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I am in paperwork hell and therefore desperate for fun things to talk about. Therefore I am not going to talk about the 2008 election. Not that it's not fun - it's enormously fun, and at times sadly funny - but it's too much a blood pressure point for me and apparently a lot of the people who read this page. Long and short of my thoughts on the matter: it's all going to work out. Everyone breathe.

Instead, I want to talk about [title of show], which Cheryl and I treated ourselves to after a day of canvassing for Obama in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. You can read Cheryl's post about that here.

I did not know, going into this show, that I was entering a Fan Zone. Pieces of culture that have Fan Zones are different than others, though the circle is growing wider every day: it may not be the most popular movie, television show or play out there, but there is a strong band of devotees, who will show up every night and scream, post about it on their Facebooks, urge their friends and family to watch/read/listen, etc. I know about this kind of fan because I am one. One thing I truly love about a show will sell me on it for life. This is not usually because the show/movie/etc. deserves it more or is inherently better, but because it has struck the nerd nerve: if only one thing about it is one of the best things they've ever heard, they're sold. Of course, there's usually well more than one thing - but there's one moment that always piques the experience. It's Free Love on the Free Love Highway during the British version of The Office. It's "Seasons of Love" in Rent. It's Defying Gravity in Wicked. It's the fashion show on Project Runway, "Suddenly Seymour" in Little Shop of Horrors, the entire first season of Heroes, the end of season one/beginning of season two of The West Wing, the slide down the pole in Bridget Jones (the book), the what-will-she-wear-now game of Sex and the City.

(One doesn't immediately jump to mind with Harry, but that's really because the first book is full of all those truly imaginative twists on reality that it's like a series of wave peaks throughout.)

And, being one of these fans, and being familiar with the accoutrements of intense fandom, you know exactly when you're walking into a Fan Zone. If it's a live event, it's usually accompanied by a lot of screaming. This happened when we saw [title of show], a fabulous little musical about making a musical. I knew only that it was an "inside" ("meta") play, going into it; I wasn't even sure it was a musical. But as the lights went down and the roar deafened (it was the show's last week on Broadway) I groaned internally. The Fan Zone is almost unanimously a good thing for the material that is the object of the fans' obsession, but to newcomers it can make it hard to understand and enjoy that material. I wasn't sure I wanted to be part of a few hours of incomprehensible screaming that made me think I was a year too old to be a New Kids on the Block fan, and at one of their concerts. (Which I am only allowed to say years and years after being part of the screaming, and years and years after realizing how it can be completely obnoxious to those outside the Zone.)

Thank goodness, that's not how it played out. The show was, sincerely, one of the best things I've seen in a long while, and that happened well before the middle, when the real Fan Moment happened. Because for all the potential annoying character of a Fan Zone, it can be really useful. I was enjoying this charming show - self-aware, unadorned, a hilarious little reflection on creativity that played itself with honesty and no trace of pretension - when I knew we were about to get to The Moment. Why? The screaming went THROUGH THE ROOF. Cheryl and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, because the woman onstage had just said, "Die, Vampire, Die," and she hadn't said it while simultaneously twirling flaming batons, juggling three apples and a live grenade, and shooting fireworks out of her sleeves, so why was everyone going crazy? Because they knew what was coming, and luckily this pre-emptive hype wasn't enough to spoil the moment.

The song is Die, Vampire, Die, and it's the best exploration of the ridiculous inner monologue that goes on while you are writing that I've ever heard. It's not all Finishing the Hat, it's not all sweet, melodic elixirs of endorphins caused by creation. No. Sometimes there are ugly gnomes playing twstie-tie with your confidence, inside your head, and it's annoying and petty and feels small. What did I call this phenomenon awhile back? Ahhh... Grogsnot! I had nearly forgotten about him. Yes, this is a song about Grogsnot!

Listen to this (it's the audio track set to a picture of the show's playbill, you don't have to watch), if you want to know just how silly, sad, funny, stupid, elating, and unglamorous creation really can be:

Check it out here; surprise for PotterCast and MuggleCast listeners coming soon.

