UPDATED 07/16/05: Small world incidents


Some of the strange, 'small world' meetings I've encountered of late.

My SO, Chris, likes to tease me that every single time we go anywhere, from the mall, to a show, to a restaurant, we run into someone I know.

This is a gross exaggeration, but it is true that I've had my feet in multiple worlds, including the theatre world and the high tech corporate world, and I've lived in the Bay Area for 33 of my 39 years, so that does give me increased odds.

Still, there's a difference between running into someone you know around here, and those true small world experiences below. I think these are fun examples of why you should always conduct yourself as though it COULD come back to haunt you :)

I'll add to this list if new ones arise, as I'm sure they will.

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New Small World #14: Blogging and theatre worlds collide
I'm sure you know I've been heavily involved with putting on BlogHer for the last 3 months. So much so that co-founder Lisa Stone and I have probably spoken and emailed every single day since early April. I eventually learned that both her sisters live in L.A. and are actresses, but both are younger than me. Anyway, by being cc'ed at the end of some long email thread the other day, and email thread that had nothing to do with theatre, I saw that one of her sisters, Anna, has a web site. I checked it out, looked at her resume and noted that she has been directed in a show by a guy I acted in a show with...16 or 17 years ago in New York. See, this is why you should never lie on a resume or pretend to have a connection you don't have...some day somehow you will run into someone who shares that connection!
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New Small World #13: The Book Club Intersection
A friend and I recently decided to start a book club. I invited people from various parts of my life that I thought would be interested. The first to arrive last night were two nice young men who had never met before...one I know from theatre, and the other through a mutual friend. The second man is not a theatre person, nor does his line of work intersect with Man #1. I mentioned that I had only gotten home 10 minutes before from a meeting with Company X. Both men started saying, "hmmm...that sounds familiar, I think I know someone there." Now, Company X is by no means a small company, it has hundreds of employees. yet, as you may well guess, they both knew the same person there, and what's more, this person was in the meeting I had left but a half hour before. One of my friends had worked with the woman in question, and the other went to the same church. Now seriously, what are the chances!?
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New Small World #12: The Intersection of Technology & Romance
Tonight we had dinner with a nice couple. The SO knows the male half of this couple from a Techno-Geek chat group he belongs to. Now that the SO works at Microsoft, Mr. Techno-Geek #2 hit him up for a copy of Virtual PC. Rather than simply hand it over, the SO and Mr. Techno-Geek decided we should go out to dinner, Mr. & Mrs. Techno-Geek (and small child) and us.

While at dinner it inevitably arose that each couple talked about how they met. As it turns out, Mr. & Mrs. Techno-Geek met in Berkely, where they both lived, via a woman who also lives in Berkeley and is somewhat renowned as a "connector" type.

Now I posted earlier this week about how fun it was meeting a slew of fascinating people at a dinner on Tuesday. Turns out the woman who introduced this couple 5 years ago sat across from me at that dinner 3 nights ago! We had some great conversation, she and I! Not only that, Connector-Woman talked to me about MoveOn because she's close friends with the founders. The founders, who just happen to be the cousins of Mrs. Techno-Geek...which is how she knew Connector-Woman to begin with.

Oh, and speaking of Democrats...another woman at the dinner Tuesday had a very unique last name. Turns out she's the sister of the woman who co-chaired the Media Committee for the Santa Clara County Democratic Party during the campaign this past year...who just happens to be the one who nominated me (successfully) to the Executive Board of the California State Democratic Party at a meeting last month! Politics and technology...they go hand and hand in this area I guess.
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New Small World #11: My friend Mike: the Connector
If you check out Small World Incident #6 below, you'll read about how I met the partner of an old high school choir-mate at a housewarming party thrown by my friend Mike. Yesterday I went up to the City for a birthday party for this same friend Mike, and he is the connector in the midst of another small world incident.

Mike has this friend who is also a writer and also extremely politically-oriented. I met her at his last party, but since then Mike has been saying we really needed to talk again. Probably he had heard us both ranting about the election enough and wanted us to rant at each other instead of him. I'm just guessing. I had to leave early, but about a half hour before my departure she showed up. Hi! How are you?, Good to see you etc. And she's there with a guy, who looks very very familiar to me. And I realize in a moment that he is a guy I met at BloggerCon last fall, with whom I had a lengthy (and big surprise: political) discussion!

Malcolm Gladwell would be proud of my friend Mike: he has connected the world of theatre, blogging and high school over the last six months!

