Hot Doug’s Revenge
We went back to Hot Doug’s, the landmark Chicago hot doggery where dreams are encased in sausage form and devoured by a hungry and happy clientele. The line came out the restaurant and around the block. We waited 45 minutes to get in, which was exactly like waiting for a ride at Disneyland: It feels like forever, but you forget all about it once you strap yourself in.
The foie gras hot dog.
I ate a foie gras hot dog. I went into this thinking it was a joke — “ha ha, it’s a foie gras hot dog!” — but let me tell you, my friends: This thing is no joke. It was one of the best hot dogs I’ve ever eaten, perhaps the best. Easily the most decadent.
A sausage made from duck and foie gras. Truffle aioli. And a slathering of foie gras on top. This hot dog was actually banned in Chicago during a short lived city-wide foie gras ban, but Hot Doug’s courageously went on serving it anyway. It is a hot dog that sticks it to The Man — a hot dog for rebels.
It was so, so, sooo very good. It cost $9, but I felt like the restaurant had gotten the short end of the stick. I would’ve easily paid twice as much for this thing.
So I ate three hot dogs: A plain Chicago style dog just to set my palate. It was good, crisp, fresh, nice. Then I split a Paul Kelly (Bratwurst soaked in beer) and a Marty Allen (beef, pork, garlic) with Tim — just to see what all the fuss was about with the specialty dogs. I’ll tell you this: It’s all about the sausage. The sausage is what makes it.
Then the best for last: The foie gras dog. It was amazingly good — creamy foie gras paired with the best parts about eating duck. Salty, a little tangy, but no greasiness. Just a really nice, decadent treat. Oh, plus cheese fries.
You’re all right, Chicago. You’re all right.
Sippin From an In-N-Out Cup
Mad Props: Hey guys, how about a tour of our props table? Come with me and take a look at the motley assortment of objects that the actors will imbue with magic, like unicorns would if they had hands.
“In-N-Out” Cup: The play has a scene where one character is “sippin from an In-N-Out cup”. There are no In-N-Outs in Illinois, so we currently have this cup with the phrase “IN-N-OUT” taped to it. It even has an artful little arrow drawn onto it too. Also note that the cup’s day job is at McDonalds.
For the actual production it will be replaced with real In-N-Out cups so that ex-West Coasters can giggle and whisper “They went to In-N-Out!!” when they see it. I hope my paychecks aren’t pieces of paper with the word “CHECK” taped to them.
Condoms: Every play must have condoms in it, and they must be used. This gives the play a sense of action, and it makes the play inherently sexy. And as Anton Chekhov once said, “If in the first act you have hung condoms on the wall, in the following one they must be used. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be hanging there.” He also pronounced the phrase “nuclear vessels” as “nuclear wessels”. He was a funny guy.
Dungeons and Dragons Stuff: Yes, there is a scene where Dungeons and Dragons is played. We have this rulebook and some D20s and D10s. The protagonist of the play has 46 hit points and his armor class is 6. His alignment is Chaotic Good.
No Gun: Even though this play has an Asian gang member in it, it has no guns. All my previous plays have had guns in them. This other play I’m working on right now has a crossbow in it. For me, a play without a gun is like a George Rodrigue painting without a blue dog. But for some reason this piece has no guns. I don’t know why. Maybe I should write one in.
Cookie Jar With Human Skull Inside: This is the most important prop in the show — in a sense, the fifth (or perhaps the sixth?) character in the play. As you can see, the jar is not the final jar, and the skull is not the final skull. We’re currently using a skull from one of our early hominid ancestors. It turns out that having bone matter made out of packing tape was an evolutionary dead end.
And that’s it for now — more soon.
Historical Artifacts
Field Trip: Victory Gardens arranged for the company to take a trip down to the Cambodian Heritage Museum run by the Cambodian Association of Illinois. This was a welcome break from hanging out in a rehearsal room all day.
I got there an hour early so I could walk around the neighborhood which is apparently called Lincoln Square. Chicagoans: I’m an out of towner, so please bear with me. Your place names are strange and unusual to me — I’m from California, and more used to the Spanish names of saints.
Anyway, this is what I love about any big American city: The streets are a pastiche of good things from all the corners of the earth. While I was waiting around I got a chorizo torta. It cost $3.50. It came with chips and two types of salsa, and it was gooood. I consumed it with dos Diet Cokes. Across the street there were a couple of Korean joints — those will be investigated on a later trip.
So we all met up at the Cambodian Heritage Museum, took the tour. Saw artifacts of everyday life in Cambodia — much of which has changed very little in the last few hundreds of years. A huge wooden rice grinder, sickles and baskets — most people are still subsistence farmers. Industrialization and globalization have arrived on the country’s doorstep, along with all the good and ill they bring with them.
What was most touching to all of us was when our guide — a man in his sixties, maybe my father’s age — told us the story of his own life under the Khmer Rouge. He was a school teacher before them. But during their rule they worked him in the fields like so many others were literally worked to death.
And then, slowly, haltingly, he told us the story of how he was caught by Khmer Rouge soldiers and accused of stealing food.
To punish him, they used pliers to pull out his teeth.
It’s when someone is telling you their own history — their tragedies, the everyday pieces of their lives — that history itself becomes personal. To write this play I had read facts and statistics, autobiographies. But it wasn’t until this moment that I had heard someone’s story of survival told to me in their own voice.
It’s something I’ll never forget.
It made everything real for me. Because this play is about personal history and how it’s told — about how it’s passed from person to person so that we can understand something about the past. Maybe not quite understand evil — who could? But maybe we might begin to understand how people can endure evil, and what we can do to confront it.
