JD Sasser's Wanderings and Musings

Chiang Mai

2009-05-28T03:07:00.006-05:00

Author's note: These entries are post-dated, as we did not have internet access for most of the time we were traveling.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Chiang Mai reminds me very much of Iquitos in Peru, perhaps a bit more developed. It's a place people come, not necessarily for the city itself, but for everything around it. A frontier town, of sorts. After the Elephant Park for a week, it was still a little jarring to be back in a moving city. It's amazing how quickly I can adjust to non-urban life, even after living in New York for fifteen years.

We did hang out with the other volunteers that stuck about Chiang Mai on Sunday evening. We had dinner at Taste of Heaven - the park's sister restaurant. Very nice vegetarian food (and I'm not one to usually say that about vegetarian cuisine), and then beer at the local Reggae Bar. The blaring music and party atmosphere was a little odd after our week, especially as Kristin, John (one of the other American volunteers along with his lovely wife, Gemma) and myself were more interested in discussing ways to help the park. We ended up heading back to our hotel fairly early - exhausted from the week - but it was nice to get to say farewell to all we had spent time with.

Our first complete day back in civilization we really just decompressed. We did laundry, much needed, and met with Jeff at the Park office to discuss materials and ways to help. I felt it was a good meeting - without the cultural and language barrier, it was easier to discuss things like 501c3s, proposals, other foundations that have supported them, etc. I'm hoping Jeff can continue to be out point person, even as he gets more involved with the sister elephant park in Surin.

After our meeting, we felt it was time to move, as Chiang Mai wasn't really speaking to us. So we set about making our plan for Laos. As is turned out, the Park office is also a travel agency, so we were able to book a direct mini-bus to the border cross-over town, Chiang Khong, with little fuss.

The skies started to darken, but we were famished. We went for supper at the cafe Naga, one of the many Thai/Western hybrids in Chiang Mai. Kristin had a strawberry smoothie, and I had some chicken fired noodle curry that came to haunt me a few hours later. It was delicious nonetheless, and worth the future discomfort. Just in time for the skies to open, we hoofed it back to the hotel in the warm rain to pack.

I recommend the Na Inn in Chiang Mai, especially if you've been roughing it for a while. Huge, western style rooms, real working A/C, and from the top floor there is a killer view of the mountain and several wats. It's modern, clean, and relaxing, and had little hassle at all for 600 baht a night.

We rested a little, then got cleaned up and decided we had to go see the famous Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. We did find a few gifts and nice clothing items, but honestly, as we had done the Sunday Market the week before on our arrival, and as we have Chinatown in NYC, I was not that impressed. The Sunday market prices were much cheaper, and there were less touts and hawkers in your face every ten seconds. I don't know why they think that works as a sales tactic with westerners - it completely turns me off. In fact, the one booth that we did actually buy something from was run by a little, older Thai lady who spoke fabulous broken English, and who was very polite and calm. She asked where we were from, and then she said she was from the north. She then said she was cold (it was a little breezy, having rained, but still warm by my standards), and then she asked how cold it got in New York. When I said zero degrees (Celsius), her eyes almost popped out. I couldn't tell if she thought I was lying - but it's not Thai custom to say that sort of thing out loud.

We then headed back to out hotel, full of anticipation for our crossing the Mekong into the heart of northern Laos. We started our walk through old Chiang Mai, but got turned around. It's easy to do that in Chiang Mai. Fair enough - a three dollar tuk-tuk ride home didn't seem that exorbitant. Onward, traveler.

Elephant Park - Last Day

2009-05-28T01:58:00.007-05:00

May 16, 2009

Our night up at the Haven was nice - a fitting end to this amazing week. Pom cooked dinner for us, a spicy chicken curry alongside pumpkin, and wok fried chicken legs to die for. One of our British friends - Sue - a wonderful woman with a great sense of humor - brought a bottle of rum to share, so that was doled out as we sat by candlelight, asking Pom questions about her, Lek and the park's history.

We also discussed ways to possibly help the park, including finding channels for much needed fund raising. Pom seemed pleased and eager to consider this - an interesting shift from her sometimes stoic and grounded demeanor. She then told us a story about how elephants were created, a legend about their trunk and original human nature. It was a lovely finish to the night, and we tucked under our mosquito nets, not even needing to dream about free elephants as there were four happily wandering about somewhere not far from us in the jungle.

Morning would mean breaking camp, and going out to find the elephants. Yes. Find the 'phants. They can roam as much as 3-5 miles in one night - but usually stay closer to the camp as the grazing is quite good. We have awesome footage of coming upon them - they appear like stone boulders or some ancient civilization's monoliths at first - rising out of the jungle. Of course, Rock and Roll Mahout and the others had found them earlier, we were merely led to where they had congregated. Even still, after seeing how well they blend into the jungle, I would not want to trust my meager tracking skills over three miles to find an elephant.

We rounded up the group, human and pachyderm, and headed back down. It was a little muddy, and there was a moment where Kristin and I almost were made the human filling of an elephant sandwich: Jungle Boy was leading, or more like sliding down a muddy embankment - very deftly, I might add, for a thousand pound elephant, but rather slowly. We were behind him, and Sri Nguen, the grand lady, was behind us. Well, J.B. hesitated at one moment, so we slowed behind him, right as Sri Nguen hit the muddy patch. We escaped by quickly shuttling to the side, but only just. I caught the second half of the episode on video. Watching it now is really quite funny - both of us are out of breath. J.B. and Sri Nguen didn't seem phased at all.

We then made it back to the park, and it was time to say our farewells. We opted for the later bus back to Chiang Mai, which gave us time to see the birthday boy Tong Tae again, and others. A special treat was getting back in time to see Fae Mai, her mother, and auntie Sri Nguen, get to play in the field and mud for the first time. Mom had been getting restless (you try spending a month in the same enclosure as a 250 lbs. newborn), and she had actually tried making a break for it in the morning by dismantling part of the pen walls. So Lek decided she needed to listen and give mama what she wanted: some wander time.

This is the genius behind Lek's program - by listening to the elephants, and paying attention to what they need, and by only using positive reinforcement, she doesn't have to keep them chained or penned all the time. Her eventual goal is to have enough land that each family group gets their own area, without the need for constant rotation during bath time, feeding time, etc.

At any rate, it was a big, scary world at first for Fae Mai, who spent most of her time protected between Mom and Auntie, or under Mom as she walked. It was a beautiful sight, and having just seen four elephants walking free in the jungle, this added bonus melted even my usual cynical side. This place and the work being done here is not just life changing in the moment. It continues to affect you over time.

That would be a phenomenal ending to any story, but as I didn't write this one, I'm only commenting and observing - there is a postscript. We had packed up and were merely waiting for the van to leave, when we walked over to where Sri Nguen usually camps, under the elevated walkway. Aside from Mom and Fae Mai, Sri Nguen usually keeps to herself. As I mentioned, she is the oldest, and she has seen so much abuse in her 76 years of life. Luckily, she has had the last five years at the park, and she definitely knows her situation has changed for the better.

There was no one about except her mahout and us. It takes a special kind of person to mahout a solitary elephant - and he seemed both at peace and very lovingly attentive to Sri Nguen. Kristin had developed a particular connection with Sri Nguen over the last few days. We came closer, and she ever so slightly stepped towards us. We were able to say farewell - eye to eye - and it seemed she knew we were reluctant but had to go. Then she stepped forward again, and tilted her head slightly lower, placing her forehead against mine. If it wasn't a blessing of some sort, then I don't know what else it could have been. She then repeated the gesture, slightly longer this time with Kristin.

I get sad and a little choked up thinking about it, and about how this magnificent creature, so mistreated for most of her life, could be so beneficent and trusting of humans now. She knows - and has forgiven - and was perhaps thanking us for coming and caring, if even for just a little while.

That is the magic of this place - the magic I tried to write about earlier. I know that Kristin and I will help in any way we can so that hopefully more elephants can be spared cruelty and abuse - and so that they can find peace. So that more can be born if not free, then at least into a life where they will be cared for, loved, and respected. So that they as a species can survive our insatiable greed and its subsequent destruction of their habitat.

A few more photos...

2009-05-22T23:11:00.007-05:00

Feeding Time - Sri Nguan

Baby's first walk out in the World
(Mom, Baby Fah Mai, and Lek)

Spot the Elly (Som Boon)

A walk with Friends

The Climb to Elephant Haven

Jungle Boy

Spot the Elly, Again!

Elephant Park day 5

2009-05-22T06:23:00.004-05:00

May 15, 2009

With all the rain, the river rose so much overnight that we were told we may not get to go to Elephant Haven. Pom needed to check to make sure the bridge was intact - we would hopefully know by lunch.

So the day began like most others: breakfast, elephant shovel duty and feeding. Today, we assisted with elephant food prep. I knew visually just much food it took to feed 32 elephants, but not viscerally - as I hadn't been there for the complete food prep process as of yet. I was given machete duty - to chop huge, hard pumpkins into easier to manage pieces for our friends. My arm was well sore by the end, and my left hand covered in a fine, sticky orange mush from the pumpkin innards. But it was rewarding - seeing all the buckets full for feeding time. Most of the work for the volunteers here is like that - with the right attitude very rewarding. It is menial, but without the volunteers, the park would have to hire other people to do it, and that would take money and resources away from the other much needed projects, including maintenance.

We got to feed our friends shortly after, and specifically got to feed our gentle favorite giant friend -Sri Nguan - one of the elephants the Dutch woman name Antoinette helped to save. She is surrogate matriarch to Mae Perm and blind Jokia. Sri Nguan is massive - and the oldest gal at the park at a ripe old 76.

Word finally came that we were to head to the Haven - after we had watched a DVD of footage of our volunteer week at the park, shot by their photographer, Mai. They did a great job catching all of us at awkward work moments, and at lovely candid ones with the elephants. It'll be another great way to remember the park, and our week there.

So we shouldered our day packs and raced out the front gate to make the hike with the elephants. We saw them just over the first hill, and double timed it to catch up with them. Luckily, an elephant's pace is easy to match, especially on the Haven hike as they stop to graze every fifty meters or so. Young bamboo and banana leaves seem to be their favorite grab snacks within reach on the side of the road.

We were accompanied by four elephants up the mountain: Mae Sri Nguan, Mae Boon Ma, Mae Kaew, and the ever gregarious tusker, Jungle Boy, and of course his Rock and Roll Mahout. I started calling his mahout this as he always seemed to be singing, and his mane of hair with his straw cowboy hat was worthy of 80s rock stardom in and of itself. Normally his repertoire was Thai pop songs, but today on the hike he made reference to "West Side Story" with "Something's coming, something good!" as one of the elephants came up behind him on the road. Ah, the power of satellite T.V.

Jungle Boy has a bit of a reputation at the Park for being a troublemaker, a six year with glorious tusks and a penchant for mischief. He is obviously proud of his tusks, but despite his rep, he was golden on our hike. We did have to bribe him to get the last 500m up the mountain - luckily Kristin had some dried apples - which I'm guessing J.B. had never tasted before judging by his expression when we fed him one. We coaxed him up the rest of the way, just as you would leash train a puppy, his trunk and mouth searching for the next little sweet tidbit. When we stopped, he was still so invested in the next treat, he opened his mouth over Kristin - who fit neatly between his two tusks. Rock and Roll Mahout then set him loose, and he and the other three were on the own recognizances for the rest of the night.

The Haven is beautiful - on a piece of government land that Lek leases. Once you are actually up on the mountain itself, you can't really see human development. It is rough and fairly raw, but like Thailand in general it is caught between itself and the "new" way of life here. In order to reach the Haven these days you have to walk through a new resort under construction - complete with sprinklers and manicured lawns (in Southeast Asia?! What are they thinking?) - a totally idiosyncratic presence here in rural northern Thailand. And a little disgusting, in my opinion. All the workers had formed a "temporary" shantytown across the river from the resort - another idiosyncrasy. Their tin roof shacks all had satellite dishes, but the conditions looked deplorable. I've only seen worse in rural Peru.

These are the living dichotomies of Thailand. Million dollar resorts next to bottom rung poverty. A culture that reveres elephants, but also tortures and exploits them. It's not a black-white world, and none of these things are easily explained or solvable. One can only do what Lek does, and try to solve things one issue at a time. And then hopefully over time those individual things become a multitude, and real change has occurred.

A Photo Blog

2009-05-22T05:42:00.007-05:00

Author's note: We've had trouble finding fast enough internet connections to upload any quantity of pictures or movies, so please accept this meager offering. More will come once we reach bigger cities along our route.

Kristin and Tong Di, Tong Tae's mother

Bath time

Elephant Park - day four

2009-05-22T05:02:00.012-05:00

Thursday - May 14, 2009

It's amazing how quickly you just get used to seeing elephants. You forget how huge and majestic they are when you see them everywhere, day after day, until you have a moment like the one I just had. One of the four year olds just turned and looked at me, her bright eyes taking us in where we sat. Mist and clouds covered the mountains, and there is a trumpet in the distance, and an earth rumbling roar. They speak the same language as the clouds and thunder, the ancient tongue of the mountains, one we will never know, are too young to fully understand. All that prior thought goes away, that taking for granted of elephants and their presence, and left in its place is the shimmer of the magic I spoke of before.

We have fallen into the routine here, but in a good way. Work, then break, then time with the elephants, then rest. And everywhere, elephants. The morning's task was to clean the buffalo pen. By far, the muckiest, smelliest of any job here. I will take elephant pen duty over buffalo on any given day. And I will also spare you the details, but suffice it to say it is far messier than all the other jobs combined.

A front moved in, and a gentle rain has started, punctuated here and there with tropical downpours and then spells of clear. Not the monsoon yet, but she is on the way. Half of our group heads to Elephant haven today, a nearby property Lek leases from the government, where the elephants can roam freely. We will get to spend Saturday there ourselves. But for today, due to the wet sky stuff, our job is to peel the remaining bark off the railings of the new addition prior to varnishing. The new addition is an open patio-lanai like structure, about a hundred feet by twenty five feet. Remind me in the future that if I ever build one for myself, to strip the damn railings of their bark before I put it together. We sort of joked with some of the other volunteers that maybe this was "busy work", the type created to keep us occupied on a rainy day. Considering there are a thousand railings, it's truly idle hands and all, all in good spirits.

