Thursday, December 14, Now Billed As Yesterday

1) Office holiday party in the afternoon at Le M*******, which had been glamorously redecorated since I'd ankled over there last. The theme was plad, but I wore my traditional Christmas sweater (not happy with any of the plaid in my closet). More than one person asked why I wasn't wearing plaid, and I answered "If you're stoned it looks plaid."

1a) There's nothing like swearing a blue streak and then realizing that a Very Important Person is standing just behind you. #oops

1b) Best macaroni and cheese ever, and some lovely passed bits, and petit fours.

1c) Really, having run the holiday party myself for seven years in the 1990s, I'm thrilled and grateful that other people do it now.

2) In the evening, Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans in Whatever Happened to Baby Jesus? The first Ryan Landry production I saw was Johnny Guitar in P'town back in 1996 (which was outrageous) and since the move to the Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts, the shows have included more Golden Age Hollywood-inspired dance numbers, and the audience has included many more heterosexuals. Packed in tight as sardines in oil, I tried not to remember that this year is the 75th anniversary of the Cocoanut Grove fire.

2a) I have to remind myself that you can't take this troupe literally, so when considering Whatever Happened to Baby Jesus? I shouldn't have been surprised that most of the plot came from Summer Stock. Let's just say it's quite a mashup!

2b) My new Boston theatre crush is the actor who played Orville Smirch.

3) Afterwards, gleefully piled into the wayback of a friend's SUV/van/whatever to get to the parked car of other friends who drove me home. This prompted nostalgia of childhood family vacations when my sister and I greatly preferred to ride in the very back of the station wagon.