Three-Day Weekend

The LA Theatre Works is a nationally touring company that does staged readings of plays. Because it stems from LA, big-name actors are often involved. Last year we saw a drama on the Pentagon Papers. This year they are touring in The Tennessee Monkey Trial. Both shows rely heavily if not exclusively on trial transcripts.

You might remember last summer when I read scripts for the local theatre. I advocated Inherit the Wind, also based on the monkey trial, and I suggested we work around the limited repertory and stage resources this way:

... I suggest the theatre do this as a staged reading with double casting. We can go with simple props and scripts and old-time radio microphones. The stage action is insignificant; the dialogue is everything. If we focus on that, we can abstract the set to the black-box level.

... I phrased it as "We could do it this way and this way. It would be cheap! We won't have to memorize! We could rehearse in half the time!" I still think a bare-bones staged reading of the play with seven people playing all 30 characters (including the monkey) could work. Scrap the spectacle, get to the text. That will make people connect with the script without being distracted by the yokel caricatures.

The idea was kibboshed. And what did I see on Friday?

A staged reading in a virtual black box setting with doubled roles. Thirteen people played about 25 roles. Stage mics. Simple costumes. This is a national show with celebrity actors. I feel utterly vindicated. I strike the Caesar pose.

We did have celebs. The play was led by Ed Asner, and the man was a fucking lion. I have never seen a dramatic performance this good. He owned. He ruled. He should have struck the Caesar pose. Funnily enough, almost all the actors listed a performance on Law and Order.

The show was from the trial transcripts. Small-town Tennessee school board folk wanted to challenge the state's new Butler Act, which forbade teaching evolution as a contrary theory to Creationism. The official state biology textbook, which predated the act by two decades, did just that. The board remembered that the school football coach also substituted as a biology teacher, and he affirmed that he might have read the evolution passage from the biology textbook. The board found their poster-boy, and Scopes found the sheriff to turn himself in. The media were informed of his arrest, and the town, as planned, became the national hot spot and was soon wallowing in money.

Clarence Darrow, who just successfully defended Leopold and Loeb, joined a three-man team to defend Scopes. Former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryant, who has since become a fundamentalist lecturer, was recruited to argue against Darrow alongside the state attorney general. This was spectacle by design.

Darrow's team targeted the Butler Act while the prosecution targeted the affirmed legal transgression. Bryant was eventually called to the stand himself as a Biblical scholar. He deflected Darrow's attacks on the Bible (where did Cain's wife come from, how long was a Genesis day, how were there three mornings before the sun was created), but Darrow's point was made and broadcast to the world. Political pressure nudged the judge to go light on Scopes. Darrow didn't care what the verdict here was; he always planned to take it to the Supreme Court.

But the judge scuttled the case. Because the jury refused to set the fine, the judge did so, and he surpassed the legally allowed amount. The State Supreme Court ruled quickly that this negated the conviction, and the trial progressed no further. Darrow couldn't appeal, and the Supreme Court avoided the case.

It's a different story than Inherit the Wind, better in many ways. The acting was superb. The cast took the stage after the play for a QnA session, and I happened to close the night with my question: Did they discuss the nuances between conveying a transcript and performing a script? They didn't know how to respond at first, but they did mention how the narrator frames the recreation into a storyline instead of conversation, and I was happy with that.

Great show.

I've since spent time refining the comic script and lettering the comic on the computer. I adjusted some art gaffes and now have more than a week to add spot colors. I'm very, very close to finishing and uploading the procedural on Facebook.

All that workshop hunching drove me to run Sunday, and I got enough a groove going to run four miles. If I can extend that two more miles, I can attempt a 10k run. I think I'd like to try that this summer.

For Valentine's Day, we watched the Fiddler on the Roof and the DVD's documentaries on the actors and production. It's such a weepie.

Picture of the Day
Another Lost wallpaper.

Vee Dee

Your Sister has demanded in a most demanding way that we do nothing for Valentine's Day. I bought her nothing, I have nothing planned. I almost, almost bought her greeting card with an audio chip playing Lucy Van pelt complaining about Snoopy's post-kiss dog germs. But it would have violated the "anything" clause of her demands. I passed. This was at the Asheville Mall's B. Dalton store which closes tomorrow.

I did buy a book there called Watching the Watchmen by series artist Dave Gibbons. it's a coffee-table collection of preliminary designs and page thumbnails detailing the construction of the comic. Because the store is closing, they're holding a half-off clearance sale, and it was a bargain. Series writer Alan Moore is resolute that he will no nothing to help studios adapt his works, but he encourages the artists to cash in. Gibbons has done this and has been involved in the movie from the ground floor. I plan for this to be my last related purchase. I won't crack open any of the books or the toy until the comic is done.

And I'm close. I have 1/4 a page left to ink, some small black areas to fill, and some mistakes to fix with paint. Then I'll scan it, letter it, and apply spot grays.

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If What's-His-Head is still being a doofus, please accept my Valentine's gift:


Happy Valentine's Day, Sis.