Finally, in the afternoon, the rain let up. Mind you, we certainly weren't searching for work: there was still the unloading of the days rations, then processing that and loading the food baskets, feed the elephants and bathe them (easy today with the rain), and take plenty of pictures and laugh at the 'phants as they play in the mud.

We did however, get to take a small excursion. One the the British gals in our group had a reaction to some bug bites (There are lots of bugs here. It is the jungle.), so we got to head to the local village to get some creme from the clinic. The town has electricity, a few shops, a lovely wat that has a splendid view of the valley and park, and even a hand of Buddha imprint in stone.

Relics of that nature dot the countryside here - evidence of Buddha's trip through this area (although historically speaking, he never made it this far east, and the prints are usually giant sized. Perhaps they are more symbolic - evidence more of the spread of Buddhism than the Buddha's actual physical presence. I won't argue it.) There is also a relic of the Buddha in the golden spire atop the hill, at the top of 108 stairs - a bone brought to the temple after his cremation. Again, I'm not a doubter, but likewise if you piled all the wood of the cross together with all the Buddha relics, you'd have a hell of a tag sale at the ready. I wonder how many there are of each in the world.

It was great to have "Brad" aka Mammoth there, as he had been a monk until his teens - so he was able to explain all of the symbolism. He also let us get in - there was a question as to whether we could or not as some of the ladies were in tank tops. The dome pinnacle was stunning, and of course aligned to the cardinal directions.

The village of Mae Taeng was a little resistant to have the Park near it at first. Lek approached them, explaining her mission and the goals of the Park, and assuring them of their safety with so many elephants so close. The tide really turned when she hired the ladies to do the massage (at about 120 baht, or 4 USD each). The tallies added up quickly, sentiment changed when the steady flow of cash into their economy remained steady. Like I explained before, it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

Thai massage is done with the clothes on, and incorporates pressure points and stretching. While you probably can't get one for $4 in the States, I highly recommend them. I had never had one before coming here, and they are very effective. The fact that these ladies sometimes bring home $25-30 a night in this rural economy is a big deal. Add to it that the Park is now the biggest employer in the valley, with the maintenance and construction jobs as well. They employ over 70 people, including mahouts, at various times throughout the year. And as "Brad" explained on our walk, the fact that village has gone from lukewarm to happy to have Lek and the Park is exactly the kind of community support the Park needs. Lek has managed to build a strong community support base here, and an international one through the volunteers as well.

It was a lovely hike back through the valley, around the hill the village was on. My feet were aching by now, having been on them non-stop for almost four days. To make it all the more interesting, the break in the rain caused the emergence of millions of may-fly like creatures to take wing - like may-flies, but much, much bigger than their American cousins. You would look up at the sky and just see black winged things everywhere.

We showered, then dodged the plague to get to dinner. Luckily, it rained again, ending the insect free-for-all as quickly as it had come - so we were able to get our evening massage in peace. A much needed foot one this time, in relative peace before heading to bed.

Elephant Park - day three

2009-05-22T00:08:00.005-05:00

Kristin's Birthday - May 13, 2009

Magic is hard work. There's this modern fairy tale version where the godmother or wizard just waves their wand and poof! Your wish is granted. But if you read a little, the old stories remember: those wish spells require hard work, years of preparation, sometimes even a sacrifice.

The Elephant Park is exactly that - a magical place that requires constant hard work - and the sacrifices made by Lek and others are astonishing to consider.

Today was an amazing day. Let me begin with that. It was also Kristin's birthday, so there was already a glimmer around it - but there is more. We woke up, had a shower and ran to breakfast - our exhaustion overwhelming our body clocks - we were now running on "Thai time". The duty for the day: shoveling elephant dung out of the nighttime enclosures. No one every thinks about that duty when they want to run away to the circus as a kid.

Luckily, despite the size and quantity, elephant poo is pretty easy to shovel. Their digestion is not that effective, so a good portion of the poo in question is undigested fiber, making it rather easy to shovel. i was also surprised that it didn't smell that much.

The second job for the morning was cleaning the elephant mud pit. Sounds like a Sisyphean task, which it sort of was, but apparently the elephants don't like the way the water buffalo and cattle smell - or the offerings they leave in the mud. So we were charged with skimming the water and top inch or so of mud off the top along with any buffalo poo we found. Kristin opted out, it was her birthday after all, and instead helped seed pumpkins for the elephant lunch. I lasted about an hour, then cleaned off in the river and went to help in pumpkin land.

As you can tell, there is always something that needs doing here. We then unloaded the daily delivery of food - 15000 baht worth - or about $500 per elephant per day. I'm roughly guessing about three tons worth of food - all bananas and cucumbers. We sorted out the bananas that needed to ripen a little more, then filled the baskets for the 'phants. Feeding time followed, then shortly afterwards, our own lunch.

After lunch, we played a little game instigated by our coordinator, "Brad", to build a group dynamic. It consisted of having two lines facing one another, holding up a tent pole with only our index fingers. We then had to lower the pole to the ground as a group. You would think two days of corn cutting and shoveling would make this an easy task, but it's really more about communication than division of labor. Coming from a theatre background, Kristin and I are used to these kind of games, but it's always an interesting study of human interaction with what I tend to think of as "civilians". The usual characters and personalities emerge: the boss, the quiet laborer, the fusser, the smart-ass, the talker, the ADD child, etc. At any rate, it took us two attempts, and we had a laugh.

Then the time came to hold a lottery to get to spend time with the new baby, Fae Mai. At first, it didn't seem like we had the luck of the draw, but then, as it was Kristin's birthday, they chose her to get first round. I got to tagalong, being the partner. We were fortunate enough to get an entire two and a half hours with her and mom in their area. At first, Pom accompanied us with their mahout, but after half an hour or so, Lek came in with us.

Fae Mai is as rambunctious as a toddler can be. She runs and plays, and is already more of a handful than you can imagine - a two hundred kilo handful. That's more than I weigh. Much more. She is powerful, but testing her strength, and she is still learning to completely use her trunk. Yep. That's right. Elephants have to learn how to use their trunk to grip and pick things up. Lek said she is amazingly outgoing for a month old, and most babies are not as accepting of humans. But considering all the positive attention she gets, it's no wonder. What is amazing, is that Mom allows humans in with her and baby.

Fae Mai also apparently likes men because they are strong enough to support her weight. I found this out first hand, when she decided it was time for a nap. She rolled over on her side and put her massive head in my lap. If I hadn't had the luck of having a pole behind me, I would've been flattened. She napped for half and hour or so, then it was playtime with Kristin and I once more.

There is something beyond humbling sitting on the ground, a baby elephant in your lap, and her one ton, ten foot tall mother comes over check on baby - to look up and see this wall of grey hide, hair, feet wider than trees, her trunk gently snuffling her progeny. They are magnificent, intelligent, and caring creatures. The fact that Mom now trusts humans enough to allow this after so much abuse in her life is testament to Lek's ideas and program here.

Mom would also rumble every once in a while, Lek explaining that she was calling for an auntie to come spell her so she could get a rest. Yes. They do that for each other as well.

We had a wonderful talk with Lek, about elephants and their treatment, her ideas for the program, and the hardships she has faced. Unfortunately, there have been a number of people who said they were going to raise funds for her, and did - to the tune of thousands of dollars - who then used the money for other purposes. An organization recently contacted her to ask how she had used the $10,000 dollars they had donated to this other group in her name, and Lek had to tell them she hadn't seen a dime. She's since formally ended her relationship with that group, and is rightly wary about people claiming to want to do good using here name from far away. She is a totally self-sufficient woman, you can see that, and has had to overcome such hardship - not unlike her elephants. From beatings, to cultural prejudice, to death threats, all from humans threatened by what she is trying to do - so that kind of fraud is only doubly insulting. If it is possible for us to find ways to help her, I will be certain the money goes directly to her and the park, and not through a proxy.

How does one describe playing with a baby elephant? I'm running out of adjectives for this journal. Her favorite game for the afternoon, besides getting Kristin to scratch her all over, was climbing me. She's figured out how to step up on the bottom rung of the fence of her enclosure, which she then tried with me. I was just strong enough to support one of her legs with both hands, and then she would "climb" me, and put her mouth on my ear or head, or back of my neck. Extremely fun, and extremely, extremely tiring. She steamrolled me flat more than a couple of times.Lek had her camera going the whole time, and we got some wonderful photos of the experience.

We got cleaned up (sound familiar?) and had another documentary before dinner, this one about the Dutch woman who helped Lek rescue two elephants a few years back from Surin province. The area is famous for their elephant festival, but their numbers are dwindling, and many of the elephants are severely mistreated. It's hard not to be discouraged, but this doc showed what can be accomplished when you have a small goal (in this case $8000 USD to rescue an elephant) - and the massive amount of good that one small act can achieve.

Dinner was much appreciated, and a few cold Chang beers ("Chang" is Thai for Elephant) even more so. Shortly after dinner though - I could tell something was doing as "Brad" asked me where Kristin was sitting - they switched off the lights and surprise! They brought forth two lovely, frosted birthday cakes (one for Kristin, and one for another volunteer whose birthday had been a few days earlier). The detail on the cake was phenomenal - a picture of Fae Mai and the words "Happy Birthday Ms. Kristin McLaughlin!" All done here at the park's kitchen. It doesn't get much better a birthday than that. There was only one way to end the day: another beer, a massage (Sore shoulders and arms today. Hmmm. I wonder why?) and then bed.

Elephant Park - day two

2009-05-21T23:40:00.006-05:00

Tuesday May 12, 2009

Our first day was so packed, it's amazing to recall day two and realize we did even more. We awoke pre-dawn, as per our new body clock's insistence, and had a hearty breakfast, complete with banana frites and nescafe. There's something about nescafe - the freeze dried kind - that is a visceral childhood travel memory for me. For some reason here in the tropics, it just tastes great. I'm sure it's exactly the same at home, but setting makes everything better, right? Knowing there are elephants 30 feet away certainly adds something to it.

Our work detail for the first real day volunteering seemed like the hardest at first glance: harvesting corn stalks. We piled onto a truck, machete in hand, to head off 40 minutes to a nearby farm. They have a nice deal with some local farmers - we clear their field, and take the just harvested stalks for the elephant's nightly feed. We lucked out that it was a little overcast to start, otherwise it would have been especially brutal in the heat. We were joined by several of the mahouts (a mahout is an elephant trainer - more on them later), and several village folk. They laid charge to the field, and we managed to fill the truck in about an hour and a half, roped bundles piled high with maybe an acre's worth of stalks. It was the perfect amount of work - any less would've seemed light, any more might've become drudgery as the sun was getting full strength.

We then climbed on the pile, and rode home atop the bundles like conquering heroes into Rome. Okay, not quite. But there was a definite feeling of accomplishment. A small endorsement here: at Campmor we nabbed a small handheld fan that at first seemed like an impulse buy, but turned out to be a life saver. It had a little watergun spritzer, and the little fan cooled you down quite easily with a spritz. I donned a shirt on my head, sheik-style, to stay cool and keep the back of my neck from scorching in the near equatorial sun. On the way home we did stop to resupply the park with beer - Chang and Singha. Much appreciated later in the day.

Corn duty took us through to lunch. We got cleaned up (a constant theme here) had another wonderful lunch, and then got on to varnishing railings on the park's new building addition, made of tropical wood. Then it was bath time - first of the day for us with the elephants as we missed the morning session. The river was nice and refreshing, and the elephants actually finished bathing before any of the humans were ready to get out. We would've gladly scrubbed and bucket dowsed them more, but they were on the the dirt and mud portion of events.

We got cleaned up, again. Lek then showed us her documentary about the brutal methods used to break elephants - the same methods used to "train" them to do the circus and painting shows so prevalent in Thailand. I had no idea the extensiveness of it, or how ingrained it was in the society. Lek's stance against it caused her to be disowned by her own family - and since then she has led a crusade to raise awareness, and in general educate people about what is being done. It's not so much a lack of caring on the part of Thais and Westerners alike, it's a type of ignorance - in some cases willful. Most people don't even know about trekking until they see tourist literature about it - and they certainly don't know that an elephant shouldn't have more than 200 pounds on it's back, or it can cause spinal damage to the point it can't give birth. They also certainly don't know the methods used to get that elephant to "accept" riders on its back.

Dinner followed the documentary - conversation was fairly quiet - we were tired from the day, and sobered by the film. This was followed by a Thai lesson from Pom, the fiesty and spry park coordinator. I'm guessing she is hill-tribe, and her age of a certain number shall we say - but you would never know it. She also speaks superb English, and at least French, as she gave us a comparative grammar lesson, conjugating in French, English and Thai.

When the opportunity opened, we nabbed spots for Thai massage, offered by some of the local ladies. The lesson continued in the background, and I can now speak fluent Thai, but only when getting a Thai massage. The massage ladies are part of the partnership Lek has formed with the local village - providing a good bridge between the park and the community: income and jobs for the local people, and they in turn provide the kind of support the park needs, whether by massage, or in the numerous construction and maintenance projects around the park.

After that, we hit the sack. On the walk back to our room, we could hear singing in the dark. There is always one mahout singing Thai pops songs around the park. Imagine 80s power ballads, crooned in Thai. It's strangely funny and entertaining at the same time. Another magical day at the elephant park.

Elephant Park - first day part two

2009-05-21T23:16:00.008-05:00

The elephant in Thai society is revered, even venerated at some shrines. It is the symbol of the royal family. But the treatment of domestic elephants is nothing short of barbaric. A lot of the footage of the documentary we saw was difficult to watch.

Lek's work is a break from the brutal "tradition" of elephant training, which said training is really a lack of compassion or understanding of animal rights and psychology. Since logging was banned in Thailand in the mid 80s, literally thousands of elephants were put out of work. Hundreds are still used for the trade illegally, but most of the rest are used for the tourist/trekking industry. As there are no laws protecting elephants (they are considered "livestock") there are little to no penalties for hurting, wounding or even killing one. Jokia's blindness was a result of this treatment - she was shot in both eyes by a slingshot by her owner because she could not haul heavy trees at her age. Lek's oasis for 30+ elephants is but a small refuge - there are still 1600+ domestic "working" elephants in Thailand, many of whom live under dubious conditions.

