Snow Day

A forecast of heavy winter stuff all across our section of the state ended with a whimper Thursday. While Mayberry got a nice heaping of snow, Asheville didn't. I go to stay home with Your Sister anyhow. We had Mexcian lunch and a snowball fight after a quick trip to the school to attend to her classroom. Then she slept. And you are shocked.

I fiddled around in my workshop for a bit before he hunkered down on the couch to watch TiFaux material, including Jeffrey, the adaptation of Paul Rudnick's early-90s play about a gay man terrified of dealing with AIDS. It's got a great cast, filled with Hey-I-Know-Those-Guys. Then we finally saw the Scientology episode of "South Park." Your Sis is slowly being converted to this show.

As the play wraps up this weekend, I'll tackle some back-burner events like going to the gym again and working on mini-comics and the big painting. But Sunday night is for the Super Bowl, which I'll TiFaux and watch in toto.

Picture of the Day
I want this shirt.


In The News
The Aqua Teen Hunger Bombs is a pretty big story in my online communities. You've heard far more about it than I have, I'm sure, but the consensus among the level-headed geeks is that the sign-placers should have gotten permits, and the larger company should have expected a reaction like that of Boston, but the Boston authorities are playing the indignant "national security" card to cover their zealous paranoia. Granted, Boston is the home to Logan Airport, and if any location has a right to be a bit jumpy, it's Logan. But this didn't happen at Logan. In fact, it happened all over the country, and Boston is the only place to call in the bomb quad for the equivalent of Lite-Brites. The lesson: Everyone was a little stupid here.

Bad Business

Some of the laminated cards are coming apart again. I could call the company to complain, but they already have my money, and I won't accept their offer to redo the cards. They don't deserve a third try to get it right. A member of one of my message boards works at a local office supply store and informed me they can provide me decent laminated cards quickly, and they're right down the street, conveniently enough. So I'll call him at work today and order a batch to replace the failed cards.

That first company is an offshoot of a printer we use at work, and I'm going to suggest we --

Hold on, I got my dander up explaining this. I just called the parent company to complain. I called them on the cell phone and talked to a project manager who works with us. I told him that I was calling as me and not a representative of our office. I explained what happened, told him where I was taking the cards today, and suggested they look at the lamination process. He was good about it, and he wants to see the bad cards so they can determine what went wrong. No hard feelings with the parent company at all. But I'm still going to OfficeMax to get new cards, and it might all be done before I head back home today.

I'd also like to take this moment to register my astonishment over magnetic tape. This -- I just -- MAGNETIC TAPE.

Picture of the Day
This is so foul and alien as to be strangely alluring.

Day Thirty-Three: The Cast Gift

It's a theater tradition of giving tokens of respect to the cast and crew of a show. It can anything: roses, candy, mementos. Greenville Little Theatre had the great idea of shrinking down a show's poster and giving it laminated as fridge magnets. I have five from that company. The back of the magnets have a quote from the show. The Odd Couple magnet says "Nature didn't intend for poker to be be played that way." The Sound of Music magnet says "How do hold a moonbeam in your hand." I liked the idea so much that I wanted to continue the tradition even after I moved to other companies. But I didn't have a copy of the official Hot Roof poster. Fortunately, I'm a drawist. I just made my own.

I had thought about this for about a month now and sketched some ideas during rehearsal. I started off with a literal notion of a stylized cat on a roof and various forms of title logos. But it seemed a bit too on-the-nose, and I moved to items used during the show. The one thing seen throughout the production is Brick's alcohol, and it's the fundamental problem everyone works around. Maggie competes with it, Gooper and Mae depend on it, Big Daddy and Mama lament it. It made sense then that it would be prominent in the poster. That allowed me to put the title in the shadow of the glass to mirror Maggie's position. She's eclipsed by his dependency on booze. And sense she's the title character, well, this was too good a visual pun not to use. I also wanted to fill out the poster art with something suggesting the other characters, and I thought of the wedding rings. The play concerns three marriages in distinct conditions, and two rings would represent the spouses of each.

