My parents are traveling, so I didn't go down the shore this weekend to see my mother, but I did phone earlier in the day and they are having a lovely time driving from their place in Florida back to New Jersey.

The two performances of Arabian Nights on Friday and Saturday went well, despite Friday's show being a bit rough due to our having been off for six days. My friend Eric came Friday night and didn't hate it, which was very nice of him.

If you're interested in catching the show, tickets have been available on Play-By-Play, the ticket papering service. You have to be a member (which I'm not), but, if you are, it's been there.

One funny thing happened on Saturday. Well, maybe "funny" is the wrong word. Here's the thing...I developed a particular recurring bit over the course of our rehearsals and my scene partner for the scenes in which I'm doing this bit picked up on it and together we built it into a nice little thing. In fact, our director praised the bit in notes we got just before the opening.

So okay...

Well, we're in one of those scenes on Saturday and I look across the stage and realize that one of my fellow actors had actually stolen my bit. Wow. For those of you who aren't in the business, this is pretty much not done. People have famously gotten fired for stealing bits from their show's more famous headliners. Actors are supposed to come up with their own business unless the director has specifically told them to copy another actor. Problem is that, when this happens, it's the person complaining who tends to look like the bitch, rather than the person who did the stealing.

Hmmm...

Well, lucky for this actor, I don't particularly care. If we had more performances than we do or if this was a higher profile project than it is, I might say something. But it is what it is and I don't care enough to call this person out for doing this.

Truth to tell, my impression is that this actor doesn't have a whole lot of training or experience so I'm choosing to be flattered that he'd want to steal a bit that I created. I have a lot of tools in this particular toolbox and I'm not going create a stink because this person doesn't have as many tools at his disposal as I do.

But I did spend the whole rest of that scene on Saturday thinking "HEY! BITCH STOLE MY BIT!!!"

I saw Person #1 on 26th Street as I was leaving an audition and heading up to temp job interview. This was a guy I've done some work for in the past it was nice to catch up for two minutes on the sidewalk.

Person #2 was someone who'd been at a show I'd volunteer ushered at on Sunday night and recognized me. He stopped me to talk for a minute as we passed each other on 5th Avenue.

And Person #3 was a friend from Village Light Opera who I ran into on 9th Avenue as I was finally making my way home from all my travels today. We also took a few minutes to catch up on the corner before heading off in opposite directions.

You just don't get this kind of stuff when you're tooling around town in your car. Just one of the many things I love about urban living in general and New York in particular.

Check This Out!

This article was a long time in gestation. Originally, I got hooked up with this writer from The New York Daily News by Jeff. I was in the UK and the writer and I spoke on the phone for a good long while about the health care situation in this country and how specifically that related to my life. Then, she sent a free-lance photographer and got some shots of me around Tim's apartment and in the front yard of his building. As you can see, the shot that was used was me in Tim's kitchen.

That was back in February and the story has just made it to the Daily News' website. It's not in the print edition of the paper, but you can't have everything, can you?

Arabian Nights
Michael Chekhov Theatre Company
45th Street Theatre
354 West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Friday, May 9th at 7.00pm
Saturday, May 10th at 3.00pm
Friday, May 16th at 7.00pm
Saturday, May 17th at 3.00pm

Note: There is a another cast that performs the show on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7.00pm during the run. I'm sure they are terrific, but I'm not in the show at those performances.

Admission: $18. (Kids under 10 get in free.)

I've heard that tickets have been available on at least one of the popular papering services that many people here in New York utilize. If you're a member of one of those, it's probably worth checking out to see if the show is listed.

And it went well. I was pleased. People seemed pleased with my work. So, okay.

I haven't written much about this one here, because the rehearsals have often left me frustrated and stressed, rather than feeling creative and fulfilled. Or creatively fulfilled. I'm sure you know how that goes.

So I've been torn about inviting people to this. It's been available on at least one of the papering services and I've advised at least one friend to pick up a ticket that way if he's interested in checking it out.

Here's the thing...this is more children's theatre. Which is fine. But I don't know anyone with children of the appropriate age, which is, say, 6-10 years old or so. And it's hard for me to ask my friends to pay $18 for children's theatre, me or not. Hence the papering recommendation.

I'm going to think on this and may post the full details tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want the details, drop me a line and I'm happy to provide them.

Now, I've always loved trivia games and game shows from Tic Tac Dough through Jeopardy! and, of course, Millionaire. But I've never been on one. I auditioned for the annual Jeopardy! Teen Tournement once or twice in my youth, but that's been as far as I've gotten.

So here's how this happened...I usually browse the ads at Craig's List daily for job opportunities and one day I saw an ad advertising that Millionaire was having a round of auditions. So I applied. And I got assigned a spot today. As it turned out, the auditions were held in the cafeteria up at the ABC offices on the Upper West Side, which is only about 10 blocks from my apartment.