After the documentary, we had the amazing fortune to attend a basi welcoming ceremony. The park had asked the local village shaman to welcome the volunteers. A good handful of our group are a little young to understand the significance of it, but it was something Kristin and I had been interested in finding. As it is usually a family ceremony, you must be invited by a traditional hill tribe home.

The hill tribes of Northern Thailand and Laos believe that we all have 32 souls. When we are ill, or bad luck has befallen us, it is thought that some of your souls may have wandered away or gotten lost. The ceremony reunites them in your body - a homecoming of sorts. The shaman asked four volunteers to sit around a traditional offering; I wanted to be sure Kristin got to be a part of it - luckily as our group was a little gun-shy, both of us got to be in the quartet. The shaman sprinkled us with water from a handful of traditional dousing herbs, and then to symbolize the reunification tied a white strand cord around each of our wrists - a bringer of luck. It's tradition to wear them until they fall off of their own accord, pun not intended.

Dinner was just as diverse and tasty as lunch, and was accompanied by a group of teenagers from the local Lanna music school. The Lanna culture, or northern Thai culture, is considered distinct from the rest of the south. The people of the hills here remind me a little of the Occitan and the Pyrenean people, easy to smile, fiercely proud of their regional identity, a part of a country drawn on a map, but really a people and country of their own. There is a sense of ease about them that their southern, more cosmopolitan neighbors lack. The musicians all burst into a smile anytime I made eye contact with them.

Lanna music, as far as I can tell, is modal, much like its Chinese neighbors. The two stringed bowed drum box, the plucked mandolin, the bamboo flute and drum - seem similar to other instruments of the region. What is interesting is that all the melodies are doubled, with one on the lead, and the other adding flourishes - such as plucked doubles. The melodies are parallel, and seem to be able to be repeated, like Indonesian gamelan. The end is called for when the lead player starts to slow down, and the rest follow winding down like a clock.

After dinner it was time for bed. Even the sound of the water pump outside couldn't keep me awake for long. Day one had slowed time, with all we had done we had only really been at the park for twelve hours!

Arrival in Chiang Mai and the Elephant Park

2009-05-17T23:56:00.006-05:00

Author's note: These entries are postdated, as there was no internet with the elephants. Yet. Thank goodness.

Saturday May 11, 2009

We arrived in Chiang Mai on a no hassle, no frills flight from Bangkok Air. The airport in Chiang Mai is a single terminal, regional deal - very easy to navigate. We had our bags within minutes, and were in a cab before you could say boo. The green mountains here are constantly visible in the distance, and the air here is thankfully cooler than in Bangkok. But it still can get quite hot this time of year.

Sunday night is street market night in Chiang Mai. Vendors line one of the main drags in the old town and it's a friendly mob scene from about sundown to eleven. Lots of great clothing for cheap, the usual touristy knicknacks, and amazing streetside thai massage. For 120 baht, about three bucks, an hour rubdown by little local ladies in a big comfy chair. The sounds of the market almost lull you to sleep and the travel knots are kneaded away. We did a little shopping, and hit the sack as the next day we had to be up bright and early. I'll write more about Ciang Mai later as we're planning on spending a few days here after the Elephant Park.

Sunday May 10, 2009 - part 1

We went to the Elephant Park office at 7.30 a.m., having accidentally stumbled across it the day before in our wanderings. We signed in, and had enough time to get a quick breakfast and coffee at the cafe across the corner. It's a fairly sizeable group for the week - about a dozen - some one weekers like ourselves, and some folks staying for two - and about an even spilt between North Americans, Europeans, and Auzzies.

Our group leader is a charismatic and quirky Thai, who asked us to call him "Brad Pitt". (We shortly found out his real name is "Mammoth", no irony lost on this during his explanation.) He gave us a basic intro to the park, and we watched a DVD in the van on the way made by some American filmmakers about Lek and the elephants. Interestingly, since the doc was made, she's expanded the park even more, and the fruits of her work are evident in the new projects all about. We made a pit stop at a 7-11 (they are everywhere) and loaded up on some gatorade - it being anotehr scorcher of a day.

Lek's valley, northwest of the city, is staggeringly beautiful. Words sort of fail. After an hour long drive, we came down the other side of a dense green mountain and it opened up before us into a fertile valley. And there they were: the Elephants. It was definitely a "Jurassic Park" moment. I didn't have a snarky Jeff Goldblum-esqe comment ready. I was just inexplicably happy to see them there, spread through the field in the distance, great grey sentinals against endless green.

Our bags followed in another pickup, but we were dropped off and whisked away immediately on a tour of the main area. We were introduced to the new star of the park - baby Fae Mai - or "New Sky". Four weeks old as of the 17th. The mother happily muched on some squash as we cooed in amazement at the big youngster.

How to describe an elephant baby? I feel like the proverbial blind man, or that I'm living that passage from St. Ex's "Little Prince". Fae Mai is a rambunctious month old, and she scrambled about the pen as we scratched her through the bamboo railings. Her skin is tough and her hair is bristly. Her trunk, which she is still learning to us, writhes around like a snake with a mind of it's own. Her eyes are bright and curious, and she has a smile not quite of this earth, making her name more than appropriate. It's wonderful to know she will never live in life in chanis, or in painful servitude.

We were then introduced to most of the rest of the elephants during feeding time, a twice daily ritual. As you can imagine, their appetites are elephantine. Big baskets of fruit awaited: bananas and melon and pumpkin. We were shown how to load up a few into their awaiting trunks. I had Mae Perm, a spry 40 or so year old who eagerly accepted my bananas, but would spit the pumpkin out. This was fine until we ran out of bananas, and after two or three pumpkins in a row, she got the message and sighed loudly, proceeding to munch on the harder skinned pumpkins.

After their lunch, it was time for a bath in the river, also a twice daily ritual. There are several family groups at the park, one centered around the yearling Tong Tae (more on him later), and a few others based on individual elephant dynamics. We later found out that the elephants choose their own groupings and family units. We were allowed to accompany the medium group, along with Mae Perm and Jokia, the blind elephant. Mae Perm is Jokia's eyes, acting as her seeing-eye friend about the entier park. Jokia was blinded due to abuse she received working as a logging elephant. She is a gentle, huge creature, and it is sickening to think of anyone harming her. We splashed water on them, and scrubbed their backs with brushes. We had earlier advice not to stand downstream from the elephants, but as any offerings they made in the water floated, it was farily easy to dodge them as they came downstream. For safety safe, we were not to stand directly in front of their heads, or on the feet side if they were lying on their sides in the water. Seeing how quickly they can move proved this to be wise words to follow. There was then a short break, where we got some ice cream from a local tuk-tuk vendor (the equivalent of the the ice cream truck in these parts), and got cleaned up so we could watch a documentary about the elephant in Thai society. All this and it was only halfway through the first afternoon.

Day 2: Acclimitization

2009-05-09T06:45:00.006-05:00

We're almost over jet lag. Still woke up before the sun rise, and we watched it rise ever so slowly above the eastern horizon from our balcony this morning. First sunrise I've seen in quite some time. Definitely not complaining.

So I forgot to mention in my last entry that we head to the Elephant Park in Chiang Mai tomorrow. We planned for three nights here in Bangkok to acclimate, get over jet lag, get used to the change in food, etc. All in all, seems to be going well. Should be interesting when we get to the park sans AC and hot water. But considering that it's over 90 degrees most days, cold showers will be just fine. And we get to bathe the elephants in the river, so that should be fun.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. Today, after dawn, we had another lovely breakfast, this time with a pancake and Thai maple syrup. Who knew? We headed off for the Golden Mount, not far at all from our hotel. The Golden Mount is a temple atop a ruined temple, and is the highest hill, albeit man-made, this side of the city. The view is nice, but the breeze atop the mount made it even better. The buddhas and bodhisattvas were of a more practical size, but grand and golden nonetheless. The top of the mount does give you a good perspective of just how spread out Bangkok is: it's almost several cities or areas, not unlike L.A. and the Valley, OC, Canyon County, etc. I seem to be etceter-ing a lot this entry. Must be a King and I Siam thing.

Sorry for the dorky musical theatre reference. But King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) is an ever present figure here in Bangkok. A number of the palace fixtures were built by him, and there are monuments and references to him all over the place. He's only beaten out by pictures and huge roadside portraits of the current king. It's interesting knowing the show, and now seeing just how prolific of a ruler he was. Thailand is an interesting study that way - they are very proud of never having been a colony or imperial puppet regime.

And on that note, after the Golden Mount we took our first tuk tuk ride to the Jim Thompson house. That pride mentioned above was related by a guide at the house over a 16th century map that showed Siam next to all it's colonized neighbors. Thompson himself was en ex-pat American, an OSS man after the second world war who went bamboo, so to speak. He loved the country, and pretty much single handedly revitalized the Thai silk trade. He disappeared mysteriously in the Malay Cameron highlands at the age of 61, sparking all kinds of conspiracy stories. Intriguingly, it seems he also had some kind of relationship with the royal princess, but due to Thai decorum, the guide was not forthcoming with any details. She and the royal family do sponsor his house, which holds a stunning collection of east Asian art and artifacts, and is really six traditional Thai stilt house connected together in a way that would give Frank Lloyd Wright a wet dream. Everything was teak and high and vaulted, dark and beautiful.

After the Thompson House we hopped on the sky train, a modern elevated train that blows the New York MTA away. No competition. There isn't a single metro in the US that compares. In fact, we are severely being left behind in the dust when it comes to public transport. Anywho, we went down to Patpong, marginally the red light district, but as it was 11 o'clock, nothing was doing. We had a recommendation from a guide book for a decent reputable Thai massage place. It was a nice massage, not the best we've had (we have some serious shiatsu guys in NYC), but definitely not the worst. An hour later, we were ready for the centerpiece of the day: a two hour meditation session with a real live Thai monk at Wat Matathat.

Our monk was classic - probably sixty, but he could have been a hundred and sixty and we never would've guessed. There were also two Austrialians working in Bangkok who came, so he walked our quartet, literally, through basic walking meditation and a basic sitting meditation. Through soft toned inflected but very good English, he gave us very practical instruction on how to begin a meditation practise. We have his book, a bargain at 200 baht, which looks very thorough and heartfelt. All in all, a wonderful experience.

After that we headed back to the hotel as it was the heat of the afternoon. We're getting excited for tomorrow when we head north to Chiang Mai, and only forty eight hours until the Elephants. To that end, I am pretty sure we will not have internet access at the park, especially when we are out and about in the countryside with the elephants. So it may be a week before I can give updates. There will be plenty of stories, and plenty of pictures. Don't worry.

Sawadee krop for now.

May You Live in Interesting Times

2009-05-08T04:24:00.006-05:00

Day one in Bankok, and it is hot. That sweltering, walk into a wall hot. The kind of hot that make New Orleanians and Bangkokians similar to each other yet different from everyone else, the kind of hot that makes hot sauce and chilis part of your blood stream, the kind of hot that makes you sweat your sin out in the first ten minutes of walking in the morning. But I'm not complaining.

I am however, skipping ahead. We traveled 22 hours to get here, so some weave of story must be woven to encompass that thread. We left JFK and had our layover at Narita in Tokyo, altogether an uneventful flight on a lovely airline: ANA. Very clean, very efficient, very Japanese. We were two of only a handful of westerners on board, and thankfully, no screaming children. Interestingly, the flight was rather silent. It was when we landed that things got interesting. The quarantine crew came on board to scan for H1n1 flu, and lo and behold, someone three seats from us was tagged by the scanner. The crew was all clad in surgical gowns, gloves and masks, and the whole thing had a William Gibson quality to it. They took her off the plane, and held the thirty or so of us around her at the back of the section for another twenty minutes while she was tested. The doctor in charge was a cheery older Japanese man, who smiled and said to us we'd be out in a few minutes. Otherwise, the whole affair would have been more ominous than it already was. She was cleared, and we exited the plane, the lumps easing from our throats as the thought of three day quarantine in Tokyo abated. That's the closest I ever need to be to an epidemic, and a rather intriguing way to reenter the country of my birth.

After that, our flight to Bangkok was smooth and easy. Fourteen hours into our journey I finally succumbed to some fitful sleep. We made it through customs quickly, and jumped into a hooptie of a cab - the trunk securing our bags with a bungee cord. As we careened down the highway toward the city, I noticed our cab, and most of the others on the road were CNG cars, or ran on natural gas. Intriguingly green.

Our cabbie had no idea where our hotel was, and first tried to deposit us in the backpacker section of town, Banglamphu. We passed a dozen 7-11s (they seem to be ubitquitous in Bangkok, the NY coner deli equivalent). We stuck to our guns, having printed a map of where we needed to go. He eventually had to hop out and call from a payphone for directions, all done with a smile. We made it, twenty-six hours after leaving New York, and settled in for some jet lagged sleep.

The morning arrived for us earlier than usual, although we were well awake. Our hotel, a little boutique affair called Lamphu Tree hotel, is delightful. A lovely lobby, bar, pool, and the room is spacious with a balcony overlooking the canal, and very clean. And I can attest that the mattress and pillows are very comfortable. Breakfast was coffee, eggs, toast and bacon. I'm at the side lobby now typing away at their internet cafe.

But the morning! Ah, the heat! And the light! Everything has a golden glow here, the light being equatorially intense. We strode out with our sunglasses and hats, every bit in wander mode, and headed toward the old section of town. Hustlers abound in Bangkok, and being unable to truly blend in, they approach you very friendly, and very insistently. One the guide books got it right by saying that if someone speaks to you that way, they want something from you. Real Bangkokians who are not on the make seem very much like real New Yorkers, they ahve their own agenda that has little or nothing to do with you. We easily went into city mode, and after the first three attempts, had "Mai Krop" (No thanks) down, and our city walk with clear intention suited for southeast Asia.

Today is Buddha's Birthday, a major holiday to buddhists everywhere. We started the day right by stopping to see the Emerald Buddha, at a stunning Wat a part of the Grand Palace. The palace grounds themselves are impressive, and while it was busy, it was not nearly as crowded as other touristy places we have been. The entire complex consists of several wats, and intriguing side items like a mini replica of Angkor Wat, which we'll be seeing in person in a month or so.

