Do you know the way to Notre Dame?

      It was the first night of auditions for a play I was directing. I was talking to a bunch of strangers and needed to make a good impression. So naturally I developed the plague. My eyes itched and watered making me blink constantly, my nose ran with gallons of lovely green snot, my coughing and wheezing would have frightened a consumption patient. My back still not healed, I lurched around the stage like a creature that would be right at home in the tower of a Gothic church shouting, "The bells! The bells!" I'm surprised any of the actors stayed.
      It's always been that way. Whenever I need to look good, I don't. I remember when I had my senior picture taken. The night before, my face was clear and smooth. The next morning pimples had erupted like Mount St. Helens. The photographer, after gasping in horror, had assured me that he could "touch-up" my photo. Back then, before computers allowed us to put Hillary Clinton’s head on a monkey and Dick Chaney's on a donkey, photographers had to use "dodging" and "burning" to touch up photos. (Or actually take a knife or watercolor pencil to the negative.) Dodging was using a small spatula-like device to block the light from an area of a photo when developing. Burning was allowing the light to hit certain areas more than usual. Dodging decreases details while burning increases details.
      Obviously, the photographer thought my photo needed to be dodged. When I received my senior picture proof, there I was, Casper the Friendly Ghost. I complained. He took a watercolor brush to the photo and gave me the skin tones of a lush southern belle. A little more blush and I would have been the splitting image of Shirley Temple minus the curls. I complained again. He suggested a caricature artist. But eventually, after re-shooting (I shot at him several times, but missed) and more darkroom work, I received a photo that looked exactly like ... Richard Nixon’s younger brother.
      Of course, I usually have a certain rumpled look. But not that just-out-of-bed look that, according to People Magazine, women find so attractive in Brad Pitt. No, it's more of a vagrant look, the look of a man who has lived on the streets since his heart was broken by a heartless woman who decided to leave him just because he accidentally lost her cat when it fell into one of his rockets. Like that doesn't happen every day, and the cat did come back. Eventually. And it even had most of its parts. Some women are so unreasonable.
      It takes directing a play to really reduce me to a shambles. I'm always so overwhelmed with all the details that the fact I remember to shower daily is an amazing thing. Once at a intermission, I remember a good friend pulling me aside and actually combing my hair as we discussed the first act. She even spit on my head in a vain attempt to get my hair to stay down or at least pointed in the same direction. At least, I'm assuming that was the reason.
      I do have some good pictures of me. I was walking through Wal-Mart after attending a wedding. I was in my suit and tie. Everything matched for once, and my hair was behaving. Suddenly I saw a photographer had set up in the store and was taking photo sessions. I rushed over to him, got some pictures made and was back to my car just before I was afflicted by full-blown leprosy.
      Anyhow, do you know the way to Notre Dame de Paris? That gypsy girl is waiting for me to pick her up a latte.

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