living it up at the Lyceum

When I left the Lyceum last night I had a feeling that I was forgetting something important.  So much so that I stopped just outside the building and looked down at my empty hands.  “You’re forgetting something, Meg.“ I said out loud.  But still I couldn’t remember what it was.  I had my purse, my car keys, my coat.  I figured it must be the stack of Try and Stop Me/Lucky manuscripts that I had remembered to sign and return to the Lyceum.  It wasn’t until I was home and chatting on the phone, that it struck.  My beautiful puzzle!  Dabnabbit. 

Thank goodness Christianne will keep it safe for me until I am able to get over there again.  I’m planning on taking it to the frame shop and seeing if they can do a two sided frame.  I want to hang this puzzle that the Book Jackets made for me on my writing room wall.  And if the frame is two sided then sometimes I can have the beautiful, be-jewelled painted side facing me, and sometimes I can have the reverse side where they all autographed for posterity. 

Yvon and his Mom brought some kick-ass Mucklishiousness.  And Jenna, arrived with a zillion bowls of the best kind of penny candy, (which we devoured.)  After everybody alternately praised and critiqued TBM we played, Pictionary!  GASP!  Everybody.  Even me, who royally sucks at this kind of thing.  No matter.  We had some incredibly smart people around this table and they were able to guess my word “hallucinating” even though my brain picked that moment to turn to mush.  I am not good at this type of thing.

I remember when we shot The Big Chill, and we’d have these get-togethers and there would be food and music and conversation and then out would come the dreaded Trivial Pursuit.  It was a new game and oh my was I bad.  Everybody elses pieces were whizzing around the board as the rest of the cast gleefully got answer after answer right.  And there was me, stuck at Go/Start.  I am not exaggerating here my piece never moved.

I guess I could blame it on not growing up with TV and only being allowed to go to the Shakespeare Festival for movies.  That and we saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (a terrible disappointment) My Fair Lady (My favorite) and A Hard Day’s Night (I was very young and don’t remember much except it was a drive in black and white movie and the Beatles ran around a lot and screaming girls chased them.  And we also got to see The Yellow Submarine. 

I’m not sure if all the Buster Keaton movies that Mama would bring home from school with an old projector would count.  They were movies, but they were silent and we didn’t see them at a real movie theater.  We saw them on a white sheet that we pinned to the living room wall.

That was it, I think.  The total sum of my movie going experience growing up.  I remember babysitting once and Charlie’s Angels came on t.v.  I got really scared.  All those guns and plots to kill.  I had to turn it off.  Funny huh?

Anyway, maybe that’s why I sucked at Trivial Pursuit, but what’s my excuse for the other categories? 

But last night, at the Lyceum, Pictionary was fun.  Although when I got home and told Don about it, he said, “You talked?“ 

“Yeah,“ I said.  “How else would they know how to figure out what the ending was?  How would I manage ing?  I had to give them the hint that the ending had 3 letters.“

“Meg,“ Don said gravely.  “That’s cheating.  You aren’t allowed to talk.“

Well, sheesh!  I didn’t know that.  Maybe that’s why they figured out what mine was so fast.  I was talking through the whole thing.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 in Chewing the Fat