Quote of the Week

Under the circumstances, why not trust the crazy actor?

--Theresa Rebeck

Tiz and Ass – An Etymological Extravaganza

Tiz – my nickname; a state of frenzied excitement; a word that sounds like tits, of which I have mere pancakes.

And – used as a function word to indicate connection or addition especially of items within the same class or type; used to join sentence elements of the same grammatical rank or function.

Ass – I act like one; I’ve got one…a big one. One that makes up for my short stack. It can sing Glitter and Be Gay. Just ask it. If you’re really nice I’ll find the video and post it. But you have to be realllllllly nice.

Tits and Ass – a song from the musical A Chorus Line, the first Broadway show I ever saw with the Nana. I knew then that flat-as-a-board me would never cosmetically enhance (or unhance) an ounce. I knew then that broad-bottomed me would play on the Broadway.

And as Tommy McCarney* oft said, “Well…no tits, but a great bum.”

Close enough for jazz and I’ll take it where I can get it.

*One of the few proper names I will EVER use (unless you're an artist or an establishment and I think you're fab). Please be kind and nickname. Or after-six name. Or porn-star name. Life's so much easier under the false guise of anonymity.

Really?

The town is known as the "Land of Rape and Honey" due to its significance in producing both rapeseed and honey. It's also known as the Honey Capital of Saskatchewan.

Sweet!

P.S. Love the "Crime Stoppers" sign underneath, don't you?

(Thanks to Mickey for the heads-up and Wikipedia for the "facts.")

The Apartment that Sex Forgot

That’s where I live. On the Upper East Side. Maybe sex has forgotten me because Jesus is my Landlord. I’m not kidding…that’s not a play on “Jesus is my Co-pilot”. (Can I tell you, if I got on a plane and saw J-man up in the cockpit, I’d just turn right back around and leave. Express flight to heaven? No thanks.) The Lutheran church next door actually owns my apartment. They are very pleasant…as are the organ music and bells on Sunday morning.

Not sure what makes it so unsexy up here. Perhaps it’s the 5th floor climb. Perhaps bad feng shui bed placement (one side is up against the wall). Maybe the fact there are two entrances (although one would think that would make it sexier). The ski-slope floors? The tin ceilings? Maybe my Goddess Kali lunchbox is displayed too prominently in my living room.

I just don’t know.

What I do know is what made my last apartment soooooooo sexy, so deeeeeeeeeeeeeply sexy.

Follow me back to the early 90s…

I was leaving the opera world, relationship with Boyfriend FUBL(1) had ended and my temporary digs with some crazy beeeotch proved too crazed. Synchronicity! A lil’ ol’ lady who lived in a brownstone across from my bro’s firm needed someone to live on her third floor…where no one had lived for 25 years.

ME DO!!!!

One floor of a brownstone on Murray Hill. 800 square feet. 7 foot walk-in closet. Patio off the bathroom (heretofore known as the potty-o) and…

A working fireplace.

Cost = $500

Sex-appeal = Priceless.

It was honestly the best sixsex years of my life. Who could deny the beauty of a world that would offer that kind of a digs deal…to ME?

Within two weeks of moving in I booked my first musical. And I basically never stopped working. And if I wasn’t working, I didn’t need to. Here’s the kicker—if I left town, the lil' ol' lady didn’t want rent. “Why pay for something you’re not using?”

Ummm…okay.

It was the perfect bachelorette pad…with its fire in the Winter, potty-o in the Spring and Summer, and ability to bathe al fresco. I would actually just ask guests if they would like to bathe. Male? Female? Everyone was invited. I could LIE DOWN in this bathtub. A bathtub built for two.


And a HUUUUUGE bedroom. No feng shui issues there.

I swear some of my relationships lasted so long because the guys just wanted to hang in the gorgeous, eclectic pad. Tom even proposed…and he admitted it was because of the flat. Gotta love honesty.

