ITALIA: June 12, 2007

We have arrived in Italy. Actually, we arrived almost two days ago now, but owing to jetlag I am only this moment become self-aware again. It is just as we’ve left it (although, okay: with more construction on the highway) and it feels like home. Today we took our first visit to Orvieto, home of last year’s extravaganza, and it really was wonderful to revisit. Prior to that, when heading to the car rental place attached to da Vinci airport, each of us purported to feel as though we had never left…we just took a year to get lost before finding where we were supposed to be again.

Our occasion to visit Orvieto, as though we needed any excuse, was to meet David’s friend, Andrea Brugnera, and plumb the prospects of collaboration. The meeting, it was agreed, went very well. This was not merely because Andrea fed us coffee and ice cream, nor because the ice cream was topped with rum, nor because his rooftop porch faced onto the duomo. No, the meeting went well because we discovered that our interests were quite similar and we established times to work (read: play) together during the week that Todd is still here in order to discover one another as actors, improvisers and general old people. Tomorrow we’ll host lunch here at the agriturismo, then we’ll head to a gorgeous little theatre nearby to run through the patented Zuppa del Giorno™ technique. Later in the week we’ll get a taste of what Andrea’s been up to, and we’ll all discuss possible future collaboration. The important agreement between us all is valuing commedia dell’arte as a living tradition. We’ll see if the specifics enforce or betray this commonality.

One other very interesting thing Andrea showed us was a DVD of a Spanish program done on a fellow actor of his, Adolfo, who has been doing traditional commedia for years. It was fascinating, and in no small part due to the fact that what he does is so similar to what we do! Working in somewhat of cultural isolation as we regularly are it has been easy to imagine we were getting off track with our updating and transposing of the commedia tradition into contemporary (relatively) forms. It turns out we seem to be more in keeping with what the modern traditional commedia performer values than we could have hoped. There were moments in the DVD when his workshop looked exactly like one we would run. Basically the only difference is that we don’t adhere strictly to the stock characters, but venture to use them as inspiration for more complex or contemporary types.

There’s a lot to be done, a lot to explore. We ended our time out today by driving around the area we’re staying, trying to find a road to a castle you can see from our front porch. We made it to the nearest town and had a look around, never quite getting to the castle proper this day. But we got a hell of a view of it. Tomorrow, maybe, we’ll walk its walls.

Let the Games Begin

So I'm still thinking muchly about

Camp Nerdly

and with what I came away from it. The connections between it and some of my other work--in a theatrical milieu--are striking. Here are some of my thoughts on this . . .

As Far As We Know

: A show developed through the combination of elements from

actual events

and improvisational explorations of the ramifications of those events on the people involved. I was reminded of this show whilst playing

Dogs in the Vineyard

, what with the cultural fact/fiction overlap and the issues of faith and violence that are predominant to that particular game. I played a character taken from Mormon history, who believed in blood-letting being good for the purification of the soul. (This is based in biblical quotation, believe it or not. Mormons do not believe this now.) It was hard to find a way to play this character with sincerity, since his beliefs were so different from my own, and I feel very strongly about issues such as missionary work, the concept of sin and the pursuit of violent means for a peaceful end. Playing a soldier in

As Far As We Know

has helped me explore some of these issues, and so playing

Dogs in the Vineyard

was made more difficult for me given my inability to disassociate from the implications of its story. This difficulty made for a good game, because it's a game that thrives on conflict, internal and external. Rather like theatre.

In Bocca al Lupo

: This isn't a show, but an entire program involving traveling to Italy, taking Italian classes and teaching commedia dell'arte to American students, all of it culminating in a show in that style performed in Italian, for Italians. The Camp Nerdly experience was reminiscent of last year's first contact with Italy, in that at first I felt incapable of contributing anything due to the language barrier, but eventually I learned to express myself to good effect. Moreover, I had two experiences directly relevant to the work I do in

In Bocca al Lupo

: I was constantly trying to pick up the rules as I went along, and I got to participate in an improvisation class as a student (whereas lately I have invariably been the teacher). There is much to apply from these experiences to my teaching. (Is there no word, in any language, to encapsulate the phenomenon between student and teacher in which both are constantly learning from one another?) Mistakes can be learned from in terms of improving one's craft, but still others can serve to simply blow the doors off conventional wisdom, and thereby make new rules. Game-playing generates desire in addition to goals, which in turn can fuel a performance. And what of the element of chance? We in theatre talk a good game when we spout off about audience interaction and ad lib dialogue, but most of our efforts at creating theatre are concerned with removing elements of chance. How many of us would be willing to trust a plot change to a chaotic mechanic element?