Being Nice Only Leads to Defeat

I thought I'd be a nice son and send my Mom a bouquet for Valentine's Day. I wanted to surprise her. I found a decent online flower service, and it offers a nice gift basket. Thought she'd dig it. She works at the hospital, and I know that it could be complicated to send the package to the correct mailbox/receptionist. I found the address online.

I then rechecked the flower service and realized it was a national service with ties to a shop I know from my hometown. I called that shop, hoping to save some service charges and maybe get the order delivered quicker and correctly. The store told me the bouquet I wanted was only available through the online service. They were no help. Pout.

I go back to the national website and prepare to enter the right address. I use the hospital site to find a number, and I call the front desk. I ask to talk to someone in my mom's department: neonatal ICU. It's a huge branch. Dozens of people. I knew that they would all know mom and could be trusted to keep this a secret until the order arrived in a few days.

So of course the operator patches me straight through to Mom's phone. And she answers. And I'm busted. Total happenstance. The operator had no idea who I was or why I was calling. Of all the hundreds of people I could have been routed to, it's Mom. So I tell her the truth. I even let her choose what type of arrangement she'd prefer. She picks the chocolate basket. We share a laugh. I just talked to her last night, and we're already caught up. Phone call over. Surprise ruined.

Fuck.

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Dharma wallpaper. Lost is on tonight.

Who Draws the Drawmen?

We attended a "Celtic" concert on Saturday night. It was the Scottish group Tannahill Weavers, a group I swear we saw five years back. They've performed for about 40 years, and it was a quick, lively show. Your Sis got her first copy of their music in her senior year of college, but lost it. She bought a new CD of it after the show and had it autographed by the band.

The inking is flying by, and I'm practically half-way done. In one weekend. Granted, I shackled myself to the drawing board to motor through it all. I listened to NPR and horror-movie commentaries all weekend. I drew a few hours Saturday morning, ran against a bad wind, ate lunch, and drew some more. Then came the concert. Sunday was all inking.

I'll slog through a page and put it aside after a disappointed appraisal. I won't look at it for a few hours, and when I do, I find myself slightly delighted with it. It's not professional quality, but it's not bad for amateur work.

I am treading into dangerous geek territory over the Watchmen film. I picked up an enlarged, recolored copy of the original trade, and I found a toy.

Imagine if Lucas didn't produce toys until 25 years after the first film. That's what it feels like to see and hold a Rorschach toy on Friday. Now I don't want Watchmen towels or toothbrushes, but a souvenir like this is just tasteful enough. I don't need any other of the figures. As noted comic writer Grant Morrison said recently, and I'm paraphrasing, everyone likes Rorschach despite his insanity and violence because he is the lone undaunted hero. He gets the job done.

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Here's a before and after for page three:


I'm documenting the progress for a Facebook album similar to my painting prodecural.

Progress

From this week's Lost:Remember the water bottle from the canoe? It was from Ajira Air. ABC has already put up a fake website for the airline. Also, I realized yesterday that the Oceanic Six have recreated their circumstances from before their crash on the island. Sayid is fighting shadowy agents, Hugo is locked up and bedeviled, Jack is a drunk with a body in tow, Kate is on the lam even though she's doing the right thing, Aaron is headed to where he shouldn't go, and Sun has a secret. Maybe they have to relive their original destinies.

After eating raw fish Wednesday, I went the other route and burned dinner last night. My fried chicken was charred black. I'm still learning my skillet-fu.

I may have finished the major pencils for the comic. I can start inking tomorrow.

Picture of the Day
Here's the poster for the convention where the comic anthology will be unveiled.

A Pattern Emerges

Wake, draw, drive, work, drive, draw, eat, TV, sleep. God willing, I'll start inking this weekend.

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We used to order our robots from the Christmas Sears catalog.

The Magnetism of the Stage

Your Sis met me in Asheville on Friday, and we attended the first of a two-night stint by the Aquila Theatre. This night, they performed The Iliad. That's what the brochures, posters, and tickets said anyway. The Iliad. So I expected the entire Trojan war, obviously distilled into one night. Paris and the Golden Apple leading to the bribe of Helen and Cassandra the prophet and the Trojan Horse and Achilles dying from an arrow to the ankle. All the stuff that makes the Trojan War a fun story.

We find out right before the curtain goes up that this is The Iliad: Book One. That's Book One out of 24 books that make up the Greek classic. What we see, instead of all the fun stuff, is a stand-off between Achilles and King Agamemnon over the rights to seized booty. The whole play is less than 80 minutes long. We do get some Greek Gods, but mostly this is a series of conversations about why war is a bummer. This is not what I expected. It was OK, and I appreciated elements that suggested a style of theatre from the days of Homer. It was black-box theatre with multipurpose props and creative lighting and sound. But I wanted a horsey.

The following night, they performed Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and knocked it out of the park. I can't imagine how they could wring one more drop of entertainment from the script. Six people performed all the parts, and they all did the heavy lifting. Brilliant theatre. I can never keep Shakespeare's comedies straight, and I thought I perhaps had seen this before. it wasn't until the play was half and hour from the ending that I remembered seeing the Montford Park Players do the same show and how mild their version was in comparison.

