Back in Menlo from a whirlwind, exhausting SF trip: saw Ellen, Gabe, Morgan, Mary, Nelle & Mia, and Mere all up here. PHEW. Plus interviewed with Octavio Solis and Aaron Davidman: two of the best I’ve had so far. And James Still on the phone. Such great stories. It must mean something, perhaps about my self-satisfaction, that the more theater people I meet the more I love theater. But there are amazing folks in this business, in this basket-weaving, early-music-making, hybrid of the extreme past and the unrealized future. Nothing “present” about it. Dreamers.

The last time I was on Florida Street, where I met Aaron at the TJT offices, was years ago when I took the CASSANDRA SPEAKS crew up to a show there, and thought it would be a good idea to get off at the 22nd Street caltrain station and WALK from there to Florida Street. We arrived, halfway through the second act of a dance performance at Theater Artaud, absolutely exhausted, having trudged lost through the streets of SF for nearly two hours. I thought this would be a good “bonding experience” for the cast. This is, without question, the worst thing I have ever done to a group of actors.

So I must have grown some since then – at least now I’d know to get off at 4th & King…Perhaps if the Millbrae BART connection had been up then, I wouldn’t have so completely traumatized all of us. Blame your bad directing on the public transporation system. What would Darin Nichols do?

And it seems like there’s always more of SF to find. Ellen and I got totally windblown in this park at 19th and Yukon. Mary and I walked all around Union Square looking for something that wasn’t a glorified sandwich. North Point and the Marina with Gabe. (Again, more wind.) Mere and I went to the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero. Lots of good solid tourist stuff. And I explored Oakland with Morgan a bit – saw her house, and Mike’s enormous fish triptych. But my heart still belongs to 16th & Valencia. To the Mission district. Morgan and I hit Club Baobab and I watched people who know how to salsa.

I’ve been driving Shiyan’s hybrid Toyota Camry for a day now. Delightful. Pushes a button to turn on. She had to drive from Syracuse to NYC after trouble with a Chicago connection dropping her brother off at Cornell…and then a big-rig overturned on the freeway south from Syracuse, and she had to sit in traffic for hours on end.

Mere has been helping me set up my bookcase encampment too. And we watched the end of Sabrina 2 and most of Avenue Montaigne. Is it just me, or do French directors find naivete more attractive than anyone else does? Americans like our ingenues jaded.