[230] Screed City
[230]
2/20/2023 Monday. Kitchen Microwave. Queens Haus. Brooklyn, New York.
Well, boy are my arms tired, right? We did the old Berlin hokey pokey. I won't lie, it was kind of a fascinating trip. Beer, brats and the big screen. Breakfast nooks and Berlin babes. Boing jumbos and bubble gum. You know? The old usual. It's a little odd being back, my brain is fried and my schedule is so out of whack that it was either sock this thing out, or stare at the ceiling for the next five hours thinking of England, as the bridesmaids would say.
Professor Curly's film went over like gangbusters. Expectations:Eviscerated. Unmitigated success. Plus, you know, having a very famous actor involved kind of made the entire thing surreal. Hollywood-style. Red carpet, selfies, flashing lights, people screaming the Starlet's name, Professor Curly's, the Two Dudes. I mean, we even had to do some sort of delayed show-up when we drove to the red carpet, to time it just right. Which was a little frustrating to everyone else aside from the Starlet. Mostly because everyone else had just been at some celebration dinner with very odd German tapas and gallons of champagne and beer, so everyone had to piss. Which kind of gave the proceedings a stressful sense of urgency. Like what we used to do in swimming in high school. The idea being; Hold your piss and you will swim faster. I mean, it was garbage physically, but mentally, it changed things. And the funniest part of rolling up to the red carpet was that the Starlet was in the back of a Sprinter van. Which, if you don't know what that means; it is a very tall van, like what delivery companies use, a thing you can stand up in. So the Starlet coming out of this beast was kind of hilarious, and then later, after the pictures were taken, some camera dude stepped on her dresses tail, what do the bridesmaids call that? Her train? And the look she gave the dude. I mean, to me, for me, it all seemed humiliating, but I guess if that is something you are into, right?
[Insert Red Carpet Photo]
And then the movie played. It was the first time I had seen it. My hands were sweating the whole time because it was so stressful, not the scene, but the movie itself. Very intense. And I have seen the play a million times, so I knew how it went, but there was something so uncomfortable about it, I mean, also, the thing was showing on like a 50x30 foot screen. Maybe bigger. The theater must have held 1,000 people, and you had to look back and forth to catch all the action. And in the end everyone cheered. Nobody left when it was done. They all stuck around for the Q & A. There were lots of questions and answers to those questions, and for some reason when we were leaving we had to go out through the kitchen because, I don't know, throngs? I mean, who the hell shows up to these things and then get really excited about it? Human beings baffle the fuck out of me. I mean, I understand the newspapers and stuff, this is what sells papers, but the regular people that just want to see a celebrity or whatever? Do people just not have anything else to do? I also understand watching the movie as a premiere, but I am very baffled about the fans.
But then me and Professor Curly and the Two Dudes from the film were inside a car going to the after party and we drove for a while and then the driver pulled up to some place that everyone in the car couldn't believe was the correct place to go, so we tried to figure it out, but nobody had a phone that worked and the driver didn't speak a lick of English, so the next 30 minutes was like that scene from This Is Spinal Tap, where they couldn't get to the stage, lost in the corridors of the building, except we just kept driving and driving, arguing in two different languages, and when we were supposedly finally where we thought we were supposed to be, it looked exactly like the first place we had stopped. I mean, I think we were not in that exact same place, but it looked the exact same, and it turned out that the after party was at a Speak Easy, and the name of the bar, Jimmy's Swizzle Bar was a misleading name that somebody probably should have mentioned in the beginning. Butwhatever, the toothless bouncer let us in and told us to keep our mouths shut as we walked from the street, down the hallway that was under an apartment building and up into some incredible space with a bar by the door, for hard liquor, a kitchen with taps for beer and prosecco and white wine, and a wide open space filled with maniacs partying down to the maximum.
