An incomplete list of words and phrases that pertain to the cruise I went on, presented without context: water slides, stanky leg, towel animals, valium, barracuda, streaking, scavenger hunt, conga line, parrot, lucha libre, opa!, cruise jail, holding pen, Team Bride, bingo, wedding dress remover, sea beer, sardine and caper pizza, white elephant gift exchange, hot tub, serenity now.
[Pictured: a stowaway bird, nestled in a dinner napkin, who hung out on one of the decks for about two hours before flying away. I'm sure it's a metaphor. For what I do not know.]
My friend Kimber is getting married. On board a cruise ship. Then a slew of us are going to set sail with her for a five day tour. (A five day tour.) With our port-of-call being in Mexico. So! Drinking and bingo and intestinal distress, here I come! Updates will resume upon my return. (I know though, right? Another break? I’m like the Nikki Finke of unpaid bloggers.)
In the interim, do glance over the “Best of Ephemerist” page, where all the posts on this blog have been scrutinized using a complicated metric to determine their essential best-ness, the top ones then being culled and compiled so that you might reacquaint yourselves. Experience, as they say, the magic all over again. (Your mileage may vary.)
I’ll be departing Wednesday to spend the Labor Day holiday in seclusion, finishing work on my epic, three-part Kushnerian play addressing the health care debate, which culminates in a barn-burning final act featuring all the celebrities and public figures who met their end in this the Summer of Death ( The Awl™) donning Mexican wrestling masks for a cage match in Limbo.
Or not, actually. I will oncemore — yet for the last time! Bittersweet! — be in Westport New York, on this trip to rehearse and ostensibly perform Henry V. We will take pains, be perfect. (Or at least as perfect as the sure-to-be-present hangovers allow.) And in our downtime we’ll be free to dawdle and luxuriate at the manse, affectionately called “granny’s house,” wherein we’ll catch up on some back issues of Us Weekly, perhaps take a dip in the pool,and what else, oh yeah, drink more.
As is custom, every summer there seems to be something of global or national import occurring on or around our time there. Hurricane Katrina, the beginning of the John Roberts confirmation hearings, Sarah Palin added to the McCain ticket. I shudder to contemplate what might befall us on this trip.
Anyhoo, updates will resume on my safe and sane return. Presumably!
After much back and forth texting, I finally arranged to meet my friend Chris for coffee. To discuss his impending acting stint at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha’s Vineyard. I had suggested getting together since I’d spent two summers working there and thought I might offer him some hints and tips in dealing with that weird, magical, insular enclave. But also I guess to reawaken for myself (sense memory!) the feeling of being there, as currently the plans I’d been making for a quick weekend trip to the island this August were steadily imploding. (Beware of Facebook friends bearing invitations.)
The last time I’d set foot there was maybe six years ago? It was over the 4th of July weekend, and I stayed in a tent on someone’s property with my friend Julia. We went to the local parade, a small town extravaganza that was so Norman Rockwell-ian in its earnest Americana, with floats and toddlers waving miniature flags and sparklers, that it vaulted you past cheesiness right into rah-rah sentimentality. We lay on the beach and watched fireworks that evening exploding so close to our heads that they might as well have been LSD hallucinations projected on the movie screen of our eyelids.
I’m going away as I usually do for Labor Day to do a thing, to a place where cell phone reception is spotty at best and the series of tubes that make up the internet have not been laid. Suffice it to say, no updates until I return. And as it is the Summer of Monsters, perchance this time I’ll finally get to see Champy, the elusive monster of Lake Champlain.
Posted by ephemerist 
Posted by ephemerist 
Posted by ephemerist 
I’m going away as I usually do for Labor Day to do a 
Arts. Culture. Rantings and ravings. Generous dollops of nonsense. The doing and the being of nothing in particular.
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