Zuppa del Giorno

: This is the connection that felt most fruitful for me. In fact, it may merit an entire entry of its own some time this month, but for now a few observations. For our first show as

Zuppa del Giorno

(the mad-cap contemporary commedia dell'arte troupe) each actor was asked to build four characters from scratch, based on an appetite or desire and with certain details fleshed in. These characters were applied to a scenario we had already begun to conceive of, and there was a back-and-forth between the two as we tried to work out the entire show. It was a rather painstaking process, particularly because we were doing it for the first time, but eventually we developed a show called

Noble Aspirations

. Playing

Inuma

with Clinton R. Nixon while at Camp Nerdly, I and my fellow journeypersons created an entire world in under two hours, and somehow without once screaming at somebody for holding up the process. Now, that hardly compares--in terms of priorities--to the work of

Zuppa

. We have many additional pressures upon us, not the least of which is to create something accessible to a wide community of audience members. Yet there was something in the

Inuma

system that was highly effective, and which must be applicable. Our

Zuppa

shows are almost always created from very specific given circumstances (see the development sites for

Operation Opera

and the burgeoning

Prohibitive Standards

), just as the

Inuma

system works. Even putting

Inuma

aside for a moment, most role-playing games have something interesting to add to the method of creating a character, either from scratch or from the given circumstances of a script.

One interesting thing to note when comparing role-playing with theatre is a term used in the former's circles: conflict resolution mechanism. This term refers to the dice rolls, or the card draws, or what-have-you device used in determining things otherwise undetermined, such as whether or not you can succeed in leaping from a moving car and survive. In theatre,

very

generally speaking, there is no conflict resolution per se, apart perhaps from the comedies that supposedly end happily when everyone gets married off. Conflicts can transform, but the moment they become resolved is the end of the show, because the audience came to see a fight. "The show must go on" is not simply an axiom expressing an actor's work ethic, but the spirit of theatre in general. Is it any wonder that so much of our entertainment (including role-playing games) is motivated by battle or violence? It's a tireless metaphor for individual struggle.

If a "conflict resolution mechanism" existed in real life, we'd have nothing to tell stories about.

Holler if you Hear Me

I just want to give a shout-out to my peeps.

Actually, I hate

Peeps

(TM). They're just glorified puffed sugar, like diabetes-inducing rice cakes. But I know some people who love the Peeps(r), and I love the people who love the Peeps(patent pending) so, ergo, ipso facto, I love the Peeps(k) too, and must shout it out unto them. This entry, thus, is for ma'

Peeps

.

Some of y'all (most of my peeps hail from Virginia [though Northern {which was going to secede just like West, until they realized they had no natural resources}]) may have wondered where the Aviary went for the past three days. Some, in fact, may have panicked, and I offer my most profound apologies to just those panicky some. It's all right. It's okay. You can cry without shame, and I will hold you just as long as you need to be held. Maybe a little longer. Why not? No one's looking. And maybe, if that's too warm for you, you can just go ahead and take your shirt off. That's cool. We're just friends hugging here. And if that hug gets a little rubby, you know, if the, fingers get curious and the breathing gets throaty, hey--

Whoa. Where was I going with that? Oh right: Jail. For lewd 'blogostomy.

Where have I been? Well, I was ill. Again. Yeah. Thas' right. Because I rule so bad. There are aspects of my reputation as a performer that I quite enjoy, such as being unerringly punctual (unless I miss rehearsal altogether, eh,

TP

ers?) and always having some outlandishly overwrought physical choice to contribute. The one I'd just as soon not have continue, however, is my proclivity for infection during the course of a show. I was wicked good at that in college (starring in

The Three Musketeers

with a swollen throat and fever of 102) and thought I had whipped it (whipped it good) in the early years of my adulthood, but the past year+ now has brought the return of the leprous liturgist. This time it was a head cold that fell into my throat, which created the intriguing aspect of never knowing if my voice would go out in the middle of

A Lie of the Mind

last weekend.

Owing to how we've staged the show, with cross-fades in lieu of blackouts, after the act break I end up lying mostly motionless on my side on a box for about twenty minutes at the top of our Act II (Shepard's Act III) before being suddenly woken to proclaim a somewhat lengthy monologue. Well, last weekend it was always a crap-shoot whether or not I'd have any voice whatsoever after my little silent nap. The worst was Friday night. I sat up and started talking, and it was like trying to rattle a piece of papyrus, my larynx had gone so brittle. I made it, thankfully. In fact, I got some compliments on how effectively I played the character's fever. Which I took. What? That's valid.