After meditating at the Emerald Buddha's feet, we then went across the way to Wat Po, to see the gian reclining Buddha. He is truly impressive. His complex is the home of traditional Thai medicine, and was very active with monks and visitors alike. Several other wats housed buddhas an bodhisatvas, and we had several more lovely meditations. We then headed up to the Amulet market where Kristin purchased a small day purse, and over to Wat Matathat, to see if they were offering any mediations in English. Just so happens, they have them on the second Saturday of each month, and that's tomorrow. Good timing.

It is now definitely siesta hour. Dinner later, and we'll see what the night brings. All in all, a great way to start in Thailand, here in the mighty and busy city of Bangkok.

Swine Flu? Not sexy.

2009-04-27T12:10:00.017-05:00

Well the European Union just announced that Europeans should consider canceling non-essential travel to the U.S. and Mexico in order to combat the spread of Swine Flu. Now I’m not saying that this is a “cry wolf” like SARS, West Nile or Bird Flu - but it is the fourth one of these "pin the name on the infectious disease" scares in recent years. And with all the wild swine and porcine-like creatures that are running around Manhattan these days, I’m thinking it’s time to jump ship and head off to Southeast Asia. I’ll just have to take my chances with malaria and yellow fever.

I know, I know. Malaria does seem a little old fashioned. And yellow fever doesn’t really have a name that inspires fear like “swine flu”. But I guess the two big tropical killers just aren’t sexy anymore. DEET bug spray and a mosquito net takes care of most malarial risk, and then there is always the fall back of the mega anti-everything pill: doxycyclene. Personally, I do fancy the time worn and tested gin and quinine filled tonic, sipped slowly from a hammock on the porch of some French era colonial villa overlooking the Mekong. Oh trust, me. We’re going there soon. But again, this isn’t sexy or modern enough for the blare of the 24-hour news media.

And I’ve had tropical diseases. A few of them. And yes, I was fully vaccinated. Mumps was the worst, followed closely by ringworm (for which there isn’t a vaccination). Luckily, I’m all better now, although I do from time to time get the urge to paddle upstream to remote villages where the locals worship me as a god-king and I convert young and innocent members of the Sheen clan to follow me while I prognosticate and gesticulate in shadowy fog filled temples. It happened just last weekend up the Hudson near Millbrook.

Vaccines are never 100 percent effective – they rarely tell you that. They are wonderful preventatives, and there are great treatments for practically anything you might get from a winged pest in Southeast Asia.

The beautiful twist on all of this is that people are being warned not to travel to North America. Mexico I can understand, with all the drugs, kidnappings, guns, and drunken spring break frat boys. Personally, I think this may all be a right-wing conspiracy to bring the issue of illegal immigration back to the fore. If they have “swine flu”, well then that makes ‘em really scary. And we’ll have to seal the borders and deal with it right now! Oooh… I might just be on to something here. Call Air America and NPR, quick!

So my advice is: don’t be scared. For us, or for yourself. We have ways of dealing with these things. Take a deep breath, and if you smell bacon, it’s probably from the breakfast roll I had this morning. If you start to feel like you’re getting a cold or the flu, go to your doctor.

And turn off the news. Seriously. You'll feel much better.

Yes! We are still going to Thailand to volunteer for the Elephant Nature Park. In just one week! You can still make a donation and help! Click here.

Elephants Don't Care What Color Shirt You Wear

2009-04-16T11:14:00.007-05:00

Yes, we've been following the situation in Thailand closely, and I am happy to report that the worst seems over. Both sides have called for reconciliation, and it looks like that will happen. From all reports we have seen, including first hand ones from people we know there, the protest and violence was limited to a few neighborhoods in Bangkok. After a few days, even the citizens of these neighborhoods had tired of the protesters, as most had come from outside the city. The rest of the country, especially the north where we will be, remained virtually unaffected.

Most of the reputable news media (Reuters, BBC and the like) seem to think this was likely the last hurrah for the "Red Shirt" supporters of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra. American news media, with their wonderful brand of A.D.D. sensationalization, filled the airwaves with pictures of burning buses and malatov cocktail throwing masked street fighters, until they got distracted by pirates and a new water dog in the White House and forgot about the rest of the world like they usually do.

The current PM Abhisit Vejjajiva, supported by his "Yellow Shirt" contingent, was adamant about the military not using violence against the protesters. In practice, they appear to have done fairly well with that mandate. Not being Thai, I can't pick sides in this issue, and I won't get into all the politics and issue of the charges against Shinawatra. But suffice it to say, the underlying social disparity between the Red and Yellow groups still exists, with the mostly rural based Red Shirts feeling disenfranchised by the upper class Yellows. This will have to be addressed in some form or fashion by PM Vejjajiva, but the fact that the military did not have to step in with another coup is testament that most regular Thai people don't want confrontation or civil war, they merely want a government that represents them and works. Sound familiar? Red and Blue, anyone? Like us, they have bigger issues to face like the economy, health care, and education reform.

So the short of it is that we will still be going to help the elephants at the Nature Park. Something tells me they won't care what color shirt we're wearing, as long as we're feeding and taking good care of them. And don't forget a good scratch behind the ears.

We are still collecting donations for the Elephant Nature Park! Click the link to find out how you can help.

Yes! I want to help out the Elephant Nature Park!

Exciting News and a Request

2009-03-25T10:48:00.008-05:00

Hey Everyone! So, Kristin and I have finally made it happen and are and celebrating our birthdays this May by going to Thailand to volunteer with elephants at an amazing sanctuary outside of Chiang Mai called the Elephant Nature Park. I know, we've been planning it for a while - and life in the big city being what it is, it's only just come about. But come about it has!

The Elephant Park is run by a Thai woman named Lek who has taken in over 30 elephants from abusive situations (as well as numerous dogs, cats and a water buffalo!) and created a beautiful open refuge for them to live out their lives. No tourists riding their backs, no menial labor. She also works with the local tribes to educate them about elephant care and herbal treatments for their elephants, and has started a rain forest restoration and protection project in her area.

We are so passionate about this place and Lek’s work that we thought, instead of all the lavish gifts you were planning for our birthdays, we would ask if you would like to donate to the elephants. We will put everyone’s donations together and bring them to the sanctuary in person in May.

It would be a great gift to the elephants, and since there are only 30,000 Asian elephants left on the planet, they need all the help they can get. Even a $10 gift goes a long way… and it’s tax deductible!! :)

There are several options to get your donation into our pooled fund:
If you have a PayPal account, you can donate to: jdsasser@juno.com via PayPal’s secure server. We’ll send you a receipt for your donation.

If you don’t have a PayPal account, send us an email mentioning how much you’d like to donate and we’ll send you a link to an invoice you can use to donate on PayPal without being a member.

Or you can email us to make other arrangements.

Thanks so much! Send us any questions and check out The Sanctuary’s site at www.elephantnaturepark.org/index.htm

More stories and plenty of pictures to come.

Final Days in Toulouse

2008-11-30T12:47:00.002-05:00

Our last two shows in Toulouse went exceptionally well. Number two was actually an added show, which turned out to be our most lively audience. They were in on the idea from the beginning, and caught a lot of the humor, whether intended or unintended. Afterwards, we headed over to the café and had a quick pint, then a group of us bustled over to the metro to get to our favorite creperie before it closed.

The Toulosan Metro seems to be the antithesis of my earlier idea of “Technologie Francaise”. I rode it a few times over ten years ago when the system was fairly new – and I vaguely remembered it being completely automated and modern. It's a nice poster child for the tech sector of Toulouse, home to Aerobus and the European Space Agency. Getting to ride it as a commuter for twelve days, I have to say that there are aspects of it that New York could learn from. The cars are much smaller (less than a third the size of the subway), but Toulouse is a much smaller city. Rush hour is crowded, but less so than New York, and aside from a slightly different personal space aesthetic, not unlike rush hour in any city. The tempo is a city’s tempo, which means you choose your path and stick to it or you are herded by those with stronger pedestrian wills. All that said we rarely waited more than five minutes for a train. Like most European cities, the Metro does close late at night, but we were good kids and either headed home or at least were nearby our hotels by then most nights.

The creperie had now become our favorite late night haunt. Aside from a drunk Brit who tried to worm his way into our table and conversation (which seemed fishy from the beginning so it was dealt with quickly by yours truly), the meal again was one of our best. We asked our waiter when they close, and he said “Whenever we feel like it.” Much vin de table rouge was had, savory and sweet crepes alike devoured, French cognates were discussed and bandied about successfully, pun-fully and painfully, and in the end, our new friend the waiter poured us all a quick shot of Armagnac to warm us up for the walk home.

Last day of the show we awoke to our only perfectly sunny day in Toulouse. Kristin and I took a walk to Place Capitole where we took café and croissant at our usual, and watched as they erected the Christmas Market which we would miss by a day. We then went to the Hotel du Grand Balcon, to see what we thought was an exhibit about St.-Exupery. Turns out it was just three photos of the trio of Aeropostale greats – big ones that I had never seen before – of St.-Ex, Jean Mermoz, and Guillaumet smack in the middle. Having just played Guillaumet in the musical reading of “St.-Ex.” at Sundance not two weeks prior, it made me smile.

After that we headed toward the canal for a walk. Before we reached it, we found St. Aubins cathedral, a gothic masterpiece that managed to survive the purge during the revolution by being deemed a “temple of reason” by local denizens. Even with that, much of the artwork and stained glass is damaged. We walked in and heard a rather authoritarian voice echoing through the cathedral. We thought there may be a mass going on, but it turned out to be restorers working on one of the white marble pulpits. The majesty and the history of the place was inspiring, and a little eerie at the same time. Particularly poignant was the WWI memorial of fallen Toulosan soldiers. History and faith have mixed in a volatile way in France, and places like St. Aubins are visceral reminders.

After the cathedral, we looped southward along the canal, enjoying the sunshine and the air, and stumbled across a lovely little museum called Musee George Labit. Housed in a late 1800’s Orientalism style villa, the collection was the private collection of colonial explorer George Labit, who began collecting the items during his time in the Indochina campaign. It is a small collection by some standards, but exquisite, ranging from Egyptian to Tibetan and Chinese works, Japanese prints and Indian statuary. Not unlike the Rubin museum in New York, the museum is a collection of artifacts that will probably never be able to be reproduced as it was assembled in many cases before Westernization and exploitation was rampant. It was especially interesting to see the Buddhist and Hindu sculpture after visiting St. Aubins. The torture and suffering so prominent in Christian iconography was in stark contrast to the compassionate and easy beatific smiles of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Hindu figures.

We grabbed a quick lunch back at Place Capitole where we bumped into John. It was great to have a compatriot and cafe conversation on the main square. We then headed to the theatre and filmed a quick promo video for the piece. Two hours later left us with time to kill before the final show at ten o’clock. What else to do but eat? We went in search of an open restaurant, not an easy feat in the mostly residential neighborhood of St. Cyprien. We walked around with John for a little while, and as it was a day for such discoveries, stumbled across a little neighborhood restaurant with a 12 Euro dinner menu. It was the kind of restaurant we had been hoping for the whole trip – a totally neighborhood, wife and husband family run place, where at first it seemed as if we might not be able to be seated as we didn’t have a reservation. I had boudin (blood sausage) and duck, and Kristin had an enormous half chicken and frites. The meal was a decadent, wonderful and cheap final dinner in France. If only we’d have several more hours to enjoy it – but alas, we had to go to the theatre for our final show.

I will miss this group of people and Toulouse. It was nice to be in a cosmopolitan, classic European city – easy to walk, lots of sights and cafes and markets – with enough time to get into an enjoyable rhythm of everyday life. Luckily, the artistic powers that be fully intend to market the piece and try for tours and festival dates for next year. So hopefully there will be more “I/O” stories to come, and more European cities we have the opportunity to explore. As we live in the East Village, we have a not dissimilar lifestyle already to our adopted one in Toulouse. We went to our local little Polish diner for brunch this morning, and while the coffee and croissants are not nearly as good, I am happy to be home.

Opening Night of "I/O"

2008-11-27T05:39:00.003-05:00

So the evening went very well. No major computer glitches or sound drop outs, no unrecoverable lighting transitions or botched choreographic cues, and if you'd seen the complexity of some of this stuff, you'd know that that was a major achievement in an of itself.

The new and rather exciting element that was added into the mix this time was the audience itself. For those of you not familiar with the concept of "I/O", it is not your traditional proscenium theatre piece. It takes place in an open space of about 100m by 100m, in this case the black box at Theatre Garonne, almost more of an environmental gallery installation space. Throughout the piece we move not only ourselves, but speaker rigs and their cables all around the space to form different configurations that completely alter the soundscape in the space. Added to this were the lights - helping to define the space as well with different shapes and palletes. All of these things were interwoven in such a way as to be cued off of each other visually and audibly - with a random factor for some of the material adding a little spice to the mix. Navigating through a hundred other bodies in the space was one of the major questions we were going to face for the night, and added another major random factor. At the workshop in New York, there were only two dozen or so invited guests to the final presentation, so we were a little unsure how that many bodies would affect the flow of the work.

But as I mentioned, it ran really smoothly. The audience did begin by sitting on the floor, so it took some time and a little prodding by the director and Kristin in the audience to get them to stand and move about the space as intended. But once the lights started shifting from idea to idea, and the speakers started moving, they caught on.

Two favorite moments for me: During the first shift a pool of light came up around my speaker - whereupon I was supposed to go an sit by it in the light. About five audience members were sitting in the light, and they calmly looked up and didn't move (it was early on in the piece). So I wove my way through them, placed my chair and sat, and proceeded with the singing. The second moment was later in the piece, beginning the 'Line' section - by then a good group of people had caught on to the concept and were trying to anticipate what would come next. So as I was walking toward them in the 'Line' configuration, they abruptly tried to get out the way, thinking I was going to walk though the audience - but as the choreography would have it, I was set to turn to the left right at about where they were standing and continue through the space. I do and did appreciate their awareness and consideration, however!

European modern theatre audiences are generally more reserved by comparison to more mainstream American theatre audiences. That said, we did recieve three ovations (standing - albeit there were no chairs anyway), and people seemed genuinely intrigued and engaged. We're still not quite sure what the overall effect of the piece is - and some sections will no doubt be tweaked as of our experiences here in this space. Apparently at the talkback after the show, audience members really did dive into the idea of man and machine and our strange technological interdependant relationship. Joe (the composer) said that the piece was meant to raise the question, but not judge or answer in any way what that relationship is meant to be. I can run to all sorts of 'Bladerunner' parallels in my own head, but there is something even more stark and challenging about "I/O" than that version of sci-fi that I like - it defies simple theatrical definition in its use of space and sound and really makes us come to our own questions and conclusions about technology and our relationship with it.

