Where I Need to Be

Douglas Adams would have been sixty-two years old today, if he were still alive. Unfortunately, he died thirteen years ago, at the all-too-young age of forty-nine. (I judge anything younger than my current age as "all too young" and, to paraphrase Tom Lehrer, when Douglas Adams was my age he'd been dead for ten years.)

Adams was not a prolific writer, but what few works he left us were chock-full of some of the most brilliant, witty turns of phrase since Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. For instance, there's this gem from The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul:

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

It's a quotation that particularly resonates with me, for I have never been any good at making plans. I have always believed that, in the words of Robert Burns:

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Which I took to be Scottish for "No matter what you do, you'll probably just end up getting eaten by a cat or caught in a mousetrap, so why bother?"

By my senior year in high school, I still had not figured out what I was going to do with my life. (I had barely figured out what I was doing in high school.) When forced to choose a career, I decided on the medical profession because I enjoyed biology class and I figured saving lives was a good thing to do. When forced to choose a college, I told the guidance counselor I would prefer a small southern school—small because my high school was enormous and I hated it, southern because my father's office would soon be relocating from Chicago, Illinois, to Parkersburg, West Virginia.

The guidance counselor came up with three small southern schools known for their pre-med programs. After looking at pictures of the three campuses, I chose Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, because I thought it had the most appealing architecture.

Wake Forest University

I have always been partial to Georgian architecture.

I soon discovered that I could barely manage the biology courses required for a
pre-med degree, and I was completely hopeless at chemistry. I decided to leave Wake Forest and try to figure out something I could do with my life that did not involve atoms and valences.

Although I had not been at Wake Forest long, I had been there long enough to make a life-long friend. In H. David Hawthorne, I found a kindred spirit who shared my appreciation for theatre (with an 're'), British humour (with a 'u'), classical music, and beer (not necessarily in that order). Our friendship lasted from our freshman year at Wake Forest until Dave passed away eight years ago, at the all-too-young age of fifty.

About thirty years ago, Dave and his then-fiancee Claudia threw a party so that all of their friends could meet. At that party, I had the good fortune to be partnered with Claudia's pretty friend Loretta Wong in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Within a year, we were partnered again on the dance floor at Dave and Claudia's wedding. Within two more years, we were partnered for life.

I may not have gone where I intended to go in my life (or even known where that was), but, thanks to a random chain of events which began with a slight preference for Georgian architecture, I ended up exactly where I needed to be.

Which is wherever Loretta is.

The Green Fairy

"After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."—Oscar Wilde

Several years ago, Loretta and I—along with our friends John, Roxanne, Ron, and Judie—attended the shipboard wedding of our friend Sarah. After the wedding, the six of us had elected to remain on board with the bridal party for a three day cruise to Ensenada. Because there is not much to do on a cruise ship but drink (and because it was us), we made a point of visiting every bar on the ship. Later, we had commemorative tee-shirts made:

In Ensenada, because, again, there is not much to do but drink (and, again, because it was us), we soon found ourselves a bar—La Taberna—where we were served by a friendly and attentive waiter named Jesus. After a couple of rounds of margaritas, I ordered a glass of absinthe—The Green Fairy. I was curious about it. For years it was banned in many countries, because, as one critic put it, "It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country."

So naturally I had to try it.

Jesus Prepares the Green Fairy

I don't know about ferocious beasts, martyrs, or degenerates, but absinthe tastes terrible. You have to mix it with water and sugar to make it even remotely palatable, and then it still tastes like paint thinner.

Once we were back on board the ship and I had begun to sober up, I realized that something had changed. Since our visit to La Taberna, I was able to see things more clearly without my glasses than with them. In fact, trying to see with my glasses gave me such a headache that I eventually quit wearing them.

I had heard about the supposed hallucinogenic properties of absinthe. Could it also affect eyesight? Or was it simply the quantity of alcohol I had consumed over the course of the weekend? I had heard of drinking yourself blind—was it possible to drink yourself into improved vision?

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that our waiter was named Jesus.

I wasn't ruling anything out.

It wasn't until we returned to Long Beach that the mystery was solved. When I went to attach the magnetic clip-on sunglasses I had left in the car, I discovered that what I had thought were my glasses were, in fact, not. I immediately realized what had happened. Ron and I had been sitting across from each other at La Taberna. I have since noticed that, when we are eating or drinking, we are both in the habit of taking off our glasses, which are nearly identical in appearance, and laying them on the table. (I'm not sure why, unless we're both afraid of missing our mouths and smearing our glasses with food and drink.)

Obviously, we had picked up the wrong glasses.

"Ron," I asked, "Are you by any chance wearing my glasses?"

"I wondered why I couldn't see anything!" exclaimed Ron (who was driving at the time).

