I Sold My Soul To Nexterday
The avid followers of my life might be wondering what I’ve been up to lately, as I haven’t posted anything in a while. This has not been because nothing has been happening, but rather because I have been suffering from the rare occurrences of both business and Vermontiness at the same time. The first left me with little free time, and the second left me with only shoddy, sporadic, and stolen internet connections. So, in brief, here are some of the highlights of my life.
I got a new job. One of my old company’s clients is paying almost my full salary to work about eight days a month for them. So in a rare but welcome change of pace, I win! But the best part is that the day after I started my new job, the CEO of National Lampoon (who just bought my old company, putting me out of work) was charged with securities fraud, along with several other executives. Schadenfreude never tasted so sweet.
Just before my first day of work, I went to Schedule B of Confronting Chekhov, a series of short plays inspired by the playwright. There were six plays, all of which were highly enjoyable. Sleepy, the only one based directly on a short story by Chekhov, involved a woman with a baby going mad. Perhaps I’m a terrible human being, but how can you not enjoy the theme of a child destroying someone’s mental stability? Sexy Monk was based on a seemingly gimmicky premise of putting a monk on a “You Bet Your Life” type reality TV show, but managed to win me over with such quips as the monk observing that “life is wonderful if you don’t think of it as important.” But the real highlights of the show were the final two plays, Through the Red and Dr. Chekhov, Gunshot expert. The first was an interesting tale of a young American woman on a trip to help rebuild post-Soviet Russia. The second was a delightfully absurd mixture of Chekhovian drama and Marx Brothers-esque wackiness, with just a hint of post-modern deconstructionism to keep things interesting. A good night, all around.
And then a week later, I found myself in Vermont. Within half an hour of arriving in the unnecessarily snowy state, I found myself at a solstice party where a man lectured me at length on how there are natural cycles that we aren’t in tune to, all based on the Fibonacci sequence, and how a man who was shot several years ago in Brattleboro was the result of a World War II cycle. And then he told my mother she needed to “connect with the ocean.” Going home is always a good way to understand why you are who you are.
As a random aside, I’ve been listening to Nexterday by Ric Ocasek rather a lot lately, and I highly recommend that others do the same. The former frontman of The Cars and producer of such notable works as the first two self-titled Weezer albums, Ocasek hasn’t had the most successful solo career, but he has put out a few albums that I think are just great, and this one may well be my favorite.
And now I am back in New York. We’ll see what happens next.
-TC