The Bridge

Yay for summer. I have thus far determined that my time would be best spent working on the most difficult jigsaw puzzle in my collection: the photomosaic wolf. This puzzle is indeed rather tricky and after 3 days of work, he still has a gaping hole in his cranium. Prodigy has been containing his curiosity rather well, although he still tries to sneak in a big stretching yawn, where he deftly paws a piece and pulls it away from the rest. I hope to finish the puzzle tonight or tomorrow.

Anyway, while solving my puzzle, I generally have random songs circulating through my head. Once I get sick of those, I have been turning on the DirecTV music stations. I've tried a handful of them and stations such as the 80's station or Lithium tend to play 5 or 6 really good songs, then 4 or 5 terrible songs which make me want to change the station. For this puzzling project I have settled upon The Bridge because thus far they have played a better proportion of good songs to bad ones, and I can sing along with nearly every song. I have discovered that it is quite fun to sing along loudly while solving puzzles.

However, during my last three puzzling stations, I have already noted some faults with their music library. While they do tend to play a variety from the same artists (James Taylor, America, Elton John, etc), certain songs have been played with a bit too much frequency. On each occasion that I have had the station on, I have heard Black Water, Another Old Lang Syne, and Father and Son. These aren't bad songs, but I do know that the Doobie Brothers and Cat Stevens have other hits that could be played as well. Now the real reason that I bring all this up is that every single time that I have heard Father and Son, I am reminded of a very funny anecdote that I thought I should write about.

When I was working on Death of Mayakovsky, we needed to have an undergraduate actor to play the small roles of Stalin and a waiter. The director, David, ended up finding a very interesting student named Mark to play these roles. From my perspective now, I would describe Mark as a 6th grader. He was somewhat excited to be part of the graduate production, but he was also constantly trying to please everyone. He had a fairly meek personality but he attacked every task with unbelievable focus and determination. I also happened to know that he had a bizarre fascination with werewolves, but that is a different story. Anyway, he was quite happy to serve bouillabaisse to the diva actresses onstage and took his task of moving a table and chair quite seriously.

So one day (I believe it was a Saturday or some odd day), we had rehearsal in 1350. 1350 is the big dance room with mirrors on the walls and foam mats piled around. For this rehersal, the only actors who were needed were the leads- both Mayakovsky's, Lilli- played by Coco, and Mark. Most of the rehearsal was focused on the leads and thus Mark spent most of the time sitting on the upstage mats or wandering around against the far wall. I was at the front of the room with the director and my assistant. Rehearsal was going along at a usual slow pace. We were going over and over the same section for quite a while. Coco kept having to say her one line and then exit while the Mayakovskys said their monologues again and again.

At some point in the rehearsal, David had some reason to stop rehearsing and start looking through my script to find something, either to cut out or to fact check. He was very engrossed in this and I was sitting waiting for his decision but wasn't involved in the same amount of concentration as he was. Mark was still wandering around upstage and the Mayakovskys were probably flexing their muscles in the mirrors (they both did this a bit too much). While this was going on Coco walked up to our table very slowly and cautiously. She came right up to the table and said "David.... I'm scared." David remained engrossed in the script and did not look up or show any indication that he had heard her. She continued in a serious but worried voice, "I'm scared. Mark is back there. And he's singing Cat Stevens songs. And he won't stop." I was indeed quite suprised by this but David kept looking through the book. Then, a moment later, after flipping a few more pages, he said, "Well, why don't you ask him to sing Father and Son?" He made this comment as though this were the only logical way to deal with that kind of trouble. We all found this to be a hysterically funny response and I still remember it when I hear the song. Mark later came up to the table and gave us a beautiful rendition of Longer Boats and Coco remained scared of his talent.

And with that I shall return to my puzzle. Perhaps tomorrow I will begin to review biology.