My oh my...

Well my last few months have been too full to even write on a blog, but I will attempt a quick recap.

-American Mime Theater!  Responding to a job listing in Backstage Magazine advertising a search for a male actor or dancer to join the American Mime Theater, I sent in a headshot and resume almost on a whim.  Mime sounded like something cool to get in to, and I fit the description of being an actor or a dancer, so why not?  I got a call to come audit a class and see what I thought, and so I did.  Now...the man that runs the company is the same guy who created this medium he calls American Mime, and he did it 59 years ago after stints as an actor, a dancer, and a soldier (presumably at different times).  So this form is a sort of melding of influences from those three worlds, but the way he runs his classes seems to draw much more influence from the military than from any artform. 

Mimes show up and get dressed, and when they are out on the stage for the class, they are performing the entire time.  The teacher sits at the front of the classroom and barks words and phrases at the mimes, which they understand because he's barked them before.  Through these short orders, he guides them all through a number of exercises that, if you don't know what they're doing, seem as strange as the minor transgressions that make the teacher shout at them (and if you've never seen an elderly mime fly into a rage because someone scratched their nose, you, sir, have not truly lived).

Anyway, after an hour and a half of this, I pretty much decided that joining this company was going to be the next step for me.  So I did, and the next week I showed up and was on the floor, among the castigated.  It's only been a couple of months now, but I've found the teacher (whose name is Paul Curtis) to actually be an incredibly sweet man who, because of his philosophy on teaching and his extensive experience performing, refuses to allow his students off the hook and expects greatness from them.  His health is somewhat dwindling, but every last bit of energy goes into shaping this mime company to his vision, and there's a way to look at that that seems nothing short of heroic.  So when he shouts at me to pull my diaphragm in, it's a good kind of deathly fear.

Anyway, all that is to say it's been a good couple of months for me at the American Mime Theater, but lately I've been a little distracted from that work because of...

-New job!  Yes, my time at the restaurant in the east village is winding down, and I just finished training at a whole new restaurant!  So you know, I'm movin on up.  The new place is in the meat packing district, which is very exciting...let me tell you why.  People who I no doubt hold in high esteem will remember the episode of Seinfeld where George gets invited to a party that you can only get to if you know it's there (and Jerry says "I thought this was a meatpacking plant").  Then he is cast out from the elite group, he goes back to where the party was, only to find a bunch of meat hooks.  That party was in the neighborhood I work in now.  As I leave at night, there are long lines and velvet ropes protecting what I thought was a security entrance or a small jewelry shop or a bakery.  Apparently at night they transform and people who are way cooler than me get the message on their special beautiful people antennae.  Then they all get dressed up in clothes that cost more than my--well, I don't really have anything of value to make the analogy, but they're really nice clothes--and they hobble down the street in their 9 inch heels so they can take drugs and stand in lines.  I try to high-five them as I walk by, but then they look at me and I run away.

There's another group of people around that neighborhood, one of whom I had a brief encounter with on the way home.  He was smoking a cigar and strutting up the street in a nice looking suit and a tilted hat with a brim...not quite a fedora, but you get the picture.  As I walked by, my eyes probably bloodshot from a lack of sleep, my clothes ruffled from being stuffed in my bag while I worked, and my general demeanor pretty haggard, he says in a low voice "Coke? Coke? Coke?"  Now I thought he was saying "Coat coat coat!" As though I had dropped a coat I was carrying over my arm or something.  I did a double take and looked back for the coat, not realizing that I was, in fact, wearing my coat.  He saw me turn around and gave me a look like "yeah? Coat?"  I quickly realized what was going on and froze.  Not being the type to spend a lot of time in the meat packing district, I don't even know how to say "yes" to a drug dealer, much less say "No, I was mistaken, I thought you were helpfully pointing out a dropped garment" in a way that doesn't get me pistol-whipped.  I just kind of went "oh, I, uh, nah" and shook my head, lowered my bloodshot eyes and darted around the corner.  I can't remember a single time in my life when I have looked more like a junky.

Okay, so that's two things that have happened in the last few months.  I now have to go get a haircut, taste some wine, and begin the last week of the previous part of my life.  Keep it fresh kids.