The other thing is, I plowed through my congestion to take yet another trip out to the sticks. Or, as it is more commonly known to those what live there, Scranton, Pennsylvania--home to all things

Northeast-Theatre

-like. I was there to go on a sort of first date.

Zuppa del Giorno

is beginning to collaborate with a few community groups for our upcoming projects, among them

Marywood University

and the

Scranton State School for the Deaf

. We were to attend a rehearsal for the latter's production of

Grease

, and while there show them a little something of what we do, too.

Yes:

Grease

. Yes: School for the deaf. I recognize that this smacks of a really poor set-up for some even worse punchlines. Such is not my intention, however, as the high schoolers we met that day probably have gone right out and found every single website associated with us they could. Gang, if you're reading, I can only hope I half rocked your world like you rocked mine.

As it was going to be just

Heather Stuart

and I to perform our half of the bargain, we planned to do our clown piece, "

Death + a Maiden

," and had to allot time to refresh it before unveiling its silly splendor for what we imagined to be culturally jaded teenagers. We had the theatre to ourselves, and that is a fairly big space. Well, huge from a struggling New York actor standpoint. I was reminded, between gasping for air without the use of my nose and chugging Alka-Seltzer Cold concoctions, of the sacredness of space for a performer. As Heather and I struggled to feel our roles again, to polish our beats 'til they shined like the top of the Chrysler Building, I thought of how it would be yet four more months until Zuppa rode out

our new debut

, and wondered what work lay before us.

Heather, as I have mentioned previously, has moved out to Scranton, and before we took to the stage of the deaf I got my first look at her new place. It's really nice; idyllic, in a

Benny and Joon

kind of way. The entire time I was there, she and David Zarko cracked jokes about how long I was going to wait before caving and moving out there myself. It's hard to say if they had any idea how much I'd thought about it in recent months. Still, their jokes peppered my appetite for New York adventures in a very appetizing way. Just tonight I was out past my bedtime, catching a mixed bag of short plays. How I would miss that sort of thing.

Before we even met the students at the Scranton School I felt simultaneously like I was dreaming and like I had returned to Italy. Obviously, all the faculty there use sign language. Not so obvious is who amongst them can speak as well. As in Italy, I found myself having to remind myself to look to the person being translated, rather than the translator, and as in a dream I began to sense the sense of a language and culture I had virtually no exposure to prior to the moment. It was a matter of only seconds before my mind began making connections and understanding the tone of some of what was being "said," if none of the words or symbols used. That would have been fascinating enough, but we were there to the meet actors who were native to that country.

In a gymnasium with a stage built into one end we met about twenty young actors and technicians who couldn't hear a word we said. Our introductions and conversation all flowed through the hands and lips of a translator or, often, several, as others "mirrored" what was being said in order for everyone to get what was being said. There were still kids more interested in what they had to say at the moment than what the class was discussing (one I think I even caught making something of a dirty joke with his pals) but in this context such side conversations were easy to let be . . . one just kept his eyes on the ball. Like all first dates, it was awkward at first. It was funny, actually. No one was quite sure what he or she was doing there, or what the other wanted from them. Eventually we determined that the home team would show their stuff first, so they brought us chairs as we sat back to see a scene from

Grease

.

Five girls played the sleepover scene, and broke into gesticulated song with "Frankie my Darling." ("Frankie my Love"? I don't know. I don't know

Grease

. Or sign language, for that matter.) There was no music--they were still working on getting their speakers rigged to vibrate the stage so the actors could feel the beat--but somehow the actors kept in perfect sync with one another. As they signed, a translator spoke, always about a beat or two behind their delivery. By the end of the scene, we weren't laughing at the translated lines, but at the delivery, silent and as literally inexplicable as could be, simply because we understood the characters and their feelings based on the acting and, somehow, the tone of the signing. Actually, it was some of the most naturalistic acting I have seen from high schoolers, and I wonder how much of that has to do with their living first and foremost in a physical language.