This night's comedy made me remember why I love performing comedy and how I could maybe possibly perhaps do the sex comedy after all. I got a call Friday night from another actor asking me to audition, and again I explained I couldn't. I told him about the comic, and, frankly, I suspect he didn't believe me. Watching Saturday's play got me itching to do the show, but I couldn't forget the pitfalls of the last show. By coincidence -- maybe -- I ran into the theatre president Sunday, and he made the sales pitch for me to audition. Turns out the Saturday audition garnered no male actors. None. Again I considered doing the show by juggling my comic schedule. They were desperate. I could write my own check here. They could work around me this time. I was torn for a good hour until I looked again at the performance dates and my penciled pages.

I chose the comic. And that's my final decision. I've had four -- FOUR -- appeals for me to do the play, and I'm tired of trying to shoehorn it in. Unless the dates of the play change, I can't do it. And let us keep in mind that this theatre can't find three other men to do a comedy. Even if I jumped aboard, who would play the other roles? What did they do before I moved here?

The comic continues to bubble along. I had an epiphany yesterday that lead me to the kind of thematic detail that my high-school student brain never believed was accidental. But this one was utterly unconscious. It appeared before my eyes, without my manipulation, and I'm shocked by the workings of the subterranean mindwaves. I can't claim credit for it in any way.

In other news, my Steelers won a close game.

As I look out the window, it's pouring snow.

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I loved these things when I was in middle school.

I Do Not Run to the Rescue

Cast your mind back to Tuesday, when I was asked if I would direct the upcoming sex play. Now, return with me to yesterday when I received another farce call. An actress (the accused from the 2007 courtroom play) called to give me the sales pitch for auditioning. She tried to describe the play, and I interrupted to inform her I helped pick it last year. I told her I had championed it against the other farces we read. I did not say how much I wanted to do this play nor did I say exactly why I couldn't do the play. But I did pass on it, and she asked me to think of and alert other youngish actors to try out for the play. Hence the Facebook notice.

She didn't know why the original director bowed out. I told her. She told me the new directors were a husband/wife team, half of which played Scrooge just last month. That makes the idea of tackling the play intriguing for lots of reasons, but I still can't commit to the play. One wonders who they'll corral if they don't get the young actors they need. Can you do a sex farce with 60-year-olds? Do we want to see that?

Again, I feel like I'm abandoning this group when they need help the most. But I look at this comic in progress, and that's what I want to do now. So there you go.

Speaking of plays, my college buddy with whom I had lunch Wednesday thought I was a lawyer because she saw my courtroom photos on Facebook.

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Bling bling beep boop wah-WAH.

Lost and Found

Via Facebook, I'm talking to lots of folks I haven't seen in years and years. I had lunch yesterday with an alum of my first college. A gal I hadn't seen this century. It was a great lunch. Asheville now has a breakfast bar that stays open after lunch. It's called the Over Easy Cafe, and it's a few doors down from mellow Mushroom. Hot cakes for lunch is bueno. She looks great. Turns out she's dating a guy who now plays for a band we listened to in college.

We're trying to get a Super Bowl party, but it doesn't seem feasible. Either people live too far away, are busy with a new baby, or don't care for football. We now own a party TV. It must be stared at.

There was one line on Lost last night that almost collapsed me into a ball of tears. Another solid episode.

Picture of the Day
This is me doing the comic right now. I'm now drawing the comic every day. I'm getting up and drawing for about half an hour before work and hitting the drawing table for at least an hour when I get home. It's strong progress so far, but I dread the inking process.

Drama!

I walked in the door yesterday, and the phone rang. It was my spring director, preparing me for a great big request. The director of the upcoming play was just ordered by her doctor to avoid stress for two months. The auditions are Thursday. She can't direct. Would I direct the sex farce?

This makes the second time I've been asked to direct since summer. Again, I turned it down. I can't commit to it now. Also, the previous objections remain. No one knows me. I've done three plays. Why would any well-acquainted repertory listen to me? No matter what, this play is going to have issues. It's a wordy script. Lots of back-and-forth and repetition for humor. Whoever directs it has missed out on weeks if not months of preparation. A director shouldn't approach the script as cold as the auditioning actors. They need guidance.

Let me be the diva for a second: They really need me in this play, and I can't do it. I don't know who they can corral into it, and I bet they don't know either. The possibility exists that they will bump this play back to the summer, and use this new downtime to renovate the theatre further. This is probably best for all involved. They could also start the next show's rehearsals earlier and get that play nailed down tight.

I got more details about the Sunday play screw-up. The two onstage actors jumped ahead to the next act and didn't realize it. Two other actors walked onstage -- without cues -- to right the ship. The original actors not only didn't recognize what was happening, but they managed to get the new actors offstage. Somehow they later realized what was happening and returned to the Act One material. The replacement director for this play was brought in to rehearsals with only three weeks til curtain, and she discovered the original director -- wracked by leukemia -- was too distracted to have blocked anything. He was removed from the play after two rehearsals where he passed out multiple times. Like you, I'm much more curious to see a train wreck, and I might go on Sunday.