I needed the quote to complete the tradition. Fortunately, I had one immediately ready. The reverend is angling for a memorial gift for his church and spends his stage time talking about what other churches have gotten from wealthy widows. Gooper appears to direct him to something worth asking for: an air conditioner. When the reverend tries to change the subject during Act III, he goes right back to gifts and the Southern heat while complimenting his hosts: "I think this house is the coolest house in the Delta." Bingo. Out of context, the line salutes the cast and crew. That's my first and only choice for a magnet quote.

I took a photo at home of the a glass with iced tea to suggest a chilled liquor and drew it in Illustrator. I also took pics of rings and drew them. Then I made the logo fit inside the shadow and grabbed the theatre logo from their website. I made it approximately the same size as the previous magnets so it'll fit right in with them on the fridge.

I contacted a company the office works with and they were able to take my file as a PDF, print it, laminate it, cut it, and deliver it to me in an afternoon. When I got their after work, I discovered the lamination was shoddy on some cards, and they were redone. Right as I was leaving, and after I paid, I was informed they had charged me for re-laminating those shoddy cards. And that, ladies and gents, is how you lose business. I shan't go there when I do this for my next show. I then boogies over to Home Depot and found the exactly what I needed. Magnetic tape. This is surely the work of a highly civilized society. Yes, it's made in China. But my point is that it was something I didn't even know about but was searching for.

Got home, cut the tape, discovered laminate was coming off of a few cards again (doubling my conviction of taking my business elsewhere), and made the magnets in about 20 minutes. It looks right nice on the fridge. I'll give them out this weekend before a performance. I hope the theatre doesn't mind this cheek of making an unofficial poster, but then again, this is a great advertisement for me. If I can't be in a play, I could do the artwork for it.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks
Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague
Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party

Picture of the Day
Why, it's a magnet. Made by ME.

Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party

Victoria's still out, the younger boy is MIA, the middle girl is the walking dead, and we learn the oldest girl will be no longer available after today. We decide to take pictures of the happy-birthday scene with her in it to make up for her absence last weekend. But we will not have pictures will all the children. I feel a bit sicky myself, but the gunk I wake up with goes away after lunch. I carry DayQuil with me just in case but never use it.

The green room prop table has a bulletin board above it, and one of Mae's real daughters (also a crewmember) has started a stick-figure art gallery of scenes from the play. It's cute stuff. I show her my early sketches (which I posted in this thread), and she demands they go up as well. That leads to the kids wanting their own gallery space, and now the board is covered in backstage art.

It's a dandy crowd, even applauding for the new managing director comments. While she talks to them, I'm reading about the first Americans to orbit the planet. Once I hear my early cues to get ready (Maggie repeats the line "laws of silence don't work"), I put on my suit jacket even though the audience won't see me for another half-hour and move to stage-left for my Act I offstage lines. Ten minutes later, I'm reading again. The reverend and doctor still check their scripts to determine their Act I cues. The departing Gooper daughter has made notes for each of us. Mine says I was lucky to be in "Sound of Music." I don't get to tell her I was the bad guy. I'll be sad to see her go. She didn't misbehave backstage, and she hit her lines well.

Daddy conquers the audience in Act II. If his was a stand-up act, we wouldn't be willing to carry on once he leaves the stage. Act III feels good, and Gooper comes out a little angrier tonight. I like it, but I don't want to change up the character in mid-run. We'll see what happens in the subsequent shows; maybe natural flow and adjustment will allow him to show his temper more.

We have a cast party after the show at Susan's house, and the small turnout does nothing to diminish the fun. We have three types of soups -- Mexican, potato and a thick chili -- and assorted snack stuff. I learn that the Gooper Groupies tell Brick about Gooper directing the singing kids, something Brick never noticed. The crew noticed today that he looked and was cracking up at the sight. Big Mama sits right in front of Gooper at that moment, and I perform the moves for her as we sit and eat soup. We all joke about what we'd love to do on the last performance as on- and offstage pranks, things we would never actually do, you understand. We talk technical stuff about slightly off sound cues and small prop adjustments. It's like any other party among co-workers; we talk shop. And the women debate Hugh Jackman vs. Sean Connery. Also, there's still debate about Brick's sexuality (the character, not the actor).