And here was this man, our guide, who had somehow survived when two million others had died. Who somehow made it all the way from Cambodia to this huge American city, for better or worse. But he had survived, and had become a teacher once again.
So it was a pretty good day. Because it reminded me of all those who died, but also let me know that others lived.
And they continue on, telling their stories.
Bodies Moving Through a 3D Space
The First Day of Year Zero Rehearsal: We’re going from lines in a script to people actually moving through a three dimensional space, laughing, yelling at each other, trying not to knock anything over.
That’s one of the big differences between theater and other storytelling mediums: There are live people acting onstage in front of you, and it imparts a special kind of energy to the audience.
It’s like the difference between listening to music on an iPod and seeing your favorite group play live. The difference between watching a comedian on TV and seeing him/her in person — there’s this massive energy that you feel from seeing a live performance. You’re witnessing intensely private moments. Peoples’ lives are changing before your eyes. It’s a powerful thing — almost like a physical sensation. And you’re sharing it with the people onstage, the other people in the audience — you can feel their energy too.
But to make this happen, we’ve first got to figure out how we’re going to move these human beings around on stage — how we’re going to dress them, light them, set up the space in which they’re going to play.
Costumes, Sets, Lighting, Audio: First day of rehearsal usually includes a design presentation where we get to see lots of cool things:
Costumes — It’s always amazing how lines in a script can inspire a talented costume designer to sketch out looks for fictional characters. One special line in the play about Banana Republic informed a whole bunch of design choices about a certain character. Pretty cool!
Sets — This is one of my favorite things: When a set designer brings in a tiny model of the set. Tiny chairs, tiny tables. Ours has amazing elements that evoke the imagery of places as distant to each other as Choeung Ek and Long Beach’s Cambodian community, and brings them together.
Lighting — Great lighting can create moods and effects; transitions, show the passage of time. I’ve been told this play is a particularly “cinematic” one — it moves quickly and deals with a lot of imagery. Light and darkness play a big part in this, so great lighting is essential.
Audio — Holy crap, the music. Hip hop, Southern Californian culture, and the Khmer language converge incredibly in the music selections. They’ve also engineered audio/sound effects that come from their natural sources (i.e. a car radio’s music comes from the car radio itself), and have environmental sounds too.
And there you have it. Lines on a page are coming to life in 3D space. The key word is “life” — as in life lived before your eyes. A live performance, transmitting energy by live wires.
Plus someone gets beat up over a cheeseburger.
It’s Silly to Stand In Hamburgers
Why You Gotta Be Like That, Chicago: Taking a quick trip to our favorite midwestern city soon — the Windy City, the home of encased meats and industry.
Last time I was in Chicago I stepped onto the train and was greeted by the foul odor of a drunken man who had lost his lunch. Everyone was huddled on the other end of the train car, and everyone getting on rushed over to that side.
Behind me this guy got on the train, sniffed the air. He saw the drunken man. Then he yelled into the air, “DAMN, CHICAGO! WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THAT, CHICAGO?!!”
He was talking to Chicago. Like it was a person that had caused this guy to upchuck on the train.
I loved this very much.
Terrible Yellow Eyes: Many, many visual tributes here to Where the Wild Things Are. All of them worth checking out.
Amazing how such iconic characters can be re-imagined using so many different art styles.
It’s silly to stand in hamburgers.
Be With Someone Who Knows What They Have When They Have You
This is a good metric for figuring out whether someone appreciates you or not. Do they know what they have when they have you?
Our good friend Pepe definitely knows what he has when he has you. He understands who you are and all your capabilities, and will lie down waiting for a body massage once he has your attention.
Humans… Sometimes do not know what they have when they have someone. I am guilty of this sometimes as well. But Pepe always shows his appreciation and never takes you for granted. This must be rather tiring for him.
The Hero’s Journey: I took him on a three hour walk yesterday. It was epic. We found ourselves between rocks and hard places. We both transformed as people. He has a mustache now and I know the meaning of life. We also came back with an elixir for the village.
We seriously walked twenty miles on this thing. Up and down hills. Through the woods, with multiple weirdoes and strangers with candy stopping me to ask me weird questions about him. Also there are cheerleading summer camps here, so we were stopped by masses of preteen girls who OMG just HAD to pet him. “Ohhhh he has socks! Is he friendly?”
“No.”
“Can we pet him anyway???”
“Fine.”
I like the new direction House MD is taking:
Let the Madness Happen
Hey: I’ve been invited to become a member of Center Theatre Group’s Writers Workshop for 2009-2010.
Neato!
Stop the Madness: Pepe is a really nice, sweet dog. He will come up to you and lean on you while you pet him. He loves other dogs and loves jumping up on ladies holding ice cream cones. He makes people happy.
And then 8 pm rolls around. This is when the gateway to the netherworld opens and he is suddenly possessed by cackling demons. He runs at high speed around the living room while growling. He jumps on the couch and starts digging a hole to Australia. He WRITHES. Fireballs shoot out of his arse.
This is always a scary time around the household. He has de-evolved 30,000 years and is looking for someone to murder, and there’s only one other person around: Your gentle narrator.
Thankfully, after about 20 minutes it stops and he flops over.
Before I would try to get him to stop. “Off the couch! Stop digging! What are you digging for? Oh god, there’s nothing in there! Where are you going? Stop doing that! Get off the table!”
But now I have the solution to his madness: Let it happen. I let him run around at high speeds. I lie on the couch so he can’t jump on to do his digging. He eventually exhausts himself and flops over and watches Law and Order and that’s it. It works great.
This is how I’m going to handle parenthood as well.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
