Friday, July 31, 2009

Vampires at the Lake


I wore a cape. The sun was still up, and I wanted to wear a hat, but Maddy was certain that Vampires have uncovered, long flowing hair. Image google "vampire" - none were wearing hats. image google "vampire hat" they were in top hats or fedoras. Fully equipped, I sallied forth.


Aurora Avenue, there was something metal that could have been a shell casing in the gutter. A rehab computer store looked interesting, but the curtain was about to go up. Live performance at Green Lake with teenage actors playing whiny high schoolers, the undead, and reveling in playing pompous teachers and parents.


Vampire Story begins with two young women planning what they will say about their histories when they arrive in a new town. One will go to school, the other one, as her older sister will get a job as a cocktail waitress. The student tells her Drama class that she has been alive for 200 years, beginning life in a French orphanage. She later writes more about it in the form of a play, adding period costumes, a mother who ran a brothel, and hinting at how becoming vampires was the only way that they could have survived. Her classmates vacillate between believing her stories and wondering if she is crazy. Some begin to fear her, as other characters are found to be missing, or die unexpectedly. There was never a concrete resolution which which side the playwright wanted the audience to come down on. The story seemed to change with the retelling, was it an orphanage or boarding school, in France or in England? But that difference could have been due to tailoring the story to her audience. And what of the opening scene where names and ages are recited and memorized? That could have been the formation of a cover story, or it could have been the more responsible character preparing the confused younger one to appear sane, even if she had to fake it.


Hilarious ask the cast session afterwards with a little kid asking one of the actors if he felt uncomfortable with some of the physical closeness in one of the scenes. It mirrored a spot in the play, where the kids were asking the new students about their lives, and the teacher was ruling most of the questions inappropriate.


I stepped outside at intermission to see a huge crowd of bicyclists. They were Critical Mass, escorted by two police officers on bikes, and tailed by police cars, even though this was a trail and not a road. The director spoke to a few cyclers because if they stayed there when the play resumed, they would be heard inside the theater. Someone announced a street corner a block away where they would reconvene, and they mounted up.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Pepe's cousin


Close encounter with a skunk this morning. I was exploring a cul de sac and Sophie-Pup took an insistent run at a small cedar. Under it was a small, wide-tailed black and white creature. I'm positive that it wasn't a cat, because the Sophster regards cats neither as rivals as she does other dogs, nor as food as she does thrushes, ravens, and squirrels. We got surprisingly close, but fortunately the leash ran out before she could touch it. 

All parties left the scene in as sweet-smelling a state as they entered it.

Whew.