The Cameraphone Diaries

Cucumber Eyes

I have been known to say that marriage (or co-habitation) is really just an extended slumber party. The other night, rehearsal went until 9:00 pm. And then, the stage manager and I taped the spikes onto the stage floor in prep for moving into the theatre the next day. And then, I drove him home to San Francisco (the second time, and he still did not offer to chip in for gas or toll. I’m pretty sure he catches rides in order to avoid paying the toll).

So by the time I get home it’s around 10:30 and it’s too late for dinner, but I haven’t really eaten. Drew cuts up a cucumber that’s in the fridge and I eat some slices and then I appropriate two slices to put over my eyes and lay on the couch. Drew comes in and changes the channel on the TV from Frasier to Golden Girls. “Let’s play a game. You see if you can guess the show.”

“Golden Girls,” I say immediately. [Pause] A male voice says something about politics and everyone laughs. “Stephen Colbert,” I say. [Pause] I hear weird intonations in a female voice and I’m not sure, then I hear the familiar voice of Quagmire. “Oh, Family Guy, it’s the one where they’re in Lord of the Rings.” [Pause] Music and inspecific noises. “Is this VH1?” I ask.

“Nope,” he replies.

“TLC?”

“Yes!”

I hear someone say, “One, two, three…” “17 Kids and Counting?” I take a stab in the dark.

“Yes! How did you do that? Are you looking?” I cross my heart I’m not. “But the show is now called 19 Kids and Counting, but this is an old episode so it’s still just 17 kids.” I promise I’m not peeking.

More inspecific noises and ominous generic background music. “Is this a Discovery show?” (I’m thinking about shark attacks here.) It’s not. “Law and Order?”

“Yes!” He practically says “OMG.”

The next one is Will & Grace, I get it immediately based on Rosario’s voice. I then have a run of bad luck which includes Millionaire Matchmaker (I know I recognize her voice, I just can’t place it, and I’m getting smug, which doesn’t help), Unwrapped (I guess Frasier again based on the theme music) and China Mandarin Intern (which I guessed as “The China Channel,” close enough, right?). We land on The Tonight Show, which I guess right, and then I get tired of the cucumber slices which keep sliding down whenever I talk or smile. I take them off and consider eating them but they have mascara bits on them.

So we watch Hugh Jackman be incredibly racist for about 10 minutes (did anyone catch that?) and we never do figure out what he’s supposed to be promoting. Maybe The Tonight Show just couldn’t get anyone else.

Sometimes after a long day you just have to relax, in inventive ways. (Also, I’m pretty sure that the cucumber slices totally did work magic on my eyes, just the way they do, well, on TV!)

Tags summer

"Other people" Being a girl Drew Family Not awesome

The Wedding Photographer from the Black Lagoon

Post author By sychela
Post date March 15, 2010
2 Comments on The Wedding Photographer from the Black Lagoon

So, I got married last November. It was a wonderful affair, with wine and family and dancing and cake and guests coming from New York and Spain to help us celebrate. It was really much better than I expected and lots better than I even wished for. The caterers were thorough and invisible when they were supposed to be, the DJ played all the right music and none of the wrong music, and the cake was 5 layers, not 4 like we were expecting, because the baker wanted to give it some extra drama. I love me a 5-tiered cake. The photographer and his assistant were everywhere at all times, stayed from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, and didn’t mind when our set-up shot plan changed 3 times. They left the reception when we did, and promised us our pictures in “4-6 weeks! by Christmas!”

Here is a timeline of how the next 4 months have gone.

