We had a wonderful weekend here at Casa Booski!

Our friend Madelaine played hooky from her own family this weekend to hang out with us.

Saturday, we ventured out to a Big Tourist Attraction, only to find it mostly closed. Noah got wiped out by all that adventure, but he enjoyed his first day of being outward facing in the baby bjorn!

As you can see, we also had fun dressing Noah up B-Boy style with the cool bling outfit from Aunt Anna! I’ll put more pics of the outfit on the flickr page. But in the mean time, who needs video girls?

When he got home, it was bath time, which also involves Aunt Anna’s taste for baby Bee-Boy style. Noah loves the bath, which is nice.

Last night, Jill and I got an evening to ourselves! We went to see a
fabulous play, an adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel &
Dimed. We also met Ehrenreich, which was very very cool. I’ve been a
fan of hers since the mid 90s. And Madelaine babysat!

This morning, I tried to make a Dutch Baby for breakfast, but it turned out flat. Anyone have a theory for what went wrong? I followed the directions! It still tasted good, at least.

After breakfast, Madelaine, Noah & I went to the Botanical Gardens, where they have a fabulous exhibit of scuplture by Niki de Saint Phalle.

WOW! Her art is so wildly imaginative, I am in love. Madelaine and I
kept daydreaming about having enough space and money to acquire one of
her scuptures — especially the giant skull. It was indescribably
beautiful, especially from the inside. Little kids were climbing all
over it, and the grown-ups, us included, kept running our hands all
over the pieces that were within reach. Tactile, colorful, powerful,
and inspiring!

Plus Noah slept the whole time. Madelaine and I had a blast  talking and walking through whole show.

Sadly, we had to go home eventually and say goodbye to Madelaine.

This is a REALLY hard review to write. In fact, I wasn’t going to write a review at all, but then Jill asked about it and opined that if I didn’t review it, that would be really weird.

So…on to the review.

Onstage Atlanta’s production of M*A*S*H went up on Thursday night, and runs through October 1, on Thursday & Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons.

The show is funny, and I enjoyed watching it. The set was interesting, and most of the acting was pretty good.

But there were a few weaknesses.

First, there were some surprising logistical problems, especially since the theater is professional. On opening night, there were no programs, for example, and a conversation with the woman running the concession stand revealled that they had very little water left. Since there were maybe 30 people in the audience and most of them had purchased wine, I’m having trouble coming up with a theory other than weak organizational skills.

Second, the acting was on the uneven side, and one of the casting decisions was just odd. Most of the principal roles were good, although several people clearly dropped or flubbed lines.

The odd casting decision was having the role of HoJon (?–wish I could check the name in the program) played by a white actor. The character plays the "houseboy" who cleans up after, and mixes drinks for, Hawkeye, Trapper, and Duke, and is later drafted into the military.

I think the actor tried really hard not to play the role as a goofy asian stereotype, but in a comic role of this type, he faced a serious challenge. The way it landed for me was almost as if the actor had been in blackface, only instead, it was heavy and strange eye makeup.

That was my biggest "Toto, I don’t think we’re in Washington DC anymore" moment.

The other thing are smaller, and I imagine that most of them will work themselves out over the course of the run — voiceovers and lines being lost during audience reaction, blocking that inadvertantly blinds the audience with a powerful desklamp, preventing them from watching the action stage right (the light was on and in my eyes for at least 10 minutes), and a ‘not quite jelled’ feeling with the cast chemistry.

The last thing, and this is obviously my own bias, is that I’m tired of seeing Jill in tiny roles that don’t showcase what she can do. There wasn’t a more appropriate role for her in this production — I think "Hot Lips" was appropriately cast older than Jill, and older than she can probably play convincingly — yet.

Jill did everything she could with Scorch, as she did with her prisoner characters in Far Away and her various roles in Wit. But I really want the world to see her in juicier roles, like Narissa.

The director of M*A*S*H made some casting changes, and Jill is no longer playing Connie Leibowitz. She’s now playing a nurse named "Scorch."

I liked the description of Scorch. None of the nurses other than Hot Lips have many lines, but they’re on stage a lot, so this character will develop more in context. Which is a long way of saying that I don’t think Jill wants me to say more about the character until she has a chance to see how the character evolves in the context of the show.