Day of Show

2008-11-26T07:05:00.003-05:00

Been a bad blogger - my apologies. The last two days were full to the brim. Rehearsal day before yesterday was spent tightening 'Line' even more, and on 'Circle', one of the more complex sonic sections. But before that, we (John, Kristin, and I) went shopping for un petit fete. Being a true French theatre, the green room at Theatre Garonne has a fully functional kitchen, and we recieved permission from the powers that be to use it! So we hit the market and stocked up with all kinds of goodies: Chabichout cheese, ENORMOUS oyster mushrooms, pork and chicken breast. And of course wine. Wonderful wine. I found a bottle of one of my favorites, a Minvervois, for a mere 4 Euro. At any rate, after an exhausting rehearsal, I set about with the great help of the cast cooking. The end result: grilled pan cooked chicken and pork stuffed cutlets with parsley, garlic, and cashews, topped off with a butter oyster mushroom sauce. A huge French style salad with hard boiled egg, and for dessert, sauteed pears with fresh goat cheese and a raspberry wine reduction. We had the perfect amount of food, and the company was great - our French technicians, Stephan, Stefan and Rob joined the meal. We managed to fill our bellies, chat and listen to music, and clean the place all before midnight.

The walk home was particularly lovely. John, ever so subtly, suggested we walk across another bridge than Pont Neuf as it might be quicker. Turned out the view was the payoff. The entire city was lit - Toulouse has a artistic lightscape across most of its public buildings, and so we saw Pont Neuf, St Sernin, the Beaux Arts Ecole all lit up in multi-colored splendor. We hit a small bar just in time for last call by the hotel, (had a great Belgian beer) and called it a night. Party hard, work harder, as it were.

Which led to yesterday's rehearsal. Intense, in costume, and very warm in the theatre. I can only imagine how steamy it will be with a full house. We're all hoping they turn the heat down a little as the lights are by far warm enough for our purposes. But we did manage to (knock on wood) get through the show fairly intact, and without too many train wrecks. We did another run for an audience consisting of the Theatre Garonne staff last night, and they seemed very engaged. They also recorded the performance, and no audience members were harmed in the taping of "I/O". I wish I had a gastronomic report for the day to make you all jealous in cyber-land, but for lunch we ate the left-over cheese from the fete and two deli sandwiches (which were brie, beurre and ham - so maybe that's a little jealousy potential).

After rehearsal is another story, however. Thinking something light might be the way to go, we trusted in John's navigational ability once more, and he guided us to a creperie he remembered spotting by the Universite. For the cheapest meal we've had in Toulouse, it may also be the best. 6 Euro brought a full dinner plate sized crepe to the table, complete with bechamel sauce, mushrooms, emmental and ham. We of course had to split a pear and chocolate crepe for dessert. Of course.

Today has us doing some point work on movement, and another run. Opening night tonight, show at 8 pm. Here we go!

Rain and Cheese and Art Moderne

2008-11-24T05:09:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was a tough day. We awoke fairly early and caught breakfast at the hotel. Our hotel, le Hotel de France, is a cute little two star deal right off of Place Wilson. For location, it could not be better – it is smack in the heart of the busy restaurant and bar district. There is a stunning indoor market across the street from us, brasseries and cafes galore, and major department stores like Gallerie Lafayette three blocks away. For those of you familiar with stays at European two star hotels, unlike most, ours has hot water that doesn’t give out after one shower, and the rooms are almost spacious compared to a Novotel or the like. I would stay here again if we needed to.

But back to the day: we got out and moving before rehearsal and headed to Les Abbatoirs – the modern art museum not far from the theatre. On the left bank of the Garonne, it’s housed in what used to be slaughterhouses. The outside is fairly unassuming, but the inside is quite stunning – high brick arches and colonnades make a perfect gallery space. I can see why people like the museum – it is ideal for a single artist exhibit like the Saura one upstairs we visited. All in all, the gallery did not blow my socks off. Not sure what I was expecting, but many modern art museums leave me that way – sort of disaffected. They did interestingly have a number of 17th and 18th century paintings on loan from Les Augustins throughout the museum. They were paired in many cases with modern works. These for my eye were by far the more interesting studies in the space.

Rehearsal was spent on the most physically intense section of “I/O” known as ‘Line’. In it, the six speakers are placed in (you guessed it) a line about two meters apart from each other. We then proceed in a pulse assembly line fashion around a set track. Various auditory and visual cues trigger certain choreographic motifs for everyone as a group and individuals. The entire energy and action of the section increases until by the end of it, we are sprinting headlong into oblivion. Doing this fifteen minute section requires a lot of focus and physical energy. Also, adding in the lights was intriguing – the lighting plot is designed so that when we leave the ‘track’, we disappear into darkness. It’s very intense. Four hours straight and I was wiped. My calves and knees are more than protesting a little this morning.

So there was only one thing to do: salve our tired bodies and minds with fondue. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Fondue. How quaint.” But this ain’t your swinging seventies fondue. We sat down (Kristin, John, Robert and I) and saw over at another table a sort of medieval contraption into which an entire half wheel of cheese was strapped. Little did we know we were in for the same delight. We ordered two beef fondue platters, and two cheese fondue platters. And the delight came. The device was none other than a heat lamp that you raised or lowered the cheese wheel on. The lamp then melted the cheese, which when finished melting, you proceeded to tilt on a very ingeniously designed incline toward your plate. You then gently scraped the melted goodness onto your plate with a wooden paddle.

The beef fondue was a more traditional pot of boiling oil type of fondue, where you cooked the meat to your own liking. The piece de la resistance was that instead of bread, there was a basket of boiled potatoes. Melted emmental on boiled potatoes. It nearly made me cry. Bellies full of melted cheesy goodness, we trod home through the winding cobblestone streets, not caring one bit about the rain coming down as we were heated through and through by a warmth more than mufflers and down jackets provide.

Rain again today in Toulouse. But it is the gentle, cold reassuring rain that merely lets you know it is not summer, not the harsh winter rains or wind that are just around the corner. I rather like Fall rains, especially French ones. We are headed to market to procure goods for a feast tonight. Being a true French theatre, the green room at Theatre Garonne has a fully functioning kitchen, where I am planning to cook for the cast tonight based on what we buy at the market for an after rehearsal dinner. And considering that we are revisiting ‘Line’, it will need be a hearty feast indeed.

Day Two-louse

2008-11-21T19:40:00.002-05:00

Day two started with a nice sleep in. It was misting in Toulouse this morning, a nice grey mist sweeping up the river Garonne. One that did a fine job of cooling the thousands of Beaujolais hangovers the morning after as the city woke up and went back to work. It was interesting – Toulouse is very much a late night town. At about three a.m. it sounded raucous outside our hotel window, and not unlike our beloved East Village. A fight had broken out that traveled down the allee drunkenly toward Doppler oblivion. Then about thirty minutes later there was a reverie between a drunken French reveler and a drunken Englishman. They did their best to communicate, both in a sing-song inebriated mixture of the two languages. Even at three a.m. it was entertaining.

But none of that kept us from meeting the day at 10 o’clock with breakfast in the room of croissant, comfiture, coffee and tea. After a workout, it was out to pick up some lunch for later, and then off to the theatre. Jet lag didn’t seem to touch us much – perhaps being exhausted from an entire day of travel really is the best way to beat it.

Theatre Garonne is across the Garonne river on the west side of the town in several former Republique municipal buildings. It is a chic mixture of industrial modern architecture built into 19th century surroundings, a uniquely French combination, set tidily into the corner of what seems to be a very unprepossessing residential neighborhood. The main theatre is a stunning proscenium space. The Atelier, which we are in, is a dense black box, which will give our piece a vastly richer soundscape than the open concrete warehouse we rehearsed at in New York. The day was mainly spent getting used to the space – and as things run on a slightly more laid back time schedule theatrically speaking in France, this was a good acclimatization to the environs. Besides one blown microphone headset, the day was well spent, getting through the reorientation of the prologue for the new space, and most of the first section. Tomorrow we’ll get more in the belly of the beast as we get into the third and fourth sections, by far the more complicated choreographically speaking. That’s all I have for now. More croissant and café crème no doubt in the morning, and off to the theatre again. These are the woodshed days, after all. Le Jour Bois Hatchet, perhaps? Probably not.

Arrivals and Day One so far...

2008-11-20T08:43:00.002-05:00

Well, Charles de Gaulle airport has not changed much. We arrived at CDG after an uneventful red eye. Decent food, and I had half a plate of cous-cous spilled in my lap - but the young attendant was so french and fabulous, I didn't mind so much. He did offer me champagne for my troubles. I declined, thinking a hangover before even landing wouldn't be such a good idea.

But back to CDG - we arrived, and of course our flight was delayed an hour. So most of the company curled up for a power nap at the gate. Luckily, John and David were awake when they switched the gate and announced at the same time they were boarding. We dusted the sleep from our eyes, hobbled over to the gate, and boarded a little bus that proceeded to sit for thirty more minutes on the tarmac. Eventually, it drove over to our waiting plane, on the other side of Terminal 2.

I must pause here and relate a story from the very first time I backpacked around France. I was traveling with two dear friends, we were fresh out of high school. I'm not sure how it started, but we were coming from Germany into France, transferring from the ICE high speed train to the TGV. My buddy Girard and I had both lived in Germany as kids, and we of course were waxing rhapsodic about the efficiency and timeliness and modernity of the DB (German train system). After a while, this started to bug our travel mate Wick, who spoke French and was a definitive Francophile. We were after all going to visit his friends for Bastille Day. Finally Wick spoke up and said something to the effect of just wait until you see the TGV - it'll blow the Germans away. It's Technologie de Francaise!

Needless to say, we arrived at our transfer point for the TGV and it was running late. For the rest of the trip, anytime anything was late, or like an escalator into the Metro that was broken, it became "Technologie Francaise!" CDG was very definitely Technologie Francaise yesterday.

But as John Rose put it last night at dinner, I can put up with a lot of stuff for a free trip to France. Indeed John, indeed. And the first creme cafe and croissant this morning at a little cafe right off Place Capitole was breathtaking. It's a good reminder, Technologie Francaise included, to just slow down and enjoy. Not everything needs to be on time, exactly when it's supposed to be. What exactly does that mean, 'on time' anyway? Time is fleeting - there's no actual way to be 'on it'. By the time you'd be 'on it', it'd be passed. Or past. Gone, at any rate.

We then hit the little market and had a shopping accident (new leather purse for Kristin, new black belt for me since I forgot mine), and went to St Sernin's Basilica. There was a mass going on, so we didn't wander too much - but it is grand in it's pre-gothic splendor. The Musee-Saint Raymond right next door is a tidy little museum with a grand collection of artifacts from Roman and early Christian Toulouse, much of it found accidentally when they renovated the abbey or surrounding buildings. Lots of Roman busts, a few lovely mosaics, and some astonishingly detailed jewelry.

And lunch. Let's not forget lunch. Two salads, one a warm goat cheese with lardon (French bacon), the other a salade St. George - duck, chicken livers, tomato and cucumber. Both serious arterial commitments, and so good.

It's siesta hour now, so we are resting. Most shops are closed. Plan for the evening includes theatre, movie, and/or a jazz club. And of course, the Beaujolais is out as of tonight. We shall see.

Leaving for France Tonight

2008-11-18T12:20:00.006-05:00

So it would seem this will continue as my travel blog. We leave tonight, on the 'red eye' - thankfully the Air France strike is finished as of this morning. Kristin and I still have to finish packing, although now that sort of thing is an easy and familiar routine to both of us. Dig out the converters, find the travel clock and iron, collect the Euros stashed in the bottom of the change basket or magneted to the fridge from last time. Already I am excited about the prospect of creme cafe and croissant at some little corner cafe. To catch this blog up a little, the reason we are going is that I have been involved with a wonderfully edgy and artistic piece called "I/O" - short for "Input/Output" with director Phil Soltanoff and composer Joe Diebes. We workshopped the piece for a month here in New York, and are premiering it for the Festival Novellum at Theatre Garonne in Toulouse.

A link to Theatre Garonne's website and listing for "I/O"

More on the piece as rehearsals develop. We'll be staying at the Hotel de France near Place Wilson, smack in the center of town. Herr Direktor, Phil, says there is a wonderful market right there, which I am certainly looking forward to. And there are certainly oodles of restaurants and things to do within walking distance.

But I thought to myself that it's been nearly five years since I was last in the south of France. Occitan - so different from the North. Last time I was there I was a very different person: tracking the Cathar Heresy, doing some serious soul searching, trying to figure out if New York and I were through or if I was heading back into the fray to be a writer or an actor or both. Needless to say, both - although it is highly ironic that now I am headed back as a singer in a rather avant-garde theatrical work. On a side note, a dear friend of mine, John Rose, is also involved in this piece - he and I were privvy to the fateful and crazy JC Superstar tour in '01 that ended when the towers fell. We're much happier to be headed back in a different era - and very happy that we won't have to seek asylum in France thanks to Obama's victory. I will be curious to see what the actual 'on the ground' feelings are, especially as Toulouse is a university cum cutting-edge tech town.

And so the rose colored stone of Toulouse beckons, the linden lined Canal du Midi beckons, the fairytale fortifications of mountaintop castles beckon, and hefty servings of foie gras and cassoulet beckon. Fall in l'Occitane. A perfect time to be in... well, you know.

Hill's Climb

2008-01-09T10:17:00.000-05:00

Hill has a problem in this race. She uses her gender like a weapon. Sometimes keenly edged, othertimes bluntly. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

Or at least that how it comes across to a lot of people. Our society (still) has a problem with gender, especially female gender and public identity or persona. You either have to be the virgin or the mother, the matriarch or the whore, as Joan of Arc combustibly learned.

And you can’t be the crone – our society is wickedly uncomfortable with crones. Whether this was fear mongered into us from medieval witch burnings, or goes even farther back when patriarchal hegemonies took over the spiritual doings of most western proto-societies, I don't know. Crones have been relegated to crinkly caricatured clichés – and the main reason we fear them so much is that they remind us of our death. Or perhaps more importantly, they remind us of the entire life process, and even the death of our loved ones. And we fear being alone even more than we fear our own death.

