I Must Have This.

My favorite sport...remastered. In the words of Ali G..."Check it."

http://www.vurtego.com/

Creativity in the Workplace

The subject of my presentation: BORAT'S FIRST DAY OF WORK IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Although, I was not allowed to use this photo in my presentation, I was nonetheless, overjoyed by the whole experience. It started like this; My boss's boss says, "Lori, you're creative, right?" Me: "Um...I guess." Boss's boss: Here, do this. The "this" was a poster for explaining business procedures in The United States for a big Human Resources meeting happening in Tampa this week. Everyone got a different country. People were spying, cheating, copying....I had to lock my poster up. Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but I wasn't allowed to show anyone. And I have to say, it was pretty freakin' cute. And more importantly, I scored major kudos with my boss's boss (who basically scares the hell out of me).

In other news...I did a staged reading at the York Theatre last night with all these Broadway/TV actors. It was fun...and now I wanna be a Broadway TV actor. Chuggin' Chuggin....

And I'm sick. My dad is sick. And my marine brother is sick somewhere in the Mojave desert.

Question of the day: To watch the State of the Union Address and spit at the screen, or have a cold pill and watch Idol...oh decisions, decisions.

And finally, for those of you who actually read this thing: my apologies for taking so long to post.
XO

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

There is just something about Charlie Brown and the little tree that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Now, enough of that. I have big plans for 2007, here they are:

1. Land a role on Broadway.
2. Land a role on a soap.
3. Finish my play, BOB.
4. Get an agent worth a damn.
5. A trip to LA.
6. Get in better shape.
7. Start singing again.
8. Peace on earth.

(Not necessarily in that order).

I am off to OH tomorrow for a few days. Happy Holidays to everyone!

Pictures From Costa Rica.

One word: AMAZING. TIME. Well, two.


Howler Monkey, Cabo Blanco Park


La Fortuna Waterfalls


Jan, Tide Pool, Montezuma


Sunset, Playa Manzanillo


Montezuma


River, Cloud Forest


The Drive


Our car


Moon, Montezuma

Going back. Right now.

Costa Rica Here I Come!

Costa Rica, Puerto Quepos

I can't quite believe by Friday night, I will be there! Yippee Skip. My Deah has closed after 6 weeks, to great audiences, super reviews, and just a ton of fun. I couldn't have asked for more than that. Well...perhaps one of these casting/producing/agenty types that saw the show might cast me in a little sumthin' or allow me to audition so I can go to broadWAY. THEN, I really couldn't ask for more...The depression that I always get once a show closes (well, a good one anyway), always hits me after a few days, but hopefully by the time it does, I will already be a under a palm tree.

For now I sit in my little cubicle with my new cube-mate, Nat, who is an opera singer...I'd like to give a big shout-out to the artists all over the world that have to do stupid crap to pay their rent. Feel my love, y'all.

Opening Night, My Deah!

My Deah Cast

Mark Waldrop and Jay Rogers

Maxwell Caulfield and Me

Geoffrey, Kevin, Me, and Jay

Okay, so I am a little late since we began previews October 13th. We have been extended for two weeks and (most of) the reviews have been great! The audiences are loving it. Here is the NY Times Review:

________________________________________
October 25, 2006
THEATER REVIEW | 'MY DEAH'
Tale of Woe Seems Like a Greek Tragedy
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
“The mind of a beauty queen is a thing to fear!” This portentous phrase, which surely deserves some kind of immortality, is not, as you might guess, the tagline for a new reality show pitting Miss Maryland Crabcakes against Miss Wisconsin Dairy Belt in a fiendish catfight for a million bucks.

It’s a flavorful morsel of dialogue from John Epperson’s play “My Deah,” a lovably trashy spoof of a certain exalted Greek tragedy, in which a scorned woman sets about chicken-frying her own children to get even with the no-account man who done her wrong.

My Deah Hedgepeth, the determined heroine of Mr. Epperson’s cracked comedy, which opened last night at the June Havoc Theater in an Abingdon Theater Company production, is none other than Euripides’ vengeful Medea plunked down in Jackson, Miss., where swags of Spanish moss hide dirty deeds performed under the influence of sugary iced tea.

Mr. Epperson is well known downtown as Lypsinka, the voiceless drag star with an exclamation point for a last name. In his ingenious solo shows for his alter ego, Mr. Epperson has proved to be a savvy scavenger in the archives of camp, stitching together snippets of heavy-breathing movie dialogue with the rigor of a gene-splicing scientist, and lip-synching to the chaotic results with the histrionic abandon of a dozen assorted screen goddesses.

Although Lypsinka herself is absent from the stage in “My Deah,” Mr. Epperson brings the same deconstructive and reconstructive skills he uses to showcase that grande dame to his Mad magazine rewrite of Euripides. Wisely retaining the stark lineaments and basic dramatis personae of the original — the Greeks knew something about suspense and structure, after all — he has found clever Deep South analogues for the workings of fate that ruthlessly hem in our desperate heroine.

So, as Medea was not entirely at ease in her adopted home of Corinth, My Deah is an outcast of sorts in Jackson. She was, after all, Miss Louisiana State University when she fell in love with Gator Hedgepeth, the football hero from the college’s archrival, Ole Miss. Betraying her own and forever tarnishing her crown, she fled with Gator and settled in Mississippi, where she gave birth to her sons, Scooter and Skipper. Now she finds herself in a pretty pickle, for that rascal Gator has taken up with Simplicity Bullard, the governor’s daughter.