Dec 15, haven’t heard anything from him, so I email him just to find out if he’ll post them soon. We’d love to sit down with our sets of parents and go through the pictures. Photographer doesn’t respond.
Dec 22, Facebook informs me he’s going to Mexico for Christmas.
Dec 22, I email him again because I haven’t heard back.
Dec 23, Photographer informs me via email that he’s “out of the country” for the holidays and will return after the New Year.
Jan 6, I email him again asking because I haven’t heard anything.
Jan 6, He writes back saying he’s almost done!
Jan 11, They’re posted! We’re so happy. I email him back asking for a couple others shots – one, a group shot with the girls I used to babysit, which I definitely remember being taken. Two, anything, from any point in the night, of me and my mom together. He tells me he’s out of town until Jan 17 so he’ll get back to me.
Jan 26, I call him. No answer. No callback.
Feb 12, I email him. No answer.
Mar 2, I call him. No answer. No callback.
Mar 6, I call him around 9:30 in the morning.. He answers! Holy cow! He tells me he’s “just looking at the pictures” and he can’t find the one of me with my babysitting girls. Also, he says, “this has never happened before” but he can’t find anything of me and my mom. He’s “never had to set that up before, it always happens naturally.” I basically give up and say sweetly through my teeth, “Okay, well, everything else is great, so can you mail us the DVD?” He says he’ll do that right away.
Mar 11, Silly me, I assumed “right away” meant he’d mail the DVD on Saturday, or Monday at the latest. No DVD has shown up yet and shipping from San Francisco to San Bruno shouldn’t take long. I email him asking if he’d sent it because I wanted to take it to my parents’ house over the weekend (not true). He writes back saying he’s at a “wedding photography convention” in Las Vegas to get some new slick DVD cases that he likes. He’ll overnight one to my parents’ address, if I’ll give it to him. I give it to him (anything to get a copy of that DVD!).
Mar 12, In the morning he leaves me a voicemail saying he’s been to the post office, UPS, and FedEx and no one can get it there by Saturday. I text him saying to just send it to me here.

Today we got home and there was a (granted, pretty slick) DVD case leaning against the door. Which means he just brought it by and left it at some point today? There are 2 DVDs inside, one saying in Sharpie, “Copy 1” and the other, “Copy 2.” For needing to be placed in such a slick case, the DVDs are pretty unimpressive, but if I pop them into the computer and my wedding pictures exist thereon, everything will be forgiven (if not immediately forgotten).

So here it is, over 4 months later, and we have our pictures. The next step is to upload all 600 onto some photo sharing-and-purchasing website, send the link to everyone, and then order the prints. Now the only thing to kind of bother me is the fact that everyone else has that one great the-happy-couple-kissing-in-a-very-posed-manner-in-front-of-a-tree picture, and we, for some reason, have none of those. I mean, we have lots of good candids and that’s what I wanted anyway, so it’s all good. I just kind of miss not having that gazing-at-each-other-lovingly-in-front-of-a-pond picture.

Oh yeah, and I need to write that photographer a scathing review on Yelp. My only question is, is this the kind of thing where I should warn him beforehand? Or should I just cut into him via the faceless internet? Major dilemma.

Tags spring, winter

"Other people" Being a girl Drew Memoir

The Starbucks Exchange

Last fall, I had this running joke on Facebook about the Starbucks employees having major problems getting the name “Drew” onto my drinks. By all rights, at some point, I should have just switched to another one of the several thousand names in the world that are easily recognizable and have one spelling.

(Like…”Drew”??)

But I thought it was funny and each day I wanted to see what new perversion the baristas could come up with.

I stopped going to Starbucks to save the money, and for months I drank coffee brewed at work. A three dollar bottle of generic vanilla creamer could last two weeks. Such thrift! My mother would be so proud. But no one ever wrote on my cups for me.

Then, after the fiasco with our wall (which is, in fact, finally finished and repainted!) the rental office very thoughtfully gave us a gift card to Starbucks, as a way to say “We are so very sorry about the ridiculous delays, and thank you for your patience.” I basically grabbed it out of Drew’s hands and ran-not-walked to the nearest Starbucks to rediscover my addiction. (Not true. I did wait maturely until the next morning.)

And here is where, can I just say, Starbucks, I missed you. I have been rediscovering the joys of my morning venti-nonfat-vanilla-latte. I fear I may be off the wagon.

One morning recently, I gave the young gentleman behind the counter “my” name, and he looked at me thoughtfully for a minute, pen poised, before asking “D-R-U?” I said with a tight smile, “D-R-E-W.” And he said, “Oh, right,” and wrote it down.

“Is that a girl’s name?” he asked. It was high time for me to have moved down the counter.

“Drew Barrymore,” I offered.

“Right,” he said. “Is it short for something?”

Should I have said, “It’s not my real name, here, write down my real name, it’s Syche”? I just said it wasn’t short for anything, grabbed my drink and made a hasty exit, noting the correct spelling on the cup.

Maybe it’s time for me to pick a new name. Maybe it reads too “clingy girlfriend” that I use Drew’s name. Maybe I should just give them a number. What’s the consensus here?

In the meantime, I leave you with today’s cup of fame. Today, my name is Drak. Address me accordingly.

Tags summer

Awesome Being a girl Theatre Work

Equivocation, Installment 1

Post author By sychela
Post date February 26, 2010
1 Comment on Equivocation, Installment 1

In college and in New York City, the theatre stereotype was always easy, right? Most male actors were gay. Sure there were the straight ones, but if you found youself guessing, you would err on the side of gay. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule (one of them is the nicest exception I’ve ever found) but I don’t think too many people would argue with me here.**

**Actually suddenly all I can remember are the straight guys in the Davis theatre department. But I know there were un-straight ones too.