So here's a word of advice if you're thinking of trying absinthe: don't. However, if you insist on sampling the Green Fairy—

Make sure you know where your glasses are.

Food and Family

For Loretta and me, Thanksgiving has always been about food and family (not necessarily in that order). It's a special holiday for us—we were married on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This makes it easy to remember the approximate date of our anniversary, if not the exact date. The exact date is November 26th, which coincidentally also fell on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year, when our nephew Mark and his bride Rhonda were also married on that date. That was a memorable Thanksgiving. Because Rhonda has two sets of parents, last year we attended two Thanksgiving dinners and acquired two more families. Lots of food, lots of ohana.

When we lived in Buffalo, Thanksgivings were always spent with Loretta's family. Before we were married, they met at her cousins' restaurant, the Taiwan. It was a huge gathering, encompassing all of the cousins and their families. (In the Chinese community, a "cousin" is anyone who comes from the same village in China. Quite a few people from Loretta's father's village had settled in the Buffalo area.)

I had the honor to be present at the last Thanksgiving at the Taiwan, before the restaurant was sold and the celebration moved to the home of one of the cousins. All of the tables in the dining room were shoved together to make one huge table, which was covered with all of the traditional American fare, plus countless Chinese dishes. After dinner, members of the older generation settled in for an evening of Mah Jongg, while the young people (which at the time included Loretta and me) went out into the parking lot to work off some calories playing touch football, then returned to the warmth of the restaurant (remember, this was Buffalo) for a game of Trivial Pursuit.

My childhood Thanksgivings weren't much different from Loretta's, except that they weren't at a Chinese restaurant and there were not nearly as many people. Also, instead of games, dinner was usually followed by naps. The Thanksgivings I remember best were the ones at the home of my grandmother and aunts. My Grandma Shorter loved to cook. Most of my memories of her are in the kitchen: peeling potatoes, rolling out dough, cutting noodles, kneading together the ingredients of a meat loaf. She made everything from scratch: mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, pies—even the whipped cream to go on them, hand-whipped in an ancient stoneware crock. Then, one year, my mother and aunts convinced her to try a relatively new labor-saving product: whipped cream in an aerosol can.

It was a wonderful dinner, as all of my grandmother's holiday dinners were. When the main course was finished, dishes were cleared, the pies were brought in, and my grandmother prepared to serve dessert. She cut a slice of pumpkin, mincemeat (or, as was more often the case, a "sliver of each") for each person as requested, carefully laying the slices on dessert plates. She then picked up the can of whipped cream and—following the directions on the can—shook it vigorously, then pressed the nozzle.

Unfortunately, she neglected to aim the nozzle at the pie.

Some of the whipped cream hit the ceiling. Most of it hit my grandmother in the face. In some families, I suppose, such an event would be considered a disaster. In my mother's family, it was considered hilarious. No one laughed harder than my grandmother.

Loretta and I miss our East Coast families during the holidays, but, as someone once said, "Friends are the family we choose for ourselves." This year, we are looking forward to spending another Thanksgiving with members of our West Coast family: our good friends Ron and Judie and Judie's daughter Beth. As usual, there will be plenty of good food and drink, and dinner will be followed by the traditional Thanksgiving Pictionary Tournament. Ron will put on some classic rock, or maybe even some Christmas music. In short, it will be a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I wish all of you just as wonderful a Thanksgiving, spent with the ones you love.

A Good Weekend

Last weekend should have been a great weekend. After all, it was Labor Day weekend—a three-day weekend, and you can never have too many of those. Add to that the fact that we were visiting our friends, Ron and Judie Kewish, in Arroyo Grande. We always have a wonderful time when we visit Ron and Judie, and there's the bonus of getting to spend some time on California's beautiful central coast. Finally, we got to see another of Ron and Judie's always-excellent mystery dinner theater productions.

 

So why wasn't it a great weekend?

I first met Ron and Judie Kewish in 1996, when the three of us began performing mystery dinner theater with John and Roxanne Diesel in Simi Valley, California. John and Roxanne were old hands at this form of theater, but it was a new experience for us. No stage, no proscenium, and—except for entrances and exits—no blocking. Just a dining room where actors roamed freely among the tables, delivering lines during scripted scenes and improvising with the audience in character during scene breaks. We started out performing a couple of scripts from Samuel French, but once we understood the formula, Roxanne and I began writing scripts ourselves.

Shortly after Ron and Judie moved to the central coast, they started their own mystery dinner theater company: Murder In Mind Productions. They began by performing the scripts we had done together in Simi Valley, and when they needed more, they asked me to write new scripts for them. Eventually, they made a name for themselves, attracting audiences from all over the central coast and as far away as Bakersfield. This year marked their tenth season.

