Episode 4- Lois Finds Love at The Ottobar with Trixie Little, The Evil Hate Monkey, & Scotty The Blue Bunny

On Sat night I brought a few friends and my cousin Lori to the Ottobar to see Trixie Little and The Evil Hate Monkey, Baltimore's long-time "beloved acrobatic burlesque superduo" of whom I had heard so much. The show was called "High Brow" - "A Night Of Intellectually Sophisticated Low Brow Entertainment."

Indeed Trixie, Monkey, and several other performers delivered all and more that was promised. While I have no true acting ability, I have a deep love for actors and for performers of all sorts, as well as the many quirky, funky art students who fill the city (no shortage of which were also there last night) and among whom I rather like to mingle and emulate and disguise.

Like Trixie, I am also on the "vertically-challenged" side of things (clocking in under five feet tall), my last name begins with "T," I tend gravitate to the vivid, the sparkly, and the outrageous, and I also enjoy (when they allow me) to vent my occasional frustrations with men in the tried-and-true "Elaine of Seinfeld" way--that is, to "whack" male friends every now & again--playfully, of course, it is I suppose a sort of special license of women who call themselves spunky and small. And so my reasons for feeling a special bond with Trixie, "the sassy burlesque superstar" known also as "Tiny T," embued not only with "super-human spanking powers" but also a special brand of Bawlmorean quirkiness to call her own, are various.

During the show, I found myself riveted, like everyone else in the crowd, also by the show's MC ("Scotty the Blue Bunny")--so named for his blue latex-clad and bunny-eared attire, whose charm, sense of humor, and taller-than-7-foot-height-in-heels impressed everyone. By the end of the night, indeed, I found myself relating ever more to Scotty, whose jokes and stories about his own Jewish Mom from New York and her angst about his chosen career and life path rather echoed my own.

Really the show was extremely witty and fun and entertaining. Although, as I stood in the crowd of overwhelmingly "goth"-inspired folk (my friends and I had really, by & large, not worn the properly dark or outrageously coordinated attire worn by the typical "Ottobarian" participant), the emotion I found myself nearly overcome by was love.

It struck me while watching Trixie and Monkey perform their final rites of acrobatics and intimacy on the swing (see pic above, more in the Flickr slideshow display on the right side), that really only in such settings as this, and those mostly in Baltimore, have I felt truly thrilled and fulfilled. While I have experienced pleasure and even wonder at times in various places in which I have lived, it is really only in Baltimore where I have felt deeply and soul-drenchingly happy, truly at home in my own skin, and comfortable and accepted by a populace which by and large not only accepts difference & individuality & full-fledged creativity but treasures these commodities far above money or material things.

And so all at once I felt all the doubts and fears and anxieties of last week dissolve (see last week's Episode 3--"Sweatin' Over My Choices at The Charles"). I understood, quite clearly then, that I have given my whole heart and soul now to Baltimore, and since that is done really my choices have been made already.

For better or worse, the only dreams possible to me now are those of a particularly Baltimorean sort, and further committing myself to Baltimore--and to the romantic notion I have of it--is the only path I can and must traverse. And so even if (as I worried last week) all I can succeed at in the end in making with my life is "cannabilistic meat pies," then so be it, I swear I will make the most delectable, most savory and most spectacular "cannibalistic meat pies" in town.

If you also love burlesque but missed Trixie last Saturday, you can take in some tonight at The Sex Workers Art Show, to be held at 7 pm at The Creative Alliance at The Patterson--more details here and in the "LoisLife Calendar" of events found at the bottom left of my Blog. Trixie and Monkey themselves will be back performing live also at The Creative Alliance on Thurs-Fri, March 28 and 29th at 8 pm.

Can't get enough Trixie? Check out her Blog, "The Adventures of Trixie Little." You'll find many stories and pics of Trixie and her friends working seriously at circus school, as well as partying it up equally hard.

Copyright 2008 by Lois

Episode 3-Sweatin' Over My Choices at The Charles

I tend to be pretty upbeat generally. Usually I stay pretty optimistic about projects I've engineered and been involved in over the last year or so. Still, I do experience the occasional moment of self-doubt.

One such moment struck me Tuesday, while watching the film Sweeney Todd at The Charles with my cousin Lori and two of our friends. (If you've never actually seen the movie or play or heard the plot, BTW, you might want to stop reading now--I don't want to be blamed for spoiling it for you.)

