I'd been really looking forward to a leisurely week back at the old childhood homestead, out in the peace of the forest; retreating from the crime-ridden, pollution-stained city to get some real work done with a clear mind.
It turns out that I've ended up being even more allergic to everything about this place than I remember from my last visit here. It's also amazing how much one's productivity and general will to live plummets when one is trapped in a bottomless pit of watering eyes; clogged up breathing; an itching that makes one want to claw one's lungs, throat and ear canals out of one's body from the inside out; and multiple nights of poor sleep.
So if you haven't heard from me lately, don't worry, I'm just quietly dying a slow death of environmental allergies in beautiful upstate New York.
And so the summer season is closed, all of the detritus of production -- sets, props, costumes, electrics -- struck, and I would like nothing more than to sit here and with a stare as blank as the repainted walls and floors of the theater. With an almost comical predictability, I'd been feeling a little off by the time I closed my own show on Saturday night and had that sense of foreboding during the closing party on Sunday night, where I forewent getting ritually smashed by choosing instead to binge eat on two cupcakes, probably half a bag of potato chips and an unquantifiable amount of tortilla and lavash chips that served as vehicles for guacamole, spinach dip, salsa and Trader Joe's five-layer dip on their journey into my mouth. Because let's face it, I have alcohol around all the time, but I don't really keep snacks in the house, especially not carbs. So that night? Yeah, stuffing my face. And the others didn't need my help in demolishing the rather sizable amount of alcohol, so let 'em have it.
Thinking about it, the oncoming change of the seasons probably helped push along this sickness. The nights have started to take on that deliciously refreshing autumnal coolness, but changes in temperature always can wreak such havoc on the body. Admittedly, some of that might have been self-inflicted. I'd scored a Groupon for a four-person pass to a local year-round ice skating rink, so a crew of us went on an outing on Friday.
It was a huge amount of fun. I took figure skating lessons as a child, and though I'd switched to dance by the time that I reached junior high and have never been able to keep it up regularly since then, I can still keep myself upright passably well and enjoy it a great deal, not the least because it's a highly physical activity where I can actually not overheat.
I am, however, out of practice to the point of not being able to do any "tricks" -- spins, footwork, jumps. At least, not without a good hour of ice mostly to myself, where I can feel free to fall on my ass as much as necessary. For one thing, it's about the safety of others, as a public skating session like the one we attended on Friday often felt like a game of reverse Frogger, with you as the motor vehicle and the swarms of small children as the frogs that you needed to somehow avoid turning into roadkill. It simply takes a lot of focus, skill and energy to keep track of oneself and all others when all others aren't keeping track of either.
But also, something that those little frogs seemed to have that I've come to lack is a complete and utter fear of falling. It is true that my body isn't quite so cavalier in its recovery from gravity as it used to be. That doesn't let me off the hook for my attitude, though. As I said in only the paragraph above this, if you gave me an hour when no one was looking, I'd fall on my ass the entire time, to hell with my ability to walk the next day. What I've always lacked, and do so now more than ever, is the ability not to give a fuck about falling in front of others. Because those kids? Could not have given less of a fuck. And I think that's just something that I need to remember -- that sometimes, the only person of note who actually gives a fuck about your ass hitting the ice is yourself. Sometimes, staying upright out of fear is the greatest thing holding you back.
Anyhow, that's all that my brain can summon for today. I keep spacing out and clicking on more music videos. So I might as well go the easy route and dish on some things I recently threw money at.
First up is Helen Chen's Asian Kitchen Perfect Rice Cooker. I had received a small rice cooker as a gift when I graduated from high school, presumably to keep myself from starving as a college student, but as I ended up on a full board plan, it just got shoved into the back of a closet back home. When I embarked on the first internship of my stage management career, however, I wouldn't have survived without it. After a few years of dedicated service, it finally died, not owing me anything. I then bought myself a larger rice cooker, like the type you see at the end of the rows in all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. It was awesome -- until it died on me a few months later. So I bought another one. Which also died. And then another. Which also died.
At that point, I resigned myself to stove-top rice cooking, at which I was decent but not free of imperfectly cooked rice, which is kind of a terrible thing. So when I happened to spot this little item on sale at Ideeli, I figured, hey, why not.
It's simple and elegant enough. You put the rice and water -- a one-to-one ratio -- into the cooker, and then you place the cooker into big stock pot with some water, which is then covered and heated, so it's partially a steaming process. It's so easy that it might make you roll your eyes, but the thing is? It works. That shit don't get burned. I've only used it for brown rice so far, which I've started cooking a little chewier than I used to eat it, since I no longer fear burned rice crusting the bottom of my pan. I haven't had a miss yet. It's a little on the pricy side, so I wouldn't recommend it to a casual rice eater, but if the state of your rice is extremely important to you, it's something I'd recommend for consideration. One thing I would caution is to be sure that you have a big enough stock pot. I think that mine might be a 8-quart, just one of those cheap ones you pick up at Target, and I have to remove the rice cooker's bamboo handle in order to be able to put a lid on the pot.
Next up is the PopSugar MustHave, which I decided to try on a whim this summer. It's one of those surprise gift bag subscriptions, where you pay a set amount to receive a set of various curated products each month. It's $35 for a month, and being gainfully employed as I was, I figured that it was worth a one-time splurge to satisfy my curiosity.
The service's blog posted a description of the contents of the July bag after it was shipped, but here they are in quick list form:
-canvas beach bag
-Body Drench Raspberry Gelee Body Scrub
-Body Drench Pomegranate Crush Body Lotion
-2 KIND bars: Madagascar Vanilla Almond and Cashew & Ginger Spice
-2 RGB nail polishes: pale "neutral" pink Doll and pale seafoam Minty
-Ilia lip conditioner in Bang Bang (sheer red)
-Ilia lip color in In My Room (light pink)
I'll admit that there was a very fun "it's my birthday" sort of feeling to receiving a package in the mail and not knowing what was in it, except that it was presumably cool shit. Overall, however, whatever the retail value of the selection might be, I wouldn't call it worth it. I'd been hoping for some really ahead-of-the-curve products, but what I received was simultaneously unexcitingly unrisky while at the same time too narrow to be a guaranteed hit.
As a person with a pretty well-developed personal style, these items fell well outside of things that I would pick for myself. The bag is functionally great, sturdy canvas with nice shoulder straps and a zipper on top that partially closes it enough to keep things from falling out while still being able to slip things inside of it. With the bright pink, vintage-distessed print of the "PopSugar" label on it, it's definitely not my Look. Which is moderately forgivable in a beach bag, since aesthetics aren't my highest priority when heading to the beach, but fact remains that it's something I would never have picked for myself, and not in that positive "oh my, what a discovery!" way.
