No Vines - No Hair 15 November 1998

Terribly gloomy day out Today. Doesn't exactly inspire one to jump up and be productive. Not that little short of imminent disaster or 50,000 volts would anyway, personally speaking.

Fortunately, yesterday was much nicer. I won my race with time, and managed to finish re-reading Original Sin by P.D. James, shower, and make it to my appointed haircut spot on time. Well, except for having any money to pay for it. But Brittany, the haircutterperson, was very kind, and let me run down to the bank afterwards. Nice to meet a trusting soul every now and then. In leather pants even, yes.

Oh come on, it's a hedonistic experience all round. As Sean said last night, "I always found that having my hair washed by a pretty girl was an excellent cure for a hangover." Too bad I can't go again today, ow ow. The girl in the chair next to me when I first sat down was cute, as well. Great blocky little saddle shoes. Not the best of circumstances for striking up a conversation, though. "Hey, I see you're getting your hair cut! Me too! What a coincidence!" That's all right though, just part of the scenery.

I tried out Big Sherm's Sandwiches across the street for lunch, afterwards. I've been avoiding it since it opened, because at first I thought it was some kind of chain, and it's right next to where Studio Cafe used to be - the last decent place to get breakfast around here, and a painful absence. But no, it's just your ordinary sort of San Francisco fancy-hippie deli, with the colored chalk menus, sandwiches on baguettes or foccacia or falalala but certainly not on French rolls, please, and extra adjectives in front of all the ingredients to make them, and by extension you, feel warm and special inside. The sandwich was OK, but with all those production values, it really should have been excellent. Maybe if I'd eaten there, the placebo effect would have been stronger.

Speaking of production values: Later that night, I saw my friend Kris from work in Hedda Gabler, done in the style of a noir film. It was put on by The Actors' Collective, a small group that's more or less what it says it is, in the basement space of a theater used by a slightly larger company. Seating for 50 people, tops. As they were leading us down the back stairs, I was trying very hard not to think about fire.

The show was quite good, better than I expected. Kris might have been born to play Hedda as 40s bad-woman/vamp. Excellent eyebrow control. And the rest of the cast was good as well, for the most part. Out of seven roles, maybe two of them were done in that stiff, actorly little-theater style. Considering that even plays at Berkeley Rep, which you'd naturally hold to a higher standard, always have one or two people like that as well, it's remarkable. I was struck in particular by how good the voices were of a few of them. Maybe the small space helped with that, they certainly didn't need to project much.

Of course, it helped that I've never seen or read Hedda Gabler before, so I was caught up in the story as well. I have to go rent a movie version of it now to see what it would be like done in the "proper" period. I thought the noir style worked fairly well. Not obtrusively done, just the costumes and furnishings, and it did give you a mental hook for the characters. It's funny, though, how any time an American tries to sound upper-class and formal, he ends up sounding British. Still a colony at heart.

So then it was on to the bar. Only an hour earlier than I might normally arrive there, but my goodness the difference an hour can make in the wrong crowd. If I had tried to write anything by the time I got home, it would been like, "Haircut today. Babe. Play good. Much beer. Sleep now." Which I suppose does convey the essential information, but still, it lacks a little something.

No great plans for today (see "gloomy" above). Probably go to see the latest edition of Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festival this evening, which will no doubt be amusing and stupid in equal portions as it always is. But what the hey.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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