long weekend

That should be the title of my first book of memoirs.

Remember the album cover of the Beach Boys Endless Summer?

I used to stare at that artwork when I was a little kid and without any Tantric training whatsoever inwardly meditate on the phrase.

Endless Summer endless summer endless summer...

What a beautiful concept. Summer back then meant one thing:

No School.

Always loved learning things, just instinctively hated the mandatory nature of School. Having to be there so early in the morning, sitting there all day, bells ringing at you, telling you where to go next.

That magic moment of 3:00 PM on the last day when they would have to release you for three months and we'd all stream out of the building, smiling and near-giddy, free to run through the St. Louis streets and lose ourselves in the hot, green St. Louis summer nights.

Goddamn, it was almost like being alive.

Me and the Kid are staying close this weekend, nothing to do but Mike Daisy's panel on Saturday night.

Reading of Mr. Culp's The 13 Hallucinations of Julio Rivera went like a barn-burning bastard last night at New York Theater Workshop. Still needs a trim or a good pruning, I think, but it's a beautiful thing. We'll have to figure out what's next with it. Might be a good Labyrinth show.

Full day today, morning meeting with Elena up in FringeLand, rehearsal with Matt down at Barrow Street, a sit-down with Big Bob Lyons at Soho Think Tank and then a drink with Omar Sangare to end the day.

Omar's a guy we met during the first Fringe Festival, 12 years ago. He's a great actor and director, teaching up at Williams College now, and he's a black Polish guy.

Born and raised in Poland, black as a hot cup of coffee. Polish mom married an African guy and along comes Omar.

Hanging with him twelve years ago on the Lower East Side was a very funny and revealing experience for me. I'd watch people watch Omar walking across the room and you could see them just unconsciously thinking, "Who's this black guy?" And then he'd open his mouth and there'd be this thick Polish accent and the Old World, Eastern European formality and behavior and people's eyes would go wide, trying to figure out who was standing in front of them.

Have to look beyond the skin, sometimes, much as we're trained around here not to.

Enjoy the weekend, eat nine or ten hot dogs for me and if it's warm where you are then stand in the sunlight for a little too long, eyes closed, face turned up, smiling.

Endless summers to all.