I showed up outside ABC and joined the queue where we were all checked in. Then we were told to turn off our cell phones and were led into the ABC cafeteria, which involved having our bags searched by security officers and passing through a metal detector.

We then collected a manila folder and a Scantron form from a cute ABC guy and were assigned a seat at a table. After a run through the directions and a few pointers from the proctor (It pays to guess!...Make sure you're filling in the block on the Scantron that corresponds to the question you're answering!), we got the go ahead to begin.

The test was 30 multiple choice questions to be answered in 10 minutes. Topics ranged from history and geography to pop culture and religion. It was a good mix.

Now, I went to high school in the Scantron era, so I'm pretty much an expert on filling in the little rectangles. I finished this test in about 6 minutes. And I was pretty confident about 90% of my answers. I ended up having to guess at a handful of the questions. So okay.

While they were running our Scantrons through the machine to check them, there were tee shirts given out. I didn't get one. Which is fine. I have enough tee shirts.

And then we got the results. Out of about 60 people in my group, I would say about 15 passed. One of whom...was ME. Whoo-Hoo!! I wasn't really surprised given my confidence with my answers, but it's always nice to get the confirmation, no?

Those of us who'd passed were shuttled to the other side of the cafeteria where we filled out a questionaire with all the usual questions about being related to or knowing anyone who works or ever has worked for any company that has anything to do with the show. There was also a page of "personality" questions where they basically asked "So what's interesting about YOU?" Eh...

Then came the live interview. This was basically five minutes sitting with a member of the staff and talking up the "personality" points. I tried my best to sparkle pretty.

So we'll see how this goes...apparently, I'll be getting a postcard in the next couple of weeks to let me know if I've actually made it into the contestant pool.

Wish me luck!

By the way, Clive Owen is just as tall, dark, and handsome in real life as he is in the movies. And I spent most of the day within about 8 feet of the man. Not the worst parts of the day, believe me.

The worst part of the day was that we were outside for most of it and it was pretty cold in New York today. The crew was all dressed in parkas and winter hats. Clive Owen had a parka at the ready whenever he wasn't on the camera. The rest of us non-movie stars had to pretend that it was spring or summer or something and basically freeze our asses off all day. I thought I was being clever and wearing my coat to the set...not so much. The wardrobe people decided that there were too many coats in the scene and I had to carry mine on my arm. Sigh.

By the way, my call this morning was 6.00am. I was there for a grand total of 14 hours. It got old fast. There was a small army of gawkers on Fifth Avenue watching us and I just couldn't figure out the appeal. Sure there was a movie star there. But all he was doing was walking down the street all day. Once you've see in once, what's the attraction?

Oh, hey...I spent some time today discovering the wonderful world of craft services. I had some breakfast (grilled cheese with ham and a side of sausage) and some lunch (peanut butter sandwich), as well as some snacks throughout the day (mostly candy), all free of charge from the production. Yummy.

But I may actually end up on screen in this movie. I'll have to remember to go see it next year when it opens.

On Friday, I got a call for work in the morning from one of my agencies...and then got a callback 30 minutes later as I'm heading out the door that the job was cancelled. Sigh.

Well, okay...sometimes this happens. So what to do then?

I packed up my music and went to three different auditions. And then I went to an interview with a new temp agency. We'll see if this new place can get me more work than the two I've already been working with. The rep I met with seemed to really like me.

Anyhow, earlier in the day, while I was in the midst of running from one audition to another, a guy actually spat on me. No lie. I only wish I was kidding.

He didn't mean to do it. He was just spitting into the street and was not paying a bit of attention to me trying to pass him. He apologized and I gave him the evil eye. It wasn't so bad...I didn't get the brunt of it. But this experience prompted me to share something very important:

Jere's Rules For Spitting In Public

1) Never Never Ever Spit in Public. No one wants to see it and no one wants to hear it. And no one wants to deal with the results.

2) See Rule #1.

3) If you absolutely MUST spit in public, meaning that death by choking is imminent if you do not, never spit onto a non-natural surface like concrete, tile, or any sort of pavement. Again, no one wants to deal with the result of your proclivities.

4) See Rule #1

5) If you're in an urban area and can't find a patch of grass to spit on, wait till you're at the corner and spit into a trash can. Please. Really. Not kidding about this. Seriously.

6) See Rule #1

Thank You.

ADDENDUM: I suspect that the above rules were taught to me as a child by my parents, grandparents, or other adults who were concerned with making certain that I grew up knowing how to behave in public. This can't be THAT unusual, right? Didn't everyone's family address issues of when is and is not an appropriate time and place to spit?

