Sounds good to me

Mellencamp, King musical set to haunt stage

NEW YORK (Billboard) - A long-gestating stage musical from rock musician John Mellencamp and horror author Stephen King will open in April 2009 at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre ahead of a possible Broadway run.

Mellencamp wrote the score for "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County," while King wrote the script.

The story, set in rural Mississippi in 1957, revolves around two brothers who hate each other. Their father takes them to a cabin where they used to vacation as children.

"What has happened is that the father had two older brothers who hated each other and killed each other in that cabin," Mellencamp said. "There's a confederacy of ghosts who also live in this house. The older (dead) brothers are there, and they speak to the audience, and they sing to the audience."

The production will be directed by Peter Askin ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch").

the night

The cat is following me all over the house, shouting at me in the tiny croaking voice she has.
Monster is already in bed for a while, running a fever of 102 degrees.
I am mindlessly twittering around online and waiting for sleep to come.

sick monster

First knitting class tonight went well. I hope I can retain and practice everything until next week's class.

Monster is sick with a flu-like (but not the flu) cold bug that the Doc-in-a-Box said is going around now and should only have a duration of 4-5 days. Let's hope he's well super-fast. I got home around 8:20 and he was already in bed, emitting higher than average BTU's.

still miss my dad sometimes

Although we did not have THE close father-daughter relationship I read about sometimes, and he often said the opposite of what I was expecting or needed to hear, I still quite often feel the absence of him. I miss being able to ask for his advice, good or bad but always honest, on important matters.

In the reverse, even these three years after his death, I feel frustrated and even a bit angry at things he set in place that still affect me and limit me. My brother and I were both kept on a short leash, which was both protective but very limiting.

Sometimes I miss my father's infuriating, but loving way of running things as "Don't even try. I've already taken care of everything. You'll just screw up. ".

I wonder if my brother's adjustment is much easier than mine, as I suspect it is, or if we are in a much more similar boat than I think.

He has a good education and I have always longed for a better education.

He is married to his perfect life partner with a large home and a family but he's never taken a step outside of the ties we grew up with and he has no very close friendships that I know of despite that fact. I have no family of my own and I will always struggle with my own finances - due more to my near-complete inability to make money more than poor management, but I have good friends who I adore and share infinite things with. I think I may enjoy the small things in life much more than he does as well.

He has so many good things in life but he always seems to have a pained look on his face.


... or maybe he just looks that way when he's around me...

problem solved

I have found a way (at home) to deal with sitting in a very uncomfortable hard chair in a cold office - sitting on a heating pad.

a call for help from a stranger

This from Neil Gaiman's journal today -

I was born and spent the first 2/3rds of my life in the UK, in a world in which health care was simply a human right. You got it, like an education, by virtue of being alive. And then I came to America and simply it isn't that way here, and, even after 16 years, that still keeps surprising me. (Every now and again I've told people who can't understand why from time to time I write movies, who say things like "You don't need to, you're a best-selling writer, you get paid more for a novel than for a film script," that it keeps my Writers Guild health insurance current, and I'm at least half serious.)

It's always hard to put up medical appeals, but Caitlín R. Kiernan needs financial help -- you can read about it at her journal, over at http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/428785.html.

final sock monkey line-up

These are the finished sock monkeys produced that night.
I made the little guy on the far left with the orange mohawk and goatee. He was the first sock monkey I've ever made.

Sock Monkey birthday party

Last week -
We gathered at the birthday boy's house and made sock monkeys for his birthday gift




While he fed us stuffed pizzas, banana cake and rum drinks.

I'm in need of stimulation

My hair is of a different, lighter, redder color today. I was a bit bored with myself this week. Last night, I was tired of what I saw in the mirror so before going out to eat, I pulled out some product that had been sitting in the closet for quite a while and decided to kick it up a notch.

Something to do for Valentine's Day? -

Orchid Daze: Gargoyles & Grace
Date: Saturday, January 26 - Sunday, March 30
Time: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Orchid Daze: Gargoyles & Grace heats up the winter months with dazzling displays of orchids in combination with antique urns, fountains, lanterns and architectural remnants such as gates and gargoyles.

Dine & Daze
Date: January 26 - March 30
Time: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Bring your dining receipt from ONE. midtown kitchen or TAP to the Atlanta Botanical Garden and receive two for one admission to Orchid Daze through March 30. Offer is good one per person, per receipt.

A special $25 dinner pre-fixe is available Sundays - Thursdays, February 3 - March 27 (excluding Valentine's Day) at both restaurants in honor of Orchid Daze.

Tiny Tim on Ironside

Tiny Tim performing in a beatnik club from the pilot episode of Ironside.

They should offer vegetarian school lunches

This will make you consider eliminating meat from your diet.

Tuesday

We made it to the EAYC last night. Got beaded. Ate dinner. Heard about the lastest krewe projects coming up - all of them sound delightful. Got seranaded by the Seed & Feed Marching Abominables.
Then home and to bed, all before 10pm.

The election returns are disappointing but not unexpected.

I fantasize about relocating to Canada or Europe.

Meanwhile, our pal who is originally from eastern Europe just got his citizenship this week - after twenty years residency - and was sporting his voter label last night. He is always much more optimistic about this country and the state of the world than we are and good for him. He is quite often the perspective-correction unit in the crowd.

The Sixth Element

Yes!