Western societies of all stripe dispensed with the natural triad of maiden, mother, crone. We’re now so far removed from watching anyone age naturally, let alone a public figure, that we're confused by this. And Hillary, a powerful woman, who doesn't quite fit into any of those types, confuses us even more.

And to make matters worse, she has the one archetype challenging her that all the fairy tales has triumphing over the wicked crone: the young Hero. Obama the shiny knight, on his steed of change has come to save the kingdom. And with his trusty cute sidekick, Sancho Edwards of the South, they just might be unstoppable.

I have to pause here and say that I didn’t intend today’s blog to seem like a conservative pundit’s rant. You all know that my personal politics are the farthest from that raving pack of frothy mouthed baboons as possible. So don’t get me wrong – this is not an endorsement of Hillary, or of any other candidate for that matter just yet.

It all just fascinates me – Americans are such a young psychology study in that we have to do things all or nothing, all the time. And here in this race, we have a black man and a woman vying realistically for the first time that either could be president. And so we’re stirring all these issues and social insecurities up at once, and I think a lot of it just gets confused and thrown into the bin by most folks out there, simply because they don’t want to think about it.

Hillary still has a hold because she has the experience. And we tend to not want to allow an older woman this, because we’ve blurred the lines so much. But she does have charisma. So, my problem lies that whether or not she cries in public, whether or not she gets testy in a debate, we as a public need to not judge every behavior as if it’s damning or the first time we’ve seen it. We’ve always accorded that privilege to other candidates. (Howard Dean not included.) And I’m certain that her speech of “I found myself by listening to you” in New Hampshire was as calculated as her crying and voice cracking was not. But being a good politician means being calculated. And at least she is responding in real time, and isn’t the dense stone wall of “I’m the Decider”. We’ve seen where that’s gotten us.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in the coming days. I couldn’t be happier that the top three contenders for the Democratic nomination are progressive, albeit in different intensities. But they are going to give it everything they’ve got. They’d better.

The Different Year to Come

2007-12-31T11:20:00.000-05:00

New Year's eve is here. And it's spring-like in New York. Almost. It certainly doesn't feel like the bone-chilling years of recent memory outside today.

I have a lot to be thankful for looking back over this year. What? This isn't a Thanksgiving Day post, you say? Yes, I know. But there is something to the tradition of looking back on New Year's that I find more appropriate than some arbitrary day in November. Besides, that day is really about family - this one is about the year behind and the road ahead.

I've never been one to set resolutions. When something has needed doing in the past, I've done it. But there is something different about this New Year... a clarity, a want, a desire to take things by the horns. Is this different from the same 'every new year' feeling that comes around this time of year? This time, I think it is. It's not just a celebration, or a remembrance. It's something different to come.

Merry X-mas Eve

2007-12-24T10:03:00.001-05:00

What is the proper way to spell "Xmas" anymore? Is there a hyphen? No hyphen? Should we spell it out to keep the Christ in? Heck, I just don't know anymore.

For those of you more familiar to my writing style - you'll know that I am not squeemish about using the hyphen. More correctly, I am a dash-a-holic. I use them everywhere. I feel they are more expressive than most choices of punctuation... and more specific than the ever so vague ellipsis... See?

Kristin and I did our gift exchange over the weekend, as we are spending the next two days with family. There was some spectacular gift giving this year, I must admit. Nothing too fancy or expensive - but some great clothing and cooking items, a killer japanese style tea-pot, and we adopted a red wolf family via Defenders of Wildlife. Good people. And we did put up a great tree. I still have problems cutting down a magnificent evergreen and sticking it in your living room as a symbol of everlasting life or greenery, just to watch it slowly dry up and die and be put out on the curb come January. I'd be much happier if there was the more Osiran bit to the myth where the tree is re-born right away, or we could at least re-plant it in a forest somewhere. (All you "X-ians" get a version of this in Easter - with the bunny mythos mixed in. That always makes me smile.) I did look into getting a potted tree this year, but they are prohibitively expensive here in the city.

But it did get me thinking: What happens when a symbol outlives what it symbolizes? And also when that symbol is adopted and adapted by other members of a mixed society that don't prescribe to the original symbolism? Now - bear with me - I know that the tree is originally a germanic pre-christian, pagan if you prefer, symbolic metaphor. They in turn gave it to the Brits via the whole House of Hanover succession thing, which then sent it across to the Americans... yeah, yeah, we all know that story. But does the adaptation and dissemination of a religious symbol into a larger society, thereby taking away some of the "religious-ness" of it, make it any less powerful? Is the symbol the essence of the meaning anyway, and that's why it symbolizes what it does? And is that why the powerful symbol of an everliving green tree survived two religions, two continents, and countless cultural dilutions?

Next year, I am planting a tree. And not for the tree-hugging, pro-environmental reasons you might think. Although most of you know that along with being a dash-a-holic, I am also a rampant tree-hugger. Nah... next year it's about the symbol and what it really means.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Return to the Blogosphere

2007-12-20T14:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm sure some of you are wondering why it's been since May since I've written anything here. Hell, I know no one was really wondering anything... I don't think anyone reads this at all except me. But the reader's digest version is - what started as a blog meant to document my time aboard the NCL Dream had to be disbanded. And (drum roll, please) the reason for that was: the condition aboard the Dream deteriorated to become a nightmare. And this is not a joke... faced with constant gastrointestinal viral outbreaks onboard, near constant harassment from the officers and crew, a thoroughly disgusting passenger hygiene environment, bed bug infestations, and a beyond unprofessional performance and work environment, we jumped ship. Honestly, I couldn't even begin to make all of this up.

And it was all going so swimmingly at first. But the situation switched on a dime so quickly, and I was not removed enough from it in the present tense to write about it without using harsh and potentially legally incriminating language, that I just chose to not write about it at all. Rather professional, don't you think? For further evidence of the insanity, inanity, and a general summing up of what it was like to be on the 'Nightmare', check out the article below:

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/344219.html

Good thing we were long gone by the time this happened. But there were plenty other similar events during our time aboard - not anything as traumatic, thank our lucky stars. But all of the aforementioned was quite more than enough for our wonderful Agency in New York to support our decision to come home. And I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be in New York again!

So, this blog will be changing tones. I am back to trodding the proverbial boards again - and working on my new musical "The Westies". I will be posting links to samples of the music soon. In the meantime, look for my articles on ehow.com - and come back everyone for further thoughts and ramblings. Gods know what they'll be about. But here we go!

Tallinn

2007-05-20T09:10:00.000-05:00

Nothingness enveloped the world. The view was shrouded in white, wisps of unformed fingers curled and coalesced against no horizon. And then, piercing through the quilted formlessness, a single black spine reached upwards. Slowly, Tallinn emerged from the fog – a faery tale come to life - the spires of the city’s old town cathedrals and castle walls materializing out of nowhere. It was more than magic – it was history and fantasy combined.

After a beautiful walk past dandelioned lots near the port terminal, we entered the old town. It’s not so much a maze of cobblestoned streets as it is a stream of constantly flowing alleys and avenues that all turn back on themselves and all eventually flow together into the central square. The town’s architecture, a consistent 400 years of Hanseatic influence, aren’t suspended in time either like other walled medieval towns I’ve been to – rather they are vibrantly alive with Estonian pride and culture.

This old town is still very much redefining itself – the day we arrived there was a cross-country ski race around the main church – they had made snow across the courtyard for the late May competition. The square was alive with people having afternoon lunch or a beer in the many gasthaus style outdoor sitting areas. And tourists aside, the town was awash with activity and life, all going about their business in this magnificent, ancient town.Everyone we met spoke beautiful English, or put up with my passable German.

The prices in Tallinn are decent – not as staggering as other Scandinavian ports of call, and not as bad as St Petersburg (that was a surprise!), and deals could be found at some of the side stalls, numerous artist galleries and market areas. Obviously, the worst deals were at any permanent stores conveniently located for tourists to stumble into. But we did find a number of fun items that we’ve earmarked for future purchase. And I’m very much looking forward to getting to know the streets of Tallinn over the next five months.

Bad Blogger. No Q-ookie.

2007-05-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a bad blogger. It’s been twelve days , or the exactly length of one cruise, since I’ve written last. But rather than apologize – I do have good reasons. You see, Kristin and I had the grave undue pleasure of being quarantined. Yes, the Q-word. There are little buggles than run around the ship from time to time, and if you’re lucky enough to catch one, they stick you in your cabin for three days. Minimum. Now – we weren’t Q-ed for all twelve days – we did get off in Tallinn, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm – but I’m going to save those for separate blogs. We did however have to spend an eternity of those 72 hours in our cabin – and we watched every DVD we own twice. And with the director’s commentaries.

My new recommendation for favorite TV series is the beautifully crafted ‘Firefly’ by Joss Whedon. Those of you turned off by vapid writing, or the fan-frothing sci-fi series such as Star Trek, or the abysmal cgi-world of the latest Star Wars movies, then you will have a refreshing chance to see what science fiction can really be like with ‘Firefly’. The unfortunate thing is that Fox canned the series after only 13 episodes – so it definitely leaves you wanting more. There is a big screen continuation with the movie ‘Serenity’, but it’s more of a “Here’s what we would have done, given another ten episodes” rather than a real extension of the world. The writing is crisp, the dialogue witty and funny, and the future world that they created was superbly new in its scope and inspiration from present day real world developments. But the caveat are the characters – beautifully crafted real people: not black and white tin-types as most sci-fi goes – but true, grey, stuck in real moral dilemmas that they don’t get out of from time to time. As an actor, it made me supremely jealous – and then listening to the commentaries on the DVD and hearing how well the writer/director Joss Whedon got along with his actors, and their rapport with him, was truly refreshing.T

he weather along the Baltic route has improved – the sea is glassy and calm – and the sun is shining most of the time. Even yesterday’s jaunt in Germany started off grey and rainy, and then the sun broke through while we were having lunch in downtown Rostock. I love Germany – it’s a great place to check in with every twelve days on this strange little odyssey we’ve undertaken.

Germany on to the Baltic Proper

2007-05-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

Warnemunde is a delightful town. Long, wide sandy beaches, a café lined promenade filled with old world Germanic charm, a cute little downtown area with a small brick church, and back alleys cobblestoned and gardened as far as the neck can bend.

Shame it was rainy and grey – a not uncommon condition on the Baltic. Early May is definitely not beach weather this far north.At least we’ll get twelve more chances over the course of the summer to see it once it’s warmed up a little. But for all its Hanseatic League coastal charm, we covered the town pretty quickly in the afternoon we had. Once we return, we’ll definitely be taking the train to Rostock, and after that, probably an excursion to Berlin and Hamburg.

We are sailing to Helsinki today, a bright white and emerald green water day, having switched the itinerary from Tallinn due to protests taking place in the city for the last few weeks. Apparently, tomorrow is the anniversary of the end of hostilities of WWII, and a major ceremony was supposed to take place over the Russian tomb of the unknown soldier. Only problem, the Estonians decided that the Soviet era statue to fallen Russian soldiers was a little too prominent smack downtown, so they moved it to a cemetery outside of town. This of course inflamed the ethnic Russians in Estonia. There have been a few protests and small riots over the matter, so rather than be in town on what might be a troublesome day, they decided to switch days with Helsinki. That’s probably a good call. I can’t think of anything offhand the Finns might riot over.

But two shows tonight – and sunset isn’t until 9.30. So it’ll be light for all of one, and mostly light for the other. Land of the midnight lit show, here we come.

Deutschland!

2007-05-06T10:48:00.000-05:00

We are on the Kiel Canal – having just passed under the first bridge of seven. Apparently, the Dream is the largest boat that can access the canal, and we just literally saw why – we cleared the bridge by about three feet. Not kidding.

We entered the canal a few hours ago, and were piloted into the lock by several little German tugboats. Once in, we were joined on the top central outside deck by the local Feuerweg Zug Band – or the fireman’s band. They are mightly oom-pah-pahing away as I write this, and I had to have a German beer to mark the occasion. The only thing missing is a schweinbrot or wurst with mustard in my other hand. They’ll play onboard for the next eight hours or so that we’re on the canal.

The countryside is pastoral, green, and orderly in that way that the Germans perfected and patented. There is something comforting about the German countryside, something that I remember very well from my childhood. The rows of trees, the gently rolling yellow and green fields, no space wasted – there are always sheep, or cows, or horses, tucked into every little corner. Here up north, there are also windmills – giant white Quixote-defying modern mills – that only add to the feeling of order and care. Just one of those mills generates enough electricity to power who knows how many homes – and it’s green, and very abundant here on the edge of the North Sea.

Back in Germany. And ‘Bring back my Bonny to Me’ plays in the background. Das ist Super Toll!

The Promised Photo Blog

2007-05-05T07:25:00.000-05:00

Finally! Here are a few pics!

The Dream. And Us. In Belize.

The Easter Bunny on board the Dream.

Sunset from the Dream.

It's my Birthday.

2007-05-05T07:22:00.000-05:00

And I'm sitting in the Prince Albert pub in Dover, England, watching Manchester Utd. play football.

And of course, I've got a pint of bitter in my hand. It's making typing a little difficult, but there it is.

We start the journey in earnest tomorrow: off to the Kiel canal, then Tallinn.

But most of the cast is here, we're drinking, chatting, and the birthday celebration has begun.

Cheers!

Rare Ould Times to the White Cliffs

2007-05-03T13:11:00.000-05:00

A few days catch up is needed, my apologies. Between being sick, and then having extra late rehearsals to get our new acrobat into the shows, things have been busy.We landed at Cobh, Ireland, Kristin and my first time together on the Isle. Cobh is a darling little coastal town – the official port for Cork. Lots of Georgian row houses, and brightly colored townhomes, and a rather Gothic ‘Mary of the Sea’ cathedral overlooking the whole town. There is not much to do, especially on a Sunday, but we managed to find a good seedy pub, named ‘Ryans’, and had a pint before going grocery shopping for such absolute necessities as Irish cheddar and orange juice.