More useless to me are the cosmetic items, the nail polishes being colors that I basically wouldn't wear in a hundred years and will probably end up giving away. It actually surprised me a lot that they would include something like lip colors, where you're dealing with things like different complexion colors. The lip conditioner in Bang Bang is actually all right, very sheer but nicely creamy. The In My Room lip color, however, looks like absolute shit on me. The color is so pale, it almost gives me a Ganguro girl look, particularly with my summer skin. And while it is also very creamy and feels nice on my lips, the color coverage is pretty poor. If it's hot out at all, it starts to come apart and become almost grainy. Even when it's cool, though, I found it to have a tendency to really sink into the creases in my lips, collecting there while remaining extremely sheer on the rest of my lips, making my mouth look about ten years older than it is.
That they would include food items that contained nuts also surprised me, given allergy issues. I'm actually sensitive to almonds, but ate them one half-bar at a time, since I wasn't about to pass up protein that I'd paid for. They were good, but also not that exciting -- I'm not very impressed by a surprise "trendy" product that I see on a regular basis at the Korean deli on the corner. Granted, it's a Korean deli in a university town that includes multiple prestigious graduate arts schools, but my point remains that it's in the same place that I could pick up a package of Cup Noodles.
I've yet to try the body scrub and the lotion, waiting until I'm through my current scrub and lotion to begin using that as a fruity set.
As for the service itself, while the multiple-month subscriptions bill themselves as being automatically renewing, I have to caution that the single-month purchase also automatically renews. If you order a single month, you will have to go into your account and manually cancel being signed up for the next month. That had soured me to the service, as it seemed rather underhanded. Additionally, I don't know if they'll improve over the coming months, but I didn't receive my advertised "July MustHave" until the first day of August. And when I did get it, I had received a double of the two-nail polish set, with one bottle having leaked, and none of the lip color. I wrote them some rather tepid feedback about the packing mistake, pretty resigned at that point to not getting any fix for it, the late shipping of the product indicating to me that they didn't have their shit together.
To my surprise, without ever having gotten any digital reply to my feedback about my botched package contents, about a week later, I received a box in the mail. In it was an additional nail polish set, the lip color set and a hand-written note expressing their apologies for the mistake. So points to them for that.
So that's the dish on my latest forays into consumerism. I think it might be time for my fifth cup of echinacea tea before a spinach salad dinner and bedtime, honey.
This is a day late, but that's because life happens. Yesterday was a two-show day, including our final performance of the show that I've been running this entire summer, and we all ended up hanging out afterwards for a while. Of course, this was largely due to the fact that the theater's freezer -- it's a dinner theatre -- went kaput before the evening show, and the administration beautifully made lemons out of lemonade and a broken freezer into an informal post-show ice cream party. It was a blast to watch everyone whip themselves into a sugar-fueled hysteria and suddenly come crashing back down. As for me, my digestive system registered its not-unexpected displeasure not too long afterward and I crashed as well, though more from the internal strain of large amounts of lactose -- I've reached a point where I'm no longer completely lactose intolerant (again), but while minimally tolerant of it, my body still doesn't particularly like it -- and, I suspect, rather more fat than my system is used to dealing with anymore.
Would totally do it again, of course.
As for the show itself, last night's wasn't our best -- our last performance last week (the season is three shows in rotating repertory) was, I think, the zenith of the season and a thing of magical beauty -- but it was still good and a satisfying end to the run. I don't get sentimental over the ends of shows, never have, and while I have, in some ways, been ready to let go of this project for a while, it's still a show that I've found exciting (in a good way) to run every night, which is something I know that I won't always get. It was my first time working on a piece of physical theatre without any text whatsoever, and I found the intense focus and synergy required to call it to be extremely engaging and very rewarding.
Our very last performance of the season is tonight, followed by a closing party for which the board has apparently gifted us a large amount of money. It is expected that many people will be very hungover when we begin strike tomorrow. I don't plan on being one of them, but I do plan on being drunk tonight, so that's a thing.
But I'd had a particular reason for wanting to write yesterday. Yesterday was the ninety-second anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yes, my countrywomen, we've the right to vote -- full citizenship -- for less than one hundred years.
Women have been awesome for a long time, of course. Just a couple of things that have floated by my attention in recent days have included how Renaissance Women Fought Men, and Won [ScienceDaily] ("A three-year study into a set of manuscripts compiled and written by one of Britain's earliest feminist figures [Lady Anne (1590-1676)] has revealed new insights into how women challenged male authority in the 17th century."), Dr. Hawa Adbi, a 2012 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize [NYT op-ed] continues work in a country beset by famine and extremism ("The Party of Islam then attacked with 750 soldiers and seized [her] hospital. [. . .] For a week there were daily negotiations, but Dr. Hawa refused to budge. She demanded that the militia not only withdraw entirely but also submit a written apology."), and Julie D'Aubigny existed ("Julie D'Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun."). But for all of that awesomeness, the state of women today continues to range from "not on equal footing yet but succeeding despite it" to "absolutely horrifying crimes against humanity."
There was just recently an article in the New York Times, Wed and Tortured at 13, Afghan Girl Finds Rare Justice, that made me so angry and so frustratingly perplexed as how people (both men and women) can view women as being some sort of foreign, sub-human class of beings. And it's just so dangerous, once you make a person an "Other" -- from there, it's so easy to make them be "Lesser," and from that, any number of horrors can grow. The way that whole societies support this is so enraging and discouraging." A new 2009 law to eliminate violence against women was cited in the sentencing of Sahar Gul’s abusers, but the law is still barely applied, according to a United Nations report published in November, and it has not been formally adopted. Women’s shelters are under threat, with a conservative justice minister describing them as "brothels," while a new family law that could make it easier for abused women to divorce is being held up. In such a climate, the fear is that Sahar Gul’s successful rescue may turn out to be an aberration rather than a new norm, and that it will not help those women whose suffering is not discovered."
And even in societies where, though there are battles currently raging over health care and bodily autonomy, women have made great strides legally, women are still often caught in a double-bind when trying to be fully accepted members of society. Of course women will work to rise above it, and many will succeed, in the same way that all people must struggle against the things that factor against them. But it's wearing. It wears on a person. And some people are able to reinforce the areas which have been worn away, become stronger in the places where they've been broken -- but must we break people out of ignorance, arrogance or just plain cruelty? So often, a person ends up being reduced. So we have a society being populated by reduced people. And that hurts all of us, men and women and others alike.
So particularly in a presidential election year, let's think about voting. It was a hard-won right, while at the same time not being safely guaranteed. A New York Times op-ed told of Overt Discrimination in Ohio, where "If you live in Butler or Warren counties in the Republican-leaning suburbs of Cincinnati, you can vote for president beginning in October by going to a polling place in the evening or on weekends. Republican officials in those counties want to make it convenient for their residents to vote early and avoid long lines on Election Day. But, if you live in Cincinnati, you’re out of luck. Republicans on the county election board are planning to end early voting in the city promptly at 5 p.m., and ban it completely on weekends."
What the shit is up with that?
