The Chronicles Of Jessica

I spent a couple of days last week workshopping the new show at Woolly with the director and the writer and a few members of the cast who were available; I still haven't met them all yet. The director is awesome and he's a Scone - I've decided this is my new nickname for British guys. Charles thinks it's ridiculous but I think we've established by now that Charles thinks most things I do are ridiculous. He's supportive of me nonetheless, which I appreciate. Besides, he's British, too, of course he's not going to like the gestalt of the whole nickname thing. I wouldn't like it if he started calling American girls some arbitrary nickname based on one of our native foods, like Pop Tarts or something. Although I have definitely met some women for whom that description would fit quite aptly. Anyway, given that I was born in England I feel entitled to some freedom of expression in this regard.

Anyway, the workshopping was really cool. Melissa James Gibson, the playwright, is so neat - she just sits and she's all cute and quiet outwardly but you know her mind is just churning with all this stuff because you come in the next day and she's written, like, 30 new pages of the play overnight. Why can't I tap into talent on command like that? I mean I can haul out my Marisa Tomei "My Cousin Vinny" impression pretty easily but it's not the same thing.

It's been so long since I worked on a new play. In fact I've never ever worked on a play with the actual writer in residence before; Shakespeare has never made himself available for rewrites, as it were. I wish it was starting tomorrow. Then just as the play was wrapping up I could leave town, go get married, and take a week long vacation as the capper. The timing is probably good though - this way I have something else to really look forward to. Besides Season 4 of LOST, which isn't until JANUARY. Bastards.

I was thinking of going to the movies this weekend and there is nothing, but nothing, that I want to see. I heard Shrek 3 stinks; well, my cousins Allie and Alana said it was awesome but the grownups that I've polled have been lukewarm. Rise of the Silver Surfer is some comic book movie, forget it. You can make a comic book movie but you need good actors like Patrick Stewart to get me there. We already saw Pirates of the Caribbean and I was not impressed. The plots are so bizarre and so vague in those movies, you can't remember who's dead, who's plotting against who, who's part fish. And there's not nearly enough of Johnny Depp mincing around doing his Keith Richards impression. Hear me now, Sony: Johnny Depp mincing around doing his Keith Richards impression is the ONLY reason the first movie did so well! More Johnny Depp mincing around doing his Keith Richards impression = Better movie!

Something tells me Sony could give a damn because according to the internet (from whence all facts are born), P.O.T.C. has already earned $274,145,510. Holy shit, that's a lot of money. And I think that's just straight ticket sales, not even counting merchandising and Happy Meal toys and stuff like that. Bastards.

I want to see Ocean's 13 but Paul doesn't, because he didn't see Ocean's 11 or 12. He is such a hard ass about stuff like this. He has to watch everything exactly in order. He won't even come in to the middle of a Seinfeld rerun, it has to be exactly at the beginning. But that's okay, I'm going to go alone because Ocean's 13, to me, has the drool-worthiest cast of any movie franchise. You've got your Pitt, your Clooney, your Cheadle, and (my personal favorite) your Damon. J'adore Matt Damon. Actually, I think Paul has a little man-crush on him too, because when we rented The Departed he kept chuckling to himself every time the Damon was on screen. He caught me lifting an eyebrow and he said, "I know, but he's just so charming!" I agree wholeheartedly. He's charming, he can act, and he's got an ass you could bounce change off of.

Matt? Call us.