I'm currently sitting in the airport in Honolulu, waiting for my connection to Kona, and drinking a Tropical Colada (less coconut, more rum.)

My 10 hour flight from Atlanta to Honolulu wasn't actually too bad. I packed a ridiculous amount of snacks, anticipating nasty and sparse food, so wound up munching during pretty much the whole trip. I wasn't upgraded, but I had a window seat, and nice older Hawaiian gentleman sitting next to me, who was just coming back from a month of visiting his 12 children who live on the mainland.

The strangest thing was that the video monitor most visible to my section of seats was showing the image backwards - none of the flight attendants had a clue (or were interested in trying to figure out why) - so every time someone in a movie was sitting in the driver's seat of a car, it looked like it was in England. Watching the GPS map of the plane was a bit headache-causing, trying to mentally flip the names of the cities.

I watched "The Pursuit of Happyness", which I thought was excellent, then worked on my laptop during the showing of "Rocky Balboa" which I had no interest in, and then put my headphones back on to watch "Night at the Museum" while I continued to work. THAT was a dreadful movie.

Will try to post during the program if I get the chance. I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to tell this client that I'm leaving, as I'm deadly curious as to what his reaction will be. I think I'll tell him it's because of the blankets.

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I have a fever and a racking cough - I'm supposed to be in Arizona running the program that I've been killing myself to put together, but ironically, I ran myself down and am too sick to go.

Instead, I've been re-watching the first two seasons of Slings & Arrows - I'm eagerly awaiting the third season, which they're only just now starting to show on the Sundance Channel.

Slings & Arrows makes me ridiculously happy on so many levels. It's an intimate look at actors, theatre, life, love, language - everything that touches my soul in a way few things can. It makes me miss the theatre with a painful desperation. It makes me want to be a better person.

Watching Paul Gross, as Geoffrey Tennant, caress and adore the language of Shakespeare, is a beautiful thing to watch and to listen to. Gross has a background in Shakespeare, as does his real-life wife, Martha Burns, who plays the diva actress Ellen. You can tell, when they speak the words so effortlessly, so fluidly, and so meaningfully. They speak Shakespeare as if the thoughts came from their own heads. And when Geoffrey is directing Hamlet and Macbeth, his insights into the characters and depth of meaning are beautiful and wondrous to behold. Apparently Gross actually played Hamlet on stage to great acclaim, and I sincerely wish I could have seen that performance. I love watching him dissect both plays, and if it wasn't for the frequent use of the word "fuck", I'd say those scenes should be shown in high school and college Shakespeare courses.

The show has its share of slapstick moments, some of which I could do without. But they're far outweighed by the gorgeousness of the characters and language, and the love and respect given to Shakespeare's plays, and the complex world of the theatre - in front of and behind the scenes.

I've been a terrible patron of the arts over the last year or two, and I'm determined to change that. Husband is supportive of this plan. It's a matter of needing to be in town (which actually shouldn't be a problem for the next month - I keep getting pulled from other programs for being too busy, and then unable to run the ones I'm still on.) So to all my friends in the arts, I will try harder and be better with my attendance.

Did I mention the incredible performance by Paul Gross in this show? When I was in college I had a housemate we will affectionately - and accurately - refer to as Psycho Sarah. Psycho Sarah was obsessed with the show "Due South", but for some reason was loathe to let anyone in the universe actually know that. I did find out, and she reluctantly began to let me watch the show with her. For those unfamiliar, it was a Canadian show that starred Paul Gross as a Mountie working in Chicago (though filmed in Canada) with a hard nosed Chicago cop. It was charming and slightly subversive, in that subtle Canadian way that I adore. Watching Gross play Geoffrey Tennant is also a delight in part because Geoffrey is such the antithesis to his Constable Benton Fraser. (And Forever Knight fans take note - Geraint Wyn Davies plays an important part in the second season.)

I have to mention and credit the rest of the cast of Slings & Arrows - Rachel McAdams was wonderful in the first season, and so is everyone else - from the wonderful two old queens, Frank and Cyril, to the erudite Nigerian security guard.

It's immediately evident that by and large this is a cast of actors with stage experience - REAL acting, in other words. They know how to interact, they know how to work as an ensemble. They're helped by sharp writing (minus the fairly silly subplots involving Richard and his efforts to keep the theatre funded) and excellent directing. And because it's actually SET in Canada, the actors don't have to pretend not to have Canadian accents (although it would have been helpful if the actress playing the Texan bitch in the first season had tried to hide hers a little better...)

Thank goodness for the Sundance Channel and TiVo...

Thanks to Husband who pointed out this article to me this morning - here's the beginning of it:

New Rules Make Firms Track E-Mails, IMs 

WASHINGTON -- U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.

It's almost 1 AM, and here I sit in my hotel room, having wolfed down a cup of chili around midnight (after getting back to my room close to 11 PM), still with lots of work to do. But I'm stopping, because I have a long day tomorrow here at my program.

As stressed as I am with the overload of work I have going on (my current program here in Philly, multiple upcoming programs, and oh yeah, that Managing Editor thing for the magazine) - it's tempered by sobering news from a friend.

He's one of my absolute best friends in the world, actually. And his brother, age 29, was diagnosed this week with colon cancer. It was bad enough that they operated immediately, and found that it had gotten in to his bowels. He now has a colostomy bag. 

I'm so grateful that when my mother was diagnosed, they caught it early, and two years later she has no traces left.

I can only imagine how freaked out my friend's family is, particularly his parents. 

Enough. Sleep now. Work tomorrow. Work Saturday. Home Saturday night. Sleep Sunday. ALL of Sunday.

And no one I love is allowed to get cancer anymore. Got that? Good.
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