Release, Richard, Rants, and a Feral Ballerina

The album release party was a success.  Everyone enjoyed the music, and we sold a number of cds, perhaps not so many as we hoped, but not so few as we feared either.

As a follow-up to a recent post, I must say that Richard III was quite good, the setting in the 1930s done very well, and Ian McKellen simply perfection as Richard, slimy and charming, wily and paranoid, all at once.  So the woman at the junk store was once again proved wrong, not that I ever listened to her recommendations much anyway.

I leave Thursday morning for my annual writers' conference, and find myself in a state of mingled excitement and worry, as usual.  Excitement because of the cathartic experience of spending four days in the company of fellow writers, concentrating on writing, writing as life rather than an accessory to life.  Worry, because of meeting editors and agents and exposing my writing (and through it, myself) to the scrutiny of others.  These things will always be harrowing experiences I think, no matter how my writing eventually fares, or how much confidence I gain.

The four days of the conference serve another useful (at this point indispensable) purpose as well.  They shall offer me a brief respite from work.  In general it hasn't been too bad.  I've met some lovely people, found an endless new supply of character ideas, and the tips aren't so bad either.  The last two days, however, have worn me down into a fine paste.  There are always days like that, there always will be, at any job.  At the coffeehouse there was the man who invited me out to his "ranch", the one who always asked you to stir his coffee with your little finger "to sweeten it up", the woman who went on a tirade when you ran out of her favorite salad dressing.  At the golf course there is the man who offered to be my sugar daddy, or the one who mocked me as I split up his tab, or the woman who insisted I stop and take her party's order as I was on my way to the kitchen with three water glasses in each hand, menus under one arm, and the ketchup and mustard carousel dangling from my little finger.  Not that my days are made up entirely of these occurrences.  Hardly.  There are generally plenty of good things to balance out the bad.  I don't mind cleaning up after people, really, and I actually quite like waiting on tables.  What I don't like, what makes me see red, is the air of entitlement which so often comes with the aforementioned actions, the attitude that the fact that you are waiting tables and they are not gives them the right to treat you in any way they see fit, to mock, harangue, or hit on you without compunction.  Meanwhile, they expect speed, efficiency, serenity, and grace from you.  Generally I can manage the speed and serenity, if not always the other two.  The last two days I've been slipping.  Four days of rejuvenating literary immersion should be just what I need.

Rant over.  By next Monday morning I will love customer service again, or at least see the amusing side again and dislike it a little less fiercely.

I must conclude this post with a photo of my alter-ego, the Feral Ballerina, from Stephen Pastis' comic strip Pearls Before Swine.

Shakespeare in a Junk Shop

So, I've already mentioned my soft spot for second-hand bookshops.  This also translates to junk shops in general, in spite of the allergy-inducing effects of the dust which usually permeates such places.  To clarify, I don't care for moth-eaten table-cloths, and I find half-used bottles of lotion and great-aunt-Ethel's perfume to be quite frankly disturbing, but if one can look past such things one can sometimes find hidden gems.  For me these gems generally come in the shape of something that can be made into something else, however, yesterday I had the good luck to come across an old VHS copy of Richard III, with Ian McKellen, Maggie Smith, and a number of other quality names.  Personally, when I see the names William Shakespeare and Ian McKellen combined like that, I snatch, regardless of whether I've heard anything of the performance before.  In any case, I took it up to the counter, and this was the ensuing conversation.  I shall put my thoughts in bold italics.


Woman at counter: "Oh, I saw this when it came in.  Thought it was Shakespeare, then turned it over and saw it was a remake."


Technically, any of Shakespeare's plays performed after 1616 could be called a remake, but I'll assume you're referring to the fact that they set it in the 1930s.


Me, aloud: "Hm."


Woman at counter (shaking her head): "Yeah, I don't know.  It's weird."


You're weird!


Me, aloud: "Sometimes I like the updated versions, depending on who performs them.  I've never heard of this one, but the cast looks good."


Woman at counter (with a cackle and another shake of the head as I'm walking away): "Well, you know, even William Shatner was a trained Shakespearean actor."


I give up!


Afterwards I recalled that it was the same woman who, when my sister bought a book, said that she'd started trying to read it, but the tone was "too British".  Ha!