P.S.: And later, talking to the Noe one:

Melissa Anelli: dude i'm tired
Melissa Anelli: going to watch AI and the olympics
John Noe: long chipotle eating day for you
John Noe: poor thing
Melissa Anelli: yeah
Melissa Anelli: pics funny huh?
John Noe: mhmm
Melissa Anelli: missed you though, wasn't right doing that there without you
John Noe: we'll do it again before we know it
John Noe: its going to take all your strenth to keep me from eating every meal at chipotle in vegas
John Noe: and im totally serious
Melissa Anelli: LOL
Melissa Anelli: i'm supposed to stop you from doing it?
John Noe: no more than once
John Noa: a day
Melissa Anelli: ok, sure
Melissa Anelli: i'll...
Melissa Anelli: i don't know
Melissa Anelli: i'll have the car keys
Melissa Anelli: so you're pretty much screwed
John Noe: hey the walk might make it ok
John Noe: in that heat
Melissa Anelli: you'll die
Melissa Anelli: i won't let you do that
John Noe: its not going to be warmer there then it is in miami
John Noe: at leat i dont think
Melissa Anelli: yes it is!
Melissa Anelli: it's like 120 there!
John Noe: oh, lame
Melissa Anelli: or 110 or whatever
Melissa Anelli: dry heat tho
Melissa Anelli: they say
John Noe: http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/pipmoreshell1_2.jhtml?sku=SI558SL2&pid=26728300
Melissa Anelli: you're gonna put that thing on just to get to chipotle
John Noe: yep
Melissa Anelli: and walk what's usually a 20 min drive
John Noe: LOL
John Noe: you said it was DOWN THE SREET>>
Melissa Anelli: STRIP
Melissa Anelli: STRIP
John Noe : DAMIT
Melissa Anelli: LOLOLOL
John Noe: i dont wanna go anymore
John Noe: i quit the leakymug
John Noe: i'll have to order 2 each time so i have one to take back

Last night, as I was settling in for a night of catchup editing work (don't worry, Aimee and Justin, I'm on it), Mike bursts through the front door.

"You know what we need? A fire."

"A what now?"

"A fire. In the backyard."

And he starts running around the house as if he's looking for something.

"Are you OK?" I call.

"Yes! I saw the neighbors with one! A fire! We should have one!"

He drags from its hiding place a fire pit. A fire pit. We don't have a working doorbell and we use the dining room as an office - but, fire pit? Check!

It's this huge copper pot, basically, and he sets it up in the backyard. Now I see what he's up to.

"You know, we're going to need marshmallows," I insist. He goes out to get them, while I tell the Leaky helpers who were testing out a new software with us that I have to go, because we have to burn things now.

Mike starts grabbing fistfuls of twigs, and dragging over spare bits of firewood. A box erupts under his lighter, and soon we've got the Olympic flame in the backyard. We spent the night toasting marshmallows on chopsticks - at one point I amused myself by running around the backyard with a lit one in my hand, singing "Chariots of Fire." AJ and Maura came over, we sacrificed Teddy Grahams to the flame, and watched marshmallows glob and expand under extreme heat. It doesn't take much to amuse us.

And there are pics! Except, check out the new format of my pics at my new Gallery. I have wanted to get a good photo management system going, and even played around with the one Milly uses for her galleries, and then I learned how to do this one and I love it. It's ridiculously easy, and it took me about 10 minutes to get all my photos into it - I still have to bring all the captions over but that shouldn't be hard, and uploading all the galleries I have waiting on my computer should be cake, too. You can also comment on all the pictures, which I find kinda fun and funny.

Here are the pics from last night, and here's the link again to the main gallery. "Pics" on the side of my page goes to it as well, now.

The WEEKEND O' FUN continues.

Last night, after I got home (early, because I had work today) from my cousin's bachelorette party, I settled in my (admittedly not the cleanest lately) room to check some mail, read some stuff, and go to bed.

A shadow passed through my vision on my right. Very quickly. Skitteringly, I thought.

Nah. We haven't had any bugs. I'm nuts. I go back to reading.