I did agree to join the spring director's artistic committee to act as a secondary theatre board. It sounds like a small commitment that can build the momentum the theatre needs to get its head together.

Picture of the Day
The secret to House.

Noses to the Grindstone

I met my personal deadline for the comic this weekend. I wanted to have the comic completely thumbnailed. I wanted to design my superheroes. I wanted to design my space ship. And I wanted to make the panel grids on the full-size art boards. They all got did. I plan on making a Facebook photo album documenting the whole process. I now have five weeks to complete a six-page comic, and I feel good about where I am.

Your Sis spent the entire weekend reading books for her new semester classes. She went through, I think, four version of Beowulf, and an Elie Wiesel anthology. Her brain is numb. We spent spare moments vegging in front of the TV and then would break the huddle to get back to work.

I ran into members of the current play and learned they had a similar onstage disaster. Somehow they jumped ahead to Act Two before finishing Act One. The original director became too sick to complete rehearsals, and a last-second replacement turned the noir thriller into a comedy. I can see that actually, but that changes timing and delivery. I wish I had the initiative to attend the show, but I'm so disheartened by the recent theatre troubles that I don't have the inclination. And I feel like I'm abandoning those putting forth all their efforts. The only performance we could catch is next Sunday, the same day as the Super Bowl.

Picture of the Day
Your Sister after studying all weekend.

The Curtain is Risen.

Let me share with you a secret. A shocking revelation that will no doubt reshape your perception of the universe. You will be changed. You shan't ever go back to the innocence you enjoyed until this very significant moment. Gird yourself. Scrunch up your face to dilute the white-hot flash from the mushroom cloud of the truth bomb.

Ready?

Attend: Your Sister is prone to fretting.

Don't stone the prophet. I burden you with reality to prepare you for the divulged dimension we shall now inhabit together.

The new semester includes her first attempt at teaching seniors. And she was unnerved. Actually she was doubly nerved. Her nerves had nerves. Then she realized she had taught most of these kids before, and they regarded her fondly. So, no, Mrs. Crabapple, you're not teaching Dangerous Minds. Chillax. She celebrated the easing of tensions with some TV and hot chocolate.

I continued to delineate my short comic. Literally. I'm thumbnailing my story to fit six pages, and I have to cut scenes I had great hopes for. The plot is shifting, but I know how it should start and end. The middle, where the protagonist must be convinced to act, is the trick.


Picture of the Day
The view from above. Click to embiggen.

I'm Going to Blab.

Lost was really really good last night, and they are truly stepping up the action. When a character deflected repeated requests to explain what was going on, he was slapped and promptly spilled the beans. This is what the show needs to do right now. Explicate. Pay off. Reward the loyal viewers, and last night appears to be the right start to the last two seasons.

I made a dish that required crumbled Saltines, and it surprisingly didn't taste white-trashy at all.

Your Sister begins the news semester today, and she continues to fret about teaching seniors. I try to remind her that they need her passing grade to graduate. She has the Power of Grayskull. She alone can determine their fate. I'd make a chart of bribe hierarchies. ("I will not respond to any muffin devoid of chocolate. If said muffin chocolate is revealed to be laxatives, your body will be buried in the end zone. Also, I like argyle socks.")

+ + +

In the Cool News
Obama has been busy. He took his oath again last night (sans Bible, and man is that raising a stink). He's going to overturn the Bush ban on federal funds going to goreign agencies that provide abortion services today on this 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. He froze the salaries of his senior staff, began legislation to close Gitmo, and called Middle East leaders to work on that whole blood-feud thing. He's workin'.

As are the people who make a living kvetching to their audiences. The local radio preacher is practically declaring America is dead, and how is "Prayer Time" hour of comment is a legal use of religious resources I can't imagine. The usual national suspects are prophesying doom. But mostly they exude the sourest of sour grapes. All of them had a favorite GOP candidate, and all of them lost. Most of them didn't get beyond May as viable candidates. And there is no immediate sign of sure charismatic leadership. Palin is their best bet. Huckabee is developing a media platform with a book tour and a new FOX News show. But both reach to the moral conservatives, assuming that bloc of voters lay dormant in the November elections. They didn't. They voted. They lost. Why fish in that barrel again? It's desperation.

Hillary had two nay votes for her Senate confirmation yesterday. One was from S.C., and he only did so to appease the state party that still can't support a female candidate for any office beyond superintendent of education. Governor? Senator? Not in South Carolina. Certainly not as a Republican. There's too much cultural tradition to keep women subordinate. So how can that state hope to carry palin in 2012? How can any moral-conservative with a strict religious upbringing vote for a woman to lead the country when they won't let a woman lead their church? It won't happen. The GOP can only get her elected by pursuing economic conservatism. And only after they etach her what that means.

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This is a great shirt.