So, yes. I'm grateful for what I have. I'm enraged for the sake of those who have less. I'm conscious of the fact that what I have is not a guarantee and that I'm also still at risk of being reduced as a person. And I am really fucking hungry, so I'm going to get my ass into the kitchen and make me a pizza. For myself.
It's been a good half week of my life flashing before me in various ways, for better and for worse. It started out with a shower of mixed blessings this past Saturday, when I was out at the farmer's market and the heavens, which had been gently raining, verily did open up and dump the floods upon us. But the weather was warm, and you reach that point where you're so soaked that you don't mind getting wet because you've just released all hope of ever being dry. I had the purse-size umbrella that I keep with me at all times, but it was basically just a visibility tool, for all the good it did the rest of me -- if I didn't wear glasses, I would have just abandoned it completely. It was the sort of downpour where the sound of rain is roaring in your ears and the sensation of nature, even walking the sidewalk of an urban downtown, is inescapable and awesome. And hell, people pay good money to go to water parks.
The downside of all of this Romantic transcendence was that my cell phone had been in my backpack, which was thoroughly soaked through from the top but very sensibly had a reinforced bottom, resulting in water pooling in said bottom, in which said cell phone ended up resting. It was completely non-responsive when I fished it out. I found myself suddenly seized by that calm which accompanies emergencies: do what needs to be done. Take out the battery and bury the phone in a twenty-pound bag of jasmine rice. Send an e-mail to my co-workers letting them know that I'm unreachable by phone. Likewise send an e-mail to my mother, also soliciting information for our family's wireless account so that I can go about getting a replacement. Change out of my soaked shorts and tank, into a sharp shirt, mini-skirt, heels and make-up because heavens to betsy, I am like a rogue CIA agent gone off the grid and shit is gonna get crazy around here.
Sleeping overnight in its rice bed restored the phone to the point of being able to turn on and show that its data was all intact, but it was otherwise nonfunctional and visibly damaged. I'd already made plans to go to the city on Sunday, though, and Monday was scheduled to be a day at the beach with friends (and the rest of that day ended up being pretty much killed), so I didn't end up getting my phone replaced until Tuesday.
Granted, I'm not in the thick of things with work right now, but goodness, I did not miss it at all.
I'm not too compulsive of a phone-checker (or, at least, I don't perceive myself as such), but it still felt so freeing not to even have the option. If I was bored, I couldn't use that as a mindless time-suck. There wasn't the slightest feeling of being on-call for work. And it was like a breath of childhood, particularly on Sunday, just the notion that when you were gone somewhere, you were gone. Austin doesn't exist for my generation in the society in which I live today. I was suddenly in an entirely different lifestyle, from which my leaving had been a gradual, unconscious thing.
Which isn't to say that I'm not happy to have a phone again. Even if I am wary because my plan had allowed for me to upgrade my handset and they no longer made the model that I'd been using, with my only options available to me being clearly down or up. And well, only one of those made sense. So, after years of digging in my heels: I now own an honest-to-goodness smartphone.
On the one hand, I do despise myself a little bit for selling out to the demands of a materialistic, interpersonally dysfunctional society. On the other hand, goodness me but is it shiny. I keep reaching over to play with it because it makes me feel like I'm in a science fiction movie. "Hold on a moment, just let me get out my handheld data control doomsday device and page down the beautifully lit color screen to bring up the information that you requested. And also tell you the current weather."
Still, much as I like it, a smartphone is a big step into the future for me, which made Facebook finally forcing all profiles into timeline format on the very same day just a little too much. I hate the Facebook timeline. I really do. I find it counter-intuitive and messy. I also hate the "places" feature because it makes me feel stalked, in addition to infuriating me by its conflation of hometown with place of birth, if the little icon's pacifier graphic is to be believed.
And then, continuing along the line of generational internet hijinks, there's the issue of how my grandfather forwarded me an e-mail encouraging me to watch a linked slideshow of various beautiful nature photos fading from black and white to color in order to show me what amazing gifts God has given us or something. Obviously, the theological aspect was a bit wasted on me, but I love me some beautiful nature photos as much as the next guy, even if my particular angle of appreciation differs from that expressed in the MS PowerPoint text on the photos in the beginning of the slideshow. Anyways, the pictures were nice, thought the last slide fades in a towering Jesus, in that semi-iconic style that brings to mind (for me, at least) the creepier aspects of mid-20th century America, superimposed over the last photo.
All well and good. The thing is, Flash has been acting up in my Firefox lately, so whenever it has a glitch, it flashes -- haha! -- images of the last things that have been viewed using Flash components. As a result, I keep getting random flashes of Jesus in the process of using the internet. Add onto that the fact that I've recently been reading summaries of various Asian horror movies about evil spirits lurking in pictures or the walls or videotapes, and it's honestly starting to creep me out a little in that holy shit Jesus is coming to steal my soul sort of way.
It seems to have gotten better today, largely thanks to my having been staring at the PDF menu of a Japanese restaurant back home quite a bit over the past two days. I really want to eat there. I really want to eat a lot of places. For over a week now, I've been experiencing enormously strong cravings for fried crap. Korean fried chicken, American fried chicken, fried calamari. Also, carbs. Fried chicken and waffles has sounded like the perfect meal for a number of days. I'm not really sure what's behind the fried food craving, as I always want fried food to some degree while also not eating much of it, just as a general lifestyle, but this has been markedly more severe than usual. I have, on conversely, actively been cutting down on carbs this summer, so that craving has a more easily identified source.
In any case, I certainly didn't lack for good food this past Sunday, when my life flashed before my eyes a few times in that "I just had an orgasm in my mouth" sort of way.
The day started off at Hotel Chantelle in the Lower East Side. I'd bought a deal for there some months ago and it was near expiring, so I used the opportunity to meet up with a former co-intern I hadn't seen in a couple years. With the deal providing for two entrees and six cocktails, we both got the saumon fume crepe, while she had some bloody marys and I had a mimosa and two South of Delanceys. (It isn't listed on the website, but you can find a picture of the brunch menu here.)
Brunch is a rooftop dining affair, and it was an absolutely delightful combination with the day's beautiful late summer weather. The food was delicious and satisfactorily filling (if not overly abundant), and the drinks were quite good as well, with my mimosa coming in a charming old fashioned-ish glass and the South of Delancey (Kettle One Citron, Sweet Tea vodka, peach schnapps and lime juice) being good and strong while still being smooth, not sugary and actually not fruity at all. The highlight, however, was the atmosphere, which was both classy and bustling. A live jazz group played for part of the time that we were there, providing great background without ever being overwhelming. And they really did play for a good long while, but it was only part of the time that was there because, in our great cascade of chatting, we ended up staying there for almost five hours. Throughout the entire time, the staff was always attentive but never bothersome, and at no point did we feel rushed. Definitely a place that I would recommend for a small group of friend.