We were enjoying it free courtesy of The Baltimore City Paper, which was publicizing its big "not-to-miss" bash, the Cosmic Cocktail Party, to be held March 6th at the Belvedere (tix can be purchased through Mission Tix and at The 8 x 10 Club).

About half-way through the movie I found myself sweating. This was partly because the theatre was crazy-hot, a pipe must have busted somewhere or something, causing sauna-like conditions to prevail.

But mostly it was a thought that occurred to me while watching the ghastly results of the "creative collaborative partnership" between the movie's heroine, Helena Bonham Carter 's Mrs. Lovett, and the "demonic hero" Sweeney Todd, the extremely talented, charismatic, attractive (for in spite of the chalky makeup and ghoulish hairdo, when ever is Johnny Depp not attractive? ;) ), compellingly sympathetic, and tragically eccentric barber, unfold.

What freaked me was not so much the sight of blood spurting across the screen as Depp's Todd artfully "shaved" off the heads of many a customer in his upstairs barbershop, while Bonham-Carter's Lovett served their compatriots up to ravenous customers in a tasty crust at her pie shop below.

Really it was the thought that I was in certain ways perhaps not so very different from "Mrs. Lovett," deeply enmeshed in a few all-engrossing projects with at least two Baltimorean men with many of the "brilliant-barber characteristics," including the fiercely crazed single-mindedness of purpose, along with far more than the "healthy" recommended allotment of Baltimorean eccentricity to boot. It struck me then that for all of my good intentions and faith in my projects, that faith could easily be misplaced--not only might these endeavors come to nothing, they could also in fact still turn out quite badly, could even result in a rather bloody public mess.

At the end of the movie, I asked my cousin: "What if I've got it all wrong? All the good I think I'm doing--what if I'm just deluded? What if I'm really just making cannibalistic meat pies with my life, after all?"

Well, Lori laughed it off mostly, and I tried to as well; but the "cannibalistic meat pie" question hung over us the rest of the night. It lingered over us still next morning, as we headed to Columbia to pitch some of our "creative ideas" for better promoting the aims of an organization Lori deeply cares about, to the regional office's executive director there.

Actually the meeting went well, and we had a fun and productive day browsing together at Spencer's Gifts at the Columbia Mall later and then shoe-shopping at DSW at Hunt Valley besides (shoe-shopping will after all cheer up anybody). I also did lots of fun social stuff with friends and heard lots of local music over the weekend, two of my favorite things to do.

Really I did most everything I set out to do last week and weekend and then some, except I did not make it to the opening of the "If It's Yellow" exhibit at the Load of Fun studio Friday night, in which some art of my friend Renee was included. But perhaps that was just as well. Given my recent traumatic reaction to the "creative mixing" of human remains with food at the movie, staying clear of an art show incorporating urine in its exhibit was perhaps the wisest thing to do.

Well, last week at least. The show still runs through February 8th, I may be up to it by then...if you've got a hankering to see (and smell) "urine-inspired" art, well, at least proudly displayed on the wall of an art studio (and outside of the usual venues), feel free to drop me a line and let me know... ;)

Copyright 2008 by Lois

*The photo in my episode is not from Sweeney Todd btw, though it might easily might be. It's a pic I took of a Chucky doll that was at the Spencer's store we shopped at Wednesday. I did not pick it up, I was after a rather different kind of toy. But he was so "cutely evil" and "devilishly cheerful" I just had to snap him and incorporate him somehow in my latest LoisLife Blogstory.

Episode 1--The Man-Eating Plant*

So, here is how I became apprised of this rather peculiar...situation concerning my ficus.

I was chatting at an office party recently with Tom, an attorney about as attractive and charismatic as he is funny (and no Mom he is not single, he is quite happily married with two lovely children thank you very much for asking.) --Sorry for the aside, but given Mom’s perpetual penchant for hopeful fantasizing along these lines I just knew what was coming.

In the course of our chat I mentioned that I would be taking off a week to attend to some things back home that needed...well, attending to.

Tom, catching ahold of some admitted deliberate ambiguity, ventured that perhaps the thing I meant chiefly to do at home was to take care of a certain ‘Man-Eating Plant' I had there. Such herbiage, he mused, could easily require a week’s full attention.

