New Entry with bonus belligerence and recipe

"Who's your landlord Betsy Ross"
- Steve

It might be easier to clarify what we don't do: no balloon animals or juggling. If you're cramming a lot of people into a small car, it's on your own time.
Internet became scarce for a while after leaving the hotel. I have been keeping notes however so here are some random snippets of the past month.

One guy at the school has one of those American circus backgrounds where you juggle and make balloon animals. Balloon animals are apparently the cash cow of the street performer. People go nuts for bright latex twisted up in creative ways. So at some point in early October it got me thinking... Balloon animals make every situation lighter … Since the municipal government isn’t willing to spend enough on addressing the issues in the down town east side and there’s a lot of talk about what’s going to happen to the residents during the Olympics. Why not just put everyone in clown costumes and we’ll tell the tourists it’s a circus… which it kind of is.

I don't endorse this idea as the first approach but is it any more cruel than gentrification and police brutality? Hmmm.

At around the same time I came to another conclusion:

I have to admit, I’m not that into juggling. It looks cool and is the ultimate party trick. But it drives me nuts, especially starting out when it’s just one ball being tossed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Last Saturday at 4am I decided to take a break from drinking for a while:

The drinking was all civil and under control until a drunk 2nd year went on a Capoeira kicking and picking up people spree at a party. One got her hand mangled, another got dropped into a table and I got kicked in the nose. I didn't mind the kick so much but the thought of visiting an american doctor terrified me. I must have been vocal about this so the albertan started handing me bottles of hard liquor and told me it was medicine. I just couldn't see an American doctor, I wasn't wearing expensive shoes so there's no way I'd get the help I needed.
One final image for that night - Standing in the middle of a dark small town street, an unfiltered camel in one hand while the other makes a fist in the air - "No Yankee Doctor..." Why do hangovers happen only on the most beautiful days when someone is bound to cook something amazing. Meanwhile, I'm just waiting for my toast to pop and my broth to boil. What a waste.

And as for the school - A lot of it is focused on deconstruction right now. So a lot of what we're doing has to do with finding a neutral place or starting with a clean slate. For example, not every character you play will have eighteen years of dance or body building or whatever it is you've done - so how can you find a place of movement outside that. We move around a lot and so we should, it's in the name after all. We're in class from
9 - 5 and then we rehearse at night in groups of 5 to 7 for our weekly performance lab.

I may be off the sauce but there's still room for Babo's Ragu. Babo is an old Italian man that lives next to the hotel. Provided you don't park your car in front of his living room or thump up the stairs, he's quite congenial. Babo means Father in Italian - so even in his eighties he's still got young women calling him Daddy.

Babo's Ragu

Get a meat mixture that's half hamburger and half Italian sausage
Add 2-3 bay leaves
When meat is brown, add 1-2 cups of red wine
When cooked grind in a food processor

In a seperate pan sautee onions until clear and then add s&p, parsley, carrots and celery
Grind up in a food processor

Add the tomato puree which consists of
Diced tomatoes
tomato puree
whole peeled tomatoes
I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to puree this either.

Let it all simmer together. When oil becomes red, you know it's done. Add s&p
This recipe is flexible - do what you want to it.

Cheers,

Lani