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New Small World #10: Everyone needs a little Pampering sometimes
You may know I'm doing some marketing for a show called "Addicted", featuring local San Jose comedian Mark Lundholm. After seeing his stand-up act, I knew he lived somewhat close to me in the West San Jose-ish area. You may not, however, be so familiar with my sojurns every other week to the nail salon for various services to my fingers, toes and eyebrows. What does one have to do with the other? Ah, that's the Small World Incident for this month.

As I sat in the chair yesterday afternoon, my manicurist noticed I had picked a purply color for my nails...she held up a bottle on her desk that was a more sparkly purple, and asked if I wanted to try it. Turns out the bottle had been left behind by one of her clients, and she was holding onto it for her. Oh, this client? Just got engaged to a comedian. "A Comedian...like he makes his living at that?" I asked. "Yes." She went on to say he was a pretty good looking guy, but she couldn't say what color hair he had because he shaves his head. I ask, "Is his name Mark?" and yes, it turns out that Mark Lundholm not only has a fiancee that goes to my manicurist, but he, himself, goes in and gets mani/pedis on occasion.

Trip, trip trippy.
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New Small World #9: Speaking of Web Designers...
A different web designer for a different client goes by the name of Flashlight Graphics. One day he emails me about the link I have to a Flashlight Graphics in my Cross-Pollination section of my Worker Bees site. He says...'you know that's not me, right? That belongs to some guy who got the URL before I did, even though I've had the name for ages.' [Yes, he did sound rather miffed about said 'guy', as though he'd "stolen" the URL. Later, of course, he did admit that he should have perhaps registered the domain name if he wanted the domain name.

Well, as it turns out...yes I DO know the guy who got the Flashlight Graphics URL first...he's my ex-boyfriend, and I've known him for almost 20 years, and he designed the customer icons on my home page. You know, you dream about 2 guys fighting over you, not over some URL!

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New Small World #8: The Theatre is the nexus of all human interaction
I'm doing some online marketing for a couple of theatres up in San Francisco. To do so I have to liaise with their web designers to get custom landing pages constructed etc. Turns out one of the web designers rents an apartment to a cousin of mine. The cousin has no involvement with theatre at all. It's a great thing that I have such an unusual last name. You are simply not going to meet people with that name that are not related to me.

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New Small World #7: Theatre & Animal Lovers Again
You can read my story about finding two abandoned baby birds on my front step. So, I found a local rescue facility for wildlife and brought the birds there this morning. While there, they gave me a bunch of literature when I left, including their Newsletter. Inside the first page is a message from the Board President, who just happens to be a woman I did a show with back in 1995.

New Small World #6: More Choir Connections
Down in Small World #3 I mentioned that I went to a reunion of high school choir folks, most of whom I hadn't seen in two decades. Well, last weekend I went to a housewarming party up in San Francisco of a friend of mine, who I've met via our mutual theatre connections, although we've never actually done a show together. While in the midst of a discussion with half a dozen folks I did not know it came up that I was a native Bay Area person. So, like people often fruitlessly do, one of the guys (who had worked with my host at WebVan, not in theatre) said: my partner couldn't come today, but he is native Bay Area, where did you grow up? I said "Sunnyvale". He said, "did you got to Fremont High School". "Why yes I did. What year did your partner graduate?" "Oh, I'm not sure, maybe 1983." "Well, I was 1981, but I might know him...what's his name?" And of course, you will guess it, the partner was someone in my class, in choir and small vocal ensemble with me, and who I had seen last summer at the reunion.

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Small World #1: This must be what long-time teachers feel like
My mom's been in the business world for 20 years, but a very different industry than I. Nonetheless, a new hire at Terayon emailed me one day asking if I was related to her (Camahort being a rather rare name does come in handy), as she hired him at Dataquest, for one of his first jobs out of college, over a decade ago. Sure enough, this guy can now proudly state that he has worked with two generations of powerful women in my family...sounds like we need to star in a nighttime soap!

Small World #2: Even respectable people will marry an actress
Every now and then I get contacted by recruiters, and this can often lead to discussions of your past, even stretching beyond the years covered on my resume. A recruiter named Mark Hill called me up, and such a conversation took place. It often comes up that I lived in NYC for four years after college (over 15 years ago now.) And if the conversation is going well, I might even bring up that I was a starving artist type. So this guy says, "My wife was an actress in New York in the late 80's too." Well, you know there are thousands of actresses in New York at any one time, and I didn't know the vast majority of them!

