Deep Thought of the Day

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are here for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real, but only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is a clairvoyant.

Slava's Snow Show

Review from the SF Chronicle

Slava’s Snowshow: Clown show. Created and staged by Slava Polunin. Directed by Victor Kramer. (Through May 7. Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. 90 minutes. Tickets $37-$75. Call (415) 512-7770

Who says opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck? One of the odder benefits of our prolonged rainy season turns out to be having an umbrella handy when clowns start spraying water on an audience. Another unexpected benefit is the joyous relief afforded by a rare April blizzard.

Such relief came to San Francisco on Wednesday with the opening of "Slava's Snowshow" in the Best of Broadway series at the Golden Gate Theatre. It's more than just a good excuse to get out of the rain. The clowns are funny and forlorn. The design is enchanting. The climax is a bust-out party offering every inner child in the house a chance to act out with gleeful abandon. And the snow -- the prevailing weather inside the Golden Gate -- is blessedly dry.

So is much of the humor -- sometimes dry in a playfully surreal, Fellini-esque mode; more often in the how-could-things-get-worse tradition of much Russian humor, our own silent film comedies and the plays of Samuel Beckett. Then there are times when the dryness is merely arid, or was on opening night. Even after the many years that Slava Polunin -- the master clown known as Slava, who created, continually re-creates and stars in the show -- has been touring his "Snowshow" around the world, parts of it seemed underdeveloped Wednesday.

A caveat is in order before we go any further. The "Snowshow" I saw may be different from the one seen on any other night, let alone the one that's still enjoying a long run off-Broadway -- though now without Slava. As he's said in many interviews, Slava considers "Snowshow" a constant work-in-progress, and has since he began performing it (under the name "Yellow") in Russia in '93 (parts of it have been featured in Cirque du Soleil's "Alegría" since '94).

He reportedly reshuffles the cast nightly, reassigning roles among the nine other clowns in the cast (not all of whom perform each time), to keep things fresh. Even Rastyam Dubinnikov's classic slapstick, meteorological sound cues and musical selections may differ from one performance to the next. Though Victor Kramer is credited as director, Slava is continually restaging the show.

The snow, however, is a constant -- as are the stars and moons that are prominent features of Victor Plotkinov's delightful design scheme, and the colorful array of large and larger balls (or planets) that bombard the audience in the riotous finale. The snow is already piled in drifts throughout the theater before the show begins, glowing in the blue wash of Oleg Iline's lights. The walls are covered in child-fantasy deep blue quilts of starry skies and occasional slivers of moon -- the same panels, in beguilingly different sizes, that make up the stage backdrop.

A cosmic clash of sound, a puff of smoke, and Slava appears -- a classic woebegone tramp-clown in baggy, bright yellow spacesuit, fluffy red slippers and scarf, big red nose, deeply hollowed eyes and great puffs of white hair accenting his bald pate. His mastery is as immediately apparent as the long rope he drags behind him and the noose around his neck. Working with the rope, executing a variety of funny walks, growing or shrinking within his suit to seemingly impossible degrees, he's instantly magnetic, a charismatic master of evoking hilarity with great economy of gesture.

Several of the other clowns in the company are wonderfully proficient as well, such as the green-garbed figure (part of the Green Team) in a funny, extra-broad floppy hat and ridiculously long shoes who mirrors Slava's movements from time to time. But some of their routines didn't come off particularly well on opening night, such as one green clown's bit with a pet balloon and talking kazoos, or a long musical number for three yellow-clad clowns -- each of which dragged on too long without much of a payoff.

But then, payoff isn't the point for most of the routines, or for "Snowshow" itself. Slava works in a kind of existential comedy realm where a dream of sailing away on a bedstead boat -- with a broom for a bowsprit and the pipe in your mouth as a smokestack -- may encounter watery floors and a passing shark. Or where great sheets of cobwebby cotton may descend to envelop a clown, and much of the audience as well.

Time, it turns out, is as mercurial as every other aspect of reality in this world. Stay too long in the lobby at intermission and you'll find that the clowns have gone on without you -- descending into the audience to walk the armrests, plop in laps and polish bald heads. Once the blizzard hits and the big bouncing balls fill the house, it's hard to tell when the show actually ends. The clowns stand onstage watching the audience take over, jostling and leaping to bat the giant orbs around.

The mere act of jumping about, arms raised, in a big crowd creates a sense of euphoria (as it does in that other touring clown show, "Aga-Boom," which played the Alcazar Theatre in December). You don't have to attend "Snowshow" to experience that. But you have to go to enjoy Slava's inspired clowning and the enchanting spell his show can weave.

Life Updates

Well Alice, here are your updates....

Xmas day has finally arrived meaning I'm an official graduate of graduate school, yay! It was a fun filled and exhuasting weekend with the whole family in town (including the fairy godmother from NYC). Highlights include: Tahoe for two days; the SF Oyster Festival with Dad, which mainly consisted of people watching and having serious, "what am I doing with my life" talks...thanks Dad; dinner at Solstice and then a party with friends at Harry's Bar; a graduation ceremony in the St. Mary's Chapel; and finally, a fabulous dinner with great food and company at Postino's in Lafayette. Whew, what a weekend!

And with that behind me as of two weeks ago, I've had time to pack up and focus on my move to the "city." Ahh the endless task of moving, it's such a fun process, but my movers Jose and Jason of Starving Students made it pretty painless. I'm hoping to get all unpacked and settled in by the end of this week. Excited to be in the neighborhood, close to all my friends now, but at the same time a little afraid of how much trouble I'm going to get myself into. :) Stay tuned for some good stories...