We're Inaugured

As soon as my stomach-ick vanished, Your Sister developed it. Hers was much milder, but the signs are clear: The abdomen was swollen and tender, and she had nausea. It was gone in a few days.

My back has again acted up -- further proof that I am old -- and I'm testing remedies. The heat wraps are nice, but the IcyHot lotion is an immediate boon. I think the cold mixed with my office chair to wrack my lower spine. It only flared up again a few days ago so I no longer suspect it's an onset of MS. I worry it's a weight issue, but I haven't put on that much winter weight. Still, to be safe, I'll went to the gym Monday and ran.

I was asked to be part of a Valentine's dinner theater production. It would be me and an actress performing a ten-page work. We would set up our own rehearsals, and I suppose be our own director. I'm gonna pass. The comic story is blossoming well, and I want to focus on that for now.

I stayed home and watched the ceremonies. I was snowed in from work. Your Sis had to report for duty despite the treacherous ice, and a student threatened to jump from the stadium bleachers. He was talked down by some administrators. My day was more mundane. I cleaned the house while watching the coverage of the swearing-in. I watched it again with Your Sis when she got home. It was roughly nine hours of inauguration coverage, and I was Obama-blind by the time I got to bed.

But I was glad to watch it, and I really did enjoy it when we all weren't terrified that Ted Kennedy died between entrees. Our First Couple are adorable, and their kids are adorable, and he delivered a speech that demands action and maturity. What's not to like?

Lost returns tonight with a two-hour season premiere.

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Maybe we shouldn't take that cruise.

Gutting It Out

According to Kathy, the stomach thing I got is a town virus. She had it, her hubby had it. We were at their place Sunday. I got it Monday. Ergo. Therefore. Such as. Seems I didn't contract Sam and Ella after all. And here I thought I had conquered it through stubbornness.

My tummy is noisy but lazier, and I'm determined to feed it whatever I want to eat. However, I suddenly can't eat as much as I could, say, last week. Either my stomach has shrunk, or it's already half full. Either way, I can buy cheaper, smaller lunches now.

+ + +

FOX sued Warner Brothers a few months back over Watchmen. FOX said it never relinquished rights to make the film. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the matter has been settled, and the studios will ask the judge to dismiss the case today. The movie is still scheduled to release March 6. No terms were disclosed, and geeks had hoped WB would give FOX the remaining rights to finally release the 1960s Batman TV show on DVD.

+ + +

I had a small breakthrough with the comic story, and it might just be acceptably unbad. My fearsome English Major powers broke down the simple plot and strung together a theme and everything. All the dry gunk teachers ask the kids to look for and extrapolate. "Do you think he was trying to say such-and-such?" Yeah, I'm actually adding all that stuff to the story. I'm debating whether I'm writing a fable or an allegory, and thank God I'm drawing spaceships and superpowers or this would be incredibly boring.

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Be prepared.

Most Is Well

Seems the worst is over. I ate lightly yesterday, including soup for supper. My system is beat up. My torso feels like I've been punched repeatedly, and I couldn't distinguish aches from gas pains. I feel like a wrung out washrag. I slept an entire night bookended by cups of mint tea. And now I'm famished.

Yesterday saw a run on Amazing Spider-Man 583, featuring Obama on the cover and inside. Marvel Comics recently instituted a no-overprint policy, meaning they make as many issues as the retailers order. If a comic gets hot, retailers can no longer order more copies quickly; they have to wait for enough similar orders to warrant cranking up the printers. But Marvel isn't telling the stores when a particular issue might create increased demand. Store owners had no idea this comic might draw crowds.

Most comic stores have pill-lists for customers. We each tell them what comics we want, and stores give us a discount. They lower their inventory and order slightly more than enough to fill those pull lists. What's on teh shelves, then, is all they have, and there may be ten copies of any issue after pull requests are filled. Marvel issued a press release on this comic Monday, and the people responded by seeking an already limited product. Here's a store in Greensboro:



The Election Day coverage lead to a run on newsstands. Newspapers sold out. Copies went for hundreds of dollars on eBay. This comic might do the same. Obama has become a proven sells gimmick for anything. Here are the most recent three comics with him on it:


This didn't happen with any other president in my lifetime. It hasn't happened with ANYONE in my lifetime.

Not Any Better

This stomach thing has become a monster. I continue to have a swollen feeling and pain, and now my stomach has opened the trap door. It's endless. I can't sleep, and my breakfast is a large Gatorade. The Pepto-Bismol helped a tad, but now I worry that it did more harm; maybe I want the symptoms to run their course instead of being muffled by pink sludge. I woke to find a cup of mint tea in my bathroom from Your Sister, who begins her exam week with a shell of a husband.

If this lasts another few days, I'm finding a doctor. It doesn't feel like my old ulcer acting up, and this area doesn't carry Swazi chicken innards. If it's a virus, it's horrible.

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Artist's approximation of the disaster.

Ugh.

