Another Long Day

Working backwards through the day, I want to express the reason that this city still frustrates me the most. It's that a half-hour commute - a fifteen minute drive, but half an hour by public transit - takes an hour and a half at night, when I'd like to be home the fastest. The longer you wait to try to get home, the longer it takes, which leaves you standing on a subway stop for half an hour while the Jersey Boy-wannabe next to you tries to chat you up, informing you that he'd "leave New York City after the cockroaches do, and people say those could survive a nuclear war." Thanks for that one, buddy. Seriously, if I'm stuck in a subway station by myself and am standing with my don't-talk-to-me look on, I'd really appreciate it if you'd abide by my wishes and not talk to me. But tonight, my N-train to Astoria just suddenly decided to become a D train, which tacked another half hour onto my regular time.

My day was eleven-hours-full of projectors. I could draw up a laundry list of the frustrations that projectors presented us today, but the best story came at the end of the night. We'd had so much trouble with the remotes, the cables, the inputs, and the cabling job itself that we didn't even get all four projectors running until about 7. To put it in perspective, I'd come in at noon to start getting things together, get a working keyboard, and cable the last two projectors. I'd asked for help from Paul the TD so many times that when he saw me rounding the corner the last two times, he'd get this beleaguered look on his face, look over his glasses at me, and go, "what is it this time?" All justified reasons, though, so most of the time he really couldn't blame me. I'm convinced I may have worn out my welcome this time around, though. They're rethinking their idea to ask me on as their next intern.

So last twenty minutes of my night were right around 11. Simon was marking out all the obstructions in our projection path in Photoshop (it's complicated to explain, and kind of inconsequential), which required me to turn the projectors on one at a time. But naturally three of the projectors (the Sanyos) are (freaking inexplicably) linked together through a single (very crappy) remote with a messed up trackpad, which means that anytime I needed to lens shift, zoom or keyframe, I basically had to climb on the ladder, because that trackpad apparently doesn't respond to girl-fingers. Don't ask me, I don't know. The major problem, though, is that trying to turn on one projector at a time means aiming carefully, shielding the signal with one hand, and praying to God that it turns on the right one. Because if you turn on the wrong one, an extra one, or actually all three at once, they have to fire up, then turn off, then completely cool down before you start all over again. Literally the only way to get all three of them off at the same time is to turn them all on, then turn them all off again before the cooling period allows me to accidentally turn one on again. You think reading that was annoying? Try living it.

I hung out with Heather, the set design girl, today. We didn't have much time, since it was late at night and we were both kind of worn down, so we walked a little up Broadway and then stopped in a 24-hour "cafe," where we sat and talked for about an hour. Heather's a really nice girl, and although I'm really sad she's leaving for the rest of the world on Sunday, I'm glad to have connected with her - I'll see her at some point next fall. I'm also happy that I seem to have made friends with the stage manager, Julia, who offered to show me her New York - one full of excitement and coffee and intimacy in a way that I'd told her my New York didn't have. It's probably a little bit pathetic that I get so excited about making friends up here, especially since I'm not awkward at making friends - I just rarely go out of my way to do so, and in a city this size, I'm happy for the opportunities I'm given.

Funny thought - there are definite societal codes to enjoying music in a public place. This is something we take for granted most of the time, until we're faced with something completely out of our view of normality. Take tonight - Guy on the Subway, with your brown leather shoes and your black leather satchel, your too-unbuttoned button-up shirt and your spikey hair . . . you need to tone back the emoting. Knee-jogging is fine. Even head-nodding, if you're the kind of person who can pull it off. But twitching - radically - lipsynching, and head-banging are not acceptable behaviors for anyone, much less a guy sitting by himself and leering at all girls in the area. Two people can get away with some extensive bouncing around, and three can do the singing thing without coming off as being crazy. But alone, you should probably stick to head nodding and knee bouncing, and try to leave the craziness for another time of day and another crowd.