In rehearsals for Equivocation, I’m finding myself faced with 5 male actors, and I’m having to drastically and somewhat ashamedly reassess. In the first 3 days being in the room with the actors, I have learned that 3 of them have children, 2 of those 3 are married, and 1 of them just recently had his heart broken by a long-term girlfriend (aww…). That leaves 1 actor who I still don’t know about (not that I have to know) and I’m too ashamed to hazard a guess here.

Besides, I’ve discovered the new actor stereotype: the green domestic who’s a healthy and conscious eater.

Of the 5 men, 3 of them have arrived at rehearsal with loaves of wheat bread, jars of peanut butter and preserves (not jelly, what are we, 5 years old?), mayonnaise and mustard and fixins. Bunches of bananas and individual serving cups of fruit cocktail. On even the shortest 10 minute break they race to the kitchen to make open-face sandwiches and mugs of tea. The men gather in the concessions area and share peanut buttery knives and talk about Tupperware carousels and diaper genies. Composting methods and child discipline. Today I heard them discussing high fructose corn syrup and one was literally (but I think unconsciously) quoting the commercial: “It’s natural, made from corn, has the same properties as sugar and is fine in moderation.” Earlier this morning they were bragging about how little garbage they produce: one said his household puts out one bag of trash per week, and the rest of their waste is recycled or composted. Another admitted his household put out a couple bags per week, but “we have two kids.”

And then there’s me. For lunch I had half a store-bought mac and cheese, a Yoplait, and a Coke Zero Vanilla. And a Kit Kat. I use lots of paper towels – washing my hands, cleaning, making paper cranes. We probably take out a bag of trash every other day and while we do recycle, we do not (currently) compost. Sometimes I leave the water running while I brush my teeth. I don’t carpool. (How far should this list of faults go here?) I drink too much Diet Coke and not nearly enough water. I leave my phone charger always plugged in. My car might be due an oil change. When I said I had a Kit Kat for lunch, it might have been 2 Kit Kats. But they were small.

Coming up soon: A list of Good Things I Do.

I guess my point is that I think it’s kind of endearing – these men coming in carrying grocery sacks and telling stories about their 4-year-olds. I’m going to hold on to this as long as I can because I think as we get closer to opening, they might get less endearing. For now though I’ll eavesdrop on their stories and share their strawberries when they offer them to me, and I will never, ever, talk business to them while they’re on a break.

Home improvements

Petty theft

Parkmerced Apartments on 19th Avenue in San Francisco has some great signage. They have four or five stucco marquees with their name on them in individual painted wooden letters, maybe a foot high. While driving home from Mill Valley through the month of January, I noticed that someone had stolen first the capital P, and then someone (the same person? a copycat?) had taken the a. Then my working hours changed and to avoid 19th Avenue in rush hour I started going down Sunset Blvd and I haven’t been by Parkmerced in some time. Tonight on our way back from dinner and Big Bang Theory with Lysandra and Joe, Drew and I drove past the apartments again. What do you think was missing? The merced, leaving a sign with Parkmerced on one side and rk on the other.

My only regret is that I missed all the progress, which is really where the humor is, right?

Beginnings Drew Religion

Sacrilege?

I am reluctant to admit this but Ash Wednesday and Lent completely snuck up on me this year and all over Facebook are people talking about getting their ashes done and what they’re giving up for Lent. I usually need some time to really think about what I can deal with giving up versus what I should give up and where they overlap. In the past I have given up chocolate and ice cream but I always knew that I was really just treating Lent like some kind of diet plan and that wasn’t really the point. So last year I decided to give up saying bad things about my friends, which I had noticed I was doing a lot, and I thought that that was a) a nice quantifiable thing that I could keep track of, and b) also something that would better myself and make me more Christian.

This year as I said it snuck up on me and, not willing to make a sudden deal to give up refined sugar or diet Coke for the next 40 days, I thought I’d just skip it this year. Then I thought, why not give up fighting with Drew? So I asked him what he thought, and he agreed that would be a great thing for me to give up. I told him he had to give up fighting with me too. He asked, But what if I’m right about something? I said, Then we have to discuss it like grown-ups.

So here goes, 40 days of not fighting.