Of course, it depends...if I'm working in an office all day, I'm usually good with skipping lunch. But performing? I'm coming to a point where I can be as effective as I want to be without a midday meal of some sort. What's wrong with me.

As soon as I got home and made myself some chili and sat down for a few minutes to eat it, I was fine. It was like I caught a second wind. And I'm just fine now.

Oh, and I was so proud of myself tonight...the company where I'm rehearsing this play did something so offensive and disrespectful to our cast today that I nearly walked out of rehearsal then and there. I'm not going to get into it here, but trust me...I was shocked to the core when it happened. I was thisclose to sending an angry diatribal (is that a word?) email to my director and/or the Artistic Director about what happened. But I didn't...I decided to take a moment, breathe, and just let it go. If the topic comes up at rehearsal tomorrow, I will say something, but I'm just going to put my own feelings on hold for now.

Not going to fly off the handle with indignation tonight. Nope. Not gonna do it. This too shall pass.

It feels mature and adult. Not quite the same satisfaction as ripping someone who deserves it a new asshole, but it'll do for now.

Uh Huh...

There was drama even before the performance started. First, in the row ahead of us (the first row of the third tier) there was such an complete asshole that I just wanted to push him over the side. What happened here was that an usher was simply doing her job and she asked him to put away his blackberry or take it out of the theatre to do his business. He started yelling at her and for the rest of the night was loudly making fun of and baiting this poor woman for having the audacity to do her job and ask him to comply with the rules. You have no idea how arrogant and ugly this man was. Had I been this usher, I'd have gotten security to escort him out...his behavior was so uncalled for that I was relieved when Eric wanted to move at intermission. This guy just poisoned the very air around him.

Anyway, just before the start of the show, a gentleman in a suit came on stage and announced that Daniel Reichard, the actor playing Candide, had been battling stomach flu and would be unable to perform tonight. Instead, Shonn Wiley was called in to perform the role at what sounded like extremely short notice.

I've seen Wiley a couple of times in minor roles on Broadway, and I had no idea what to expect here. But this guy was terrific and hardly missed a beat all night long. He performed off-book and there was never a moment where it appeared that other cast members were leading him through the blocking. He was confident and played the role as though it was his own.

What an exciting night! Wiley got a huge hand at the curtain call, even bigger than Richard Kind, who played Voltaire and Pangloss, and who got the final bow.

The rest of the show was pretty good too. It's a problematic piece and this staging didn't do much to gloss over or attempt to fix the problems. The second act tends toward the sluggish because, by that time, there's not much plot to get through and not much actually happens. There was also an issue with understanding the lyrics, mostly from the opera folks (the Cunegonde and the ensemble), but this was helped by the presence of supertitles on the proscenium.

It's an interesting show. It's good to see something like this once in a while. The big Act II finale, "Make Our Garden Grow," makes me cry every damn time. I'm so glad I went...thanks go to Eric who had an extra ticket. SA-LUTE!

And here, as the title promised, is some stuff I've seen lately:

The Drunken City - This is a new play by Adam Bock over at Playwrights Horizons. It's about what happens when some suburbanites head into the city for a night of bar-hopping and drinking and the chaos that ensues. I thought this play was so much fun! I really liked all the characters and could have spent more time with them. It was funny and real all at the same time. There's a cute conceit that's a rather literal interpretation of making the earth move that was probably a bit much, but still...I really liked it and recommend it.

21 - This is the movie currently in theatre with Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne and others. Again, such fun! This is one of those caper flicks where a group of people bands together to tackle some goliath that seems impossibly difficult to get around. Here, it's a group of brilliant math and science folks from MIT (all impossibly pretty) and their ringleader professor (played by Spacey) who go to Las Vegas to count cards at the blackjack tables and win a fortune. Yes, it's all very Ocean's 11, but there's more here as the characters' stakes rise and fall over the course of 2 hours. Check this one out.

The Homecoming - This was the revival of the Harold Pinter play that just closed on Broadway at the Cort Theatre. Now, I studied this play in college and even wrote a paper on it...and I still don't understand it. It's the story of a dysfunctional family in London, and what happens when one of the grown sons returns home for the first time in nine years to introduce his wife to his father, two brothers and uncle. I loved this production, even if I still don't quite understand what Pinter was going for here. The performances here, especially those of Eve Best as Ruth, the newcomer, and Raul Esparza as Lenny, the slick, slightly dangerous, probably sociopathic brother. Their scenes simply crackled with tension and all Best had to do to become the sex symbol her character is to her husband's family was cross and uncross her legs...and not even particularly seductively. I cannot even explain how Best did this. But wow! I'm so glad I saw this. I have a much greater (though still not complete) understanding of this classic work.

