Whew!

Wiped out from putting on an amazingly successful presentation of The Vagina Monologues. After two months of hard work, (I was part of the creative production team and performed two of the monologues - "They Beat the Girl out of My Boy, or so They tried" and "My Revolution Begins in The Body") and three nights of four-five hour rehearsals, we presented not one but two sold performances. Over $2000 in proceeds - most of which will go to The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence. We've also been sharing our church offertory with this organization for the past four weeks. The best part was various people came up afterwards and thanked me for how my performance truly moved them and healed them. Reminded me of why I loved working with theater, and how art can truly motivate change and heal others.

Art, whether it be a movie, a book, a television series, a piece of music, a theatrical work, a painting, or a poem - in all its permetations, has the ability to change lives, to inform, to heal, to anger, to validate, to incense, to motivate.

There's no such thing as a bad piece of art. It's all a reaction against what is happening to us, as well as a rendering of who we are at this point in time.

I'm incredibly proud of producing and performing in this production. It wasn't easy to put on. And I almost ran screaming from it a few times. On Thursday, I had a panic attack. I feared I'd shake through it, flub my lines, do horrible. But I stepped up to the plate, if you'll forgive the sports analogy, and hit that ball out of the park.

And I'm proud of how it helped and healed others. How sharing these stories enabled others to open up and share their own - to see things from another perspective. That's what art is all about - taking us into another perspective, another point of view.

In some ways it's the fruitful conclusion of a journey that I ventured on a few years back - the tail end of my binge read of romance novels and women's fiction, discovering how women of various shapes, sizes, cultures, races relate to and handle the endemic violence against us on a cultural, societal, and visceral level. We do it in various ways.

At the end of the performance, during a sharing circle, I discovered once again how many women have been molested, abused, raped by men. 98% of my friends appear to have been.

And how the bad boy trope is so ingrained in our cultural mythology.

I feel in doing this play, I've taken a tiny step in the direction of helping others heal.

(no subject)

1. Did LJ change its format again? When I go to my home page, I have to tinker to get to the post or friends page.

2. Speaking of updating, Turbo Tax's new software apparently requires 10.7 OS X for Mac or higher. Which they didn't tell me prior to sending me the new CD. As a result, I discovered that in order to do my taxes, I had to upgrade my Mac's operating system to 10.7. Only one problem, 10.7 is no longer available, so I had to upgrade to 10.12 - or Yosemite. This took two hours to download and install, and resulted in reconfiguring a lot of things on my computer. Although the only things I lost was Photo-Shop (it needs to be upgraded) and DivX - which is no longer compatible with the operating system.
Not sure how I feel about the new system. Seems faster than the former one, and a bit clearer -- so far. But the mail is all screwed up, although I tend to use Gmail more than Mac-Outlook messenger, anyhow.

Turbo Tax? I preferred last years version - better interface. Whomever did the software update on that - did not do a good job.

3. Behind on TV.

* General Hospital cracked me up by referencing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's been referencing pop culture lately.

Carly (who has been married to a mob boss about 4 times and is involved with him again, had an affair with the mobster's hitman (before she met the mobster) and the hitman is her best friend, got engaged to a psychopath, and was briefly married to a millionaire/nice guy/corporate raider): If you talk to my brother, my relationships mirror Buffy's and Angel's.
Jake (the hitman who lost his memory and doesn't know he's the hitman, but she has taken under her wing and become best friends with): Wait, who is Buffy and Angel?
Carly: Oh, it's a tv show about a slayer and a vampire who fall for each other and all her relationship angst - according to my brother Lucas, it's a great metaphor for all of my relationships. I can ask him to loan you the DVDs.
Jake: I'll pass.

LMAO. Albeit only funny if you have ever watched Buffy, Angel and General Hospital, not necessarily in that order.

* Agent Carter - binge watched on Tuesday night...the remaining 4 episodes. It was quite good in places. My favorite line or exchange though was in the final episode, within the last twenty minutes...where one of the agents asks Carter why she isn't upset that their boss took all the credit. That this guy didn't do anything, that she had actually saved the day...yet he got all the credit. Why isn't she upset?

Carter: This clearly bothers you. But it doesn't bother me at all. You see, I know my own value. I don't need someone else to validate me or recognize it.

(It's something along those lines. It was said better in the show. But that's the gist.)

Rather enjoyed how the series dealt with/made fun of male sexism and how sexist attitudes hurt everyone involved. Considering it's based on a comic - and how insanely sexist superhero comics tend to be - that's rather refreshing.

The plot, though, was a bit slow and plodding in places. I didn't care all that much about Howard Stark, and I should have. Also after a bit, the other male agents dimwitted behavior got on my nerves.

* Vampire Diaries - say what you will about this series, it has done a decent job of developing a character that normally gets sidelined. Caroline has become rather complex in the series, along with Bonnie. Vamp Diaries has done a better job with the formerly ditzy blond cheerleader/mean girl trope than a lot of gothic horror series do.