stateside

Home and safe on the Lower East Side, four legs done on this six-legged beast of the 3 cities on 2 continents in 8 days whirlwind blitzkrieg roller-coaster ride. Thursday we're in Chicago to see A Red Orchid's production of Fatboy. Rob Kowzloski saw the first preview Friday night and he liked it, so all is good in the City of Broad Shoulders.

My internal clock is all screwed-up so I'm up at 2:30 in the morning, wide-awake. One good thing is that I can do some business with England and Germany, they're just waking up and having their tea and sausages now.

The Edinburgh trip was a good one, met up with all of the Edinburgh International Festival folks in their amazing office at the Hub, right at the top of the Royal Mile. We met with Marketing, Logistics, Technical and the Man Himself, Jonathan Mills. The funny thing was that they all admitted right at the top that they had no idea who we were or what we do. Not a clue. The jury panel that awarded the prize was a separate entity, so here are all these nice Scots smiling at us and saying:

"And so, what kind of work do you do?"

And Nan and I are smiling back, saying:

"Really crazy, loud, fast-as-hell shit."

And they're nodding and writing it down.

We made everyone we met laugh at least once, and that's usually a good indication that you can work together.

Also met up with Laura at the Traverse Theater, spent that entire meeting laughing, don't know if it was jet-lag or if I hit a groove. Gave her all of the scripts, stumbled off.

Missed the debates last night, Tuesday night, whenever it was. Somebody fill me in. All I'm hearing is that Barack decided to take on Bill mano y mano, which sounds like a dumb idea to me. But then again, running against the Clintons you have to start playing 3-D chess and thinking eleven moves ahead. They are very, very good.

And Big Fred is ambling slowly away from the limelight, back to the little screen. Fred, we hardly knew ye.

All right. I'm going to get on the horn and yell at some Brits.