The Music Man - this is the current production at Village Light Opera, down in Chelsea. Now, I've never really liked this show very much and I think the score is merely so-so and the story has plot holes that a band could march through. A friend of mine said the other day that for telling pretty much this same story, he prefers the musical 110 In The Shade and I think I have to agree, if only because 110 isn't done to death as Music Man is. This production was pretty good though and very well sung, as one would expect from VLOG. The full orchestra was also a highlight as we get those elsewhere so seldom these days. The show suffered a bit from lack of directoral vision and it didn't seem like anyone knew what to do with the large ensemble and, whenever they appeared on stage, those moments tended toward the stand-on-stage-in-a-large-semi-circle-and-just-sing-out. And it was weird the way the scene changes were staged. Someone made the decision to stage all the cross-over stuff, which is meant to be done out front whilst the scene change is going on behind, but instead of changing the set behind these moments, the production would then go to full blackout so the set could be changed. And there's nothing that kills a show's momentum like blackouts. They should be outlawed. This production timed in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, including intermission and it could have used the few minutes that would have been saved here. But, on the whole, this was a very solid production of a old chestnut that could probably stand to be retired from the repertoire for a while. If you like this sort of thing, you'll like it. If you've seen The Music Man 600 times, well, this is probably just one more. But, hey, what's number 601 when you've come this far?

The first was a new play at Theatre for the New City called The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, based on the Edgar Allen Poe short story of the same name. I got this one because a friend of a friend was directing and needed a last minute understudy for one role because an actor needed to miss a single performance due to a personal matter. So I've been going into rehearsals for that to learn the role in a few days, which was stressing me out a bit. As it turned out, I would be going on without ever having actually rehearsed one of the scenes. Ooops...well, sometimes that happens, especially in understudy situations like this. I went on this past Sunday though, and it went really well, much better than I'd expected. I was nervous, not so much for the lines and blocking (although there was some of that), but because I was also participating in set changes and there was one particular set piece that was a stubborn bastard with a mind of its own. All was well though and things moved according to plan. Awesome!

So I'm done with that one now. The only play is a children's theatre adaptation of Arabian Nights at the 45th Street Theatre right here in the neighborhood. That's been stressful as well, although for different reasons. But we'll see how it goes.

I just got another email today from another friend, also looking for a last minute replacement in a play that she's doing. I probably can't do it, due to my Arabian Nights schedule, but it's so night to be asked. I love that.

What else is going on? Hmmm...well, I have seen some stuff, but I'll cover that separately. You know, I'm always saying that. I think I will just go for it and do it now while I'm thinking of it.

Anyway, the unusual thing about this family road trip was the destination: Baghdad. We were, apparently, driving from Europe through the Middle East to the capital of Iraq.

Except that my Dad seemed to have made a wrong turn in Israel and we had found ourselves in Northern Africa. Also? We were in a country called Bacca (or Bocca) that doesn't actually exist. I looked at a map in the dream and saw 3 or 4 small countries along the Mediterranean coast of Africa that aren't there in real life. Weird.

Also, I was very upset about having missed Israel. Apparently, we had driven through the entire country in the night and I'd slept through it.

We'd pulled over at a service area off the highway in Bacca and my Dad was consulting a map trying to figure out where we'd gone wrong.

This seems odd, no?

What this involved was showing up at the convention center this afternoon in a suit. After checking in, I cooled my heels for awhile in a huge holding room with probably more than 1000 others. In groups, we were herded onto the set.

The set was a stage with a podium, a couple of large video screens, and a sea of chairs. My fellow extras and I were playing stockholders at a big corporate stockholders meeting at which Paul Giamatti was making a historic announcement. Basically, our job was to jump to our feet and wildly applaud for Giamatti at appropriate times. We did this over and over for about 8 hours.

It was interesting at first, but, by Hour 6 or so, I was done with it and ready to go home.

I'll be interested to see the movie and see what from today makes the final cut. I don't expect to see any screen time at all myself, but you never know.

Even though I've lived in New York for 11 years, I'd never been inside the Javits Center before today. It's nice, I guess...for a big box convention center. It sort of looks like a big crystal palace over in a very industrial neighbourhood of the extreme west side. It's over on 11th Avenue in the mid-30s. The rooms inside are pretty much what you'd expect from a convention center anywhere in the world.

Paul Giamatti looks in real life pretty much the way he looks in the movies. I've seen him in a couple of plays here in New York as well. He seemed to be in a good mood and was joking around a little at the mic with us, although he was busy enough that he really didn't have a lot of time to play around.

I'm glad to be home.

A few days ago, I saw Jim Borstelmann, a cast member of Young Frankenstein, walking down 9th Avenue and managed to forget about it. I loved him in Chicago and The Producers and this is one ensemble member who always managed to catch your attention somehow.

UPDATE: This has been my day for the celebrity sightings. I was getting off the train tonight at Columbus Circle and saw actress Marian Seldes also leaving the station. Fun!