In ’95 Fidel Castro came to the States and stayed on my block. Nooooo…I did not date Fidel Castro, but let’s just say security was on the heavy side. I needed picture id and something official with my addy on it just to get onto my barricaded block where I would be escorted to and from my door by a lovely member of the NYPD.

Wednesday night’s conversation…

Officer Riley: “Identification please, Miss.

Tiz: “Here you go.”

Officer Riley: “Thank you. Married or single?”

Tiz: “Single?”

Officer Riley: “Officer Callahan…it’s your lucky night.”

I loved that apartment.

Even sublettors felt the glow. My last left a library of porn, binoculars and massage oil on the nightstand (which overlooked other brownstones) and rumors of naked sunbathing. This was, of course, after I begged his 6'5" notable self to be discreet.

I eventually had to leave that paradise (a subject worthy of its own post) and move to the Siberia that is the Upper East Side. I’ve been here ten years now and although it is the Apartment that Sex Forgot, it does have its good juju. Guests always remark about the energy—a lightness and a coziness and an intelligence all rolled into one.

Oh, my combination mountain aerie/rabbit warren. If only you had chaud lapin energy too.

(1) Fucked Up But Lovely. Just didn’t want to drop the f bomb in big letters.

You Speak, I Listen

I obviously take requests...

Just a quiet moment with my totally artificial baby and my totally artificial beverage.

Estoy Embarazada

I know…you’re thinking, “Oh, that Tizzy is dizzy. She’s not pregnant. She’s embarrassed.”

Well…

I’ve come full circle pregnancy-wise with regards to my career. Started out pregnant (Lady Larkin in my high school production of Once Upon a Mattress) and finished pregnant (Mrs. Weston in Paul Gordon’s Emma)—both experiences fraught with tension. My dad actually tried to make me quit Mattress because of the preggers story-line. I stood my 15-year-old ground, sobbing, “I’ve never quit anything in my life and I’m not going to quit now.”

Ah—the melodrama.

More recently? Emma was fraught with tension because it was my last show. I now stand my 45-year-old ground, sobbing, “I’ve never quit you, Career. WHY ARE YOU QUITTING ME NOW?”

Ah—the melodrama.

And now that I actually have the time to BE pregnant, well…my 45-year-old ground is no longer fertile. I honestly don’t think it has been for a while. Maybe ever. What a waste. I am my mother’s daughter and I’ve got the breeder’s hips to prove it. Her longest delivery was…count ‘em…four hours. By the time she got to me they induced ‘cause they were sure she was just gonna stroll down the street and go “Oooh…did I drop something? Oh, how lovely. ANOTHER baby.”

I did think about doing it on my own for awhile. I even recorded a cd of lullabies to lure it into my life.

Commercial Break…Just a Map—A Lullaby to the World is an armchair journey around the globe featuring lullabies from 14 different countries sung in 13 different languages. A portion of the proceeds are donated to charities promoting peace and human rights awareness. www.CDBaby.com/Tisdale Buy it. You’ll like it. Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

My BFF Will actually sent me a turkey baster for my 35th birthday. I hit 40 and realized I couldn’t drag two sorry carcasses up five flights to my rent-stabilized apartment, so the turkey baster went fowl…as did peering into adoption. I have single friends who do it and they are much braver and brillianter than I. I’m chicken. And cuckoo. I know my limits.

Why Why WHY am I telling you this?

Ummm.

I forgot (willfully chose not) to send my pregnancy pad back to Cincinnati. And sometimes I wear it. Like right now. It transforms me—a mixture of grounded sole and soul with head and heart in the clouds. And I think I look great with it strapped on.

Oh, my God! I have a STRAP-ON!

And it’s a wonderful hand-rest, plate-rest, TaB cola-rest—basically it’s my travelling end table. I believe a ukulele would snuggle right in.

And I am NEVER sending it back. I know this makes me a sad, sad pasty-faced girl. I don’t care.