Something skitters the other way. I jump. My feet curl onto my bed. I convince myself I'm imagining things. Whatever it was doesn't seem to be corporeal, it flits like dark air instead of a real bug. I'm in that defensive, don't-move-a-twitch mode, staring at my bookshelf, where the skittering appears to have come from. It takes five whole minutes, but there's no more noise, and my muscles limber up a bit. I type again.

This time it's DEFINITELY there. Something moved. A paper, a something. It MOVED SOMETHING. The sumbitch MOVED something, it HAS a body - the black shadow goes back into my closet.

I jump onto my bed but I'm silent. I watch the closet, waiting, trying to convince myself out of it again but I can't. Going downstairs means I have to cross in front of the Closet of Doom so I just stay put.

Mike was downstairs. He was watching the very end of the movie, and I think that if I just stay like this for twenty minutes, then I won't feel guilty about being a total wussorific piece of womanly limp spaghetti and calling my roommate, who is the same size as me and afraid of the most microscopic of spiders ("IT'S SATAAAN!" he yells whenever he sees one), to help.

Except, staying like this poses problems. The tiniest of movements in this old, settling house, freaks me the hell out. There are piano concertos coming out of the television downstairs but I can't hold another beat.

"Miii-iiiiike," I called like a whiney, whimpery sheep.

"Yes?" he answers, having heard this tone before.

"There's sooomething uuuuuuuuup heeeeeere!" I bleated.

He's there in footsteps. He sees me standing on the bed and I can see the muscles working in his face as he tries not to laugh, and as he investigates. The pair of us usually upturn the regular sexist myths; he has track lighting in the bathroom while I'm usually the one who remembers to take out the trash. He loves to cook and clean and I love to read my newspaper and do my crossword. I'm work-obsessed and he's usually on the couch watching a movie when I come home, late and dogged. He has two dates and there are all-night talk-and-cocoa sessions - I have two dates and just shrug as I walk out of the room, leaving him shouting questions about the guy in my wake. He bakes, I fry. He has the scented candles, I leave coffee rings on the tables.

Not last night. No. Last night I was on the bed, immobilized, looking for all the world like I was in the middle of a kung fu move, while he got a flashlight and started creeping around in my closet.

"You're afraid of SPIDERS," I reminded him, because his bravado was making me look quite bad. "And you're fine with this creepy crawly cockroach thing?"

"Creepy crawlies don't bother me," he said as he started throwing shoes out of my closet and slithering around on his stomach. "Just spiders."

"They ARE creepy crawlies!"

He didn't answer. He silently got up, and walked out of the room. He returned with a tupperware and quietly put it aside, so I didn't even notice it. Then he started taking all my shoes, and anything not hanging, out of the closet. The debris pile is starting to look like half-off sale at Macy's.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he got into my closet and started peering at the wall.

"Looking for the mouse."

"MOUSE!"

Mike chuckled. I danced on my bed. "Amouseamouseamouse WHY A MOUSE?!"

Mike spoke very evenly, and slowly, and calmly. "He's about an inch long. I saw him on your shoes."

"MY SHOES!"

"So we're just going to take - everything - out - and we'll find him."

"FIND HIM! He's in my CLOSET and you can't FIND HIM!"

Mike takes out one shoe rack. Then another. There's nothing on the floor. He gets on his hand and knees and utters his first frustrated word of the night.

"F--er, where did you go?"

I'm still on the same spot on the bed. I will not move. No, nosirree, it will not happen. That effing mouse is either in my closet or in the shoe sale outside it, and if I move he will ATTACK ME.

We had some mice in my mom's house once, and I made fun of my mother to no end. She acted just like this - screaming, whining, shuddering itchy crawlies and psychological crackheadedness, praying for divine intervention - all over a mouse. A tiny baby mouse, I jeered. What will he do to you, ma, I asked her. It's a MOUSE! Come on, you're a strong woman and he lives on cheese, come ooon. She shook her head. "I don't want him crawling on me in my sleep!" And she shuddered again, like something had just run up her spine.

And now Topo Gigio - the automatic name of any unwelcome house mouse - is skitting around in my room and I'm on my bed shouting "I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHERRRRR!"