(Coincidentally enough, the day after using up my purchased deal, they released a new offer for the same deal. If you're in town and enjoy a classy, extended boozy brunch, I'd recommend scooping it up! Though I don't know what the experience would be like in less-than-ideal weather.)
After unexpectedly spending so much time talking to my friend, I basically went straight from Hotel Chantelle to Williamsburg, dallying a bit on Bedford Avenue and North 7th Avenue before hitting my next stop: Zenkichi.
This was also the result of an e-mail list deal for me, which was basically a $65 gift certificate for $30. At first, a number of restrictions bummed me out a bit, such as there only being allowed one certificate per table and the special omakase seasonal tasting menu requiring a minimum of two orders per table. But I went through the menu online and figured out a list of things from the a la carte menu that had me quite excited, in addition to figuring that there would be great sake to be had, though they don't have a sake menu on their website.
Much to my pleasant surprise, when I arrived and was taken to my table, I was given a cool towel with which to wash my hands and a menu, on which the waitress pointed out the omakase. Don't you need to have two people for that, I asked her. No, she replied, it's fine! And so I threw my plan to the wind and went with the omakase, plus a premium sake sampler, because hell, why not.
The atmosphere there is comfortingly closed, with seating being in small groups of booths down short hallways. The booths are shielded by roll-up shades, which the server raises and lowers each time they arrive. The table sports a small button, which you use to call your server, should you need them for something other than them bringing your ordered food. (The doorbell-esque sing-song ding-dong of the button was initially a bit off-putting to me -- you can hear it when others nearby press their button -- but I blocked it out after not too long.) Classic jazz music plays in the background and the lights are dim. I saw in a small hallway with a booth filled by a young couple who got started shortly after I did, and it was actually quite pleasurable to be able to both enjoy my food on my own and hear them discuss their experience of it with each other.
I'd skimmed the sake menu and was a little bit overwhelmed by the selection, which wasn't anything compared to the wine selection you get at a restaurant that's known for its wine but was by far the most extensive sake menu I've ever perused in the states. I'm very fond of sake (and Irish whiskey; not really a fan of grape wine) but have never really had the chance to explore it in depth, let alone with guidance, so the sampler seemed like a great opportunity. There were three levels: basic ($19), premium ($24) and whatever-I-don't-remember ($32). The premium sake sampler featured three varieties.
I'm usually a big nigori fan, but I actually wasn't so into the Dai Shichi Yukishibori. It was sparkling and very light, so I couldn't really enjoy the creaminess that I usually like with nigori. The others were also summery and light, but in a more grounded way. I'd say that I liked the Kohakko Nama best, with it having the smoothest flavor of the three.
First up was miso soup, which came out at the same time as the sake.
It was somehow the perfect temperature, hot to the point of needing just the slightest blow to the spoon but never burny. Straightforward with a moderate body, featuring some yummy cabbage.
Next was the chilled plate, which had a few different components.
The sashimi of the day was fluke and the walnut ohitashi of the day was asparagus. Both were fresh and delicious. The asparagus was slightly cooked but still crispy, and the walnut sauce was divine. And I have to admit, as much as I avoid any sushi roll that includes cheese, the nuta miso ae -- which was basically like a philadelphia roll without the rice, or maybe a breakfast salmon sandwich without the bagel -- was delicious because salmon and cream cheese are soulmates and the plump, juicy roe topped it off with the perfect burst of rich liquid saltiness.
The Zenkichi salad was next.
Greens with a cube of fresh, soft tofu on top and light dollop of nutty dressing, it was a great mix of textures. The green actually had a bit of fiber to them, certainly not tough but also not the flimsy things you usually get when someone serves you baby greens. In contrast, the tofu was pure creaminess. I don't think that I'd ever had homemade tofu before this, and it was the perfect combination.
The sumer kara-age, a fried soft shell crab, came in a charming little basket.
I'd actually never had soft shell crab before, and while I didn't think that I would be put off by the shell, I also didn't know exactly what to expect. It turned out to most remind me of taking a bite out of a baked potato, skin and all, from which most of the softer insides have already been removed -- a little tough but entirely chewable and all the more enjoyable for the grounded texture. Also, it was fried. Delicious.
The sumer kara-age came to my table while I was still working on the salad, the only overlap between courses. I did have a momentary wondering if they were trying to rush me, but then decided that I would eat how I wanted. In hindsight, I think that it was just timing where a fried little thing like the crab wants to be served immediately and that's just how the cooking time worked out, as I was not rushed at all in actuality.
The saikyo miso cod and roasted duck were served together.
If there was one plate that had my life flashing before my eyes, it was this one. The roasted duck was actually plain and, if you just ate it on its own (as I foolishly did for one bite), a little dry. But that was because it was meant to be coasted in the mushroom sauce, which turned the dish into a rich, meaty heaven. And the cod, slightly sweet and smooth as butter, actually had me sliding back into my seat a little, eyes closed. It might have been slightly pornographic.
And then, the donburi, which was rare tuna on top of rice. I forgot to take a picture of this one, because let's face it, I was pretty drunk by then and I was also just that eager to get it into my mouth. In addition to the fish being delicious, fresh and rich, it came atop a pile of short-grain white rice. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely do love my brown rice and quinoa and whatever other unrefined or whole grain that you throw my way. But oh my stars, white rice is delicious and I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.
You have a choice of desserts, so I went with the one that I'd seen people raving about in the reviews that I'd skimmed back when I'd been trying to decide which a la carte dishes to try.
The frozen black sesame mousse looked like two moderately-sized scoops of gray ice cream with a sesame cracker stuck into it. And it was delicious. Creamy but light, and not sugary, with a rounded sweetness that had a somewhat starchy quality to it, and the cracker was like a rich ice cream cone in wafer form. It was accompanied by a single malt truffle, about the size of a peanut M&M, that was simply a delicacy.
All in all, dinner on my own there took about an hour and forty-five minutes, with not a bit of that time due to unwanted waiting. I definitely want to go back, though probably just for some sake and a couple a la carte dishes.
Monday was then the day of reckoning, as I felt like crap.
It had actually started mid-day Sunday, with my back starting to kill me by early evening, though I thankfully carry painkillers everywhere I go. I'd attributed it to my three-cocktail afternoon, since alcohol sometimes does lead to musculoskeletal pain for me, and wondered, not for the first time, if my attempts at a healthier lifestyle were killing my body's tolerance for vice or if I was just getting old and, if anything, being in better shape was maybe helping to slow a depressing and inevitable decline. When I woke up on Monday, I also had that swollen sore throat, which I attributed to both the drinking and, you know, a five hour-long one-on-one conversation. I also felt a bit ill in general -- still do now, in fact -- though in hindsight, I think that I probably just got sick from Saturday's downpour -- I'm having flashbacks of a game of frisbee in the rain in the first days of my arrival for my freshman year of undergrad, followed by a case of the summer flu for all of orientation -- and it didn't begin to manifest until a day later, growing worse, though fortunately not too bad, over time.