Soooo…I am not embarrassed or avergonzada. I am unemployed and my version of embarazada and I am grateful…for the signs in the New York subway system that taught my faulty cognitive that false cognate.

Woody Goody

There’s another Woody verse that continues to haunt. I believe he wrote it while in the Brooklyn State Hospital.


"I fully aim to get my soul known again

As the maniac, the saint, the sinner,the drinker, the thinker, the queer

I am the WORKS, the whole WORKS

And it's not ‘till you have called me all of these things

That I feel satisfied, I feel satisfied."

Let's all be the WORKS and acknowledge it in one another. Okay?

The Tizzy Guide to Nueva York

What kind of tour guide am I? If you wish to re-enact Vacay in the Citay, please to visit the following sites.

www.JonathaBrooke.com for Jonatha Brooke and Bad Dog Records

www.rmanyc.org for the Rubin Museum

www.AqualiaSpa.com for Mei and her M&Ms

www.lapeauspa.com/ for Han the Man (doing Spa Week until the 26th...catch him while you can)

www.sohorep.org/ for cool theater

www.zacharyoberzan.com/ for the very cool actor in the cool theater (check out the trailer...that's all I'm sayin')

www.jean-georges.com/ for yumm

www.tarotbydante.com/ for brilliant tarot

There is no website for my couch. Don't ask.

Let me know how you like…

Vacay in the Citay

Okay, so I think I’ve established that March suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. In a big way. I had three days off. Count ‘em…on one hand…TWO. Yeah, that’s what I meant…TWO. To the uninitiated to Tiz World, that ain’t enough.

So I made an executive decision—since the impromptu visit with The G.I.D.* didn’t happen, I’m in the midst of Vacay in the Citay. Other people PAY to play here. Seems to be quite the spot. I thought I’d give it a try.

Let’s just say it’s going swimmingly. I could get used to this.

It started at 7 pm on Wednesday with Jonatha Brooke* in the Naked Soul Series at the Rubin Museum (Himalayan art…cool). If you’re an artist in this series, you have to re-contextualize your art to fit the museum thematically. She did it. Found some ancient Buddhist who was into crazy wisdom* and sex and since she had just released an album (okay…cd...i know) of her music set to the unpublished words of Woody Guthrie (who was brilliant and OUT THERE), she had a perfect coupling. Talk about wisdom. Two quotes of Woody’s (which I will power-phrase piss poorly) continue to haunt me...

“Someday we’ll find out that all our little songs are just notes in a great big song.”

and

“You are the sound of myself in the light that calls to myself that gets lost in the dark.”

Come ON. This was the beginning of my vacay? I almost stopped there ‘cause how much better could it get?

Well…maybe not better, but different I could accomplish.

Thursday = SPA DAY. It’s Spa Week here in the city.* Every actress knows about spa week: $50 for a treatment in participating salons. I started out with a massage at Aqualia. It was a lovely massage, marred only by being less than the full hour advertised (I was touched for 50 minutes and this bod could use some touching) and the fact that Mei the Massager mysteriously left the room, returning with something in a wrapper. Hmmm…what could it be? I figured she was going to treat my Gordian Knots with something super-special and then…wait for it…I heard her crunching. I spent forty minutes trying not to laugh. That tart was eating while massaging me. And worst of all, I couldn’t figure out what.

Peanut M&Ms. Melt in your mouth, not in your hands. (Oh, don’t you know I looked in the garbage can.)

I then headed down to Le Peau in—oh crap what area of town is it? Soho. Yeah, Soho—for my two hour reflexology appointment. I spent two hours trying not to cry. Thank God Mei had a crack at me before I met Han. One hour on my neck, back and hands (I honestly thought I was being taken from behind), fifty-eight minutes on my calves and feet (I honestly thought I was being taken from the front) and another two minutes doing shark bites on my upper thighs. Han the Man had sledge hammer hands and ballpeen digits. I’m just not creative enough to describe his forearms and elbows. Oooh, how about crowbar elbows and…umm…thingamabobby forearms…whatever. I actually broke a sweat. I’m not complaining. I’ve never been as clear as when I left that joint (nor have my joints been so clear) so I consider it a triumph.

