The Chronicles Of Jessica

If I thought it was Bubbles, I wouldn't mind so much.**

Our street has had a ton of car breakins over the last couple of months, basically ever since the economy started going from pretty bad to as-crappy-as-anything-could-possibly-be. It's to the point where I'm checking the car from the upstairs windows several times a day when I'm home (conveniently I can usually see it from the bathroom window - I am nothing if not a multitasker.) The other night we had nine robberies within one block and yet somehow ours still has not been hit. I'm pretty obsessive about taking every single thing out of it after we go anywhere; there's not even a used tissue to be seen in our car. But I'm wondering if I should take further steps. Perhaps a big sign in the windshield saying, "There is nothing in this car but lint - shuffle along, cracky!" Of course I can't be sure that the thieves are crack addicts, but there are few other subgroups who're willing to smash a window at four in the morning just to get at some fuzzy change and a dried out packet of Armor-All wipes.

I've also considered just leaving the car doors open so people can rummage through and see for themselves that there's nothing there to take. This presents several problematic possibilities, not the least of which is having someone take up residence in the backseat. On the other hand, maybe we could claim them as a dependent and reduce our income tax burden for next year. There's good and bad with everything.

Apparently the police, whose precinct office is less than three blocks away, are being less than helpful. I'd be up for making a citizen's arrest if I actually caught someone in the act, but I don't have a gun or a nightstick or any handcuffs, which I think you need. Would someone acquiesce to a citizen's arrest if you just asked them nicely? How to keep them there while I waited for the police to come? Maybe I could sit on them. This might work for your leaner, petite type of criminal but if he was over 5"5 or so I'm not sure I'd be equal to the task. Maybe if I'd had a big lunch. But I can't prepare for every eventuality, so the clear solution is just to have Paul start sleeping in the car. It's probably warmer in there than in our bedroom anyway. Our landflaky promised to replace the windows in our apartment before the cold weather set in this year but that didn't happen, so you can pretty much see your breath in there these days. We'll be moving in June (which will not be soon enough for me) but in the meantime, we have to protect our assets.

I'll let him take the good pillows and the afghan from Grandma Fidalgo. He barely sleeps anyway. This'll work.

** Bubbles is a character from 'The Wire', on HBO. I would probably break into a car if it had Wire dvd's in it; that's how awesome this show is. I'm only in Season Three so do not tell me if something awful happens to Bubbles (and I know it will, because what else can happen to the homeless heroin junkie with the heart of gold?) because I don't know about it yet. Thank you.

Paulie and I went to see Toad the Wet Sprocket last night (a band, for those of you who didn't listen to the radio in the 90's) at the Birchmere and we had a great time. We love the Birchmere because you can sit and watch the band at a table while eating food and drinking beer, as opposed to having to stand and sway rhythmically while you watch the band and drink beer. We're too old for that. We don't enjoy entertainment unless we can sit down or even better, lie down. If they had santized couches with tv trays at the Birchmere that would be the penultimate band-viewing experience.

Anyway, I started thinking about something that has bothered me for a while, and that is the ridiculousness of the concept of the encore . I took a cursory look around on the intertubes and could not find any history on the encore or how it got started. But I don't really need to know; I can easily guess how the practice got started. It started with some egotistic performer somewhere who was so intoxicated with the audience's applause that they just had to get back out onstage so they could sop up a little more love for their already extra-inflated ego. (Hey, I've been in po' biz since I was 12 - I know from egos. Surely you don't think I became an actor because I like wearing clothes that smell like mothballs and making $250 a week?) I do remember reading somewhere that back in the day theatre actors used to do encores too, which is just hilarious. The star actor would just come back out and reprise the big scene or monologue for everybody, even though they'd just seen it and the play was over. (Now that I think about it I can't believe Fallon and Rene never did this in Othello. It would have been awesome. They're alive again! Now they're dead. Oops, they're back! Wheeee!)

We've seen a lot of concerts in the past couple of years and every single I time I realize that the encore is just so silly, because EVERYONE does it EVERY single time. They all plan on doing it; you can tell because they don't discuss what songs they're going to do for the encore when they come back out. There's nothing organic about it, like, "Hey the audience really was into us, they're not gonna stop applauding any time soon! We better go back out and give 'em what they're asking for!" It's become like a social obligation - the band exits the stage, they wait the requisite five minutes, the audience claps dutifully the entire time, the band comes back out and does three more songs. If the band didn't do it, the audience would become confused and frightened. If the audience didn't do it, the band would probably come back out after the five minutes to find everyone putting on their coats and then they'd be hurt and insulted. Can't you just tack the three songs onto the end of the set and get us all out to the parking lot faster? It's a weeknight, dude. Seriously.