Tags autumn

Endings Theatre

Longer & More Introspective Than I Was Expecting To Be

Post author By sychela
Post date February 16, 2010
No Comments on Longer & More Introspective Than I Was Expecting To Be

Sunlight closed yesterday. When I woke up feeling slightly head-cold-y I knew it was going to be a long day. Over the next 12 hours the cold settled in, through 2 shows, strike, and then the obligatory going-out-for-a-drink which I avoided through the entire run of the show. By that time though I couldn’t stomach the idea of alcohol (I was light-headed already from sinus congestion) so when Liz the Stage Manager asked if she could buy me a drink I wimped out and asked for a diet Coke. Which came with a peppercorn (?) in it.

Closing was kind of a weird experience, it’s just not the same as it was in high school and even in college. I remember getting major post-show depression and it just hasn’t happened in years. I thought it was because for the last 4 years all the shows I’ve worked on have been in addition to a job, and so closing them has just meant that I get to go back to working only 40 hours a week. Turns out that it’s actually not that pessimistic – everyone agreed that closing (and opening) just don’t mean as much when it’s your job, and it’s just another show. Jen the Production Manager said her parents were still saving all her programs and ticket stubs on the wall of their laundry room and I grinned from the familiarity: my parents moved their wall of theatre stuff from the hallway to the laundry room sometime while I was in New York. Although I guess they’re not even saving stuff anymore, my mom told me they threw their Sunlight programs away like the day after they came to see the show. That’s fine, what are they going to do with that anyway?

I still saved a program and I still felt a slight urge to ask the actors to sign it…but don’t worry, I resisted. I have learned a thing or two.

I was thinking about past shows and some of the past facilities I worked in, and how great Marin is in so many ways. I thought maybe I would share some of them.

Brilliant Traces: Well, we rehearsed and performed inside a school during the summer.
A) Rehearsals were on the 5th floor, air conditioning controls were on the 1st floor, and I often had to run up and down the stairs several times in a 3-hour rehearsal period.
B) It was summer which means the school was locked most of the time, so if I arrived and the actor (who worked at the school) wasn’t there yet, I had to wait outside.
C) I often ended up washing the dishes in a drinking fountain.

Kraken: One of my least favorite theatre spaces ever (Soho Rep) – an unmarked door in a fairly dirty part of Soho, it always reeked like someone had just peed on it (which they probably did, it was set back in the wall and next door to a bar, all the guys working on the show remarked it was exactly where they would go if they stumbled out of the bar and had to go). I washed dishes in a dimly lit dirty bathroom, which incidentally had no doors. At one point the toilet broke and I fixed it myself.

The Vietnamization of New Jersey: Okay, I actually liked this show and it was in Theatre Row so it was a great facility. But they did throw cornflakes ALL OVER the stage and it was crazy hard to keep it cleaned up during rehearsals…luckily I had two crew members for the run so they did all the sweeping and mopping work.

Eccentricities of a Nightingale: Giant bowl of “eggnog” which was really powdered milk in water. Washing dishes in a bathroom again! Except for when I would use the slop sink. And I hated the stage manager for some reason.

Recent Tragic Events: While this was one of my favorite things I did in New York (I really liked the script, the people, the time commitment, and my life while this show was going on), the theatre itself was incredibly small and the booth was really just behind-a-curtain in the back row of seats. For a couple of the performances, I know the audience could hear my stomach growl. But I can’t really complain about this because I still smile when I think about the entire thing. I loved buying a pizza from the $.99 pizza place every night, and I loved having to play all the sound cues (and there were a million) on a CD player, even when I had to change the levels quickly and precisely. I guess I did have to wash dishes in a bathroom again. Really, I just don’t like washing dishes in bathrooms.

Brunch: OMG. The American Theatre of Actors is terrible and I would never work there again, and I say that with complete honesty even if I did live in New York again. The guy who runs it is crazy and the director almost got arrested for taking out the trash. To get to the booth I had to climb up a ladder on the wall and I was convinced I was going to fall and die at some point in the run. The place was messy and dirty, and the house lights sometimes didn’t work at all and sometimes wouldn’t go off. Too many ladders and too many perishable props that had to be bought daily. I was in the grocery store on the corner constantly for limes and ice, down the street at the flower stand for roses, and in the ice cream store for balloons, all grossly overpriced but it’s New York so what are you going to do?

I guess I can’t say anything bad about TACT or TACT shows…

So I guess that leaves my two lists.