And in all that triumphant clarity I hobbled down to Soho Rep (which is in Tribeca…go figure). Saw Rambo Solo—a one-man, three-projector performance piece that had me screaming. The guy was great. As was the seating—rumpus room pillows on shag carpeting. I think I went home with some DNA samples on my pants legs. And there were more M&Ms;* the bag was used as a walkie-talkie, and the M&Ms themselves were used not only as sustenance but as artillery. Brilliant.

Slept in ‘til 8:30 Friday morning which NEVER happens. Was going to go to tap class* but didn’t want to lose the massage glow, so I dragged my DNA-deposited, highly massaged ass to see Duplicity and Duplicity = charming. Really. Does anyone else out there think that Clive Owens looks like a young, handsome Pete Postlethwaite, or am I on drugs? And let me just say, our little Julia has grown up.*

Dinner was Nougatine. Yum. A Jean-Georges dinner. Exciting. Took five different phone calls to get the reservation right and it was my fault all the way. I’m surprised they let me in. Probably have a note to the server, “crazy girl at table…feed with care.” It was well worth the five phone calls and Spanky enjoyed it as well. She even got seconds. How does that happen? I took pictures, but pictures aren’t taste and I take sucky pictures so let’s just say all four courses (plus the amuse bouche*) were delish. I highly recommend.

This morning I had my Tarot* read by my friend Dante…definitely a lessening of my burdens. Favorite moment = “Your nephew will call for an outing,” AND MY NEPHEW CALLED ME FOR AN OUTING THAT VERY SECOND! Freaky scary. Love it. Love him.

The rest of the day/vacay will be spent couch-potatoing. There’ll be some movie-watching, some reading of Jeanette Winterson,* some meditating and—dare I say it—fah-LIP!*

Cost of Vacay in the Citay - $410

Refreshed, revived and rebooted – Priceless

Note: I know this is one long-ass Tiz and Ass blog. Shan’t happen again.

*Subjects worthy of future solo Tiz and Ass blogs. Stay tuned.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung…and so has my mattress. I forgot to flip it for a while. I forgot to flip my mattress for something like three years and now there’s a spring poking into me. Most action I’ve gotten in months. I have somehow forgotten to flip, flip myself and get flipped…for EONS.

I have flipped that mattress every which way AND up with the hope that I can get a few more years out of it. I have flipped that mattress as a physical representation of a manifestation I wish for my sex life…with the hope that I can get a few more years out of it.

Ya gotta start somewhere. Am I right?

And Spring is the perfect place to start. I consider Spring a place…a destination…where the sun shines, radiators don’t sound like mariachi bands, and the sidewalks are devoid of melted-snow dog-poop puddles. The township of Spring is inhabited by shiny, happy people and governed by Mr. Softee…oh how I glow when his truck comes. (Does that name make you boys as uncomfortable as I think it does? As I hope it does? Do you REALIZE girlies find it hi-larious?)

I can tell I’m in Spring when the store manager at Gristedes looks hot as hell to me. Nothing against Gristedes store managers, but 11 months out of the year, I'm feelin' nothin'.

I can tell I’m in Spring when March is flippin’ over. I have never ever had a good March. March sucks. I should just hibernate for March.

Which is what I did…at least sexually. My career? My career chose to hibernate on me. It forgot to tell me.

Are the two strangely and inextricably linked? A sexual-theatrical Gordian Knot?

Oy

Tiz Puzzlement

Batting Zero

Dear Diary



oh sweet jesus...cooooooooooooold.

why can't i do this?

Book the First: Recalled to Life

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

nope...but getting warmer.

Chapter 1

I Am Born



nope...that ain't it.