All posts in Life

Extra Extra

by Drey on June 6, 2005 in Life with No comments

This past Saturday I got to be an extra in a short film that will appear during the Albuquerque Local Shorts Film Festival. I had thought I was just going to be just a face in the crowd, walking through the background scenery. What actually happened was that I was one of about six other people that got to appear in a ton of scenes for a sort of spoken word piece. We went all around Nob Hill and the Civic Center, filming all sorts of crazy scenarios while Marianne performed her piece. Then they’ll edit it all together, music video style.

One guy was dressed in a polar bear costume. Let me tell you, if you want to get attention and adoration, suit up as a polar bear and stroll down Central. People were coming up, wanting their picture taken with Nevada the Bear. It was a blast walking around downtown beside a polar bear, acting like I did this every day.

Tomatoes

by Drey on June 3, 2005 in Life with No comments

Today I purchased a tomato plant starter kit, took it home and set it up in the back patio. These Big Beef tomatoes promise fruit of unusual size and quantity. Just the sort of thing to bolster my gardening confidence. With any luck, I’ll be handing out tomatoes in no time!

Great new taste!

by Drey on June 2, 2005 in Life with No comments

I noticed when I tossed the spent carton of orange juice that it boasted a “Great New Taste!” As far as I could tell it tasted like orange juice. Was I missing some subtle flavor? Was I not a true connoisseur of juice?

But isn’t labelling orange juice with “Great New Taste!” like putting a sign by a rose bush stating “Great New Smell!” ? What could possibly be happening in that orange grove except perhaps injections of yummy DNA?

Survey

by Drey on June 1, 2005 in Life with 1 Comment

Surveys and quizzes abound on MySpace and I have become quite addicted to them. As with most things I like, I eventually had to create my own. I present to you the Drey Survey.

1. You are walking alone on a forest path when you come upon what you are certain is a portal leading to some other world. You sense that it will close soon with no guarantee of ever opening again. Do you go through the portal? Why?

2. In what situation is it acceptable to tell a lie?

3. What manner of death would you find the most unpleasant?

4. What is a recurring theme in your dreams and how does it apply to your waking life?

5. You discover a video file on your computer. The file name is TrueLove.avi. It is 10 seconds long. What would you see if you played the file?

6. You are successful at something in life, but you may be reluctant to call it “success,” reserving that label for goals you have yet to achieve. What is that success?

7. What is your most irrational fear? What is your most rational one?

8. You see a man seated at a restaurant. A small globe of blue flame hovers above his palm. When he notices you watching, the globe evaporates and he turns his attention to the menu. What is the most likely explanation for this event? What do you wish to be true in this case?

9. You wake up one morning to find a digital timer grafted to your chest, just above your heart. It immediately starts counting down from twenty-four hours. How do you spend the time between twenty-four and zero? How is this different from the way you spend time now?

10. You are cleaning out your attic and find an old shoebox you’ve never seen before. Written on the lid in your own handwriting is the phrase “You are ready for this now.” What is inside the box?

11. In the future, enlightenment is available in an over the counter gel capsule. Its effects are indistinguishable from enlightenment gained through years of seeking. Do you take the pill?

12. You want to stop doing that One Thing, but you don’t. Why?

13. What question is missing from this survey?

Dummy!

by Drey on May 31, 2005 in Funny with No comments

I just tried to cut and paste a friend’s mailing address from Outlook to a handwritten post-it note. Didn’t work too well.

Impulse Control

by Drey on May 22, 2005 in Reft with No comments

Do we leave any part of the tower standing? Peel it away until it is just a twisted spiral cyclone of abandoned roller coaster track? Wouldn’t the energy just radiate in all directions without a form to focus it? Wouldn’t we just do as we wished when we wished? Wouldn’t we love at every opportunity, even if it had nothing to do with the conversation? Is this freedom or chaos?

Mighty Hunters

by Drey on May 18, 2005 in Funny, Life with No comments

This morning I awoke to find that one or more of my cats had successfully stalked the elusive gold tassel often found clinging to new curtains hanging in bedroom windows. As I slept, the golden tassel was pulled from its safe perch and dragged out to the living room where it was properly mauled. The remains of the tassel were found stashed inside the hunter’s den, which had at one time been a table. Only piles of gold string testified to the existence of this rare beast. Good job, cats.