Susan tells us that the director doesn't like to have last-week rehearsals to brush up our lines. A table vote is taken, and I say I'm comfortable without it. Brick is for it. Everyone else is agin it. I tell him, sincerely, that as I work so close to the theatre, I'll be there if he wants a run-through. We'll see. I suspect the absent Big Daddy won't need one, nor the absent Maggie. We've worked this play since November. We shouldn't need a line-through for the final three shows.

And for now, it's a welcome bit of rest and medicine to get ready for those final performances. Now its starting to sink in: This big project is almost over.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks
Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague

Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague

Victoria is out, which makes the stage-left manager in charge of backstage. I'm not worried; she knows this play by now, and Susan the stage manger calls the cues from the lightbooth. The oldest girl is also out again. Another child erupts into a nasty coughing fit near the drinking fountain, and it's not nearly as appetizing anymore. The fountain, not the child. We get a look at the first round of official pictures, and they are quite nice. The other half is supposed to arrive next weekend, and then we can place our orders for prints.

Big Daddy admits during warm-ups that he didn't see a signer at all; it was an over-dramatic coughing fit. A Fringe Festival is held downstairs, right below the stage, and we find a trail of carpets from the green room to the stage-left wing to cushion our footsteps. We can hear the noise wafting up the backstage staircase. It sounds like the Peanuts teachers imitating wrestlers.

It's our biggest crowd yet, and they're initially quiet. But once Maggie and Mae get catty, they laugh, and I hear an alarming mass of peoples. The birthday candles are only half-lit as I take the cake onstage, but Big Mama lights the rest during a quiet moment for her. Turns out the backstage lighter was acting up. I assure tonight's backstage chief that it's OK. Talky Boy is flat-out rambunctious tonight, and even a costume lady whisper-yells to them to shut it. They're getting listless with tedium.

I'm told after the show that the light-booth crew has formed the Gooper Groupies from a mix of pity and pride in what we've done with the character. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. Also, the cast party is tomorrow, not Super Bowl Sunday, as I thought.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks
Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work

Day Thirty: Back to Work

There's a small anxiety about starting up again. Standing backstage, waiting to heed a cue, my mind thinks no time has passed from last weekend, but my muscles know it's been a while. My little habits and ticks are off. Right before the play starts, the director tells us to insert a pause right before Mae and Gooper leave Act III. This kind of note doesn't bother me, as it demands such a small change. Now if he told us to drop a line, we'd be in trouble.

All the kids are back, and the return of the younger boy means Talky Boy has been cranked to 11. Maybe it's the hiatus, but he's especially annoying tonight. The returning girl seems like she's running in a low gear. the reverend asks if I see him and Gooper's asides as a comedy shtick like Abbott and Costello. I handle this question carefully, because his question suggests where he wants those characters to go, and I don't wanna try that as we start our second weekend of shows. What I say instead is that I think the reverend speaks so often of memorial gifts to local churches because he thinks Daddy's death will be a boon to his. He seems satisfied with that.

I have a lot of trouble with a contact lens, and take in so much saline solution in my system that my stomach falls out. I miss the first part of warm-ups because of this. Also, the damn shoes have apparently shrunk back to their crippling shapes. I'm starving backstage, but I avoid the giant bowl of candy lest I take the stage with a green tongue. My reversion to a pre-run schedule, even a brief one, has ruined my theatre diet, and I'm starving.

It's a sizable crowd out there, and they take forever to get back to their seats after intermission. The reverend and I hover on stage-right waiting for them. I just read earlier tonight the depiction of Alan Shepard's 15-minute flight into space and how it began with a four-hour delay. And once they sit, they aren't in the show. Even the kids' singing fails to entertain. Big Daddy has to work to win them over. He seems to have some trouble getting started, and he later tells us he was distracted by the sign-language provider near the front of the stage. I didn't notice ther person at all. I knew we were offering audio transcription for the seeing impaired this weekend, but I didn't know we had a signer too. I wonder how they did with "euremia" and, of course, "poontang." I imagine this poor, unprepared female signer suddenly busting out a DX crotch chop.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks
Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up