Now, normally I would have laughed at a comment clearly meant to be funny. In this case, I experienced a rather different reaction--at first surprise, then something else--instant recognition. As ridiculous as it sounds, you see--while I do not actually have a plant back home capable of that kind of cannibalistic behavior, I actually do have a rather large, and lately strangely thriving ficus.

I say strangely, because while I help to run and administer a blogsite called GreenCityBaltimore (http://greencitybaltimore.org/ ), I admit to being quite shockingly (and fatally) unskilled horticulturally-speaking. In fact, almost every plant that has been gifted to me by friends and/or guest-acquaintances (I do not undertake such plant-tending ventures on my own) has sadly found its way, at some inevitable time, down the ‘throw-away’ chute of my building.

On the other hand, the ficus (technically a tree, not a plant, if you note the wikipedia definition supplied here) bequeathed on me as an optimistic housewarming gift by my real estate agent, Betsy, really has proven quite unusually hardy.

Of late, though, I had sort of noticed that it (the ficus I mean) had developed a particularly jaunty sort of way of wearing its...hat.

"Wait--hat?" You might say. As well you should. "Since when does a ficus wear a hat?"

...Well, to this I will answer that it is a sort of blue Polo cap and if there was anything rather unusual about a ficus wearing one the thought had never before occurred to me. I tend as a whole to be about as indifferent and oblivious to such matters as I am about housekeeping and also about the strange eccentric but generally pretty charismatically attractive single men who sometimes, over the course of two years, have made very very brief 'guest' appearances in my life and my apartment and then disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.

Quite frankly, I have rarely had much time to concern myself at all with it, I have been so very busy with social activities and community work and running the GreenCityBaltimore blogsite and such things as that.

After Tom’s comment though, I could not help but connect the two phenomena. It occurred to me, at that moment, that I had perhaps seen that cap on someone else some months back before I first noticed it perched on the ‘head’ of my ficus.

Come to think of it, a rather specific someone...and not only did I never hear from him again after his initial apartment-visit, I don’t quite remember him ever leaving my apartment.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that perhaps I had, at last, struck upon a theory which was–well, if not exactly comforting, still rather satisfying at least in its ability to explain a few things. At least, if true, I could finally answer those pesky questions sometimes posed to me–by my Mom, by a few friends/ acquaintances along the way–about why I do not ever seem to have, or keep, any visible men in my life–although I personally know that they do sometimes find their way into my apartment.

The plant! Of course, the plant! It is the fault of that foolish, blood-thirsty, man-eating plant! Well, ficus, tree, plant, what’s the difference? The point is, I finally had an acceptable explanation!

Being hopelessly civic-minded, I figured I had no choice but to file a report with the proper authorities. They came, looked around a bit–doubtfully, really–swiped the hat and took DNA samples. (They did me the favor of loaning it back to me briefly so my ficus could model it once again for my Blogshow–see the second main photo on the right column of my Blog, in which the ficus can be spotted, if you look carefully, actually grinning.) The results are pending.

I am somewhat hopeful, perhaps more than I ought to be. With a crime problem as big as Baltimore’s (a city I love and so am sorry to have to admit to this), the reported disappearance of a few strange, eccentric, attractive single men from a single gal’s apartment is bound to rank a little low in their priorities.

Still, at least the report has now been made and the wheels of justice are turning, and moreover I now know enough to keep any men who might find their way in from here on out far away from the herbiage, and to watch both their entry and their exit more carefully.

Live and learn, isn't that way they say? ...Well, not so much for a few of my 'male guests' in the past tense perhaps, but in the end, really at this moment (at least until the test results are in) only my ficus knows the truth of it. I will of course apprise readers of any further 'green-crime' domestic developments. Crime of any sort, even of the potentially plant-committed variety, is simply not something to be taken lightly.

Until then, I will continue to tend, as best I can, to my ficus. Men are men, after all--they come and they go--but with 'green' things I figure I have at least an obligation to try as best I can, for once, to help things that were flourishing continue to flourish.

Copyright 2008 by Lois

*Some elements of this particular LL Sitcom may have been, and probably were, fictionalized. The ficus is real, although it now favors modeling ladies' shoes over men's caps. For more on this (even more alarming development) see my second comment below.