Mike is dying of laughter about now. He has taken everything out of the bottom of my closet and he still can't find Topo. What he DOES find is a moth larva.

Yes. Moth larva. Make the night even better, why don't you?

So now I must find everything I own that is made of nonsynthetic fiber - which thankfully is only about three things but try and FIND those three things - and check for tiny little stupid non-whole moths who are eating through my clothing.

It's a fantastic night in Melissaland.

First things first, and the first thing is to smoke out this little cheeseeater like some mozzarella. It's been a half hour. I'm still on my bed. Mike is still staring listelessly at the wall, looking at the lack of holes in my closet and wondering where the hell Topo went. I'm now doing the foot-to-foot dance while simultaneously trying to scratch every part of my back, where surely little spiders and cockroaches and things are crawling, because there must be SOME reason I'm so itchy all of a sudden.

Mike throws his hands out, then puts one finger to his lips very suddenly. "Shh," he says.

I stop mid-hop. I look like Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid, one foot in the air and the other halfway into a scratch.

Something makes noise. Imperceptible, tiny, little-claw noise. I whimper.

Mike, on the other hand, goes back to his calm, methodical, move-slowly-so-Melissa-isn't-alerted-that-something-is-very-wrong-here stance.

He starts taking the things hanging in my closet out of my closet. One by one. Shaking them. Laying them on my bed.

"IT'S ON MY CLOTHES?!?!?!?"

"...it was."

"It WAS?! Where is it NOW?"

"...I don't know."

"OH YOU DON'T KNOW, GREAT!"

He sees movement. He stops what he's doing and reaches for the tupperware, but now this tupperware is long forgotten in the all-you-can-fit shoe department store that is now next to my bed, and by the time he finds it, Topo has absconded again, no doubt with some lovely piece of clothing to make a house with. Damn smart mouse.

When half the clothes are out on the bed, Mike starts looking from the bed to the closet. I can tell what he's thinking by now. He's thinking that maybe Topo is in the half of the clothes that is ON my bed, near my feet. And he doesn't want to tell me this because he knows exactly what will happen: I will do a half-flip over my wrought-iron footboard, crash into the new wooden floors, and kill myself, therefore scaring off Topo, which would be the real tragedy, because now Mike's on the hunt. He will get the little rodent. HE WILL.

So I decide it's time for me to not say I know all this. I stay in wax-on-wax-off mode.

All of a sudden Mike springs into action, doing the little "Where's the tupperware, where's the tupperware!" dance where he gets a wild look in his eye and runs in a frantic circle only to find the tupperware is exactly where he left it, grabs it and FLINGS himself to the floor.

"GOT IT! GOT YOU SUCKER!"

He gets up. The upside down tupperware skids across my closet floor. I see the shadow of Topo. I squeal like a little girl while at the same time DANCING on my bed.

"Now what?"

Oh. Good point. We're going to need to get this sucker out of the house.

"I need you to do something for me," says Mike.

"Something that involves getting off this bed?" I ask.

"You can do it."

"*whine*"

I follow instructions downstairs...de-bedding and skirting around the closet like it had an infection...and got a piece of cardboard. Mike carefully inserted it under Topo, clamped his hand underneath and the two of us were happily running out the door.

When he took the cover off Topo, outside, Topo BOUNCED away, like he was a little jumping bean. I stood on the porch doing the kind of dance where your head goes back and forth, side to side, while your hips do the same, and you keep shifting feet - like a schizophrenic twist - singing "Mike's my HEEERO he's my HEEERO he's a HEEEERO!"

The neighbors really like us here. Really.

It was 2:30 a.m., and going back inside only entailed continuing the slow comb through my clothing, the reorganization of my closet, the vaccumming and Lysol-ing of my room and the slow, tired crawl into bed at 4am. Not a bad night.

The weekend of fun. Weekend-of-fun.

Thank god it's over. I can't stand this many good times.

(PS, it's been brought to my attention it's really hard to comment here, because my spamblocker has to be intense and a lot of natural conversation strings get lost - you can comment here if you're really itching. ITCHING! ACK! No more of that!)