We then steamed off for Dublin. I was amazed at how crowded it has really become – many Irish friends of mine have mentioned this in passing, but I was figuring it was an exaggeration, especially as we can compare it to New York. But it has gotten insanely crowded. Even on a Monday, the amount of foot traffic in the old was more than comparable to New York, even more so on some lanes. But we walked all over, one the great things about Dublin. I found a fantastic grey wool tweed jacket, and Kristin purchased a great brown suede jacket, for about half of what it would have cost in new York. Not that Dublin isn’t expensive, though –it is - we just happened across a great little thrift store on a side lane.

My Dublin from the mid nineties is all but gone, I’m sad to say. Much like the clean up New York experienced in the same time period, it seems the darker edge of Dublin is a fading memory. Temple Bar has lost a good number of its pubs to bistro type restaurants, and you can no longer carouse from pub to pub outside with the same pint glass. Alas, the rare ould times are indeed done. I do miss the energy, but like New York, you trade some loss for the good – I don’t think I’d trade the new times square for the old one, but something has been lost – and New York’s most famous square does resemble a mall in the middle of America now more than ever. Dublin hasn’t crossed that line yet, there is too much history all about, but I did notice that it felt more cosmopolitan, more generally European, than it did before. I saw no gypsy tinker children playing tin whistle on the corners, far fewer drunk story tellers calling out for another pint from a stool at the end of the bar. Indeed, as prices gouge away at our beloved East Village in New York, turning it into the last hold out for true New York characters, Dublin’s old town seems to have been gouged already – huge high rise condos and new buildings ring the edge of the old town now. Hopefully, there is still a place for the story tellers – we didn’t have enough time to hunt them down in our half-day in Dublin – but one where the stories abound, and an older, gentler, and less bustling Dublin allowed for a breath between swallows of Guinness.

Le Havre came the next day, and we had a lovely walk about the town. It’s a post-modern French town – mostly rebuilt after the War, but a lovely one nonetheless. It has a great beach front, and we walked all about. Unfortunately, our desire to find a great café for a fantastic French lunch was thwarted by our timing – we arrived in town just in time for the afternoon rest. So by the time we had to leave, the cafes still were not serving. Alas, we consoled ourselves by buying several more pounds of French cheese and a baguette, and made our way back.Dover – our new home port of call – was today. The cliffs are impressive, as is Dover castle sitting above it all. The town is a little lackluster – as is the port. But it’s going to be interesting coming back here for our base of operations every twelve days. We get two more new cast members day after tomorrow – our Adage couple that we rehearsed with the Florida is joining us again. And that means: more rehearsals! One three day quick cruise – and then we are off to Germany.

Azorean Island Time

2007-04-27T18:07:00.000-05:00

The sea is grey and almost glassy today, our second day heading toward Ireland. We’re definitely in the North Atlantic now – the blues are muted and silvery instead of electric cobalt and azure. The motion of the boat is gentle, there is a calm, cooler breeze blowing – a herald to the Baltic breezes that will no doubt blow upon us soon. Kristin saw a pod of fifteen or so dolphins out the window earlier today.

And I’m sick. It sucks being sick on a boat. It’s really the week five crud – you get it on any tour or project – week five roles around and the crud hits. Mine’s a virus, accompanied by the shakes and the fever sweats – and there’s really nothing to be done except wait it out. I’m grumpy, but otherwise all right.

Our afternoon at Ponta Delgada on the Azores was wonderful. We got off the boat fairly early – after some confusion as to whether we could leave at all or not, due to a Coast Guard drill being called. But once off, it was such a palpably better feeling to be in Europe again. Given, the Azores are only marginally Europe, but just the tempo and the air feels better. I’ve never been to Portugal, or to any Portugese holdings, and neither had Kristin, so this was a first for both of us. But the waterfront itself is not unlike sleepy coastal town along the Maine Coast. Minus the cruise ship dock, the rest of the dock was populated primarily by local fishermen’s boats. But the town – now this is where it gets surreal. Most of the rock on the islands is volcanic – so the churches, the walls, even the sidewalks, are this black volcanic stone. The sidewalks all throughout town are quite apiece of work – patterns and knotwork in white stone is set against the mosaic of black stone. And the churches and municipal buildings are all that classic 16th Century Iberian style – the walls being whitewashed a blindingly clean white.We walked around town, most of which was closed due to it being a national holiday (I think the founding of the Republic Day), but there was a little bandstand in the square, and lots of locals listening to music. We wandered by the teatro municipal, which we were happy to see was being renovated, and had obviously been expanded significantly already. We also then found a botanical garden founded by Jose do Canto, a local of some significance in the 1800s. Some sacrifice was required to enter: We had had to each get a beer, the local Sergas, in order to get the 2$ change in euros so we could enter. We nobly made the sacrifice, and found that it was an unkempt, magical little garden, Calla lilies growing wildly everywhere about, and the remnants of Victorian sensibilities peeking out of the undergrowth here and there, all accented by the black volcanic stonework. The moon peered at us from high in the sky, even though it was only the afternoon. We found the original manor house on the property, moss overtaking the red huntsman patterned tiles around the blacksmith’s work area, other escapees from a flower garden now commanding the doorstep and every crack in the house to boot.

After the garden, we wandered around looking for a place for dinner – after wandering a little off the beaten path, we found a cute little hole in the wall, and had by far one of the better meals on the whole adventure so far. A bottle of local red was recommended by the waitress, which I’m ashamed to say to don’t remember the name of, only the grape variety. I had salted cod, of course, with the most amazing red cured peppers and new potatoes. Kristin had a wonderful tuna steak, that was fresher than anything Ive tasted in new York, and rivaled preparation. The lilt of Portguese diners flowed around us, familiar in some of its romantic cadences, and yet completely unfamiliar in others – some trace of deeper Mediterranean rhythms, whether Greek or Phoenician perhaps. We ended our meal, cutting just a little close to make it to the boat, but make it we did, with full bellies and a new appreciation for a different kind of island living.

(About the pictures - unfortunately the server for the ship has a massive firewall that doesn't allow uploads. I promise I'll do a number of postings once we find an internet cafe in Europe in a few days...)

Opening Night

2007-04-21T19:09:00.000-05:00

Our first shows went fairly smoothly – excepting one major event. Our acrobat snapped his Achilles tendon on one of his first passes during the early show. He was taken immediately to the infirmary, and they determined they had to get him to hospital as soon as possible. We scrambled to cover the various numbers he was a part of – luckily our stager was still with us and had the good sense to substitute similar choreographed sequences for what would have been his music. It was a shame to lose him like that – especially on our first actual performance. As a cast we’ve bonded over the last few weeks, and he fit a special niche in the dynamic of the group. When we landed in Bermuda yesterday, they got him the first available flight back to the states. Hopefully, he’ll make a full recovery.That said the audiences didn’t know that anything was changed, and they gave us standing ovations both shows. The piece itself is a very flashy, Vegas style review; very fun to perform, and obviously fun for the audience as well. We retired to the cruise director’s cabin afterwards for a champagne celebration – he quite graciously invited us all to his quarters on the forward deck. Far too much bubbly was drunk for our own good, but it was a much needed release. We then continued into the wee hours in a cast mate’s room, where we ordered room service and lip-synced along to the soundtrack of Dream Girls. They keep coming back in this story, don’t they?

The next morning had us in the port of Bermuda. I cannot begin to describe the beauty of the water there – it’s a type of blue similar to the blue of the Mediterranean, but at the same time it is clear. The buildings on the island largely have white roofs – and the Bermuda stone that they build with is also an almost white limestone – so the view across the island almost has a Greek Isle feel to it. We had lunch at the Frog and Onion pub – a cute colonial style pub in the Victualling Yard at the old Royal Navy Dockyard. We then went up to the fort, and toured the museum showcasing Bermuda’s military history. They have quite a considerable collection of old armaments – including a number of enormous 18 pounders that are still on the ramparts of the naval fort. The fort has by far the best view of the Dockyard area – and it was a beautiful day in the low 70s.

We then wandered down to an area in the fort that they use to rehabilitate dolphins. We watched as two children in wetsuits got to “swim” with the dolphins. It’s a nice gesture – the prices for them to do that are extraordinary – but the true shame is that those dolphins will never know what the open ocean is like. But at least they live in relative peace and comfort.
We sail to the Azores today – three more days at sea. We’ll have show number two after more rehearsal in two nights, and then on to Ireland.

Oh, Florida!

2007-04-18T11:03:00.000-05:00

Downtown Miami seems to be going through the same post-911 renaissance that New York is. Lots of cranes grace the skies from South Beach to Downtown. The Dream docks right smack between the two, at the port of Miami, and we managed to get a few hours of shore leave yesterday after a tech run-through at 10.30. Yes, my theatre world friends, we are doing run-throughs at both midnight, and at 10.30 in the morning. I have to say, even with the crazy hours, the schedule is fairly easy. The shows are all under an hour long. And once we open day after tomorrow, the rest of the contract will be even better – we won’t do shows on port days – so that means anytime we’re in at some great European city – we can get off ship and tour about without having to worry about a show later that night. And we have two overnights: one in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the other in Copenhagen. Land of the midnight sun indeed.

But returning to Florida for moment. It’s ironic that Kristin and I have spent so much time in Florida. We met during a contract for Riverside Theatre in Vero – and have both returned a number of times. To be truthful, I think I’ve returned more times to Florida than to any other regional theatre area. It seems to break my theory about western theatre: that nice weather outside guts the community interest in terms of real, sustainable ongoing art (hence the lack of large scale professional theatrical communities in areas that could easily support them – like the Bay Area in California, Napa and San Francisco in particular). I mean, you look at the great bastion theatre towns in Western, Anglo-cultural mediums – and all their weather is fairly crappy at least some part of the year: London, New York, Chicago. And L.A. doesn’t count – the only reason they do theatre out there is because they’re not working in film at the moment. But it’s not hard to guess that it’s the generational landslide of baby boomers and pre-boomers that have managed to make Florida viable for a regional theatre career. Granted, you won’t get your cutting edge, nouveau musicals or some such (I don’t expect Spring Awakening anytime soon at Riverside), but there is something to be said for an environment where people are still considering live theatre to be an everyday part of their life. Outside of the cities I mentioned above, I don’t know of anywhere else that is the case.

Back to the Miami anomaly – not a lot of live theatre. In the last few trips I made to the city that sleeps on the beach, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend – it seems to be emulating the not so great urban sprawl that L.A. has perfected, and is even creeping into my beloved Big Apple. The Miami of low lying, deco inspired sleek lined buildings is all but gone, excepting little stretches of South Beach. Now the mini-stretch mall is at every corner, 24-hour pharmacies at your beck and call when you need that pick-me-up at 4 a.m. And the ubiquitous chain restaurants where the food is exactly as you remember it, whenever you want it grace the malls with their homespun, collected and perfected antique-i-ness, so everyone can feel at home, without actually being home. And then there are the great castles of envy - their coral and blue towers rising from of the edges of the city out of some Metropolis meets Atlantis dream – shadowing even Star Island and the white sands. Literally – as the Dream pulled out, we noticed that the thirty story plus towers cast a long shadow over the surfers, who waited in vain for a wave to ride past the break wall at South Beach. The red sun darted between the grey columns of shadow, creating an almost pinstripe effect the farther away we sailed. Even further out, the horizon seemed a theatrical backdrop – the shadow shapes of square buildings stretching from horizon to horizon, backlit by the tired sun, too tired to dodge the scrapers anymore, instead content to settle languidly behind them for the night. It was a stunning sunset, one of the finest I’ve ever seen.

Do we have to sacrifice culture and live theatre for the inevitable pull of the outdoors? Or for the inevitable pull of pop culture and the next age to be? What is defining us now? Development? Buildings pushing the limit of both the sky and sustainability? I am not certain. But as we sailed out of Miami harbor, I saw the dozens of cranes, and the endless throng of cars and moderns caves for modern humans. These questions were flying through my head. And we were sailing straight into the Bermuda Triangle.

Stormy Seas

2007-04-16T19:34:00.000-05:00

Had our first really rough night at last night. We started in earnest toward Miami, and ran into the tail of the big Nor’easter that tore through Texas the day before, and is hitting the East Coast as I write this. I made the mistake of having a pretty large dinner – and then we had rehearsal onstage. I think I would have been fine if I could have gone to bed, but because we were on stage, anytime you took a step, you ended up taking three more as the ship moved. In the end I was all right – just a little nauseous. But I’m hoping we don’t encounter anything more dramatic than that on our Atlantic Crossing.

It is surreal being on board for this long. After our transatlantic, we’ll have been on straight for at least 12 days, maybe more. Now that we’re on the fifth deck, you can actually walk the length of the ship in the main hallway – about five or six uptown city blocks. Running on a treadmill in the gym, looking out over the endless blue water and sky is also a little humbling – I could go on about how small we really are compared to the rest of the universe – but the truth is, there aren’t really words to sum up horizon to horizon water unless you’ve seen it. I’ll spare you any metaphysical clichés.More rehearsal late tonight, and then official run-throughs for the big-wigs in Miami come tomorrow afternoon. Then, hopefully, we’ll get to a more civilized schedule with regards to rehearsals and call times.

Another Day One

2007-04-16T19:31:00.000-05:00

April 14, 2007

We are finally in our permanent quarters! After a lovely week on deck seven – right midships on the starboard side – we now have moved to our home for the next six months. Aftwards, deck five, at the end of the hall. It is the back of the ship, so it rattles a bit. Okay, who am I kidding? When we shoved off, and the winches were pulling the ropes back up from the pier, our co-principal singer Steve called and asked “Is that a tsunami coming?” There is a constant thrum, and I have no doubt that on severe weather days (which in the Baltic I am assuming we might catch a few) it’s going to rock and roll. But the room is significantly bigger than most on board, there is a king sized bed, and two portholes. It’s not spacious – but by New York city apartment standards, it’s quite doable. As a matter of fact, it’s larger than my first studio on 106th and Riverside. And the bathroom is bigger than our current pad in the East Village, minus the tub.