I’m delighted to report that we’ve come up with a name to call the embryo (it’s an embryo now, soon to be a fetus, but no longer a blastocyst — but isn’t blastocyst a cool name? It sounds like I was growing a superhero.): Smudge.

We’d talked about other pre-birth names, and I was leaning towards the ridiculous literary. Like Klytemnestra, after Sarah’s collegiate efforts to have a distinct name called when her coffee shop order was ready. (I hadn’t come up with anything that was either boy appropriate or gender neutral.)

But when we looked at the pics from the ultrasound, s/he just LOOKS like a Smudge. No other name was possible.

And, when Jill gets into a particularly silly hip-hop mood, which often happens when we’re watching brain candy on VH1 or MTV, we call it Lil Smudge. So far, that’s been great fun. But I have to start worrying a little bit about what we’re listening to — according to the developmental calendar on pregnancy.org, either yesterday or today is when Smudge’s inner ear begins to develop.

My reading rate has dropped off considerably — in part, because I’m now sleeping all the dang time and in part because I’m being a good wife.

The being a good wife involved going to a staged reading on Monday night, which was actually a lot of fun, although I learned the importance of carrying snacks at all times. We were afraid that we brought the average age down 10 or 15 years, but fortunately, some of the younger cast members had friends arrive just before curtain, so we were not the conspicuously youngest people there. That honor went to the theater interns, so blonde and pert. Toto, I think we’re in the South.

It also involved staying awake to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover several members of the Red Sox, including my new favorite baseball player Johnny Damon. I’ve never had a favorite baseball player before, but he was so funny on the program that now I do. I’d actually fallen asleep before the show started, but got up to watch it.

Happily, last night, we had a relaxed dinner out and then I came home and went to bed. Mmmmmm. Bed.

The Smith Club of Atlanta is breathtakingly efficient. Some weeks ago, they found me here and sent me a newsletter, and also invited me to a talk, "Groves of Academe:  Academic Fiction Set at Smith and Elsewhere–An Evening with Dr. Patricia Skarda."

I almost didn’t go, but then I did. It was a VERY SURPRISING evening. The people were friendly and fun, and I wish I’d taken a class with Pat when I was at Smith. After an hour or so of food, drink, and conversation, Pat began her talk.

Very shortly into it, she mentioned that "Maggie" was in the kitchen, reading Pat’s first year students’ final essays, which were on Wit.

Pat clearly  assumed that we all knew Maggie and who she was. I sat there thinking, "Wit??? Like….WIT? The play Jill was in last year, that won the Pulitzer prize a few years ag…I think the author’s first name WAS Margaret. That CAN’T BE what I think it is."

I snuck off to the bathroom and peered in to the kitchen see if I could discern anything. All I saw was a tall thin woman studiously reading papers at the kitchen table. No new info.

Back in the living room, we had a great discussion about academic fiction and the challenges of teaching and learning to write. (Expect to see a lot of Pat’s recommendations on the booklists.)

As soon as the discussion ended, I bolted for the kitchen.

Maggie was gone.

I whipped through the dining room, and spotted her in the foyer.

"Maggie?"

"Yes?"

"Wit…the play?"

Big smile. "Yes!"

"My partner was in a production last year in Washington DC, that won a major award from the British Embassy…"

She cut me off. "Was she Vivian?"

I shook my head. "She’s still too young to play Vivian. She had a number of the smaller roles, a student, a technician…but the Vivian was amazing. I saw the play 5 times."

"Where was this?" She’s clearly thinking about something.

"The Silver Spring Stage, in suburban Washington DC."

"Wait! I heard about that production! My mom saw that one! She said it was wonderful."

The discussion continued for a couple of minutes, and she got how big a deal the award was from the British Embassy and was clearly delighted.

And then, with some embarassment, I asked if I could get her autograph for Jill. And while she was writing, I thought, I should really ask if she’ll also sign something for Trish — the outstanding actress who played Vivian.

So at the moment, I’m happily in possession of two "Hello" name tags with very sweet — albeit short — notes from Margaret Edson. Trish’s will go in the mail later today.

I love being dorky like that.