Eclectic Endeavors

I spent the latter half of last week in NYC. The main excuse for this particular jaunt was to see Hedda Gabler, playing on 42nd St. with Mary Louise Parker in the lead roll. I managed to get a cheap rush ticket for the last row of the balcony (though in the American Airlines Theatre this is not really a bad seat). Unfortunately I agreed far too much with the NY Times review, and I really enjoy reading Ibsen.

The rest of the trip was an excuse to see friends. Due to circumstances unforeseen at the time I ended up spending all three nights on my friend Jacob’s couch. It was a great time, as Jacob is one of the few friends I see with any regularity with whom I can really talk with all night. We both grew up in the south and are cut from enough of the same cloth that we can see through each others bullshit fairly easily. We talked about pretty much everything, relationships, work, the economy, religion, etc. One of the more pertinent topics to broadcast on the interwebs was the economy. Times are tough. No one can deny that, but for some reason neither one of us seems too worried. He works two jobs, and I work as a free lance theatre tech / designer. We both live in pretty large cities. Neither one of us has much to our names, and perhaps that’s just it. People who don’t have much to lose do not seem to worry as much as those who do. Also our respective parents both taught us that stuff is just stuff. There is a HUGE difference between a want and a need, and in today’s American cultural landscape that lines has been blurring for a while. Now I understand this is merely the outcropping of two commiserating 20 somethings with little to no external responsibilities, but it does raise the question.