Jack At Last!

(1) Long and restless flight. World is made for small people... At least airplanes are.

(2) When you really think about it, this is a weird excursion - Halfway around the world for research on an obscure South African play that hasn't been produced for 30 years. Hopefully we'll do everybody proud and justify ourselves with this opportunity.

(3) Trouble with car reservation. Dianne, don't worry. We can fix it. We shouldn't have called you, but actors can be such a p@$$%s.

(4) Traffic, traffic, traffic. And the gears. Steering wheel and roads are all backwards. Foreigners, huh! Pedestrians everywhere walking on the sides of major highways and crossing right in front of you almost begging to be ran over. They make New Yorkers look like p@$$%s. If we don't kill someone or ourselves or cause an accident, it will be an act of a benevolent god.

(5) The hotel is great. Thanks, Dianne and Caresa.

(6) Great currency exchange rate. Thanks, somebody?

(7) These mechanical digital toys are pain in my a$$. But we will figure them out.

(8) Staying awake on doctors' orders and getting really f@%&ing stupid, slap happy, goofy, and dumb. I just asked somebody where to buy "lamps" and what I meant to say was "stamps."

(9) Cocktails and smokes are quite affordable. Thank you, god!!! No, REALLY! THANK YOU!!!!!! See you guys at A.C.T. in 2008. I'm not coming back.

(10) I look like a cop.

(11) So does SAJ.

(12) There is a private club called "Paradise." I'll bring back the card. I am being solicited constantly and called "Boss." It's a little disconcerting.

(13) Looking at faces.

(13-a) SAJ has a whole thing about faces of colors. He will elaborate.
(13-b) I'm looking at middle aged white men and seeing Foster everywhere. Where were these middle-aged men then and what did they do during The Struggle?
(13-c) I look in the mirror and see my dad, and am therefore forced to ask the question..."Where would I have been and what would I have done?"

(14) They have beef-flavored potato chips. WHY??? Lamb-flavored, too. Really, WHY?

(15) I have to wrap my mind around this "Coloured" thing. It seems so completely different from Jim Crow. This is absolutely pivotal to the production. Coloured, coloured, coloured! I must keep pondering that. I must force that word. That enigma into something actable.

(16) As a baby boomer, and the frequent viewer of post-WWII films made in the US, I have always had an aversion to the German language and its subsequent dialect as performed by badly trained American actors. It is like the dialect of Bull Conners, George Wallace or Lester Maddox and that ilk. It seems like it was made to oppress.

(17) I'm getting a little drunk.

(18) Just had dinner at this authentically touristy African menued restaurant. Great beans & rice. Great spinach & squash. And great Ox tail and Lamb. Soul Foods? Go figure!

(19) Cuban cigars and scotch at a bar in Cape Town with SAJ... What could be better?

(20) Gene pool - gene pool - think about gene pool.

(21) Sitting with SAJ at a cigar & scotch lounge in Cape Town Center, minding our own business. When 4 (count them closely) German women of the holiday variety sat across from us, smiling and chatting. We talked about cigars, and the Cuban boycott. We talked about scotch and its many qualities and how it is almost an absolute universal icebreaker. We talked about traveling around the world, and about the many places we have been to. They then asked us..."so are you in South Africa for business?" And we said, "yes." "What kind of business?" "We are actors," we beamed.

And they didn't talk to us for the rest of the evening.