I very nearly backed out of going to the beach at the last minute on Monday, but I made myself suck it up and am glad that I did.
There ended up being only three of us, two co-workers and me, and it ended up being the perfect beach day. Sunny and just edging from warm into hot, with a pleasant breeze and low humidity. It was the last chance to hit the water before the summer season comes to a close and we're all thrown into the chaos of the school year. I'm not quite ready to let go of summer yet, but that did help to put a nice cap to it.
It also gave me a pretty extreme bikini tan, as I fell asleep in the sun for a while. I was all sunscreened up, but I can only hope that it was sufficient. I'm lucky in that I don't burn, have never had a sunburn in my life, but that also means that I have less immediate reinforcement for good behavior and have to rely on reminding myself to shield from the invisible cancer rays in the sky.
But it was a great fall-asleep-in-the-sun sort of day. There was no cell phone connecting me to the rest of the world. I had nowhere to go afterwards. My friends and I talked about travel and families and The New Yorker versus Harper's. And life was just pretty good.
Even if I did have a blood sugar crash later that day that left me passed out on the futon in a heap of too-mild-to-complain-about-but-gosh-I-want-to misery. Still, I couldn't help but smile.
My dreams lately have been of the dead. Earlier this week, I was accompanied by the pet dog with whom I spent most of my formative years as I settled into a dorm room (renovated to the state of something I wouldn't mind having as a studio apartment) at my undergraduate alma mater. Last night, I went on a very strange mountain hiking trip through varying light and dark, eventually meeting my father at a stop along the way.
In an unsurprising trajectory, the funk into which I'd been slowly slipping over the past week or so culminated in a neurotic existential panic a few days ago, at which point I took a few days off from life (excepting my employment obligations), avoided whatever social interaction I could and indulged my menu-reading habit. It's a thing that I do, reading online restaurant menus in the same way that you picture a drugged-up fifty-something housewife in bunny slippers with pink rollers in her hair compulsively watching QVC. It's worse than porn. Porn, at least, wants to give its viewer a good end. My menu-reading habit is just torturing myself with food that I'm not actually going to eat and from which I really can't get any vicarious enjoyment. There is zero satisfaction involved. It's a problem.
So anyways, it was a few days of not accomplishing much of anything. Until, that is, I started cleaning out the apartment. I find that cleaning -- going through everything, throwing out what I can, reorganizing what remains -- helps to set my mind straight when things get stuck in a rut. And I figure that as I will inevitably be moving when I graduate in less than a year and will also inevitably be extremely busy with school and work, why not start the process now?
In other news, the Chick-fil-A cluck-up continues to be frustrating. Another sum-up essay that I found is probably the last that I'm going to use someone else's words to say on the subject, but no guarantees:
"The narrative was framed as, Dan Cathy is asked how he feels about gay marriage and gives his honest response. When he expressed his opinion, gay rights activists got angry and decided to boycott his business. [. . .] It’s not about Dan Cathy’s opinion - which I do not give a flying fuck about - it’s about the fact that Chick-Fil-A donated over $5 million to anti-gay hate groups. Hate groups which have been listed next to the KKK, hate groups which try to cure gay people like it’s a disease, and hate groups that have disseminated information claiming that gay people are pedophiles. [. . .] But no, the national media went with the "freedom of speech vs. mean gay people trying to silence them" narrative because it was shiny and pretty."
It's also reached the point where people are sick of hearing about it, which is the dangerous time. "Ugh, I can't believe that we still have a problem. Clearly, what we should do is proceed to ignore the problem because we don't want to deal with it anymore and we also have the attention spans of fleas." Which isn't to say that I don't understand issue fatigue -- the picture of a woman holding a sign reading "I can't believe I still have to protest this shit" comes to mind. It really is wearing. But there are different sides of being tired of an issue. There are those who can get tired of an issue and just let it drop. Then there are those who can get tired of an issue and still have it impact their lives whether they want it to or not. Going back to the previously linked essay:
"Which brings us to the last kind of people who decided to wade into the Chick-Fil-A debate for no other reason than the fact that they own a computer and can read. [. . .] These are the righteous people who take it upon themselves to be the peacekeepers and try to reconcile what they see as simply two sides who can’t seem to come to an agreement.
And I’d like to thank them.
Thank you, straight person who is completely unaffected by anything Exodus International, Focus on the Family, or the National Organization for Marriage will ever do. Thank you for reminding me that gay rights and LGBT acceptance is, for most of America, just a “hot-button” issue that causes controversy and is better to be avoided all together. I don’t think that’s a privilege enjoyed solely by non-LGBT people at all!
In more retreading of topics past, I had some great further conversation with a friend about our respective experiences with theatrical productions dealing with race in casting. Her anecdotes spurred me to think further on the subject.
I know that, particularly with local amateur efforts, demographics can be a major factor in casting. But I think that companies need to look reality straight in the face and say "Oh, hey, guess what -- we're limited in what we can do. Because of this factor, it might not be possible." (Whiteness being a barrier to doing something? Say it ain't so!) And if it is decided that colorblindness can be used with artistic integrity, then it actually has to be full colorblindness -- i.e., no racial make-up.
(Mentioning stereotypical racial indicators makes me think back to an incident when I was an intern a few years ago. My supervisor had just seen Ponyo, an animated Miyazaki film, with their young child, and part of their reaction to the film when they were telling me about it was their surprise and confusion at why all of the characters were designed with such big eyes and not "Asian" eyes. I had no response at the time. I could have a response now, but it probably still wouldn't be something to be given to my supervisor while at work, so it all evens out in the end.)
While all POC experiences are not created equal and therefore not perfectly comparable, it still does make me wonder about the perception of the black body in performance in comparison to the Asian body. The King and I is actually even more racially specific than Ragtime, if we're working on a level of ethnic origin, with all of the non-whites of King and I originating from the same country, where that country's national identity and politics are an issue in the plot, but I've seen multiple school and community productions where the race issue apparently isn't even given a second thought. Blackness seems to be a real thing in many cases, at least. But "Asian-ness" seems to live in a much more abstract land as just a marker for "exotic" and "foreign."
Of course, it's been a good decade since I've been active in the local high school musical circuit, so I actually have no idea what the current trends are. Is it something of which schools are more cognizant these days?
In any case, I've been continuing my bastardization of Asian things in the kitchen, this time with Korean pork chop with stir-fried summer squash on brown rice.
Continuing my great sauce laziness, the star here is CJ Korean BBQ Kalbi Marinade. I actually just about never use it to actually make kalbi; instead, I use it to make anything delicious.
I marinated four small boneless pork chops in the sauce overnight, with a bunch of chopped green onion. The next day, I set the brown rice cooking. About a half-hour into that, I turned on the broiler and started on the summer squash. Sliced up a whole zucchini and whole yellow squash, then chopped up three big cloves of garlic. At that point, I put the pork in the broiler to cook for about 10 minutes, since the chops were boneless and so small. I tossed the garlic in the wok with some sesame oil and started that heating. I also poured the excess marinade into a small pan and started that boiling so that it could be used as a sauce.