Maybe I undercooked the wings. Maybe I ate too many. Either way, life was bad last night. Didn't sleep. Felt like I had a fever. I had a headache. My belly was lead. I had to buy Alka Seltzer this morning, and my body feels like I've been slammed to the ground. I am dragging to get home, eat supper, try to keep it down, and sleep the whole night. I have small goals right now.

Wings have never betrayed me before. My world is askew.

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This is a fan-made map of the Star Wars universe.

Skin of Our Teeth

I had a small filling placed on Friday afternoon. It's been decades since I had one, and I forgot how it used to be done. I think, when I was younger, they used tiny smelting plants with molten steel lava flowing through the office. Nowadays, they use a liquid glass resin quick-baked with a laser and ground down to fit the toothline. This grind is done with a Dremel tool, and my numb mouth tasted of resin dust. I still had leftover painkillers from the wisdom teeth extraction -- really good stuff, not penny-ante Advil or Aleve -- but never had to use either. I was eating Chinese 90 minutes later with no problem.

You might have heard about Your Sister's school on CNN or FOX. There was indeed an FBI investigation into a student's online claim that he was going to "shoot up" the place. He was a special-ed student who was expelled for taking weapons on campus last year. There were no definite plans founds in his home, and he has been sent to a mental institution. There was no concrete danger to the school or Your Sister. The faculty were told about the matter after he was apprehended, and students found out when it hit the news. All is well, but students are a bit freaked right before this week's exams.

Saturday night saw us hang out with two other couples, and I rambled much too long about the Watchmen movie when asked about it. I can no longer pretend otherwise: I am FREAKING THE F' OUT about this film. I see the ads run during football games, and I am stunned. This is almost really happening. Can they make this giant story into a 2-hour film? Really? They're even making Watchmen toys. I was torn about this initially. On the one hand, the source material is too somber for action figures. But the rest of my brains is giddy at the thought of a Rorschach toy hanging on department-store spokes next to Star Wars figures.

You might remember that Your Sis and I made our annual NFL predictions. This week's playoffs eliminated her entirely as three of her four picks lost. That's brutal. My Panthers, of course, died an ugly death, but my Steelers remain alive, and look to be the favorite of their division. They're one game away from the Super Bowl.

A new comic anthology was announced this weekend, and I reserved six pages for a short story. This comes immediately after I hung a homemade comic page on the hallway wall. If I had followed up on the audition request from last week, I couldn't have done the comic. I have six weeks to slap it together, but I have a stack of short stories that I can pick from to illustrate. This will be no problem. And that homemade page warmed up my drawing muscles right nice.

Picture of the Day
This comes from a recent Star wars comic, and I'm not sure what I think of it.


I prefer my Vader remorseless and devoid of Anakin until Luke redeems him decades later. I don't like Precious Moments Vader.

It's Time to Light the Lights.

Oh yeah, I can hook you up with Muppet names. Your Sis and I got into a Muppet groove last night, and we saw them in the faces of real people. A guest of Keith Olbermann's show looked so much like Scooter that we suggested his eyes were actually painted on his glasses.

If you get a chance to watch the DVDs of the original Muppet Show, do so. It's a continuation of the 1970s variety-show style (much like the Star wars Christmas special). Just as this decade is a flood of reality/contest shows, the '70s were all about variety shows. The Muppet Show was another one, but populated with felt folks and presenting one or two humans each week. The Star Wars folks made appearances.

For instance:



The bad guy turned out to be Darth Gonzo.

The show aired Thursdays on ABC at 7:30, before local affiliates could air syndicated material before primetime. When The Muppet Show aired each week, the neighborhood closed down. No one was outside.

There's nothing really going on at home. Your Sis gears up for next week's exams, and I'm plodding along on my comic page. I want to redo the whole thing, but my plan is to simply finish it and move to the next page. I can't overwork the page in search of protection. I've already decided that computer lettering is the best route, and I started that last night.

Out of the Blue

Longtime reader Doc Hollyday writes:

did you ever see the buffy the vampire slayer creator's pet project during the writer's strike...dr horrible's sing along blog, starring neil patrick harris? http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog enjoyable

Dear Doc,

I did see it. I'm the lone infidel who liked it right up until the singing started. I like musicals OK, but this stuff didn't work for me. Neither did the much-ballyhooed Buffy episode (except for the joke where the scene abruptly ends as the singing gay lovers fall onto the bed; that's inventive). I love me some Neil Patrick going way back to Starship Troopers, the first glimpse we had that this guy might be winking at us all along.

There are rumblings of an on-going comic about Dr. Horrible and The Hammer, and that could be fun.

+ + +

In other news, the producer of an upcoming play at Hendersonville Little Theatre asked me via Facebook to audition for her show. The audition is tonight, and I can't do it. It's flattering to be asked, though. I'm too bedraggled from the Christmas show, and I don't see me doing another show until summer at best.

The WWE is coming back to Asheville next month, and Your Sister actually asked about tickets. She wants to go. WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

Picture of the Day
I hope you made plans to attend the endocrine lecture by Dr. Sweetums.

