when did you clean this last?

however, if the alien thing is pervasive, i push eject as soon as I catch on. I cannot engage further; brain will not allow it. this has had the side effect of making not a lot of popular media from my youth stick with me short of "independence day" (humanity decisively tells aliens to fuck off in the final act) and "V" (1980s miniseries; humanity gets invaded by nazi aliens and fights back).

a few of the things I cannot tolerate in my adult life due to overexposure:

ufos: my dad considered himself a regional expert on ufos and ufo sightings and belonged to a mailing list for same. it was not uncommon for him to hold court, reading aloud from some goddamn book or newsletter, like it was the bible. so fuck ufos -- the grays, the warring factions, theories about extradimensional nature of the crafts, I've heard it all and wanted none of it.

jesus christ. it was not uncommon for him to hold court, reading aloud from the bible like it wasn't half-stolen with a bunch of stuff grafted on saying, "yeah basically ignore all that because jesus". there is no way a book compiled over the course of centuries with fucking Saul of Tarsus' errant mail mixed in has anything to offer on modern issues besides "love thy neighbor" and that's the bit no one fucking reads.

Indiana University basketball: Pop was an asshole, drawn to other assholes, and the biggest gaping throbber of the bunch until Rush Limbaugh came along was Coach Bob "Never Bobby, goddammit" Knight. I can't hear the IU fight song without my internal organs wincing. he also screamed at the TV while watching the games, which made my friends who were over at the time nervous as fuck. (it didn't do much for me, either.)

prophecy/prophets/psychics: my dad was obsessed with anything Jeane Dixon said about anything, regardless of her rather high failure rate as regarded prophecy. I was the only 8yo at school convinced the world would end in 1999 because of nostradamus. he'd make investment decisions based on some whackadoodle he heard on the art bell show.

about the only thing i wish i could still argue with him about is politics, because I could take him apart based on scripture, thanks to so many unwanted sermons.

The business hasn't changed. You know, the economics haven't changed. The thing that's changed for me is that I was on the White Lotus and now I can be in a Broadway play. That wasn't true for me five years ago. The economics of theater have changed because we live in a country that is fundamentally unsupportive of the arts. You know, governmentally, there's no federal support for the arts. So now in order to do a play on Broadway, you have to do the White Lotus or else you're not allowed. They have to replace you with somebody more famous.

(If you hadn't done White Lotus and Gilded Age and hadn't sort of blown up as a "star"—)

We wouldn't be sitting here. Absolutely not.

(Your acting ability, what you do on stage, not enough?)

No, that's not how we make those decisions anymore. And you can ask all these extraordinary theater actors who don't do plays anymore because celebrities are doing plays. It's just a different world that we're living in now.

I would say August Osage County that production would not come to Broadway now. Nobody would take a risk economically on that move with a bunch of Chicago actors, a bunch of unknown actors in a company. I don't think the play would move now. I don't think anybody would pony up to do it.

(And Tracy wouldn't have a Pulitzer.)

That's right. And I wouldn't have married him. I'm just kidding. That's probably not true.

(It's a really sad thing you're saying.)