestly, I don't remember too much of the jokes except for a bit of quarantine stuff ("Everyone's going through a collective trauma, it is PTSD for everyone") and one guy riffing on James Bond having a "three bitch structure," but the Animal Crossing setting was darned adorable. The hostess, Jenny Yang, had an... alien ship and alien in her house? And someone was all, "You may or may not be aware that there's a UFO in your house." She designed a comedy club for the comedians to be in and said, "I don't think Nintendo intended a comedy club." Also, I saw Marti Noxon (?!?!) in the chat! I guess that's my first online celebrity sighting, of sorts.

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