The things I will not miss about Sunlight:
-Snow. Sweeping snow, scooping snow, loading snow, shaking snow, finding snow in my clothes.
-Certain actors’ warmups
-The fight
-The smell of low sodium vegetable broth mixed with water. Gross!
-Cumulative hours of references to old films and actors that everyone else is unfamiliar with, but has to nod and smile along to, as one actor describes exactly what he’s doing with this line

The things I will miss about Sunlight:
-Liz the Stage Manager
-Hanging out and making fun of the actors during intermission (when they turned on the charm they were really awesome)
-Headset chatter and movie games with Liz and Myles the Board Op
-Only 4 actors! Minimal laundry!
-The last 30 minutes of the show when I had no more duties and could just sit on the floor in the dark and drink Juice Squeeze

But we start Equivocation this weekend and so I am not feeling too sad. Onward and upward!

Tags spring, winter

"Other people" Not awesome

Trouble in Mill Valley

Yesterday I saw a couple high schoolers scam an old man.

I was at the Safeway in Mill Valley, one of the ritzier parts of already affluent Marin County, and the Safeway happens to be across the street from Tamalpais High School, so every afternoon it and the shopping center around it are flooded with high schoolers making trouble and buying energy drinks.

I was in the checkout line, with an older man behind me buying mostly yogurt and high fiber bread, and a high schooler behind him. Another kid comes up to that kid.

Wandering kid: Hey Aiden, loan me a dollar.
Kid in line (Aiden): No, why?
Wanderer: I don’t have any money and I’m starving.
Aiden: Why didn’t you go home?
Wanderer: I missed the bus. I’m going to have to sleep here tonight and I need dinner.
Aiden: You’re sleeping here again?
Wanderer: Yeah, I’m going to sleep at the bus stop.

At this point, the old man behind me pulls out his wallet and passes the kid money, I don’t know how much but it sure looked like more than one dollar, and the kid goes, “Really? Oh, really? Thank you sir!” (At least he was very polite.) Then he kind of leaves but lingers in the aisle behind us looking at ice cream toppings, which he was surely not going to buy for dinner. The kid in line very kindly helped the old man unload his groceries onto the conveyor belt and then kind of…left, at which point I realized he didn’t have anything to buy anyway. Then I also realized the poor sleeping-at-the-bus-stop kid was the one that I had seen walking back and forth across all the checkstands (casing the joint?), deliberately making his shoes squeak, which I noticed because it annoyed me.

The thing is, it was pouring rain and for a minute I felt bad for the kid too, like, I was wondering if I should buy him a sandwich with my nonexistent money. But then I became pretty sure that if he’s going to high school in Mill Valley, dressed as well as he was, he’s probably not starving or stuck without a ride home. Although if it was a scam, it was sure a polite one.

Then this reminded me of The Great Fake Scavenger Hunt…but that’s a story for another time.

Tags spring

"Other people"

Sychela, by the way, is what my mom sometimes calls me.

Post author By sychela
Post date January 31, 2010
2 Comments on Sychela, by the way, is what my mom sometimes calls me.

You know when you meet someone named Michael and they say, “Call me Mike” or when an Elizabeth always goes by Liz? I wish it were that easy to shorten my name. Not that my name is super long or anything, but I like nicknames and familiarity and informality. I even like it when people (the select few who remember the good old days) call me Sheesh. But shortening my name has never been something that everyone does easily. In high school a couple people called me Sych. But it hasn’t really stuck anywhere else.

Until now. One of the actors in Sunlight spent about a week calling me Sych on accident (and can you blame her?), but it was infrequent and there was usually no one else around, and I didn’t correct her. (This, by the way, is the same actor who misheard Liz the stage manager’s name as Olivia, saved it in her cell phone like that, and still sometimes calls her that.) Finally one day she said, “I’ve been saying your name wrong,” and I told her I would still answer to it. Then the other actors started doing it too, and finally one day in rehearsal the director asked if they could shorten my name that was. I said yes, that I didn’t mind being called Sych but I wouldn’t want to, say, be introduced to a new person that way. And now they all do it.

And it’s just getting weird. I don’t know if it’s just from the overload which I’ve never experienced before, or if it’s TOO familiar for a group of people that I don’t necessarily feel like I’m BFFs with, but I now hear myself referred to as Sych about 15 times a day. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll get used to or something I should nix in the future. So I’d just like to say, once again, thanks Mom and Dad for the swell name!

Tags winter

Awesome Beauty Fashion

Impromptu photo shoot!

MTC stores their hats and wigs in the dressing rooms. A great use of space but much too much of a temptation. It started innocently enough: trying on a couple hats while waiting for the places call (PS. You can see the other hats in the background! I’m not lying!):