I just love the way bureaucracies work. Sometimes they can be a literal pain in the ass.

You’d have to be living in a cave to be unaware of what “El Niño” (the weather phenomenon–not Chris Farley) is doing to the west coast. We’ve had something like two feet of rain in just the past couple of months. And living on the second floor, I’m always going up and down the external stairway next to my condominium.

Well just before winter started, when the El Niño hysteria was reaching a climax (don’t get me started on Paul Moyer–nothing worse than turning on your TV after a long day and having that excuse for a journalist screaming STORM WATCH!!!! in your face), my condominium association decided to “winterize” the building. So they cleaned gutters, fixed dubious fencing, painted the building, etc.

Which is all well and good, except after painting the stairway it was about five times as slippery. That was about four months ago. Then came El Niño. Now that it’s gone and I’ve fallen about six times, they’ve decided that someone might fall and hurt themselves. So they’re adding a texture to the surface of the stairs. And wouldn’t you know it? The forcast is for nice, clear, sunny weather for a long time to come.

Thanks, guys.

What a day.

Not only have legal problems cropped up (through no fault of mine or anyone elses on the production) with Pick Up Ax, but I also lost my wallet. Actually, I don’t think it was lost–it was stolen.

“What?!”, I hear you saying, “In Irvine? Nothing bad ever happens in Irvine!” That’s what I used to think too, until a neighbor of mine was shot by gang members right in front of his house. He tried to hide underneath his car, but they just bent down and popped a cap in him. Then the shooters got in their Lexus (only in Irvine…) and drove away, leaving a widow and a couple of fatherless kids.

Thankfully, there really isn’t much crime in Irvine, and we have a very well funded police department. So the Irvine PD stuck the whole department on the case, and they tracked the guy all over the world, finally nailing him in South America or something like that. Turns out he was an employee of the guy he shot.

Anyway, my wallet. I was at the gym, and I have to admit I was very stupid to leave my bag in a locker without a lock on it. But I did, and some dillweed lifted my wallet. Simple as that.

I don’t care about the money, or even the credit cards. Those are very easy to replace, by the way. You just call the company and they send you a new one. It’s actually kind of fun. I know it was stolen (as opposed to lost) because First USA Bank told me someone tried to buy gas with my card, and I haven’t used that credit card in months. I’m NOT looking foward to replacing my driver’s license or social security card. I also lost my scuba certification, Blockbuster and ATM cards.

The thing that really pissed me off was that I called the gym and they weren’t even willing to do a quick search of the locker room for me. I had to drive back there and do it myself. You’d think that after five years of paying dues to this club they could give me sixty seconds of their time.

Am I asking too much here?

I hadn’t been skiing at all so far this year, but today I finally made it to the slopes at Bear Mountain. I’m glad too, because with all the grief the weather has been giving us, I would hate to have completely missed out on the one good thing all this weather has brought.

The snow was good, and it was really warm: 50 degrees the base of the slope. In places the white stuff was a little on the slushy side, but I’ll take that over ice any day of the week. It just felt great to be up on a beautiful mountain breathing clean fresh air.

I was surprised at how many snowboarders there were. I think they actually outnumbered the skiiers. Seems like it was just a few years ago I saw a snowboard for the first time. It (and the guy using it) looked like something from Maui. “No, the ocean is that way,” I pointed.

For some reason, the last few times I’ve been skiing the boots have really made my feet hurt. I know they’re not exactly designed for comfort, but I wonder if I’m not skiing properly (a real possibility) or maybe am just not picky enough about the fit of the ski boots when I rent. By the time we were done, I could barely walk on my left foot. Usually when you take the boots off and put street shoes on, your feet feel much better, but this time the pain just kept on coming. Nobody likes that.

But enough complaining. I actually remembered to take my camera along this time, and snapped some great shots from the top of the mountain. I’m starting to love disposable cameras. They’re expensive, but you don’t have to worry if you drop, break, or lose the thing, because hey it’s only $10. And the pictures seem to come out fairly well.