Catching Up

On the way out of town Wednesday, we hit the grocery store for the duck dish ingredients. We saw the recipe on Good Eats months and months ago. I downloaded the instructions and realized it's a much easier recipe when one buys only duck breasts and not entire birds. We drove to Asheville and found The Noodle Shop is closed for repairs. The sprinkler system damaged their floor. Also, the air was stupid cold. We ice-skated for about an hour, and I fell not once. The trick was to remember to use my heels for balance. We might go back within the week. I also took her to the new comic shop, and she bought a book for her class.

I tried out the telescope Your Dad handed down to me. The cold kept us from playing with it too much, but we did spy craters on the moon, and that's utterly cool. We cooked red pepper asparagus soup (a mix available at Target), and it's very good stuff. Reruns of MASH helped us make it to midnight, and we crashed soon after.

The duck turned out pretty well. Tastes like chicken. You steam it for 45 minutes by placing the pieces in a colander inside a large pot. Then you sear the skin in an iron skillet for about ten minutes. It's very easy.

Since then ... well, I toiled and labored on the comic page. My lettering is pathetic, and I have to find a quicker method of making pages if I'm to publish anything. Your Sis prepared for Monday's start to the 2009 school semester. It was much too cold to run. We saw Doubt and almost came to blows over the story. Great film.


Picture of the Day
I used this as the cover art for Your Sister's new mix CD.

Quite A Bit

While Your Sis dragged herself back to the school, I started drawing a comic page based on a proposal to the comic publisher last year. The contest sparked five ideas from me, and four of them have potential. It asked for a new superheroine. The winning idea would be written by the creator in a miniseries drawn by a specific hotshot artist. Flash forward to today, and the mini is drawn by someone else entirely, and the publisher has co-writing credit. I think I dodged a bullet in losing. The idea I chose to draw first for these hallway pages is the most fun combining wrestling and Scooby Doo. Sorta. Kinda.

I thumbnailed the page and let that design simmer for a while. Yesterday, I started by altering the page layout and sketching out my panels. It was a good art day, the kind where the pencil cooperates and the art flows without much hassle. I know I'm not going to be completely pleased with the final product, but I have to get the thing finished. The subsequent pages can be better. Frankly, considering it's been so long since I drew anything, the page has no business looking this promising.

You might recall that I inherited a piano in August. It was Granny's (mom's mom) and it had been held at my lat uncle's house. When Mom cleared out his home, I hauled the piano home. Your Sis and I almost got that thing into the house, but it has sat since in the storage room. The local piano company called us back about moving it, and the owner came by yesterday to inspect the request. He decided we could do it, and it was done in about 20 minutes. He had two ramps, a dolly that resembled a lunar buggy, and his young son helping out. Now it sits in the big living room. It needs tuning, and he said he'd call us back to set up an appointment for that. It won't be concert-worthy, but he said it would be in fine condition for home play. I have delusions of writing songs on the thing. Granny would never sully it with a secular song, but it screams to play boogie-woogie. It's got that sound.

I was supposed to go to Spartanburg yesterday to visit with Esther. She had to drive back home instead. Her father-in-law was dying. That's a long drive to race to his side. Mom still mentions the many laws I broke getting down the mountain back in May. I told her I learned from Your Sister.

I used the iron skillet to make fried chicken. You have to use iron and Crisco to get the best dish. It's fundamental. Also, you can't make decent gravy in a steel pan. Just can't. I made my first decent gravy in a decade last night, and we gobbled it up while watching collegiate wrestling from Chicago. And House. Your Sis is on a House kick. I'm going to dry a duck dish on Thursday. we're inviting friends over. The theory is that the probable food poisoning will inconvenience four people instead of killing two.

It's New Year's Eve. I don't know what we'll do tonight. I'd bet money Your Sis doesn't make it to midnight.

Since Then

Let's see what I can remember ...

We drove down to see Mom on Thursday. We gave her the DVDs (over which she was giddy), and we ate supper at Denny's. Her TV is on a constant rotation of Hallmark Christmas movies, and they don't sit well after a Denny's burger. We arrived home before it got too dark. I appreciate the Nettie Pot. Your Sis got me a iron skillet and socks. She got Shakespeare scripts with CDs of famous performances and a new mix CD.

We picked up the giant TV Friday. Mom was determined to pay for one, and we bought a model similar to hers. It barely sits on our TV table, and this is a relatively small model. It's below the average size of advertised TVs, and yet it's remarkably huge. It makes Guitar Hero much easier to follow, and we played a long while, unlocking new instruments and songs.

I drove back down to Spartanburg Saturday to visit a high-school buddy only to find she wasn't in town. Back up the mountain I went. I did pop in to see Mom, and she seems to be handling the holidays well. She's hypnotized by Mama Mia.

We read research papers this weekend and watched football. Your Sis picked three teams who made it to the playoffs, and I only managed to pick two. We went to the local bar for trivia with another teacher couple, and we almost won on our first try. Also, I drank a lot. As is my way.