Maintenance

by Drey on May 16, 2005 in Food, Life with No comments

The Rodeo went into the shop yet again today, this time to replace the starter. People keep telling me to sell it and get a new vehicle. But I love my car. It was the first thing I purchased in my new life, a transport from one world to the next. I can’t just give up on it. Besides, after this year I will be done paying it off. Then I can use the extra money for maintenance and bringing it back up to top form. If it were a computer, I might think differently, but I think there is a value in getting the most use out of everything you own instead of always upgrading to the next best thing.

If only I could upgrade my insides. Tomorrow I will make an appointment with the doctor to perhaps confirm my greatest fear: My body is rejecting wheat gluten, an ingredient present in the bulk of the foods I eat. I’ve been reading up on it and the consequences of not dealing with this aren’t merely physical discomforts but serious health risks. I eat bread as a snack item and just about every meal I enjoy includes something gluten-based. And I already have lactose intolerance. It’s like the major food groups are slowly closing their doors to me. Years from now I will have to subsist on injections of genetically engineered nutrients. Anyhow, my next shopping trip will be gluten free, as an experiment. Wish me luck.

This is funny

by Drey on May 15, 2005 in Life with No comments

Here’s how the play is being billed:

In The Wind, A New Supernatural Thriller by Eric Whitmore

In The Wind is a supernatural thriller set in the not-too-distant future. Most of humanity has been forced into bondage and slavery, and going outside after dark means certain death. Submerged in a tiny apartment, one family waits anxiously for the return of their son, as they plan their escape and revolt against the unspoken entities that have forced them into submission. As the wind shrieks louder and louder, terror creeps closer to their doorstep. With time running out, the family must risk death to prevail in a heart-stopping conclusion that celebrates the indomitable human spirit to live in freedom!

—–

I seem to have missed the whole celebration of the indomitable human spirit. Was that when the father was torturing their son’s friend from high school? Or perhaps they are referring to the mother strangling the son, a strained melee which seemed to last five minutes.

In the Wind

by Drey on May 15, 2005 in Life with No comments

Last night I attended a performance of “In the Wind” at the Tricklock theatre. The play was written by my best friend’s ex-boyfriend whom I don’t care for at all. I was concerned that the play might actually be good and I would have to rise to the occasion and admit this fact. But this proved to be not the case.

“In the Wind” follows the meagre existence of a family living in the bomb shelter-like remains of their home. The world has been overrun by an alien dictatorship which has transformed society into the generic Orwellian dystopia that we all apparently fear. We never see the aliens or learn why they have modelled human society after the bleak apocalypses of “Brave New World” and “1984.” But we hear them from time to time, or at least we hear some kind of monsters prowling about in the wind whipped wastes outside of the hovel.

The husband and wife, along with their daughter-in-law, struggle to eke out an existence. They subsist on rationed food, maintain a bicycle-powered generator to provide light, and generally cower in the paranoid shadow of the new regime. They are bouyed by idealistic memories of their son who escaped and is now presumably a leader in the resistance. When they hear word of an upcoming push by the resistance, they plan their escape.

Other than a scene of torture via electroshock, there isn’t much else to the story. Just before their planned escape, who should show up at their door but their long lost son, now transformed into a kind of gestapo enforcer. He kills his father and then is strangled himself by his mother. Then the play ends.

What is to be made of all this? Is the message here to trust no one, not even your family? If the world should fall under the sway of alien invaders, is it best just to surrender your humanity and fall into step? I had no sense of what I was meant to learn from the story, if anything. By the end of the play, the marginally-sympathetic characters were either dead or reduced to near helplessness.

Only the acting prowess of the Tricklock company and the audio/video engineering made this play watchable. Even so, Joe Pesce, the actor playing the father, seemed almost too spirit-crushed and tired, as though he felt the play tedious. The actor playing the son (I forget the names now) was the only one who seemed to truly slip into his role.

The final line of the play, delivered by the mother standing over her strangled son, was “Let’s go!” I thought it good advice, so I went.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →