bad, jet laggy day

i spurn you jet lag. get out, now.

so, the day was going swimmingly. got up around 6:30am due to jet lag, but I felt great. Really refreshed and crisp. The weather was gorgeous today. Went to breakfast with de bebe, enjoyed it immensely. unpacked, listened to new cds i bought in china for super cheap (list forthcoming), went to the bank.

bad call.

never go to the bank when you're having a great day. but i felt invincible. little did i know, i am not. i had overdrawn my account whilst in china. well, actually my landlord overdrew my account because he held my rent checks for so long they accumulated into a little pile on the floor of his squeeky new envoy. when he cashed them two weeks ago, my account dry heaved (coincidentally, i was also dry heaving into a hotel trash can in beijing around the same time, recovering from food poisoning.) so the bank charged me $64 for overdrawing the account twice, and has been charging me $6 a day ever since the incident occurred. excellent.

well, the only thing that can cheer me up about being poor, as i always am, is improvising, as i always am.

so, i put on my spiffy new shoes that i got in china for five dollahs. they're all white except a little blue streak around the sole and a silhouetted karate man on the side. then on the back it says warrior in chinese characters. very choice and designed to make me look cool. i started to get really tired from the lag around 6:30 but i knew that improv would bring me around if not just for a couple hours. i was blocked trying to leave my alley by emergency vehicles. no problem, threw it in reverse and was on my joly way to prov bliss.

however, when i arrived at the Playground, i was informed that the power had gone out and was still off. as a reminder, this is the show that was to make up for the last playground show that was cancelled because the theatre was shut down by the city. and now this one was in danger of being cancelled, too. i scrambled for interesting things i could do when the audience showed up. my show was just going to be part of a three group set and i was going first, so i had to come up with something gangbusters to impress these other troupes. this show was actually more about showing my stuff to the other improvisers than to an audience. i know the audience likes me, but i need the approval of my peers to feel like i'm doing something worthwhile. this is a whole other topic for a later date. back on track: just as i was polishing off the idea in my head which involved going to the walgreens and buying flashlights to light the show, eight o'clock arrived and there was no audience. show cancelled. a wave of relief, frustration, and disappointment came over me. here i had diverted sleep to come out to pick-me-up with prov, been derailed, saved it with a pretty good idea, and then complete derailtion, Fugitive style.

i moped back to the car that i had filled up with $30 worth of gas this morning before i knew about the bank's fee fiesta. i pictured them all dancing on the warnings they had mailed to me that were being held at the post office in sombreros and hitting pinatas shaped like my head. undercooked pork dumplings would spill out onto the suits and they would catch some in their mouths, feeling exquisite delight, unknowing to the power of the trichs inside their stomachs that would cause them to wake once an hour later that night spewing forth my uncashed and undigested rent checks until they turned into husks and were sold in an open air market in shanghai, stretched over a rudimentary cross of round sticks, dried and ready for any chinamen's gamey delight. the chinamen would digest...
oh sorry.

back in the car i was. sighed. started her up and headed for home and bed. i was stuck in the traffic jam caused by the power outtage. i ducked onto a side street to avoid going through a lightless intersection where every guy and their brother wants to be the next person through the light, and everybody and their dog is out trying to cross the street.

got diverted onto a one way street by means of poor urban planning and cruised up to the place where all the people were on a wednesday night. now, i realize, not a lot of people are looking for things to do on a wed. night and clearly ZERO of them wanted to come to the playground. but every jagoff in chicago was outside the blue man theatre, just two blocks from the playground. they were on a waiting list, i'm guessing, for the eight o'clock show which had already started. if we could have somehow persuaded them to walk down to our show, they could have had the best dark theatre show of their lives. they weren't even going to make it into the show, i bet.
actually, maybe their power was off, too. anyway, the point is there about a hundred people chillin outside a show they weren't going to get to see, and probably half of them would have come down to see a much cheaper show because they were psyched about seeing a show on a wednesday.

i turned in an attempt to avoid the same blank intersection as before and found myself blocked by three fire trucks at sportmart. i waited and waited and finally figured out how to get around them. on the way home i planned this bitchy blog entry. i would be asleep if it wasn't for you people.

so, i hope tomorrow can be a little brighter. i hope i can make progress booking shows for "bigly," and i hope when i go into the bank tomorrow to pay them money i shouldn't owe them that they are all carrying around little trash cans, just in case.

already asleep in the brain,
b