Mark Brunasso's first performance with MIM was in 2006. He played Joey Jitters, an over-caffeinated member of the Al Cappuccino gang in a parody of the Sopranos. It wasn't a large role, but Mark made the most of it, and he quickly became an invaluable member of the MIM troupe. What made Mark invaluable was his versatility: as the victim, he could get more laughs than anyone from a death scene; as the killer, he could fool everyone with his cherubic expression; as the detective, he could handle even the rowdiest audience with ease.

My favorite of Mark's roles was Tiny Tim in Dickens of a Murder. I loved the way he would rhapsodize over "turkey, with stuffing, potatoes, and gr-a-a-a-vy!" Earlier this year, in SLO Legal, he channeled William Shatner in an unforgettable rendition of Sinatra's It Was a Very Good Year. And in MIM's latest production, Pirates of Pirates' Cove, we were looking forward to seeing him reprise the role of Ben Gay, a part he also played in the 2008 and 2010 productions of the show.

The dismal state of the economy these past few years has made life difficult for many of us. The economy has been especially hard on MIM. Each year, more and performances have had to be canceled due to lack of attendance. Finally, this summer, Ron and Judie made the difficult decision to close MIM. Although they will consider reopening if and when the economy improves, last Sunday's performance of Pirates of Pirates' Cove was, in all probability, Murder In Mind's final public performance.

Unfortunately, Mark Brunasso could not be there. Three weeks ago, he died of heart failure.

So it wasn't a great weekend, but it was a good weekend. We had a nice visit with Ron and Judie, went for a long walk on the beach, and enjoyed the show. Jeff Lee, another MIM stalwart, stepped into Mark's role with only one rehearsal. His portrayal of Ben Gay would have made Mark proud.

After the show, we all—Ron, Judie, members of the MIM troupe, Loretta, and I—raised a parting glass—

to Murder In Mind,
which may return,

and to Mark Brunasso,
who will be remembered.

Three Encounters of the Celebrity Kind

If you have ever lived in the Los Angeles area, you've got to have at least one celebrity encounter story. After living here for seventeen years, you would think Loretta and I would have a score of them. In fact, we only have three—all of which are fairly pathetic.

The first encounter was shortly after we moved here, when we were still living in an apartment in Agoura Hills. I was getting something from the storage facility that held all of the stuff that wouldn't fit in our apartment. When I had retrieved what I came for, I went looking for the manager to let her know I was finished. I found her in the parking lot, talking to a guy that looked a lot like David McCallum.

"Hey," I thought. "This guy looks a lot like David McCallum."

I looked at him, trying very hard not to look as if I was looking at him. He looked at me as if he expected me to say something, which I didn't. He said a few more words to the manager ("Hey," I thought. "This guys sounds a lot like David McCallum."), and he left. When he was gone, I said to the manager, "You know, that guy looked and sounded a lot like David McCallum."

"That's because it was David McCallum," she said. "He stores his golf clubs here."

There I was, not three feet away from Illya Kuryakin, and I never spoke to him. Clearly, he expected me to, but I said nothing. He must have thought I was an idiot.

As sad as that story is, it's not as pitiful as Loretta's. One evening, she came home from having dinner in Malibu with some of her co-workers. "You'll never guess who was sitting in the booth next to ours!" she said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Wink Martindale!"

"Not the Wink Martindale?"

"Yes!"

"Famous host of numerous television game shows, including Gambit, High Rollers, and Tic-Tac-Dough?"

"Yes!"

It turned out she didn't actually see him, she just recognized his voice, so I don't know how she could be so sure it was Wink Martindale. I wouldn't have known if it was Wink Martindale, Bob Barker, or Chuck Woolery. All game show hosts sound alike to me.

Speaking of game show hosts, I now come to our third encounter.

Nine years ago, our friends invited us to accompany them on a limousine wine tour of the Santa Ynez Valley. At lunch time, we picked up sandwiches from a restaurant in Los Olivos and ate them at tables on the front porch of the next winery we stopped at. As soon as we sat down to eat, we were joined by a dog. Don't ask me to describe him—we visited a lot of wineries that day. All I can tell you is that in size he was somewhere between a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard, and, as I recall, he wore a stylish red bandana around his neck. Also, he was very friendly—especially when we shared some of our food with him. We asked the owner of the winery about him.

"Oh, he's not our dog," he said. "He belongs to our neighbor, Bob Eubanks."

That's right. We had lunch with Bob Eubanks' dog.

Top that.

Young at Heart

It's the first weekend in May, which means it's the opening weekend of another Fairy Tales in the Park season. Every year, members of the Ventura County theatre community get together to write, direct, and perform free shows from May through September, in parks throughout Ventura County, California.

