Broadway Ticket Scanning

Here’s a Q&A about why ushers at many Broadway shows now scan the bar codes on your tickets instead of tearing them. Tidbit:

[T]he scanners record exactly when each patron enters the theatre, allowing Telecharge to amass and analyze data on when people tend to show up. What have they found so far? A lot of the data has confirmed conventional wisdom. For instance, at plays, which tend to attract native New Yorkers, lots of people show up five minutes before curtain. At musicals, which attract more tourists, people tend to show up earlier.

Die Vampire, Die

I know this is the fourth [title of show] post I’ve written in the last few days.

But I was just sitting at my cubicle listening to “Die Vampire, Die” on my iPod, and I got to the part that goes

The last vampire is the mother of all vampires and that is the vampire of despair. It’ll wake you up at 4am to say things like:

Who do you think you’re kidding?
You look like a fool.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be good enough.

Why is it that if some dude walked up to me on the subway platform and said these things, I’d think he was a mentally ill asshole, but if the vampire inside my head says it, it’s the voice of reason.

and I started silently crying.

Now I’m typing this entry and it’s happening again.

One thing I noticed when I stopped taking Celexa a few months ago after 4 1/2 years is that the spigots got unblocked. It first happened to me while watching “Enchanted,” of all things. I’d forgotten what it was like for tears to well up so easily. I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten.

Emotions seem much more feelable to me again these days.

Holiday Weekend

Thoughts swirling through my head today on only a few hours of sleep. Once again I woke up around 4:00 this morning. Why does this keep happening? We must get a new mattress and an actual bed.

As I drifted in and out of sleep I kept dreaming about [title of show]. Still thinking about the first preview the other night. I can’t get these lyrics out of my head today:

I’d rather be
Nine people’s favorite thing
Than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing

I’m still thinking about our holiday weekend. It was really nice — we did at least one fun thing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which had not been the norm for us lately.

On Thursday night I opened up my cardboard box of memorabilia. I’d taped it up when we moved last fall and hadn’t opened it since. I wanted to dig through my old journals, but I wound up spending the evening looking through a few hundred photographs that have been sitting in various drugstore envelopes for years. Then I pored over words I’d written almost exactly 10 years ago.

On Friday afternoon we saw WALL-E. I loved it. Can’t recommend it highly enough. One of the most poetic and beautiful animated films I’ve ever seen. I want my own WALL-E to keep as a pet. I also realized that the shape of his head is similar to E.T.’s. I wonder if that was intentional.

After the movie, we went to a Fourth of July party at our friends’ place and watched the fireworks from their roof. It was raining, and the rain weighed down the smoke over the East River and kept it from dissipating, so most of the fireworks were obscured. That was kind of disappointing.

Saturday night was [title of show], and yesterday afternoon we went to my parents’ house for a little family hangout. My dad grilled up burgers, chicken skewers, and steak, and we ate outside. My parents have done lots of gardening this summer and there were flowers everywhere, as well as a few bird feeders that attracted lots of birds (and some squirrels and, I think, a couple of rats). My parents’ backyard is surrounded by tall trees, which were fully green in mid-summer bloom. It was such a nice respite from the city. I think human beings need to commune with nature — it touches something inherent in us. It grounds us and reminds us where we came from. It slows us down, re-synchronizes us with the clock of the world. Trees, plants and animals are so much realer and truer than concrete and plaster and pixels and plastic.

Alas, all weekends come to an end. But I don’t want to waste this summer like I usually do. Matt and I should try to get away somewhere, even if just for a couple of days. I want to slow down and appreciate summer for once.