This information comes courtesy of the chorus members, just as helpfully chatty as in the original, who are My Deah’s regular bridge partners Mignon Mullen, Myrna Loy Seabrook and Brooksie Jones. They are left to cool their heels outside My Deah’s porch (affixed with Greek columns, of course, in Mark Simpson’s slightly tatty but efficient design) while trading insults with the lady of the house’s loyal “octoroon” servant, Mr. Epperson’s equivalent of Euripides’ nurse.
As the colorful names suggest, Mr. Epperson has eschewed regional realism in favor of chewy caricature, creating roles that give actors the opportunity to impart their personal recipes for honey-baked ham. Nancy Opel has the choicest cut — or rather cuts. She is a delight as My Deah, whom she portrays as a swaggering Barbara Stanwyck type, a cross between a velvet-tongued, coquettish belle and a snarling drill sergeant. But she is just as much fun, boasting an outrageously un-P.C. accent, as My Deah’s cackling helpmate.

Ms. Opel is not the only actor to juggle contrasting roles handily, either. I confess that I didn’t even recognize Kevin Townley and Geoffrey Molloy, who play Myrna Loy and Brooksie, when they doffed their wigs and heels to cavort with a football as My Deah’s doltish offspring.

Jay Rogers has only one role, but his deft mincing as the meddlesome Mignon, chief choral cheerleader, is performed with enough gusto for two. Maxwell Caulfield, game if a little tentative in the accent department as the disloyal Gator, and Michael Hunsaker, as a football coach tellingly conversant with the art of the supermodel, add some spice to the stew (and serve up a fair bit of beefcake to complement all the ham). Nor should I fail to mention the wonderfully dim Simplicity of Lori Gardner, her little brain squeezed to distraction by the tight ponytail flopping atop her head.

The whole is a dish more tangy than tasteful, certainly. Mr. Epperson fattens his sendup with winking allusions to a whole shelf of Southern Gothic literature, to the point that the dialogue sometimes suggests a word-search game for aficionados of Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and the like. (If the name Anacleto, here assigned to a hermaphrodite witch doctor from the shantytown, rings a bell, you’ll probably enjoy harvesting all the in-jokes.) But it is also rich in less high-toned humor, lewd innuendos and horseplay, which the director, Mark Waldrop, accentuates rather too garishly.

In a program note Mr. Epperson describes the play’s oddly long process of creation and development. I must confess I found it simpler, sharper and more artful when I attended a reading a few years ago. Since then, there has been some degeneration, with Mr. Epperson’s original ingenuity swamped by unnecessary camp shenanigans.
The Greeks never had to worry about the development hell that plagues theater today as it does movies, and their plays were much the better for it, no doubt. Still, maybe even classics scholars could learn a thing or two from Mr. Epperson’s bawdy parody. The friend I took with me, no stranger to “Medea” productions, opined that this was the only treatment of the material she had seen in which the wronged woman’s offing of her own children actually seemed understandable.

Take that, Euripides.

MY DEAH
By John Epperson; directed by Mark Waldrop; sets and lighting by Mark Simpson; costumes by Ramona Ponce; sound by Matt Berman; production manager, Gabriel Hainer Evansohn; production stage manager, Kimothy Cruse; associate artistic director, Kim T. Sharp. Presented by the Abingdon Theater Company, Jan Buttram and Pamela Paul, artistic directors; Samuel J. Bellinger, managing director. At the June Havoc Theater, Abingdon Theater Arts Complex, 312 West 36th Street, Manhattan; (212) 868-4444. Through Nov. 12. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
WITH: Nancy Opel (Lillie V./My Deah Hedgepeth), Maxwell Caulfield (Gator Hedgepeth), Peter Brouwer (Governor W. J. Bullard/Rufus Lacy), Lori Gardner (Simplicity Bullard), Michael Hunsaker (Coach), Geoffrey Molloy (Brooksie Jones/Skipper), Jay Rogers (Mignon Mullen) and Kevin Townley (Myrna Loy Seabrook/Scooter).

Wedding!

Ryan and Nichole's Wedding, Charleston, SC, October 7, 2006

I was super delayed getting into Charleston on Friday. I left on a bus from Grand Central at 12:50 and didn't arrive in Charleston until 11 PM. I read, I texted, I met this semi-drunk couple from Maine and they showed me pictures of South Africa. Saturday morning my brother and I drove to where my mom and fam were staying in the beach house. I went for a run. The ocean was calm, the weather cool...it was just what I needed.

The private ring ceremony was very intimate and beautiful. The backdrop was a marsh on Magnolia Plantation, candles, and a dog as the ring bearer. Quite possibly the funniest and cutest thing I have ever seen. Then all the peeps arrived. The hall had ivy with flowers all over, candles, and the food was delicious and very southern. Mac and cheese, with your choice of topping: lobster, bacon, chives, crab meat, the rest: salads, roastbeef, asparagus, shrimp scampi with hot sausage. And the cake was raspberry chocolate with white buttercream/coconut icing. I hardly even minded the coconut. YUM. We danced, we were marry...and since both Nichole's brother and sister gave a toast...I felt compelled to give mine. It honored my brother and his new wife, it made people laugh...and cry, I guess all in all a great toast. Lots of people came up to me afterwards and even the caterers and DJ said how great it was. Pfew. And my brother said, "You're a dork." So I think I was successful. It was quite the day. Everyone who got up to say anything about Ry and Nichole just started crying...a true testament to how much they are loved.
PS: Aside from the bride, my mom had the best dress of the night. GORGEOUS.