My friends John and Roxanne Diesel started Fairy Tales in the Park in 1995. When I joined the troupe in 1996, performances were only at Rancho Simi Park in Simi Valley (at the amphitheatre in front of the duck pond, where performances were occasionally interrupted by a duck living under the stage). Since then, the program has expanded to include four additional locations throughout the county.

This is real seat-of-the-pants theatre, with no stage manager or stage crew, and usually no stage. Costumes and props are kept to a minimum; in fact, the original intention was that we would be able to carry everything we needed for a performance in a trunk (hence our name: "The Gypsies-in-a-Trunk Players"). Performances always end with our theme song, which we invite the audience to sing along with us:

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you,
If you’re young at heart.
For it’s hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind,
If you’re young at heart.

And if you should survive to a hundred and five,
Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive.
And here is the best part—
You have a head start,
Because you are among the very young at heart.

This weekend and next, my friends Gabriel Vega, Chris Carnicelli, and I will be reprising a wacky, wild-west version of Peter Pan that we first performed five years ago. If you're in the area, I hope you'll join us.

You'll discover what I've known since I discovered Fairy Tales in the Park—that there is something truly special about children's theatre. It really does keep you "young at heart."

2011 in Review

On this last day of 2011, I thought I'd list a few of my favorite memories of the past year (before I forget them)...

About twenty years ago, I played the role of Arvide Abernathy in a production of Guys and Dolls at a now-defunct dinner theatre in Niagara Falls, New York. Our Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown were both prima donnas, who were constantly sniping at each other. Our Benny Southstreet went to jail the day we opened, and the director had to go on in his place. The producers sank all of the profits into their next show, which was a flop, so nobody got paid. In spite of that unpleasant experience, I allowed Gabriel Vega to persuade me to reprise the role of Arvide in Comedy Tonight’s production of Guys and Dolls this past spring. I'm glad that I did. It was a much better experience this time around. There was no backstage drama, everyone was a joy to work with, and nobody went to jail. The only thing I didn’t particularly enjoy was hauling around that big bass drum.

The Cast of "Guys and Dolls" (minus the drum)

Some of the best friends we've made since coming to California have moved away. (Was it something I said?) About ten years ago, Ron and Judie Kewish moved to the central coast. Then, a couple of years ago, John and Roxanne Diesel bought an RV and hit the road so they could spend more time with their children and grandson. Once a year we all try to get together. This past June, we rented a house near the beach in Cambria. We visited Harmony (population 18), drove up the coast to see the elephant seals, stopped to do some wine tasting at Hearst Ranch Winery in San Simeon, and took a lot of walks on the beach. Here's a picture of Loretta, Roxanne, and Judie standing on a bluff overlooking the ocean. I don't know why Judie is sticking her tongue out at me. (It must have been something I said.)

Loretta, Roxanne, and Judie

I was honored to be asked by Marilyn Zaslow to write a script for, and perform in, her Fairy Tales in the Park production of Aladdin in July. It’s always fun doing Fairy Tales in the Park — the atmosphere is relaxed, you get to rehearse and perform outdoors in our beautiful southern California climate, and children are the absolute best audience. And what a talented and fun group of people I got to work with — if you can call this work!

The Cast of "Aladdin" (minus Marilyn, who took the picture)

In late August, we flew to Indianapolis, drove to Fort Wayne to pick up my Aunt Sheila, then drove to Virginia to visit my parents and my sister and brother-in-law. It’s been a pretty rough year for my folks. I’m so glad that they were both in fairly good health, and were even able to go out to dinner with us. And I'm so glad that Sheila was with us. She did a lot to boost my mother's spirits, and she kept Loretta and me entertained on the long drive from Indiana to Virginia and back.

Mom and Sheila at Macaroni Grill

After we returned to Indiana, we were able to catch up with Aunt Becky, whom we hadn't seen in years. The day before we left, she met us for lunch at the Strongbow Inn in Valparaiso, Indiana, which is about halfway between Fort Wayne and her home in Elgin, Illinois.

Me and Becky

In November, we attended the wedding of our nephew, Mark, in Hawaii. We shared a townhouse near the new Disney resort on Oahu with Loretta's brother, Rob, and his daughter, Jenny. Rob perfected his broccoli salad, Jenny learned to surf, and we all learned that, if you go swimming with an electronic ignition key in your pocket, your car won't start. It was a memorable trip—a reunion of Loretta's family, two Hawaiian-style Thanksgiving dinners, and a beautiful wedding by the sea. But one of my fondest memories of the year is of Loretta, Jenny, and me sitting on the beach, watching the sun go down over Ulua Lagoon.

All in all, it's been a pretty good year for me. I hope it's been a good one for you, too. Now, on to 2012!

Happy New Year!