When they finished the scene, we applauded. There was an awkward silence. I mean, even hands were silent. We didn't know what was to come next; but I asked a question. Did they begin with a table reading, as we usually do? From this the actress playing Sandy launched into an explanation about how English is a kind of second language to them, signing being the first, and that there's no direct translation between the two. After all, it isn't like sign language evolved from a romantic or Latin-based language. It is its own entity, and so any time a script is performed in it, the whole thing doesn't just have to be translated, but transliterated. The interpretation an actor must perform begins at the level of the very language they choose, and thus there's an added dimension of reaching agreement between everyone in their understanding of the script. We asked them if they ever improvised, and had to spend some time explaining the very concept to them, so Zuppa may end up really giving them something different.

Finally, we took the stage with our little clown piece, and I was nervous as can be. Would they get it? Would they be insulted by the noses, or the style? Would the piece hang together without their hearing the music, getting the auditory jokes? At first it was silent. My entrance as a red-nosed Death usually elicits a healthy chuckle, but not this time, and I suddenly wondered how laughter came out of people unaccustomed to using sounds to communicate. Would I recognize it?

I did. Shortly after my entrance, I took an illustrative swing with my plastic scythe and the handle bent, hinging the blade back on itself cartoonishly for an instant before straightening out again. The laughter was some of the sweetest I've ever heard. From there in we were all set. They laughed at our courtship--an interesting parallel, the first-date scenario realized within a first date--and oo-ed at the acrobalance. When we finished, they clapped and we took our bows. There was a very brief question-and-answer session, akin to those following matinée performances at the theatre, in which one gets the impression everyone there is much more interested in lunch than information. But then class was dismissed, and every student came forward to shake our hands. When they saw we were not in a rush to go, they flooded us (in a necessarily one-at-a-time fashion) with questions. One boy said he loved "this clown stuff" and wanted to know if we'd teach him. One wanted to know if we'd be back the next day. One wanted to know if my character knew his kiss would kill the girl before he did it.

I can't wait to work with these kids again. Zuppa's becoming a sort of incorporation of different communities, and it's an exciting prospect. We speak of commedia dell'arte being a living tradition in our shows and workshops, and now it seems we're paying the tradition back a little for all the life it's given us. So let this entry be a shout-out to all the people who've supported Zuppa del Giorno along the way. And to our new friends at the Scranton State School, I raise the roof. You guys can teach me a cooler gesture when we work together in the fall.

A Love of the (Neo) Classics

After Easter they suffered a huge nor'easter.

I'm really digging the rain these past couple of days, actually. Sometimes one is simply in the mood to have their city look like something out of a noir flick, all sheeting greys and visible light beams. I'm prowling about in my grey trench coat . . . but with an umbrella. Which is not terribly noir, but I had to concede defeat years ago on the umbrella issue. In the right hands, umbrellas are a force for good, and for a lack of mildew-y smells.

The weekend was a strange blend of circumstance for yours truly, overlapping past and present, business and pleasure. My sister and her boyfriend Adam finally saw

A Lie of the Mind

Friday night, and it didn't scare Adam too badly, which I consider an accomplishment.

Chris Kipiniak

, of Torture Project and Spider-Man fame (see

3/8/07

) attended the same night, which was especially rewarding to me, having the respect I do for his work and knowing how busy he keeps his schedule. Saturday night

Friend Kira

made it all the way out from New Jersey, though she couldn't hang around afterwards owing to bus schedules. Perhaps the most surprising appearance, however, involved the return of Friend Christina and her fella' J.C. I reunited with Christina at Rachel's wedding (see

3/21/07

), and they both attended the opening weekend of

ALotM

. This weekend past they brought friends and family with them, and one other.

As I took my final bow Saturday night, I glimpsed a face in the crowd smiling with satisfaction, one that I recognized. I immediately, however, thought to myself, "Dang. I'm so Method. Frankie's delirium is bleeding over into the curtain call." Sure enough, though, when I had scrubbed my face and removed my bullet holes, I ventured out into the lobby and was ambushed by none other than Mrs. Rachel Lee herself. Which was

the weirdest thing that has happened to me in years

. She was up seeing friends, and Christina invited her along to see my show. A group of eight, we all went out afterwards, first to

La Lanterna

, then

Puck Faire

, and I had the opportunity to actually catch up with Rachel a bit, something that was impossible at the wedding and which in actuality we hadn't done in years. Mostly I was curious how things were for a person who came to the city with as ardent a passion as I for professional achievement, and who had since returned home and, shall we say, modified her own personal

The Third Life

(r). It sounds like she misses the more unique aspects of city living, but not the struggle to achieve. It sounds like she's very happy with her life now, which it was good to have confirmed. Most of all, it's wonderful to see in person that she's on her good path, and that I'm on mine. An unexpected fortune.