I am saying it was a wild ride. It really was. We flew out on Thursday, taking the red-eye from Newark. Me and Professor Curly got to the airport with time to spare. Went through security, which, I mean, I have good news, security is finally starting to relax on international flights. It only took 22 years, but because the line was so long, they let about 10 of us go through the metal detector instead of the thing that takes a picture of your soul. I mean, maybe in another 10 years you will be able to go through security without taking your shoes off. Fucking Terry Reid. Remember that guy? The shoe bomber? Who got caught trying to light his shoes on fire on his way from New York to Chicago? Because, of course, who the hell tries to light their shoes on fire during a flight? And then remember that guy with the underwear full of explosives? Ugh, is all my point is. However, the idea that one guy trying to light his shoes on fire causes us to forever have to remove our shoes during the security screening, but somehow the underwear guy takes it too far? It's arbitrary and made-up, is all I am saying. A construct.
Butwhatever. We got through security and had some time to kill. Which was nice. Me and Professor Curly ate a nice dinner and got onto the plane. The plane pulled onto the tarmac. And then we sat there for an hour. Then they told us that something was wrong with the radar dongle. That because it was raining they couldn't glue the thing back on, because apparently it had fallen off. So they had to get us a brand new plane. So they drove us back to the gate and had us get off. Then we had to wait around for three hours while they transferred all of our luggage and things to the other plane, and because the other plane didn't have all the food we needed, we had to wait around for another hour. I mean, am I right? Getting delayed for airplane food? That is like an insult added to a tragedy as the bridesmaids say. Look, we need to wait around and make you feel worse so we can put the thing into the airplane that will make you regret even being alive, right? I mean, it was some sort of chicken dish or a pasta dish, that, THAT, was served an hour into the flight, a flight that was supposed to leave at 5p, and now had left at 11p, so everyone, as far as I could tell, was asleep by the time the thing that was going to make everyone stand in line for the bathroom was served.
But then we got to Berlin. Having spent the last six hours in some sort of tantric re-adjustment maneuver, both sleeping and not sleeping, adjusting body pain from one joint to the next, with heavy eyes and bad smells. But we got to where we were going, and in a very nice turn of events, there was a guy waiting for us, with Professor Curly's name on a placard. And he whisked us away from our troubles and thinking. And for the next three days we didn't really have to worry about anything. I mean, logistically. It was all taken care of. The hotel room, the HMU, which means; Hair and Make-up, apparently. I mean, I was just a straggler, so what I had to deal with was nothing, I mean, poor Professor Curly had a pressor and Q&A's, she had to be on top of her shit, but me, I kind of just went along for the ride ATBMS. But the hotel had a good breakfast and there was a Starbucks in the lobby, everywhere we went, PC was given a hero's welcome. ATBMS. I mean, that was kind of the best part, seeing her being treated with the respect that she deserves. I mean, not even so much that everyone was, um, how do you say, I don't even know how to say it, but there was quite a bit of respect, without the usual amount of pettiness that comes with theater. It was obvious that this was something bigger. What that means, I am not so sure, but it was very apparent that this was her project and her project alone and everyone was aware of that. There wasn't some bruised ego male dick-head running some theater festival that he had no actual business running, Lane, I am looking at you, everyone was cognizant of how much bigger than them this was, so it was nice. Nice to see. And in some very cathartic way, when the film came out, premiered, when the press pushed send on the reviews, I mean, I can't speak for Professor Curly, but for me, as the coat-tails fiancé of this wonderful woman, I felt a great deal of satisfaction when this vindicated the project. Because fuck everyone. Because it is like jumping over a hurdle and watching all the assholes that decided to be negative about something that is truly great stumble and fall face down as Professor Curly smacks their ugly faces with the baton she is carrying. Or something.
Anyway. Here is a good review worth reading. Somebody who seems to understand it:
[Insert Hollywood Reporter]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/reality-review-sydney-sweeney-reality-winner-1235325377/
Okay, I need to get to sleep. Heading back to Vermont tomorrow. Taking the Real Estate Wagon. Poor PC has about a million things to do before she leaves again for Berlin next Monday. She has a play, by the way, happening now. If anyone is in town. And then she has a play in Berlin next month. I mean, I don't know how she does it.
[Insert Trees Information]
https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/plays/trees/