When the garlic was just on the verge of starting to brown, I added the squash, stir-frying it. About 5 minutes into cooking it, I added some more chopped green onion. A few minutes later, I tossed a spoonful of low-sodium soy sauce in.
You know what's been missing from this blog for a while? Chicken, that's what. This was mostly due to my having been out of town almost as often as not over the past three weeks -- Williamstown, then New York, then Williamstown again -- so I haven't been cooking as much. But I picked up some beets, tomatoes, corn, scallions, sheep's milk cheese and a jalapeno pepper at the farmer's market last week, and I ended up turning most of them to the service of some chicken.
There's been some chicken out there more famous than mine, though.
I've eaten at Chick-Fil-A twice in my life, back in the year that I was interning at a theatre in Orlando, where I learned a lot of things, including that I never wanted to lived in Orlando. Their food was pretty good for a fast food chain, but I also learned in the course of that year that the company was aligned with and financially supported some principles that I found to be morally disagreeable, so I decided that an easy right action would be not to spend my money there. Over the past weeks, Chick-Fil-A and the publicly professed principles of its president Dan Cathy have gotten a lot more press, and the issue has moved far beyond the questionable quality of life in central Florida.
If you want a coherent, comprehensive summary about what this ridiculous outcry -- let's face it, guys, the central images of this are fried chicken sandwiches and advertisements with barely literate cows -- really means, I'd like to direct you to this articulate essay on this issue. If, on the other hand, you'd just like to read me being angry, please do continue on here.
One of the reactions to Chick-Fil-A's declaration of opposition to marriage equality was, of course, the statement by Boston Mayor Thomas Merino that Chick-Fil-A had no place in Boston and that that he'll make their license process "very difficult" unless they backpedal. He also sent an open letter to Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy. These actions have gotten a lot of kneejerk liberal rejoicing, conservative backlash and moderate hedging. I'm usually camping out in the moderate hedge club, but I have to say that I'm finding myself pitching my tent with the liberals on this one. Do I want Mayor Merino to violate the Constitution in order to keep a fast food chain out of a city? Hell, no. But do I think that he was out of line for what he did? Based on what I've heard reported about his words and actions: no.
Nowhere have I seen Chick-Fil-A being outlawed from Boston. I saw a company being told that they weren't welcome in a place because they conflicted with the values held there. It was a statement of principles. And it was, in a representative government, the representing of a city's character and ideal and of its citizens, particularly those citizens who are often marginalized -- not the representation of dollar signs and business deals. Do we need those dollar signs and logistics to run a city? Of course we do! But we also need the other side of it, the reasons that we're running those dollar signs in the first place, and that's the side that seems to get lost so often. And maybe that representation didn't represent the view of all citizens. In that case, by all means, get up and let it be known that you're not being represented -- that's what the rest of us have to do, after all.
As for the conservative backlash, I'll just link to The Least Subtle Tweets From Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day. While not something to be read on an emotionally fragile day, I believe it to be important to occasionally give myself a wake-up call about what's really out there. The world is not a friendly place. There is a lot of work to be done.
So was Mayor Merino confrontational? Yes. Was there a backlash? Yes, apparently. You know what? I don't care. We definitely need cool heads and tactical action, but there is also something galling and tiring about always having to play nice with those who see you as being lesser and even actively work to keep you in a lesser place. It brings to my mind the image of a dog being made to sit up and beg for a treat: "That's it... that's it... good boy... just a little higher... wait for it... wait for it... Ah-ah, not yet, I've still got it...!"
And to those harshing on the people hopping on the Chick-Fil-A Boycott Bandwagon, claiming it to be an ineffective drop in the bucket, I must disagree. It definitely has an impact, if only by letting other people know that you support their right to dignity and equality. Will boycotting Chick-Fil-A change the world by directly creating just laws and saving innocent lives and sending double rainbows all the way across the sky? Nope. In that sense, it is just a drop in the bucket. But just because something is small or easy, does that mean that we shouldn't do it? That logic just doesn't make sense to me. "Oh man, why are you not letting that door you're going through close in that person's face? That doesn't take, like, any effort. If you care about people so much, shouldn't you be building schoolhouses in rural Africa right now?"
It's okay to do small things. We should be open-eyed and realistic about what they are -- small and easy things, not great high horses for us to go galloping around on -- but that doesn't make them without value. And maybe while we're paying attention to not giving money to certain businesses that go against our values, we're still ignorant about others, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make any effort. (And if you are interested in that sort of thing, there is a Human Rights Campaign Buyer's Guide to help to look at companies' performances in regard to treatment of GLBT employees and communities.) I remember almost burning myself out in a great conflagration of activist enthusiasm as a kid when it hit me: one person can't do everything. Learning about the world was overwhelming, because there was just so much to be done, but thinking logically, it seemed to me that the best thing was to narrow it down. Concentrate your energies to where they are most suited and can be most amplified by your passion. The world is not your burden alone. There are other people in the world upon whom we must depend to make it better, which makes it all the more important to be mindful of others.
Of course, the lesson about burnout wouldn't completely sink in until almost a decade and a half, countless blood draws and a Christmas Day hospital trip later. It was a start, though, for someone who wanted to do all of the things.
I also believe in the inherent value of doing the right thing.
But back to my chicken.
First up was BBQ chicken with spicy grilled summer squash and corn on the cob.
Sauces are an area in which I readily admit my weakness and desire to do better. My mom always made pasta sauce and BBQ sauce from scratch, but I use pre-made/bottled. I think that I'm frightened of them. I aim to overcome that fear, but that's something for the future, not this summer, I think.
When it comes to pre-made BBQ, my go-to is generally the Bull's Eye brand. It's cheap, readily available, relatively low in sodium and contains no high-fructose corn syrup. I marinated a chicken breast overnight, then broiled it in the oven for about 10 minutes (cover your smoke detectors for this shit -- the sugars in the sauce will get burny), also heating up some extra sauce to toss on top. The result was pretty much perfect. I've mentioned before that I hate dry chicken with a passion, but this was deliciously juicy.
Earlier in the day, I'd sliced up a zucchini and a yellow squash and tossed them in bowl with olive oil, black pepper and half a chopped jalapeno. I then covered the bowl and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours before throwing the sliced onto the hot grill pan while the chicken was cooking. The corn on the cob was boiled during that time as well, for about 6 minutes.
I'd been unsure about what a little bit of chopped of jalapeno just sitting in the same bowl as the squash would do, but it actually did give it a nice warm spiciness. Nothing even approaching excessively hot, but you could definitely feel that there was a heat to it. I also liked mixing the little pieces of charred pepper from the grill pan in with the rice.
Next came chicken with roasted tomatoes.