Who is the idiot that invented gas-powered leaf blowers? What I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone with the guy who came up with this concept…

Isn’t it odd that Los Angeles, not Orange County, has outlawed these things? They are the scourge of my neighborhood, and I swear they are coming around more and more often (usually starting at around 6:30 am).

First of all, they are LOUD. No one can dispute this fact. And they don’t really “clean up” anything. All they do is move dirt from the ground, where it belongs, to a variety of other places, such as:

• my lungs, should I go outside and have the audacity to actually breathe
• my house, if any of my windows or sliding glass door is open (and they often are since I don’t have air conditioning)
• all over my car, which I have usually just washed and waxed

Keep in mind I am not afflicted with severe allergies, old age, or any of the other things which might make leaf blowers a health hazard. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way about these machines.

So what’s the solution, you ask? I don’t know. Don’t ask me — I can’t even get myself into graduate school. But I’ve got to believe that in an age where a computer chip the size of your palm can execute a billion calculations per second, we can do better than this.

I bought a CD-R drive a several weeks ago, but other than backing up my data (which there is a lot of–over 160 meg just in data) I haven’t had any heavy uses for it.

I originally got it because a) I don’t trust Zip disks for long term storage, and the drives are prone to a problem called the “click of death” which can take your data with it, and b) I have too much data to fit on a Zip, which means that automated backups become and impossibility. But it really paid for itself this week.

Howard Johnston, sound designer for Pick Up Ax, created our sound design on mini-disc. He brought his player over and we hooked it up to my computer via the audio input on the sound card and dumped all that data to my hard drive digitally. Then I burned ‘em to recordable CD-ROM discs, and voila! It was fun.

What wasn’t so fun were the rejection notices I received in the mail from New York University and the University of Washington. But that’s okay. I’m keeping the faith–I just do my best and leave the rest to God. I’ll get accepted at the time and to the school I’m supposed to.

Well, I’ve decided to move the House of Rapp to a new ISP. I was a little worried when Dreamhost, the new service provider, went down this evening. But I guess those things happen. After all, it’s just a web site, albeit one I put way too much time into.

On a different note, I got a terrible e-mail yesterday from a friend. Her best friend’s boyfriend killed himself right in front of her! I mean, jeez. How long do you have nightmares after something like that?

Once again, your truly gains instant perspective on what a charmed life he leads. I can’t even imagine having someone shoot themselves right in front of me. What kind of training or preparation does a person have for something like that? The worst part of it is that if he hadn’t done it, odds are a month or a year from now he’d realize what a mistake he almost made. But having gone through with it, he’ll never have that chance.

Enough of that. You could drive yourself crazy wondering why people do the things they do, especially to people they “love”. Isn’t that odd? When a child is kidnapped or killed, who is the first suspect? The parents, always. Something like 90% of the victims of violent crime know their attackers. When a person is abused (especially a woman) the perpetrator is statistically most likely to be the spouse or boy/girlfriend. That’s just too depressing.

So let’s move on to a happier subject. I am having a great time doing this staged reading at South Coast Rep. The days are long, but I like that–and it makes me pity all the people who are pushing paper in an office while I get to create a character (or for this play, several characters) for the very first time.

The only thing that makes me happier is the thought of going to bed, because I’m exhausted.

It’s been a busy week, and I’m ready for a few days off. Unfortunately there’s no break in sight.

The staged reading of Uncle Sam’s Fandango at SCR went pretty well. We rehearsaed all day Saturday and Sunday. The director, Dan Kern, wasn’t there for the performance, but I think he would have been pleased with how it turned out. Before he left the afternoon rehearsal on Monday he asked for lots of energy and tight cues, which we seemed to have during the performance that evening.

I was happy to read in today’s L.A. Times that Dan won two Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards (for acting in A Winter’s Tale at A Noise Within and directing Juno at Interact Theatre Co). His wife also won one. I wonder if that’s a record for most LADCC Awards won by a single household in one year…

Then yesterday I sang four Sound-on-Site performances in Dana Point and here in Irvine. That’s the most we’ve ever done in one day. It was about four solid hours of singing, and I was tired when the day started, so by the end my voice was starting to wear.