Nonetheless, you can't help asking, 'Really, what's her name?'

He replies, 'Lesley'

And it slowly dawns on me he is referring to Lesley Hamilton Hill, a 42nd Street Moon regular with whom I've been in at least 2 shows...here in San Francisco, not NYC.

Small World #3: And they say Reno is the 'biggest little city'?

This past August some old high school classmates arranged a reunion of folks from our high school choir program at our choir director's house. The folks involved spanned about 7 years, from the class of 1978 to the class of 1985 (of which Cristy was the sole representative.) So, after 20 years I saw a bunch of high school classmates again. I went to my 10 year reunion, but not my 20 year, so it had been a least a decade since I had seen most of these folks.

Then about 2 weeks later in September, Chris and I went to NYC for a 6-day vacation. We stayed at the Doubletree Suites right on Times Square. (You can see pictures from the trip at the link to my home page. You can read reviews of all the shows we saw n the Theatre Reviews section.)

On our last day we had some time to kill, so we checked our luggage and walked around a bit, shopped a bit and had lunch. Finally it was time to come back, pick up our luggage and catch a cab to the airport. The hotel doors are right in front of a busy corner where it's quite easy to catch a cab.

Well, as we strode purposefully from the door of the hotel to the curb to hail a cab, someone walked by down the sidewalk. Somehow we caught each other's eyes, both took a doubletake and realized that it was Randy Yee, also class of 1981, who had been one of the organizers of the choir reunion. he and his wife Valerie had arrive a couple of days before and were staying some few block away.

But if you realize how PACKED the Times Square area is pretty much every minute of the day, and how short our walk was from the hotel to the curb, and come on...we were both 3000 miles from home! I mean those are slim chances!

Small World #4: It's now proven: actresses like cats

My surviving cat, Samantha, is in the fairly early stages of Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) a chronic, incurable kidney disease. Many many cats have this, it's almost the prostate cancer of cats...if they live long enough they get it. The internet being the tremendous resource it is I belong to two different Yahoo Groups dedicated to this subject.

As part of her treatment I give her sub-cutaneous fluids every other day. If you're curious about that you can view my entire routine for doing it on this blog. Anyway, if you're treating your kitty like this, you end up buying lots of needles and fluid bags.

Occasionally when someone's kitty unfortunately finally passes from the disease, they offer their remaining supplies to people on the list, so the supplies won't go to waste, and they can help another person dealing with CRF.

Recently someone offered me supplies, and I went to her home to pick them up. I knew her name was Carol, but that was about it. I hung out at her house for quite a while. At one point it came up she was a singer, and I replied that I was too, but that was about it. Then I saw a picture on her piano of a guy who looked kind of familiar, but I didn't rally place him. Finally we went into another room to find one of her other kitties, and glancing up I saw a little souvenir Opening Night card on her bulletin board...it named her, and the show 'Carousel' and the year 1991.

Then it dawns on me: The summer of 1991 I did my first show at Foothill, 'The Boys from Syracuse' in the little theatre. The same summer they were producing 'Carousel' in the big theatre, which I of course went to see. And this woman played the lead, Julie Jordan. And the guy on her piano is her boyfriend who played Billy Bigelow, and later played several other roles there.

I never did a show with either one of them, but saw them in shows, and of course they had done shows with good friends of mine. And then she realized she had seen me in multiple shows at Foothill.

What struck me is that this was a completely non-theatre/music-oriented avenue for meeting...which brings me to...

Small World #5: Where have those hands been?

I've been going to the same dentist since 1981. Even when it wasn't all that geographically convenient, I kept going to Dr. Hanson in Cupertino. And a lot of my family goes there too, my sister and her family, my step-sister, Heather. Even my Mom & Gary went there for years.

For many years Dr. Hanson had a nice hygienist. I knew the hygienist was a musician, because he had a business card on the bulletin board for his string quartet. Still, string quartets and musical theatre aren't really intersecting worlds.

After years and years, one day my sister noticed a flyer up on the bulletin board for a show at West Valley Light Opera, 'Forever Plaid' that our good friend Robin was in, and that another friend, Brad, was directing. Turns out this hygienist was good friends with Brad!! I have no idea how they met! But recently Brad had another one of his cabaret night, in which both I and my former dental hygienist performed...and it was much nicer having him use his hands to play the violin than to scratch at my plaque with a big old dentist hook.

Posted: Sat - July 16, 2005 at 09:27 AM       EmailFeedback

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