The Cake

So, today is our stage manager's birthday. Our fabulous Emileena is an astounding @#$ years young. And, as I am co-Social Director for the tour, I thought it best to plan festivities for her. Ester offered to get Magnolia cupcakes, and Leigh (my partner in Social Directing crime) agreed to my plan, so we were rolling. And that meant I had to make a cake.

FYI for those of you who are not related to me: I inherited my mother's baking genes, which means that cakes and I aren't friends. However, the cake came out of a box that said "Duncan Hines" on it, so I figured I was safe.

WRONG!!

First, the cake started overflowing the pan and made the apartment smell like burning fish. Next, after cleaning up that mess, the cake refused to cool. I let it sit over an hour, and then carefully ran a knife along the edges and readied the cake to flip onto a nice serving plate. One. Two. Three. FWUNK! The bottom of the cake separated itself from the top, and I was left with a jagged mess. No matter, I thought to myself. I'll just flip the cake over and frost the smooth rounded side. WRONG! So, left with a bunch of cake pieces, and a tub of frosting, I decided the prudent thing to do was to "glue" everything together, stick it in the refrigerator and go to bed.

The next morning, I was left with something closely resembling a collision between a chocolate truck and the Swiss alps. However, even in my 4am haze, I had a brilliant idea. It's a character choice! I've created one of Max's famed "mud pies" for Emileena. I poured on the rest of the frosting, wrapped the sucker up and packed it away for our trip to the Bronx.

After load out, Emileena was dragged to the mens dressing room, where cupcakes and mud pie were revealed, and the cast sang a glorious "Happy Birthday" in four part harmony. Emileena was beaming, as was everyone else. Theatreworks tours are famed for causing their casts to bond forever, or never speak again. Looks like we're doing pretty OK.

Kid quote of the day: A small munchkin (somewhere) watched the scene change into Grandma's attic and, at its completion, cried out, "I knew it!" I still have no idea what s/he meant.

Call tomorrow: 6am, Manhattan garage near Columbia. These 4am wake-ups are starting to kill me.