Today was the final “reading” of Pick Up Ax before we go into full rehearsal this Sunday. I put quotes around it because even though technically it was a reading, we started blocking two sessions ago. Today went well; I was finally rested enough to be highly energetic and creative during the rehearsal. Plus, with the whole rights issue behind us, there’s one less thing hanging over our heads as we work.

By the end of this week we’ll have our Los Angeles and Orange County rehearsal spaces ready, our publicity agent will be working, stuff will be off to the printer, and we’ll be rolling, rolling, rolling!

I got another rejection letter today: the Old Globe/USD MFA program. That makes five “no”s, with seven programs yet to hear from.

So I’m driving home after rehearsal ended last night. It had been a long, hard day, but the show was running well and I was happy.

As I’m getting on the freeway at Bristol, this guy behind me in a minivan decides that there’s no way in hell he’s gonna let two lanes merge on that onramp unless he’s in front, so he forces his way by, almost driving me into a concrete wall along the way. Naturally, I do what any sane person would–I honk at him.

No obscene gestures, no threatening moves, no four letter words. Just a horn. I forget all about it in 10 seconds.

Until he appears behind me, of course, tailgaiting and flashing his high beams. Still, I remain calm. We’ve all heard the stories about “road rage” and the awful accidents these idiots cause. So I just ignore the guy. But no, that’s not enough for him. He pulls up along side me and rolls down his window and starts yelling at me. Still, I ignore him.

Then he gets a great idea. “I’ll force him off the road altogether”. So the reeeeealy cool guy in the white Chevy minivan, license number 1VVV160, who has now been reported to the police, who is my hero because he’s just the hottest thing on wheels and yes, he does own the goddamn road, starts swerving toward me, then away. Did he hit my car? No.

I hope he was having a good time, because yesterday he didn’t kill anyone. I stress the yesterday part, because there is always tomorrow. And there’s only one thing certain about tomorrow: he’ll still be an idiot.

Ahhhhh, it feels so good to vent.

And the saga continues. Got a lovely letter today from Yale. I know it well, on that 100% cotton fiber paper. Such high quality and so official.

“I regret that we are not able to offer you admission to the department.”

Then there’s the obligatory paragraph containing the generic justification. Gotta love that. Is it supposed to make me feel better? Somehow I think when they compose those letters, they’re just trying to take up a bit more white space on the page so it doesn’t seem quite so… stark.

I managed to get our publicist squared away today. I’ve always dreaded dealing with PR issues, so I’m delighted that someone else will be dealing with it now. And at the last LATC rehearsal (which was particularly memorable because I had a rehearsal space booked and [surprise!] they actually held the space for us!) we were introduced to Stacey, our A.S.M. I think she’s going to work out great. One more thing to cross off the list.

Everything I’ve produced has come together in the end. I don’t know why I’m still so surprised when it finally does.

Do you use Mail Boxes, Etc.?

I’ve oftened wondered what the “Etc.” part is all about. I think it’s “we’re gonna rip you off”. Okay, I know they’re out there to make money, but you’d think when they’re scalping you this badly they’d at least have the courtesy to avert their eyes while they’re doing it.

I mailed a tiny paperback script and ten pieces of standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper to Pick Up Ax’s publicist, and they charged me almost four dollars in postage! No, it wasn’t next day air, UPS, or to be delivered on a silver platter. It was just plain old U.S. Mail. I’ve mailed this exact thing out before with a buck fifty in postage and it got there just fine.

The worst is Christmas. I wanted to send a teeny little next-day air package to my cousins in New Hampsire this past December and they quoted me a charge of $45 and then told me that the best they could do was second-day air, and that it wouldn’t actually get there until four days later anyway because of the intervening Sunday.

So, back to my sob story today. Not only was it expensive, but it’s going to be two days late. I called them to ask when the last mail pick up was and they said 5:45 pm. I show up at 5:30 and I’m told with great confidence my mail will go out on Monday. I ask again when the last mail pick up is, and now the company line is an official sounding “five p.m., sir”.

Maybe it’s it’s all those X-Files episodes I’ve seen, but I’m starting to believe in conspiracies.