aka Other Dessert Cities
(not and yes inspired by the Tony, Drama League, and Drama Desk Award-winning play)
Ingredients:
- At least 4 calls with a best friend in a different city to ask important life questions, provide a hearty listening ear, inform her you won't be flying in to stay with her that weekend, talk to on your walk home from work, speak the only words you've spoken to today, talk to on your walk from the train to work, recall your last five minutes since you woke up, breathe into the phone (WOW that sounded MUCH creepier than I intended it to be. I love when that happens.)
- 2 hostessing jobs that you signed up to train for-- on the same day-- on the day you were supposed to fly in to see your best friend (see above) and for your Homecoming (why, yes, your personal homecoming)
- 1 resume-- rather, 2 resumes, as the incredibly kind woman behind the front desk scanned more for you-- that you dropped off at an agency's office... without ANY contact info on it. [Holler, cover letter headers saving the day again, am I right?? World's #1 superhero!! I'm going to be a cover letter for Halloween.]
- 3 years, 2 Northwestern applications, & 22 seasons of Buckeye upbringing in the making: the long-awaited NU vs. Ohio State Homecoming ESPN College GameDay Big 10 blood battle. (Also known as the battle for
yourmy heart.) Buckcat or Wildeye, an attractive mascot does not make.
In the years that I attended NU, all I wanted was for my school to play my Buckeyes. Naturally, they played them my absent freshman year and the year after I graduate. Regardless, I've been supremely pumped for 3 years & had even planned on flying in to the hallowed grounds of Ryan Field. Lo, I remained here in a city without a college football team-- but full of proud purple Wildcats, all centrally located in a few key places to watch the big game. And by big, I mean B1G-- College GameDay reporting on the Lakefill students drenched in purple waking up at 4am on a Saturday to be on TV big. This... was not what I expected. I don't know what I was thinking. This was going to be... hard. Let's just say that by Friday night, I was beginning to feel, for lack of milder terms... totally frickin' panicked. Or grotesquely shakin' anxious. Or, you know, probably just "confused" would suffice. What was I going to do? The Facebook statuses were getting increasingly intense and anti-Ohio flooded my Newsfeed, the public coverage of the game was growing rapidly, plans were being made. I was going to spend upwards of 3 hours with soundly and validly enthusiastic alumni of the fantastic university I just graduated from-- all bashing the (sorry, The) scarlet and grey I had supported since pre-birth. Again, I say: Buckcats. Wildeyes. Horrific possibilities. Like, the worst Neopets ever.
The only OSU-fueled pressure I received came via a best friend and my immediate family, so, you know, casual. (I believe my father's words were "but this is where you were raised.") I obviously ended up screaming wild purple & gunning for the 'Cats. Can't say I wasn't tempted to locate the source of the approximately 3 OSU fans in the bar, though.
Oh-- Northwestern lost, btw. As ESPN's Rece Davis put it, "I would never question Northwestern's academic credentials, but I do call into question its street smarts. Who schedules the Buckeyes for homecoming?" And as a fellow NU Ohioan confided in me, "We still won."
Go 'Cats. Don't eat the chocolate.
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| I SHOULD HAVE NEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCHED THIS: I dare you to click. |
(Anyways, this inner allegiance turmoil must occur on the exact same day as: )
- 4,000+ Facebook photos of the Marr Family Lobsterfest 2013
(It's exactly what you think it is. No. Wait. What on earth would anyone think that was.)
Instructions:
Where did I make decisions not to live? Oh, right, Ohio and Chicago. For whatever reasons, good or bad, those may be, that doesn't mean I don't still love those dang places (or, at least, parts of them/parts of Ohio/I love Chicago with all my heart). And this week provided a canvas for them them to pop up in every crevasse, for some reason. Whilst meeting my fellow hostess for the first time, we engaged in this quick conversation that anyone might steal for a prolific acting scene if they so choose:
She: Where did you graduate from?
Me: Northwestern.
She: No way! I'm from Naperville! (city near NU)
Me: Oh my gosh! No way!
(chatter excited gobble chatter)
Me: Where did you graduate from?
She: Baldwin Wallace.
Me: NO WAY! I'm from Amherst! (city near BW)
She: Oh my gosh! No way!
When you move from city to city, even only once, you're going to get homesick. What I haven't experienced until NYC was being homesick for two cities at once. You begin to think to yourself: Am I cheating on my home? Wait. Which is my home? Sing it, Luther Vandross and Kristen Chenoweth: we all know that a chair is not a house and a house is not a home when there's no one there to hold you tight. Well, you know what?! There are people I can hold tight and kiss goodnight in both places, gosh darn it! And now here, too! What were you thinking, Luther????
Here is my advice for those feeling tugged geologically: Be where you are. Exist as you want to exist where you are existing. You're not there. You're here. And you most likely have a lease and, unless you call your landlord again to threaten to not pay your rent because they're not providing you with hot water, then you have to stay on that lease. And you've probably met a precocious 11-year-old you've fallen in babysitting love with and gotten used to savoring the 1-2 times a week you see your friends in whatever weird way possible and thoroughly enjoy complaining and philosophizing about everything in the universe with your roommate. How could you leave now? A professor of mine always told us that you need to try a city out for 3 years before you make your verdict. Uhhhhmmm I might have to pass on sticking with this one in its entirety, but I do agree that a year is necessary.
IN THE MEANTIME. Call your best friend and Skype with your parents when you can. Download copies of Lobsterfest 2013 from Facebook, if only to share with your friends with the message "not fair". Visit your best friends in your city whenever you can-- because, there in your current city, they'll inform you that reading your blog makes them "sad". Apparently, it's not super fun for fellow 20-somethings working in the theatre world and living in NYC to read your potentially-leaning-overly-negative comments on struggles they're also going through... in which I took I away two things:
1. Do other people get hit by potatoes?!? Do they?!?! Seriously, this is an honest question and I want to know where else these culprits are hiding.
2. I need to get some other cities.
Thus, Other. Dessert. Cities. ATTENTION ALL FOLKS EITHER IN OR OUTSIDE OF NYC: A FANCY CALL TO ACTION!
I'm looking for ingredients from you. You are either one or more of the following:
- recently graduate
- living in a city
- recently re-located
- living in what you think is a city
- an actor
- in the entertainment business
- in a business you think is entertaining
- a chef
(wouldn't it be fun to have a real recipe?!)
Next week's recipe is all about YOU. I want your ingredients. You've read the blog, you know what I'm looking for: a numerical value/approximation of an amount of something that has happened to you (it doesn't have to have been from this week) that could potentiall lead to a recipe for disaster. You don't have to give me a whole list of ingredients that tie together-- that's my job! Feel free to give as many ingredients as you wish, though! And if it's easier for you to just write me a short little story, please do! I'll transfer it into an edible form.
Capiche? You can email your ingredients to annaleighmarr@gmail.com or message me on Facebook. Danke!
I'll leave you with the spread I got on Saturday of the spread my family consumed while watching Ohio State win.
