good and evil.
right and wrong.
adam and eve.
dana and dana.

Genesis 71: 13-15
And the serpent spoke to Dana and gave her the apple. And Dana bit the apple and thought that is was good.
Dana wanted to share the apple with her other half, made in the likeness of her, and owning one of her orginal ribs, and asked the other Dana to take a bite of the apple as well. Dana thought of what God held told them and said: "I canst not take a bite of the forbidden fruit, for I am drinking a gin and tonic, straight up.

the music center.  ah.
well. i'm here. yep. at work. "work." the community music center of boston. it's a very strange place...it's a bunch of musicians. in an office. it's kind of like office space meets music of the heart meets mystic river. but creepier.

yeah. so i REALLY hate being an administrative assistant. my boss....we can call her recorder boss. i call her this because, well, as it turns out...she studied the recorder in college. yep, recorder. i mean...recorders of all shapes and sizes and tones...not just your third grade recorder. but i mean still....recorder?

anyway. i do administrative work for the music center. my main job is organizing. and of course, musicians working in an office...especially the ones i work with, are not organized. at all. being a theatre person, who happens to know music, working at an office with musicians....this disorganization pisses me off. but my task is to help them get organize.

which is more challenging than one thinks. i mostly clean files, and update charts, etc. the problem is...i have to make them user friendly for a bunch of musicians with the logic of a lab rat. or a small dog.

i hate being the assistant for recorder boss. right now i am organizing computer files for her...dated back to the early 90s. why on earth anyone needs 3 copies of a table of contets for a no longer existing songbook in 1992, is beyond my comprehension. i am still expected to open the file, read it...assess what it is (although i have only worked here for about 3 years) than decided how to organize or categorize with other things.

frankly, i can't focus on that. i keep imagining someone taking one of my boss' recorders and ramming it into my skull so i would not have to speak to anyone anymore.

a conversation today at the office:

fellow employee:
hi, how are you?
me:
fine and you?
fellow employee:
oh, just great. (in a sarcastic tone)
me:
oh? (fained interest)
fellow employee:
yeah..i just messed up accounts payable for violin
lessons, and anna isn't coming in today to teach.
so much for evaluations.
me:
yeah...(having no idea what employee is talking about)
fellow employee:
yeah, well...bassists!
me:
right....

of course this may not seem bad. but it is. especially when two people are in the next room practicing "puff the magic dragon" singing and playing the guitar.

it sucks. that's all i can say. i could deal with it...but i spent the entire day teaching bi-lingual chinese k-1st graders drama. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE IN A ROOM OF 25 CHINESE CHILDREN SPEAKING CHINESE?

7:00 pm cannot come soon enough.

Well. I simply cannot deal with televised journalism anymore. The medium never appealed to me anyway; it seemed that most news (or news-magazine) programs strove to entertain rather than inform...so, I'd rather be entertained by Dick Van Dyke tripping over an ottoman or Bea Arthur making fun of Betty White and frankly, I found Murphy Brown and All in the Family a better political commentary than Dateline.
That being said...I still tolerated what was being called news. Until today.

For those of you unaware, the TODAY show has been doing these programs similar to late night reality TV...ala American Idol, ala The Apprentice. That alone was enough to make me vomit in my coffee....yet...I wasn't at the edge. I could live with it...NBC has clearly made some wrong choices before-we need not mention Veronica's Closet-but Tom Brokaw pulled through sometime here and there.

Well...in Boston. Beantown. The Hub. Red Sox country, the good people at FOX 25 came up with this brilliant idea: New York has it's own morning show(s). We should too....and so....Boston now has another claim to fame: The Morning Crew on FOX 25. Granted, I can only tongue-and-cheekly compare the newly formed FOX brodcast to Good Morning America, Today, etc. Yet a little Masspirit surged within me (even though I am from Ohio) and I accepted this FOX program into my life, into my cultre. And I watched. Very rarely. Although watching this program (mostly for school closings during the winter) DID provided me with a strong source of entertainment. It's very similar to what I imagine a college TV station to be like...except maybe the picture is clearer and they don't play the National Anthem and Star-Spangled Banner every morning at 5:30 am.

Sitting in bed today...I turned on the FOX station. Expecting nothing more that some seemingly undereducated comments and a little bit of weather. Did I get either?  Well..I didn't get the weather. No instead of weather, news, etc...at 7:30 this morning I got crap. I was watching "MORNING IDOL." Yup. I said it, but I'll say it again: M-O-R-N-I-N-G I-D-O-L. If you are thinking that this is some crappy ploy of the Boston-FOX-syndicate to cash in on the national network hit American Idol...well, then you would be correct. Now let me state loud and clear: American Idol, Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Something or another Justin Wa-ri--knee...Clay NorthCarolinakin...all of em--I DO NOT LIKE IN ANYWAY. I may loathe the whole enterprise. That being said what the good people at Boston's FOX station are doing is degrading EVERYTHING that Americal Idol, Simon Cowell, and Paula Abdul stand for.

"Morning Idol" is set up in the same way as American Idol. Except the judges are not music professionals. They are actually TV journalists that really don't have too much to say about the music business in the first place...and two of them have a thick Boston accent. Yeah the two shows are practically the same, except for the fact the the talent pool for Boston's Morning Idol was about 49 states less than American Idol....which basically means they suck. Their two-shot camera angles to capture the performances may be interesting for a TV anchor, but it lacks something when you here yet another girl sing LeeAnn Rimes' "How Can I Live Without You?"

So when I wake up, its not FOX. (for sure) It's rarely NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. Its most likely TBS...and an episode of Saved By the Bell. At least there is more artistic integrity to that work than news programming. And you learn a lesson: like Jesse said: "I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I'm so...scared." A timeless lesson---caffine pills. No joke. (See if FOX can cover that.)

the song i wrote today.
by Justin B. Dilley

i am working on a musical right now.  (check out my theatre company: www.turnstyletheatreproject.org)
and today i wrote a fairly funny song...both lyrics and music.
of course, i can only post the lyrics on my blog at this time.
this song is called THE LIGHTBOARD OPERATOR and references the unsung job of the lightboard operator in the theatrical setting.
enjoy.

The Lightboard Operator

You'll never see my face,
Or recognize my name.
I often think my efforts are in vain.
But now I see the light.
I know that I was wrong.
I often used to hide myself.  Hide my song.
But I know better...
I'm the lightboard operator, the one at the controls.
I cast light on the actors but heaven only knows
that I'm the lightboard operator, always fading out...

I'm sitting here in darkness
With just one little question:

When is it my turn?
When will they see?
When will my spolight shine...

On me?