The next day I was up and out to attend the closing of

Friend Nat

's appearance in Moliere's

The Learned Ladies

, at

The Gallery Players

, just thirteen short blocks from my apartment. Acquaintance Alisha Spielmann was also in the production, whom I know from Nat's readings of

The Exiled

. Nat does quite a bit of classical work; I think I can say with some safety that it is his forte. He's tall, with a wiry, energetic frame and a deep voice, and he put it all to wonderful use in

TLL

. He played the villain of the piece, and I'm here to tell you: Nat does a delicious villain, especially when its one that can be as flamboyant as Trissotin. I met him on a show in which he was playing an undercover demon. His enthusiasm for mischief would make the role of Trissotin type cast, were it not that Nat is genuinely intelligent where Trissotin is merely conniving.

This is the second production of Moliere I've seen in the past few months (see

12/25/06

), and the prior experience was in a theatre of very similar dimensions and budget (apart from paying Manhattan rent, that is). I took issue with certain of the aspects of The Gallery Players production, the which may be a result of too close a comparison with the show I saw in the winter. There were little choices (among them, the decision to incorporate contemporary clothing into relatively period costumes to varying degrees--the young hero [played admirable by Marc Halsey] wore a belt on his jeans whose buckle distracted) that I can be free of with a little time to forget, but my biggest gripe was how the actors seemed to have, at certain points, been instructed to make choices of delivery that emphasized the rhyme scheme. It's hard to say if such a thing is the fault of a director, or a failing of certain actors, but in my opinion it is a big no-no. Moliere wrote specific ending couplets when he wanted the rhyme to take precedence, and his commedia dell'arte inspired characters deserve to spew their dialogue with more ease. In balance, and to the credit of Neal J. Freeman and actress Candice Goodman, her Martine--the only consistent servant character in this particular show--spoke with a great candor befitting her character and an amusing translation of her dialogue.

My overall favorite moment of the show, however, was a very naughty one, theatrically speaking. It should serve to take my criticism down a peg or two. At one point in the show, Trissotin and Henriette (played by Alisha) are left to their own devices whilst the other characters in scene wax poetic about Trissotin's, er, poetics. For this sequence, the two characters actually took seats at opposite corners of the stage (I have to imagine that in most productions this time is used to further illustrate Trissotin's intentions toward Henriette), she utterly bored and he arrogantly unlistening to his own praise. What ensued was a kind of ridiculous silent war of entertaining gesture. Nat had developed some business involving inspecting his teeth and snorting snuff, and Alisha was reaching new heights of boredom which led her to sprawling against the wall and vacantly inflating spit bubbles, all the while the three scholarly women energetically stroked one another's egos, oblivious to the unspoken commentary. It was hysterical, if possibly gratuitous. But in my world, what gets the laugh stays in the comedy.

I've written here before about the effects of past lives on the present, and it's a theme in my theatrical work. I seem to constantly be finding myself in memory plays, and

Zuppa del Giorno

is itself a tradition of finding the ancient roots of contemporary entertainment. Our next show,

Prohibitive Standards

(the which I also set up

the collaboration 'blog

for this weekend), is to be set in prohibition-era Scranton, and is likely to be influenced by characters from that era and centuries earlier. Perhaps it's a theme in theatre in general, as classic characters like Richard III or Trissotin continue to inform us about choices we're making on a daily basis. Part of the key to living and creating effectively is in learning from the past, honoring it as it deserves, but also being realistic about it and recognizing it is, indeed, passed. Similar to being alive in the moment on stage, one can't always base his or her decisions on what he or she has done (or regretted doing) before.

Sometimes the only answer is to improvise.

This Pigeon, She Limps

If you get no other lesson or nugget of wit'sdom from this here entry, please let it be this:

The FedEx/Kinko's at Astor Place is the devil.

I am not joking. "Ha ha," you think with private, interior laughter, "He is calling a

location

the

ultimate creature of evil

, which is a hyperbolic impossibility and therefore meant to induce laughter. Ha ha." Or perhaps, "Ah yes, the righteous artist, rebelling against the establishment and insidious corporations that are dug into our society like bedbugs attracted to the heat of our commerce. Rail on, my scrupulous-yet-ultimately-doomed-to-failure savant. Rail on." Or just maybe: "Dude. Chill. So they screwed up your order. It happens."

