i was just bitterly disappointed to find out that birdman won best picture and best director.  BLEGH is all i gotta say.  did you SEE it?  it was so jarring, with that erratic jazz drumbeat underscore throughout, that when i got home from seeing it i had to have a big glass of wine to calm my nerves.  BLEGH again.

kevin and i went to see it a couple of friday nights ago, on a lovely night off from rehearsal and i was so excited about going out ON A DATE on FRIDAY NIGHT, like a date night!  i hadn’t read much about the movie because i wanted to be surprised; all i knew was that they called it a comedy.

ha.  but NOT ha ha!  ugh.  yes, there were a couple of funny moments, and yes, the actors did a good job, but that’s what they’re paid to do.  but UGH.

when i told randy, who hasn’t seen it yet, how much i hated it, he said, “but it’s nominated for lots of awards and is getting great reviews.”  SO WHAT? i will still continue to hate it.

but i’m digressing before i even started writing about what i intended to write about this morning…the SHOW!  after finally getting to the point where i walked out on stage on friday night, it was a lot of fun, and we had a good crowd friday night, and a good crowd saturday night, and then, yesterday, we were sold out!  and this audience was awesome and laughed at so many lines that the other audiences didn’t seem to get, and that made me happy.  all these other women in the show are funny, and some of the lines that i’ve always loved so much got big laughs.  really great.

ok, now i finally remember what i was going to start out with this morning – after the show yesterday , this guy came up to me, and he looked vaguely familiar, but i couldn’t quite place him.  did i go to school with him?  was he in a play with me?

no, he was MR. SEE!  my 5th grade teacher!  i guess i’ve run into mr. see a few times before, but it was just so great to see him yesterday!  he quoted some line from some poem that started out with “i came to school in a….” and i can’t of course remember what the last word was, and i wasn’t sure why on earth he quoted this, but then he claimed that this was the first line from some poem i wrote in 5th grade!  he might have it confused with somebody else’s poem, but it was so sweet that he remembered it.

5th grade was really my peak grade in school.  i loved 5th grade, i had a ball, and i wish i could remember more of it.  i definitely remember making three wise men with macaroni on a paper plate and spray painting them gold, and i’m pretty sure i was the one allowed to do all the spray-painting.  i remember staging some dumb play that i chose cause there were NO BOYS in it, and how, at some point in the play, somebody totally forgot their line so we all stood there for a while, and i bet good money that that person was me.

but i can’t remember a lot of 5th grade, except that i had so much fun.  the next time i see mr. see, i’ll have to try to cajole him into having lunch, so he can remember for me.  dang.

after that, it was the black hole of junior high, the awkward high school years only brightened by being in a couple of plays, the crazy that was my college experience, bouncing willy-nilly through three schools, and finally emerging with a “rhetoric” (at the U of I, why did they call english with a writing emphasis “rhetoric?” Rhetoric is the art of discourse, according to the dictionary…why didn’t they just call it “writing?” ) degree that has proved oh, so helpful. and then all the other years of blah blah blah doing this and that…

but 5th grade.  golden.

but anyway, you should definitely come see this show!  you can buy tickets ahead of time here.  it’s general admission, so you’d better get there when the door open, a half hour before show time.  people who got there late yesterday had to sit waaay up in the very hard and uncomfortable balcony seats.

before opening night, darling jill kept saying she was gonna have a surprise for us.  i was pretty excited, confident that she was getting ponies for all of us…

but instead, it was this…

TA DA!  a champagne cake, of course, sooo fancy and delicious, and i wish i had a piece right now.  mmmmm, champagne cake.

all right, i hope you don’t have to leave your house today,

ok then,

mrs. monday morning hughes.