This was mostly from this Epicurious recipe, though with my usual M.O. of altering as needed due to not having shit. Red wine vinegar? As if. Let's throw in some balsamic. "Herbes de Provence"? Parsley and tarragon? What the shit? How about I just toss in some green things that I have on my spice shelf, which I think are rosemary, oregano and thyme. And for the tomatoes, I cut two medium-sized regular tomatoes into eighths. I also lack an oven-safe skillet, so I transferred things back and forth between a skillet on the stove-top and a roasting pan in the oven.
Tossed it on top of a pile of brown rice, heated up my leftover veggies: voila. Deliciousness. And then yesterday, I roasted my beets as the side veggie, which was also deliciousness.
Even if it's a little rough around the edges, it just tastes better going down when you're comfortable with what went into it.
Let's live together in harmony, guys. Just like Taylor Swift and T-Pain.
Full confession: I got awfully verklempt this morning when I read about Gabby Douglas' Olympic gold medal in the women's gymnastics all-around. I don't have television in my apartment (I do have a television, but it serves solely as a video game monitor), so the last thing that I'd heard about Douglas before the headline of her victory was how people have apparently been being haters about her hair. And then, not gonna lie, when I watched the video recap of her showing in the all-around competition, much to my surprise, a single tear might have threatened to fall from my eye.
I am a huge Olympics fan. Yes, yes, there's corruption and corporate meddling and a shit-load of jingo-ism -- and sometimes, let it never be forgotten, horrific, shameful tragedies -- but the thing that the Olympics are never lacking is great stories. And my stars, but do I love a great story. And I'm really fucking weak for Inspirational Sports Movies and Burning Shounen Spirit, and the Olympics basically provide a 24-hour, real-life Inspirational Sports Movie for over two weeks with a shit-ton of Montages Set To Rousing Music, which are another extreme weakness of mine.
Getting into the spirit of things, when I was restarting Firefox because it had become a memory black hole, I noticed that there were various Olympic browser themes available and decided to change things up a bit in the spirit of the Games. The obvious choice seemed to be the United States theme, but there was also a South Korean theme available. Dilemma!
Now, in my younger days -- i.e., before I was on the internet -- I would have jumped at the chance to be decorated in something Korean because you didn't find much Korean shit where I was from so you scooped that shit up when you had the chance. In the years after that, it would have been American, no question. And I mean, no question. You aren't questioning me, right? Because I am so totally American. I'm here courtesy of the red, white and blue! U.S.A., ALL THE WAY!!
I've calmed down a little since then. Amazing how being more secure about an aspect of yourself -- such as my American-ness -- results in you being a lot less rabidly defensive about it.
Racial politics and national identity are a whole other can of worms into which I intend to dive headlong at some point -- just imagine that delicious squishing noise in your head now -- but today is not that day. That requires way too much work and it's hot and I have a fucking headache and I have some serious online gaming to do later tonight. But it does bring me to the doorstep of something that I've had on my mind for the past month or so.
In early July, I heard about a production of a new musical called The Nightingale at La Jolla Playhouse. The show was based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor and the Nightingale, which amused me greatly, as the first production in which I participated following my undergrad graduation was a different new musical based on the same story.
More disappointingly, the way that I heard about this production was through the blog post Moises Kaufman Can Kiss My Ass & Here's Why, where the writer points out a very glaring, facepalming-ly idiotic thing about the show: in a story explicitly set in feudal China, out of the eleven people in the cast, only one was Asian.
Since then, the outcry about the casting has been addressed by the creators -- which, to their credit, is more than can be said of many others guilty of the same artistic gaffes -- and in late July, as noted in an update to the original blog post, "La Jolla Playhouse decided to have a talk back to discuss the casting. [. . .] I would hope that the people who wrote anonymously and bitterly of the notion that Asian Americans would and should speak up, would pay particular attention to the fact that both the Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse and the Director of the play itself, Moises Kaufman, apologized."
There are a number of articles linked in the edit to the post, as well as links to video of the casting talk with the creators.
Kaufman's apology is in the second video (above), and while it's great to really get a thoughtful, articulate and sincere apology, he follows it up with an explanation of the thought process that's pretty bewildering to me, such as how in order to make the story mythical, they decided that they needed to make the cast "multicultural" (i.e., have a lot of white and otherwise non-Asian actors playing Asian characters).
This YouTube comment gets it: "How do we create a mythical land? How do we create the suspension of disbelief that will allow you to believe that a bird is real?" They have already done so by making this a musical theater piece and casting a human as a bird. They don't need to do much else to convey fantasy. This should be a given.
Shouldn’t it be a priority, if you’re trying to tell a believable story about a Sino-American future, to include Asian characters? Isn’t it marginalizing to fantasize about a “mixed Asian” world completely absent of Asian people, especially when you live and work in a city that’s almost 1/8th Asian? [. . .] The issue isn’t Joss Whedon. It’s the blinders. All the blindspots that make it tough to understand problems that you’ve never or rarely ever had to personally deal with. The blindspots that make it tough to understand why, sometimes, race should influence casting decisions. That sometimes it should be a mission statement–or, at the very least, a priority.
But let's back up a bit.
The first non-children's album that I can recall listening to was The Premiere Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, one of my parents' CDs that I would later confiscate as my own. My grandmother had a small library of records of original Broadway cast recordings, from which she'd make me cassette tapes. The first professional musical that I ever saw was the touring production of Meet Me In St. Louis when I was seven. I'd been going to community and high school productions before that, and while I was pretty much limited to what happened before the mid-1970s (with the exception of the ALW), my depth regarding that field was great.
I was a Broadway baby, through and through. When asked by my kindergarten teacher whom I'd like most to meet, I answered Andrew Lloyd Webber. When invited by my first-grade music teacher to sing a song in class, I hopped up and belted "We Need A Little Christmas" from Mame. I was determined that I was going to be a Broadway performer. And by the time I was in elementary school, I'd figured out how I was going to do it.
Step One: find a production of The King and I.
Step Two: get cast as one of the King's children.
Step Three: reach adolescence and be promoted to the ingenue role of Tuptim.
Step Four: eventually age out of that and hang out in the chorus of the King's wives for a while.
Step Five: reach a respectable middle age and take on the part of Lady Thiang, the head wife.
I mean, that makes sense, right? After all, I was really young, so Miss Saigon was too new and risque for me to learn that I could also play a Vietnamese prostitute; Pacific Overtures is a relatively obscure and rarely-performed show with an all-male cast; and even I wasn't desperate enough for South Pacific, the only other show that I actually knew at the time that had Asian characters, and where the Asian ingenue role is non-speaking and my body type is such that I would never be fat enough to be Bloody Mary, who was a lot older than I was anyways. But The King and I? Chock-full of Asians! For all ages!