WELL THAT'S WHERE YOU'D BE WRONG! 'Cause they didn't just "screw up my order" (and don't use that tone of typography with me, mister) once or twice, but yesterday would represent the double-digit rite of passage as they rocketed from 7 to 10 incidents of humping the dignity out of me. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that yesterday was the final straw for me and ol' Astor Place FE/K's, regardless of the convenience of their location, and I encourage everyone to find a local place--where they'll learn your name, like on Cheers--for all your copying and shipping needs. Though the fine people at the 52nd Street FE/K's are quite awesome, I must admit.

Anyway. So yesterday I'm holding up the wall (and holding in my Hulk-like rage ["Don't neglect the manufacture of my brochures...you wouldn't like me when the manufacture of my brochures has been neglected...."]) outside said Kinko's establishment-o'-evil, and I espy me another injured pigeon (see

1/8/07

), this one fully legged but limping. Again I'm confronted with the question of how exactly this pigeon (or any pigeon) comes to be limping, exactly. But again, too, I'm given hope by the image. The pigeon flies perfectly well, and does so to escape an oncoming minivan. For our younger readers, a "minivan" is what "SUVs" were before Americans started playing the I'm-taller-No-I'm-taller game. See also "station wagon" and "Hummer" for further extrapolations in both directions.

Speaking of cars, Heather ended up with a

red PT Cruiser

for a rental, so we headed down to Philly in style (and I did not crush the dashboard with FedUp/Killyouse frustration) and got there in good time.

To discover that no one came to our

workshop

.

So, maybe the Gods of Copies knew something I didn't. Maybe I used up all my attendance karma at KCACTF (see

1/17/07

). Maybe it was just the "Blue Monday" factor. Apparently, January 22nd has been deemed, for a variety of factors, the most depressing day of the year (this seems wrong somehow; it's the kind of thing I'd expect to be kept track of by a lunar calendar, and thereby float over the Gregorian days, like Hanukkah; anyway:) and had Heather and I but known, we might have scheduled our workshop for another time. Instead, we taught Heather's friend Kelly some acrobalance, discussed methods of creating physical characterizations, and joked profusely over the lack of attendance. It was a good excuse to spend three hours training, and we took it. We stayed at Kelly and Diane's last night, amidst their menagerie of catsandonedog, and this morning drove back into Brooklyn, whereupon I caught the train into work here.

What's my point? I have no point. Feel free to make observations of the events herein and interpret them as you will. This is a twenty-four-hour period in the life of an actor/teacher/artist doing something related to their craft(s). But perhaps this doesn't pique your attention, blunted as it is by constant in-streaming of advertising and appetite-driven media. Very well. A dream I had...a nightmare, actually:

This was Saturday night, amidst my gloriously care-free weekend (it always is, isn't it?). It was part of a larger dream, but this is the only part I can remember:

Wait for it:

Okay:

I'm walking up a sidewalk in the Bronx. I'm on my way to some kind of party, possibly a barbecue, and I was supposed to bring meat. Ahead of me, his leash tied to a radiator outside a store front (what's a radiator doing outside?), is a medium-sized black dog. Not sure of the breed. Possibly an

Australian Kelpie

mix. (This from looking up breeds; I don't know them instinctively.) So it's suddenly imperative to me to get out my

Ginsu knife

and cut the dog into four even pieces down its back. Which I do. The dog is now held together by I know not what, and just looks at me, very sadly, ever-so-slightly whimpering. Now I'm in trouble deep, I know, because the owner is probably just inside the store. So I scoop up the severed dog, rather like how one holds a few boxes together by applying inward pressure in a two-sided grip, and run him around the corner. Now I'm in a neighborhood much more suburban looking, and possibly a cul-de-sac I knew not far from where I grew up. I put the dog down and sort of lay down with it (him, I know it's a him) in a nook of curb, semi-obstructed by trees, and think to myself "Oh man. Now I have to kill it." To put it out of its misery and so I have something to bring to the party, presumably. I decide slitting its throat is what needs to happen. (Why that's going to succeed where full-body amputations didn't, ask not me.) So I prepare to cut him...

And wake up. It might be angst over allowing the film to be cut (see

1/21/07

, "Film Debuts"). It may be about a metric tonne of guilt over some of the seemingly brutal decisions I've made in my life of late. It may just be I was hungry that night, and couldn't summon the creativity to imagine a

Royale w/ Cheese

. All in all, however, I would rather have the kind of dreams my friend Dave has:

Dave's dream.

Eva Green: Call me. We'll do lunch. I know this great

place

in the medieval quarter of Orvieto...