We docked in Houston today, the end of the ‘Texarribean’ run. No, I did not make that up. I have no comment whatsoever except to say that I am very happy to be steaming away from Houston at an average of 16 knots. We’ll be in Miami late day after tomorrow – and have a last afternoon ashore before starting the 17 day transatlantic by way of Bermuda and the Azores.But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We did get off the ship today, and took an inordinately long cab ride to the nearest shopping area. It was a nondescript strip mall like you’d find Anywhere U.S.A., except that this one being in Texas was bigger, more crowded, and just packed to the gills with all things consumable. And we certainly did our patriotic duty: we bought a fair number of DVDs for the watching during the crossing, and some household items for making our room more comfy and livable. A nice little rug now graces our cabin, and two smart throw pillows that I matched to the color scheme of the room. It’s the little things that truly do count.And now we’re off to our 10.45 company meeting and run-through. I expect we’ll be wrapped by midnight. Once again, it’s the only time the stage is available. It will be nice to be on a performance schedule in a week or so, that way we can sleep at regular hours. Heigh-ho, the glamorous life.

First Days Onboard

2007-04-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

Living on a ship is not unlike living in New York City. Your living quarters are small, you’re constantly surrounded by people and activity, and there’s often an unsettling motion around you at all times, whether the rattle of the subway, or the rolling of the ocean. It can also be expensive until you figure out where the deals are, and who to deal with.

But on board a ship, at least the food is free. It is odd to sit down to dinner, eat, and then get up without paying anything. Kristin and I have joked that we’re going to have to remember not to do that once we get back to the city.

We sailed to Progreso, Mexico after Houston – and we were able to get off at the pier for about an hour or so between rehearsals. Unfortunately, the pier at Progreso is six miles long – thanks to the limestone shelf that the bay sits on. So our first mini-liberty took us ashore to see a duty-free shop, four faux-stucco shacks jammed with straw hats, Aztec paraphernalia, cheap sunglasses that were definitely cousins to our St. Mark’s or Canal Street knockoffs, and lots of things that had the Corona logo emblazoned upon them.

Followed by more rehearsal. Kristin and I were talking this morning about how long the past four days on board have been – and we realized it had barely been over 48 hours. Given that we rehearse during the early day, and then again after mid-night – it’s the only hours we can get the stage – the days feel like two or sometimes three apiece.

We’re looking at Belize outside the windows today – it’s muggy hot, but the sun is bright and the water is a cool emerald green. We won’t see much more of it, there’s more rehearsal at 2 pm. But once we get past these three next days – and out of Houston and on the way to Miami – our days will be our own, and the show schedule will be set. And then on to the Old World!

First Day on Board

2007-04-08T14:28:00.000-05:00

First night on board.

We flew to Houston this morning at o’dark thirty – and had a fairly uneventful flight. There were no screaming children, or scary tuberculitic coughers. The in-flight entertainment was Dream Girls, which I have to say even at early morning light hours still had the power to considerably move me.

The drive to the port of Houston from the Bush International airport (I will refrain from commenting on that one. It’s just too damn easy…) seemed to consist entirely of oil refineries and indescribable smells that could only be imaginable if the Goodyear Blimp exploded, crashing into the bloated, ten day old decaying body of the Michelin Man. The port was not much to look at either, just your average endless stacks of containers – as far as a consumer’s eye could reach. It was rainy to boot - not a welcoming tropical rain, but a cold, blustery driving rain swirling down from our Canadian neighbors.But then the van came up over a crest, and there she was – the Dream. She’s a beauty of a boat – one of the older maidens of the NCL fleet. But she’s big. The décor is hotel circa early 1990’s – reminiscent of one of the better Parisien Novotels.

We gathered our four fifty pound each suitcases (six months is a long time), and rolled our way to the crew deck. We checked in with security – a rather friendly bunch – in time to walk on board for a Coast Guard drill, complete with fake smoke and screeching alarums. We then met our company manager and co-performer Tracy. We descended down to the third deck to the crew bar for an informal briefing – signing requisite paperwork and whatnot.
The crew bar, down on deck 3 (ship decks are numbered low from the water level to high), is an odd, homey, smoked filled gathering place for the crew. There’s a fussball machine, a dart board, a karaoke set-up (apparently very big with the Phillipino crew members) , and a good number of bar stools and tables. The whole feel is very euro football club a la Manchester or even Kaiserslautern – with the appropriate beer signs on the walls. There’s even a mural of a very Persephone-esque black haired maiden – her locks spreading out over the walls turning into waves – that I’ve taken to calling the Dream Girl. The crew bar is the break place, the meeting place, and the blow off steam place of the boat. We already met a good representative number of the 600+ crew – the salon crew, the other cast entertainers, and more – hanging out there.

After that, we were left on our own recognizance for a while. We tried to grab a nap, but every time we were about to nod off, the announcement chime would ring, and Ricky (our cruise director – more on him later) would come on, his crisp, slightly wry and smirky South African accent would intone that there was a mandatory passenger safety drill – and that “All passengers had to report to their muster stations, listed on the back of their stateroom doors”. After three of those, we gave up, and watched some some Pierce Brosnan era James Bond on one of the ship telly stations.

The ship left Houston at four p.m. The open water was a welcome sight – and the motion of the boat is not subtle when the weather is blustery. You sort of feel slightly drunk all of the time – not a new sensation for me, but odd when you’re still trying to find what deck everything is on. The ship seems fairly easy to navigate, and I’m sure that in six months, we’ll know it like the back of our hand.

Seven o’clock p.m. rolled around, and we went to meet our fellow cast mates and have another informal welcome from Tracy. We met the current cast that’s on board, and we’ll see them perform one of their shows tonight. We had a beer or two at the crew bar with our cast and some of the other cast – who are a good number of Aussies and Brits. Our bunch is about even with three Americans, two Canucks, and three Brits. The current Adage or Ballroom couple is a classically sculpted Russian couple – who will be with us for a month until the American couple that we rehearsed with joins us in May.

After the beers, we went to the Italian restaurant at the aft of the ship – named ‘Trattoria’. There are ten restaurants on board, some with the same theme every night, some that change. The food was very good – smaller Italian style piatti portions – which was great because they offer full course meals. Steven, our fellow singer, joined us, and opted to share some appetizers, a pizza, and a strip steak. I had to indulge in the Macadamia nut ice cream. Life is buono.
By now, the ship was rolling pretty considerably – and getting to sleep was a little touch and go for a while. But Poseidon lolled us to sleep eventually, and got some much needed rest. The days ahead would be more rehearsal, and getting to know not only the rhythm of the ship, but the rhythm of the waves underneath both sleeping and waking.

(I'm working on getting photos uploaded. Stick with me - they'll be some of the ship and cast soon.)

Hazy Thursday

2007-03-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

It's an official condition.

You're halfway through the rehearsal period for any given project - and everything starts to fog over. All the material you've learned seems the same, and all the material that you haven't learned yet looms in front of you, causing momentary panic attacks, fear, abject bitchiness, and even dyspepsia. Other symptoms can include an A.D.D.-like glaze to come over the eyes. Stimulants like coffee seem to offer little solace or effect, and alcohol only deadens the subject even more. Only surviving through the process till one realizes you only have a few days left of rehearsal alleviates the ever worsening symptoms. And it usually corresponds to a "Thursday" - or another day that falls one or two days before a day off.

All I have to say is thank god the hotel has a hot tub, or I'd be even stiffer than I am. It's not that I'm old, it's just that my knees are.

And I do adore this cast - but the dancers are younger and more limber than I am. Hell, most people are more limber than I am.

See! Right there was a symptom of the Haze! Beware of the spread of this highly communicable disease! Take all and any necessary prophylactic precautions!

Movie Review #2

2007-03-27T12:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, was anyone else also as completely not blown away by The Departed as I was?

I mean, seriously. It's a decent cop drama - but didn't it feel as if it turned into Scorcese's Boston-based version of Reservoir Dogs toward the end?

And never mind that he won the Oscar. We all darn well know that he was given it as a consolation for all the times he hasn't won. But seriously - the script is witty in a few places, but again, by the time most things happen to our two protagonists, I felt as if I was already a mile ahead of them in knowing what was coming next.

Okay, maybe that review sounds a little harsh, but haven't we seen Matt Damon do this before? Nice twist with him being crooked, and yes, he's really from Boston, we get it. Great cast of supporting characters, albeit for a "realistic" cop drama, everyone's performances seemed a bit broad. Between Baldwin and Walhberg (who will always be Markie Mark), and then squinty McGee-DiCaprio (his eyebrows were more furrowed than a plowed Kansas cornfield) there was enough chewed scenery that it could've been a musical. I would have loved it if they broke out into song, like that dreadful Botchko T.V. show "Cop Drama" that was on the air for ten minutes back in the early 90's (I believe). Even better if it was freestyle rap so Markie Mark could go all Southie on our asses. I can just hear the big show stopper number with everyone's Boston accents:

"Please don't end up just like one of us -
Crooked cops that you can't trust
If you smell a rat - it's not that he fah-ted -
it's just 'cause Mah-ty got the Oscah finally for De-pah-ted."

And really, this is a highly crafted film with a decent script and cinematography. I guess what gets me going is that the only reason it's any good is because of the people involved. And maybe that's why it got the lauds it did. Does material have to be brilliant of it's own accord? Maybe not. But I think there should be a distinction made. Perhaps Scorcese's brilliance lies in who he hires - after all they do say that good direction is 99% good casting.

So, it's a good movie. But it didn't knock my sahks off. Sorry guys.

Country Who?

2007-03-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

So. There's a country show.

I can hear most of you laughing all the way from NYC. Yes, we are doing a country western show on board. And you may choke at this even more, but it's primarily recent top 40 country songs, most of which I'd never heard before, and here comes the odd part - I actually like most of the songs.

Seriously. They're fun to sing. And even I can line dance.

Add in the cowboy boots and big hats, and I can slap on my drawl with the best of 'em. What's even more fun is that we have a number of Brits in our cast - and that's just a whirl of cross-cultural exchange.

Again, there is the Brie Factor. But it's fun, and the show is fast paced enough that when you do hit one of those awkward uncomfortable moments, it's over before it can imprint on your retinas.

There is one tune that's rather conscious of the "country-vs.-the-rest-of-the-world" mentality - and it's quite funny in an ironic sort of way:

"Well the folk scene's dead, but he's holding out in the village.
He keeps writing songs speaking out against wealth and privilege...
He says 'I don't believe in money, but a man like me could make him a killin'...
'cause some of that stuff don't sound much different than Dylan.
I hear down there - it's changed you see.
They ain't as backward as they used to be... He's Gone Country..."

I found that particularly funny as Kristin and I live two blocks from Sidewalk Cafe in the village, where they have the anti-folk hootenanny - or at least they used to back in the day.

At any rate, our first runthrough of the the first show we learned went pretty smoothly yesterday. Now we just have ten more days to learn the other two shows, and then get to Houston and get on that there big ol' boat. Yee haw. Now that's irony.

End of Week One

2007-03-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

Wow. It is Friday already? It feels as though we've been doing this for a month.

One show down - two to go. And a day off tomorrow to rest a little, and try to learn an hour more of music. All in all, haven't really had much time to think about anything other than learning the new material, and the overtly cheese-ridden narration that I seem to be the main delivery vehicle for. A port-wine, nut laden log comes to mind anytime I have to speak - but what is interesting is that while in the past, I would have made fun of such "cruise-ship" dialogue in other arenas - here it just is what it is. And it's very aware of what it is: entertainment for a captive, non-paying audience (at least non-paying for the show they are seeing) - and one where the only motive is to entertain, and not make the audience have to think too much. And it accomplishes this in spades.

Kristin and I did rent "The Good Shepherd" last night. A good movie - if a bit longwinded. I feel that DeNiro's directing debut fell prey to the bug of Coppola or even Scorsese's bug of say the same thing over and over again, and then say it again just in case. When you can nod off in the middle , and come back thirty minutes later and still know what's going on without having to ask, then it's time to edit some, fellas. Especially with a spy story. They really should follow the LeCarre model - say with "Constant Gardener" - where he allowed the adaptation to be sleek, rapid paced, and certainly not as long-winded. By the time Matt Damon's character reaches his "mature" position within the CIA, we all know exactly the kind of self-made pitfalls and hubris he's going to face - because we've seen it happen already to two other supporting players. Three times in this case is not good vaudeville set-up - it's just overkill.

Didn't know this was also going to have movie reviews, huh?

Have a good day off!

Escape from New York

2007-03-20T18:20:00.000-05:00

So you probably heard about the ice storm that bogged down NYC and most of the Northeast this past weekend. After getting prepped and all set to leave for Florida to begin rehearsals last Saturday, our flight was canceled. Add insult to injury, we had to move all our stuff into storage during said ice storm. But after a long on-hold filled phone called, Delta managed to get us on the evening flight to Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday. (It actually gave us an extra evening to chill and clean our apartment.)

And then the first day of rehearsal! After showing up late the evening before, all that anticipation and not knowing what it was going to be like - we awoke bright and early and went to rehearsal at 9 am. Now those of you that know performers - rehearsing that early in the morning is not the favorite of most civilized peoples. But there I groggily was, ready to give it my best, even though it wasn't even a double digit daytime hour.

But the rehearsal was like most first day rehearsals - minus two of the other dancers - who were stranded in the U.K. because of the same ice storm. It's a cute, entertaining bunch of material. We learned most of the music for the first piece, and started staging. The next few weeks will be like that - nothing that spectacular or exciting - these are the woodshed weeks. Day two consisted of much of the same, although we started at 8 a.m. this time due to scheduling constraints. Joy. We also had to get medical exams since we're joining a ship's crew. Mind you, they don't want hepatitis or TB on board, so that's probably a good thing. You know how dirty most actors are. Florida is Florida - traffic ridden, flat, and right now very wet. I will never understand the rampant viral strip-mall architecture that has consumed the better part of the eastern seaboard. At least the hotel is nice, and has a jacuzzi. I'll need it after today's dance rehearsal. Hi-ho the glamorous life.

Feels like the First Time

2007-03-15T09:47:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the blog.

Or maybe you all should welcome me. I've finally joined this online world of opinion, rants, and musings with my own offering. Most of you who know me probably thought I'd already done it by now, but no - I've been saving myself.

In truth, this blog is starting because I'm heading to sea with my wonderful partner in crime, Kristin McLaughlin, working for NCL and touring for six months. A large portion of this blog will be devoted to travel reviews, life aboard a big ship, and general observations of all things cruising and/or European. And of course, there will be songs, dance, wine, spirits and stories galore. So Enjoy!

Cheers - James