the tony's, greg kotis & me



for once I am proud and pleased to be a tv addict, because I just happened to turn on the tony awards in time to see my close personal friend, Greg Kotis, win two Tony's for Urinetown on sunday night.
Greg and me, we go way, way back. We spoke on the phone, twice. It went like this:


me: hello?

gk: hi, is ayun there?

me: oh, no, she went out with some friends, she'll be back later.

gk: OK, could you tell her that greg called?

me: sure.


cool, huh?


and then there was the second time, which was even better:


gk: hello?

me: hi, is ayun there?

gk: no, is this coleen?

me: yeah, I spoke to her earlier

gk: yeah - I have no idea where she went.

me: oh ok, thanks.


woo hoo!


all overdone cuteness aside, it was really thrilling to turn on my little tv and see ayun looking so shiny and happy and elegant in her lovely red dress, and greg looks more like aidan quinn than ever when televised. I loved his acceptance speech and that he was visibly nervous by the end of it. I know I would just get up there and bawl. Nash shouted, "ayun, ayun, it's ayun and inky's daddy!" and Liam said "I'mintown won AGAIN!"


It put me in mind of a silly experience I had in January, when I was in New York for the day. My friends from camp keep pestering me for tickets to Urinetown, as if I could get them some, because I'm supposedly friends with the writer, and I keep explaining that look, see, it's ayun I'm friends with, and I know her through the zine, right, the east village inky, you KNOW, like I keep telling you?, and I usually wave around a copy of the EVI as I say this, for good measure.
Well, we were standing on the subway platform having one of these conversations, it was aram, jessie, fried & me, and jessie said, Right, it's the east village inky DADDY who wrote Urinetown, we got it, and then aram and jessie launched into this convoluted anectode about a performance artist they once saw who would sing out, "what's my name, what's my claim to fame?" to which the response was "Phoenix Rising's daddy!", which of course inspired them to begin chanting the greg kotis version like so:


"what's my name, what's my claim to fame?"

"east village inky's daddy!"


now, really, can't you picture that going over big at the Tony's?