God, yesterday I went to sleep after 5a for the second day in a row, I have no idea why.

The night before last, the reason was because I got all excited about this present that I want to make for a friend, so I stayed up for hours choosing the items that I need and looking for the ones that I didn't have and so on.

Last night, it just happened. And because of the matinee today, I had to drag myself out of bed no later than 11.30a. Ugh.

So yesterday I spent a great deal of the day making my presents for my friend and for this Queen of the Month thing that some friends of mine do. It's May, so I finally made the presents for the Queens of January through April.

May, I did not do. I mean, of course not! It was only the first of May, what sort of insanity would have to take place for me to do anything about that until much closer to the 30th. Or, considering what I just made, closer to September.

So after that orgy of present-making, I went off to see Moira's show, which I really should have seen it on Monday, since I didn't have to be at the LCP show that night to pick up the money. I did not, however, see the show on Monday, so there was a great deal of tap dancing to be done to see the show last night.

This is what I get for leaving things to the last minute. But since I always leave things to the last minute, there was nothing particularly unusual about my having to rush around doing handstands and juggling fire. It all ended up fine, by the way, there was a bit of a rush uptown, but nothing disastrous happened.

I had asked Moira a couple of days ago what time her show came down, and she said about 10.15p, which would give me plenty of time to run uptown before the Shakespeare ended at 10.40p. Of course, it turned out that Moira is a lying whore, but since that was also the character that she played in the show, it all followed.

So yeah, the show was mother long. But it was also good, so unlike watching a bad show that is too long and you are praying for death, watching a good show that is too long means that you just think that it will never end, and you hope that it's extreme length won't mean that you end up hating it.

Which I didn't. I thought it was extremely good, but the playwright needs to be leashed and the show can stand to lose an hour or forty minutes. In fact, if you just lifted the first act out without changing a thing, it would make a fine show all on its own. Nothing would be resolved, but little is resolved in the show anyway.

Basically, no straight play written after 1950 should be anything like 2 hours and 40 minutes long, unless it's Nicholas Nickleby, and there certainly shouldn't be an announcement that the play would be about 15 minutes longer after a five minute break. Because that will just make the audience either leave or start to weep. I'm not certain how crazy you would have to be to write a fifteen minute third act, but this playwright is just. Crazy. Enough.

There were some terrific performances that I enjoyed entirely. Moira has some acting problems that she still has--she doesn't always commit totally to what she is saying, sometimes she will just skitter lightly over the lines like a waterbug. That said, she has one great gift that many actors, including me, do not have. She has absolutely no ego about her appearance.

Some of us will appear unattractive onstage if only it is made clear that all of the unattractiveness is due to makeup or an unflattering costume, very few of us will let what might be considered to be unattractive about ourselves to show onstage.

When Omar and I were originally talking about Flora, Horror, I had this picture in my head of the stereotypical big Russian woman, like that Apple commercial about the Russian fashion show where these big, ugly women stomped around in schmattas while the announcer said, "Svimvear. Eveninkvear," and I told him that my ego was too big to appear unattractive onstage.

It turned out that the Russian stereotype that he had in mind was Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle, so it turned out to be okay, but I absolutely would not have wanted to appear ugly. Moira has no such fears.

Not that she did appear ugly, but you could tell that that was the last thing from her mind, she was so free. She was playing a white trash prostitute, and for her first appearance on the stage, she wore a short skirt, a bra, and nothing else but makeup. I could never have done that, not without sucking in my stomach until I couldn't actually speak, which she did not do at all.

For the whole show, she looked right for the character without trying to hide the fact that she is an overweight woman, or dress to flatter her looks, because the character wouldn't have cared and that's exactly how the character would have dressed.

The thing that kept me from telling her how brave she was being was my own reaction to being told that very thing, but it was really true.

I'm watching Iron Chef America's tag-team finale, and here is officially the problem with the show. Chairman Not-Kaga, when introducing the secret ingredient(s), said, "This one-of-a-kind, two-on-two match demands a special ingredient that is...extra special!"

One thing the real Chairman Kaga had was a thesaurus, you betcha.

He just broke up the teams and paired Sakai with Batali and Morimoto with Flay. If Morimoto and Flay both leap upon the cutting board, hand in hand, at the end of the battle, I will throw up.

And why is Gunther from Friends a judge? Ah well, it makes as much sense as that lady astrologer who always shows up in the real show. And they always have weird b and c-level Japanese celebrities, just they aren't familiar to me so they don't strike me as silly as ol' Gunther there to give his culinary opinions an airing.

And besides, they have Ted from Queer Eye as another judge, and that's just fine, not to mention dandy, by me.

I would be shocked as shit if Morimoto and that dorkhead-Flay win, what with Bobby cutting his hand and burning his sauce and so on. It's as though Mary-Katherine Gallagher somehow managed to wander into Kitchen Stadium and was mistaken for an Iron Chef. I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly his pants fell down and his dick burst into flame.

Okay, they didn't leap onto the cutting board, but they barely got that soup out of the oven in time. And besides, how the evening's been going for them, the soup probably would have gone ass over teakettle onto the floor.

I'd love to be a judge on Iron Chef, I'd be a fucking challenge to anyone. In fact, that should be the challenge, not any kind of secret ingredient, but they would have to come up with a fancy dish with fancy ingredients that I, Kymm Zuckert, the pickiest adult eater alive, will both like and eat instead of poke at suspiciously and make faces. Allez-cuisine!

Shit, when did Bobby Flay have time to make all of these dishes? I thought that he mostly was cutting his fingers off! They may have fooled me with the editing. O you sneaky Iron Chef America editors!

And they did, Morimoto and Flay won! Nobody should beat Sakai, especially not the idiot Flay, isn't he the SuperDuperest Fabulicious Iron Chef in All the Land, or however they ended the series?

Ah well, that's what you get when you rely on Gunther to be the expert. Although I expected more from Ted.

In re Friends ending, can I just say one thing? It's a TV show, people, not Atlantis disappearing into the sea, calm down.

Or, as Fran said, "By the way, have you seen the cover of TV Guide? The Real TV Guide they sell at Pathmark? You would think the cast of Friends died defending the President."

Today's horoscope:
You may need to deal with a bit of a tug-of-war between your family responsibilities and your sense of duty to your work. That doesn't mean you can't work it out -- but it won't be easy.

One year ago today:
I will pause as you all recover. I realize that the last time I told a man how I really felt was when my father asked me if I wanted a candy bar or not, but maybe I'm starting to grow up a little. Go figure!

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Last Updated Mon 3 May 22:23:09 2004