First thing's first: come see my shows! "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Debbie Does Dallas", running October 22nd to November 8th at the Theatre Center here in Toronto. [link] for more info and to buy tickets (or you can drop me a line if you've got questions -- I can probably answer them). "Debbie" is the musical version of the 1970s porn film of the same name (no, there's no sex scenes -- but it is pretty racy and probably not for minors), while "Hedwig" is the story of a transgendered individual from East Berlin who followed her American GI lover to the U.S., had a botched sex change operation, got divorced, found love again, helped her new lover rise to stardom as the rock supersensation Tommy Gnossis, was subsequently dumped by Tommy, and she's now trying to figure out who she is while playing hers and Tommy's music in dive bars with her new lover and working "the job we call blow" on the side for a little extra cash. It's pretty thoroughly awesome, and it's all going to take place on the set that I'm creating. You have no excuse not to see it.

So apart from set designing, which has been eating up quite a bit of my time of late (and will eat up much more in the next two weeks, what with build, load-in, tech, and any last-minute emergencies that arise), I've also been keeping busy by working a few shifts a week at Bead Heaven [link] and creating lots of jewelry. Tell your bead and jewelry loving friends about the place so that they can get more business and give me more hours! Or just stop by and bug me while I'm at work -- I'm almost always there on Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes on weeknights when there are parties or classes booked and they need the extra staff.

In other news, my birthday happened recently, with the attendant visits and going out to dinner and much consumption of alcohol. got me a new tarantula (a pinktoe, whom I have christened "Blue"), got me a very special gecko, and everyone else got me alcohol -- don't my friends and lovers all know me so very, very well? Once again I had to bake my own cake, but it's actually getting to the point where I'm not sure I'd trust anyone else to do the job right -- this year I made kaluha-flavoured cheesecake, and that'll be hard to top next year.

For those who are in the area, and I will be hosting Sunday night D&D games starting this week (be prepared to be well-fed, because you know how I like cooking for people). Let us know if you're interested in joining -- the first campaign, at least, will be very beginner-friendly. We've also re-started the much ignored tradition of "Parley", happening the first Sunday of every month from 11ish until whenever the hell we feel like wrapping things up. Show up with some food and/or drink and we'll hang out and socialize and plot the destruction of humanity ... or something like that. This month's wasn't particularly well-attended, but it was a rainy day and it's not like we gave much warning -- and despite the low attendance we still had a pretty good time (and managed to drive Kenneth insane with cutesy computer games that we refused to turn off).

And my last bit of news: I'll be posting a whole bunch of pictures in the next day or so. They're actually from almost a year ago -- as some of you might remember, I did a couple of shoots with Gracja Wainewska last fall. Well, her computer died shortly after the last shoot, taking most of the photos with it. After getting several emails saying something to the effect of "I'm working on it, not sure if/when it's going to get fixed", I just assumed that the images were gone forever and I moved on ... but apparently they did get recovered, and the edited and retouched versions arrived unannounced in my inbox today. A nice surprise, I must say, and it was fun going through them so long after the fact, as I'd pretty much forgotten everything that we'd done during the shoot. So yes, pictures to enjoy. I must see if I've got time to do a new photoshoot or two once Debbie and Hedwig wrap up, since I do have such fun modeling, and I'll have more time then (hopefully not TOO much time, as I am looking for more theatre contracts, but we'll just have to see how soon that's going to happen with all the competition there is right now).

And that's how things are currently going in the world of me.



Oh, P.S., if anyone is still interested in baby lizards, we've still got some. They're very cute and I do want them to go to good homes, so let us know.