In my experience, the curtain call is an awkward thing that you have to get through as quickly as possible and I would not want to prolong it by engaging in this little encore ritual. At least if you're a musician you have stuff to do though; you can fiddle with your instrument or take the guitar strap off, or adjust your leather jacket or your studded collar, or something. As an actor all you can do is stand there while people clap at you. Sometimes you get to gesture to someone else (like, "I know I was brilliant but what about that guy! Did he blow your mind or what!?!"), which is good, but most of the time you come out and bow and then you have to stand there while all the other actors come out and bow (and if it's a big cast this could go on for a while), all the time with an expression on your face that says, "Thanks for being here. I know you could have been home watching The Bachelor and I really, really appreciate it. I am humble. I am thankful and humbled. Thankful and humbled and smiley. I'm smiling. Oh, and look, you're smiling! We're all smiling. Now you're standing up. That really is nice. Wow. This was something, wasn't it?" Or even worse, you wind up performing for an audience that acts like they are home watching The Bachelor; they take no note whatsoever of the fact that there are real live performers on stage and they clap all half-heartedly like they're trying to get some stray flour or dirt off their hands and then they're finished up with that before you can even get backstage. I guess there's no perfect solution. Maybe the audience could get a little sheaf of happy face stickers and on their way out they could put a sticker on the face of the headshot of the actors they liked the best. Then at the end of the run whoever has the most stickers gets a t shirt that says, "My parents paid good money for a liberal arts education and all I got was this lousy t shirt."

(If any Chronicles readers own a screen printing shop, I really want that t shirt, I just decided.)

He may seem harmless, but this bear? Raping the environment.

From today's New York Times:

Although brands differ, 25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

Great. Now I can't even make a poo without having to feel guilty about destroying the ozone layer. Every day it's something. I cannot take this daily onslaught of guilt! I feel bad on the way to work for not giving the schizophrenic with the hand-crayoned sign some of my money. Then I feel bad because every day I notice that his sign says, "Please help - homely" instead of homeless, and I've never pointed this out for him. Then I feel bad because maybe he didn't put 'homely' by accident and he really is panhandling because of low self-esteem about his personal appearance. I'd like to be able to cheer him up about his appearance but truthfully he's no Hugh Jackman. Maybe it's the teeth. (He needs more of them.)

I feel guilty if I don't hit the button in time for the elevator straggler to make it on before the doors close. I feel guilty if I take too long fishing my key card out of my bag and the receptionist has to buzz me in. Then I feel guilty if I happen to be the person to take the last mini-moo creamer at the coffee station because everyone else will have to settle for powdered coffeemate. (I also have guilt over my secret mini-moo creamer stash in my top desk drawer but not enough to disclose it, lest I would have to share.)

Then I hate myself for not recycling enough. Like today, I had to throw away a ball-point pen. Was I supposed to recycle that pen? Maybe only parts of it are recyclable. Should I have gone online and researched whether it was recyclable and then taken it apart to make sure it got reused properly? Which bin would it go in? And what happens to the bits that aren't recyclable? They wind up in a landfill for all eternity and my unborn children's children's children will wind up drowning in garbage, cursing their ancestors' laziness and wasteful ways.

As I head off to lunch I feel guilty for saying, "I'm starved!" when clearly I'm not. Lots of people are starving but I'm not one of them. In fact I had a decent sized breakfast just three hours ago with a healthy mix of carbs and protein; there's no real reason for me to be this hungry but I am. Of course then I have to feel guilty over my sandwich about the poor chicken that died a horrible grisly death after living a horrible all-too-short life where he probably didn't even get to walk around much or make any chicken friends. It's no good just taking the chicken off though, because the lettuce was probably picked by some underpaid migrant workers who have to sleep in some mosquito infested tent at night after toiling all day long, afraid to talk too loudly to one another for fear that El Jefe has been hitting the bottle again and might come out in a drunken rage like he did that time back around Christmas when he threw up all over a whole row of tomato bushels which all had to be thrown out and then he docked their pay in an unprecedented example of white Anglo-Saxon greed, self-interest and pomposity.

And now it's the toilet paper. Is there not one place in this world where I can feel good about myself and my purposes? The bathroom is the one place that ought to at least be neutral - I don't need more shame, especially not in a bowel-related scenario. I may need cushier ply than my European counterparts and for that I will not apologize. I work hard, and I do a lot, and my toilet paper should provide comfort and satisfaction. I may be a greedy, overly-pampered, consumptionist land-raping American but I say this to you, New York Times: I have the decency to feel bad about it.