Then, when I was eleven, I saw something that changed my life. Turning on PBS, there were a bunch of people in costume standing at microphones and singing. As fate would have it, I had stumbled upon the Tenth Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables. I was intrigued by what I saw and later caught the entire show -- and would go on to become obsessed with the musical, and then obsessed with the book, both of which have had a deep impact on my life.
But in addition to being my first exposure to that story, that specific performance also affected me in another way. Because I turned on the television and saw some Asian woman as part of the cast, just like everyone else. And it opened my eyes and forced the realization: that could be me.
Of course, that didn't end up being me. I would eventually discover my place backstage, where I'm happiest. But I don't think it's coincidence that it was at that point that I began to explore more "contemporary" theatre. Theatre was no longer some strange combination of historical artifact and charming if somewhat slightly hobby. It could be something relevant and truly great.
After graduating from college, I had decided to give up theatre for more responsible pursuits, figuring that I would be able to toy with community theatre on the side. As it turned out, a dear friend of mine had written a musical for a local children's theatre troupe called The Emperor and the Nightingale, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. I jumped in, had a blast and learned that doing amateur theatre would drive me out of my mind and that I needed to go pro.
It also provided me with the joke that the first theatre gig I landed out of college was being cast as a Chinese noodle cook. Which isn't so much a joke as a statement of fact, but I suppose that statements of fact can sometimes be jokes.
Still, it's with chagrined amusement that I note that our completely volunteer amateur theatre troupe (that performed during school hours, eliminating anyone with a traditional job) from white-bread upstate New York state managed to have the same amount of Asian-ness in its cast as La Jolla Playhouse. It's interesting to me to note the differences between the "colorblind casting" that changed my life with Les Mis and the "multicultural casting" that makes me want to bang my head through a wall with The Nightingale.
There are a few things that I consider when looking at the casting issue. The first is generally if race matters in the show. For some shows, race is an important, significant element in the plot; examples that come to mind include Ragtime, Memphis and Flower Drum Song, even Bye Bye Birdie. An exception proving the rule is that classic case of Hairspray, where an amateur community kids' production was done with an all-white cast because their local community was really just that white. But that was, again, an amateur production done after the fact, and the creators of the show still addressed it, allowing the production to happen but acknowledging and addressing the issues it raised. And La Jolla, a well-respected professional theatre, certainly doesn't have the excuse of local lack -- even if they couldn't bring in anyone from anywhere, they're in San Diego, California for pete's sake!
Now, back to our two examples. In Les Miserables, race is close to a non-issue. I say "close" because although the story takes place in France and we never see a character who isn't French, there is one character who is, in fact, a member of an ethnic minority, a bit of background that is mentioned in the book. That character is Inspector Javert, whose mother was Romany -- and who, interestingly enough, despises his ethnic roots and becomes a stalwart champion for the society of which some would consider him not to be completely a member... and he's the villain. But as interesting and full of potential as that is, it's given the weight of a relatively minor detail in a 1000-plus-page book, so it was rather sensibly one of the many things lost in adapting the story to the stage. So in the end, overall, Les Mis is not a story where race plays a role at all. Colorblind casting would therefor not affect the story.
The Nightingale is set in feudal China and we never see a single character who is not Chinese. In that way, race doesn't play a role in the story -- everyone is on the same page as far as ethnicity and nationality, so it's not a character issue. But then again, The Lion King is set in Africa and we never see a single character who is not African, and while a couple of roles of "outside" type characters are traditionally cast as white, it is, overall, a show with a black cast. While race is not a factor between most of the characters, what would the presented story look like if Simba were to be played by a white man? What is the gut feeling provoked by that image?
Of course, some people might say that the China presented in Hans Christian Andersen's story isn't really China. And of course it isn't, no more than the Japan of The Mikado is actually Japan. Andersen's China and Gilbert & Sullivan's Japan are both appropriations of other cultures in order to create an exotic "other." And if the creators of The Nightingale had wished to be true to the story's imperialist roots, then they were free to do an historical show fully embracing that good ol' chinoiserie chic. But when what is being created claims to be something relevant and contemporary? It doesn't fly.
It especially sinks like a lead balloon when looking at the creators versus the source material. Now, nothing will get my eyes rolling like endless refrains of "Write what you know!" We have imaginations, and thank goodness for that or else the Twilight series would skeeve me out even more than it already does. But it's one thing to put yourself in another person's shoes and another thing to steal another person's shoes and say that it doesn't matter where they came from, it just matters that you're the one wearing them now. If you're taking things from someone else, be mindful and considerate of where they came from, even if you're getting them second-hand.
Back specifically to my experiences of Les Mis and The Nightingale, there's also the direction of the colorblindness. Colorblind/multi-cultural casting is intended to overcome our biases that viewed white as neutral or default or preferable when that was not, in fact, the case. Its intention is not that not only can white people play "white people" roles (even if those roles, when you think about them, don't actually have to be played by white people), but they can play all of the other roles, too! Granted, in Nightingale, the multicultural casting wasn't only white actors playing the Asian characters, but I think it's pretty fair to say that Asians are some of the least represented in American media and that us lovely "POC" aren't actually interchangeable -- if we're going to divide people up, the divide doesn't actually end at "white people" and "not-white people."
Finally, there's always the risk of that annoying Might Whitey trope. [WARNING: LINKS TO TV TROPES. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOST TIME.] Yeah, yeah, we get it, white people come in and do our culture just like us, only better. What the fuck ever, your ex-wife still beat you at the Oscars, so suck it, James Cameron.
I have no real conclusion to this, except that it continues to be relevant food for thought. The very show that I'm working this summer had me doing some artistic soul-searching, as it's an original movement piece "inspired by Japanese folk tales." Out of everyone in the rehearsal room -- the director/conceiver/choreographer/set designer/puppet and mask designer, the dramaturg, the four white actors and one half-Asian actor -- as well as all of the other designers and staff, I turned out to be the one most knowledgeable about the culture and language of our source material. I would even feel slightly uncomfortable at times, as I would witness those much more directly responsible for presenting the material onstage mangling the language or not even attempting to use it.
But you know what else? Our show isn't fucking set in Japan. For the most part, the actors themselves aren't even characters -- they're moving bodies, operators of the masks and puppets. The pieces within the show grew out of the feelings inspired by the stories. More than many other efforts that use the word "inspired by" to mean "carelessly stealing from," I feel that these pieces are truly expressions of what was actually inspired within this individual people by hearing and reading this particular collection of stories from Japan. A Japanese-inspired aesthetic can also be seen in much of the design, but it seems natural that the result would retain something of its source, even as it passes through us without that conscious intention.
In any case, we know that we can count on Asia for many things. South Korea will continue to supply the coaches for Olympic archery teams around the globe. China will show you how a person with a tiny paddle and a ping pong ball can actually be fucking terrifying. People will forget that "Asia" doesn't mean just the countries along the east coast of the continent. And Japan will go ahead and really build GIANT MECHA.
No really, you can buy your own controllable giant robot and pretend that you're a gundam pilot
