Nancy's Musings

- emotionality warning - My friend Elizabeth took me to the USF's As You Like It this evening. I got back perhaps half an hour ago. As she stood up from her wheelchair and began scooting into the passenger side of her SUV I started crying to myself. I think the emotional ambience of the theater overwhelmed me. The cast were brilliant. The crew were skilled and unobtrusive. The audience started out a little cold, but warmed up quickly after intermission. The play is as it always was - profound and funny with a cripplingly contrived ending. I was enthralled by it. The whole experience was immersive, even the silly Irish accents of the concessions serving wenches. The evening darkness closed us all in, and the stage lights and grounds lanterns made us all part of it, all some panorama visible only from the tip of the tongue-like stage. It was just people in costumes, some vines and twigs and a couple of props, but it felt like witchcraft. We watched their barely made up faces, their s...

I'm not a mid-single. I feel the need to make that clear before I begin. I'm almost three whole years shy of the 31+ cut-off date, and can I just tell you how clear the air is up here? You can smell the faintest whiff of superiority passing on the emaciated breeze. So I have this friend named Elizabeth who is also not a mid-single, although she probably wouldn't mind at all being mistaken for one. She's a very confident 75 who drives like she owns the road, and talks as though she invented vocal cords. She probably did. She's just that clever. Elizabeth got volunteered to attend a regional meeting of Stake singles representatives and gullible High Councilmen. I got voluteered to be her extra limbs. I don't remember ever having that much fun at older people's expense. Who knew laughing at your elders could be so heartening? Elizabeth must have known all along, because she was the one dragging them along for the ride. I just sat back and watched the circus, to...

An amusing angle of the vaguely science-fiction portrays those who are already dead. I know of two brilliant shows which fall under this category: Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies . For some reason, both also feature girls with typically masculine nicknames. The main character in DLM is called "George," and the love interest in PD is called "Chuck." There are objections to the former, which include an excessive use of strong language (much like you'd hear at, say, a construction site), but it's still worth a serious giggle if you're not too discerning. This entry shall include two lists, one for each of these brilliant shows. Ways Dead Like Me makes me giggle: Killed by a toilet seat. A tree full of toilet seats. A pet toad. Frankenfruity. Herbig, like "herbig blue eyes." The Burro. A Metermaid who invented leg warmers. Der Waffle Haus. Mandy Potenkin (I'm certain I misspelled that). Jumping. Night of the Dead. A Schizophrenic boyfriend. ...