We saw The Spirit on Monday. It looks like Sin City but has none of the skill. It's a fun mess. We had the theater all to ourselves. I got a call from the spring director, and I'm again between him and the theatre president over joining the board of directors. I don't even know what they do. I didn't know until yesterday how long a member's term is (three years!). I've done three shows with these people. I've directed nothing. I've stage managed nothing. I have no business leaping into the board. I told the director I need some idea of bylaws and responsibilities before I can sign on. Also, I'm still reeling from the Christmas show. The theatre desperately needs focus; the opening show for this big fundraising effort was a disaster, and someone on the board should have worked with the show to ensure we made the best impression to potential donors.

I've begun running again, and my legs hate me. Still, I manage to keep chugging for a half-hour at a time. I got a running strategy book for Christmas, and it just happens to be written by professors from Your Sis's alma mater. She knows them well enough to pass along gossip.

I don't go back to work until next Monday, and I hope to draw today. I'll be able to post Pictures of the Day again when I'm using a PC with a faster internet connection.

The Last Two Shows

Fifth Night

It's a smaller crowd, and they are nowhere as responsive. Rothschild has a bad night. Specifically, he forgets the phrase "extraordinary measures," the key phrase of the play. He freezes in place and bends lower and lower as if the words can come out either end, and then gingerly offers "unmeasurable lengths." Not a bad replacement. But his body language has devolved this play. He crouches when he's talking to witnesses. He barely whispers a line if he has any doubt about its proper place in the play. He's back to sitting through objections just in case they're in the wrong place.

Scrooge is no vamping grunts throughout his lines and, worse, in reaction to others' lines. He's stepping on our dialogue left and right, and the grunts have become verbal spackle when he loses his place. He sounds like a tubercular MC. He and Rothschild have also begun dropping lines consistently, and the reason the play is shorter this week is because we're skipping chunks of dialogue left and right.

Scrooge gets lost during his confrontation of Cratchit, and the actor locks eyes with me as he searches for the words. I know them. I can cue him. But I don't. Fuck it. I just ad-libbed to cover a previous hiccup, and I'm not inclined to be charitable. Also, I have a stage mic about three feet from my face. Any word I say will be picked up. We share a stare for what feels like five seconds, and he eventually assembles a line to get to the end of our scene. And offstage I go to change into Future Ghost.

The judge is now blatantly reading his script onstage. When he insults his bailiff, he sometimes is looking straight down at his desk top to read the lines. The end scene goes very smoothly tonight, but everything else is getting worse.


Final Show

Marley and I are done with our makeup at 2, and there's no one else to be seen. We worry that the actors have either forgotten about today or are slacking. And it's indeed a relaxed atmosphere backstage. Brick and I talk football. Mrs. Cratchit and I talk legendary Hollywood actors. It's a large audience out there today, and we hope they catch the humor.

It goes about as usual. Scrooge is adding as much extra noise as possible, but now he's adding full lines. His scene with Marley won't end. He's adding questions, questions Marley can only answer by using lines intended for the other attorney and the big punchline is wasted on Scrooge. Instead of finishing with "No more questions," now he's saying "I see. I see. Hmph. Yes. I have no more questions for this witness, your honor, at this time. Bah. Ha. Mumble grumble." How are any of us supposed to know when to start talking if Scrooge won't shut up? He stammered originally to make noise while he remembered his lines. But now he's doing it in place of his lines. We miss some good dialogue today.

Marley still can't stay quiet backstage, and his chains are rattling before his supposedly dramatic entrance. Brick is shaking with laughter onstage at this. I crack up when the judge again loses his place while reading the script and confuses our poor bailiff.

The ending goes better, but Marley and Scrooge decide to stand right in front of the Future Ghost through the last scene. Because I'm on the witness stand, I have nowhere to go. My hand gestures are lost. Otherwise, Future and the translator get good laughs. The show ends, and we thank the audience and hang up our costumes for the last time.

I don't have any sense of accomplishment. That reduces any sense of relief. It's just over.

Fourth Show

Everyone has heard the saying "the show must go on." It's a necessary credo, especially on the volunteer level. No small hiccup can derail the production. And in order to cancel one of this production's shows, you need the president, artistic director and publicity director's agreement. Our director discovered this just 15 minutes before show time.

Our Scrooge is sick. In one of those rare times when we could also yell the other theatre cliche "is there a doctor in the house" -- we instead look to our judge, a retired general practitioner. He diagnoses Scrooge with food poisoning, and it's apparently bad. He's sick at both ends, and the director calls a huddle to ask if we should cancel. Scrooge won't have it, and we prepare for a possible show. We set up a trash can and water bottle on his side of the stage wings, in case he needs them. We check the actors' bathroom and discover it's, of course, locked. If Scrooge has to go to the bathroom during the show, he'll have to run past the entire audience. Our tech person is told to prepare an extra intermission if Scrooge needs it. I suggest we grab the visiting college student who did a show with me in the spring; he can read Cratchit, and I can do Scrooge. That gets no traction.

Scrooge arrives from make-up, shaky and quiet. He won't cancel. And it becomes his strongest show. Because he's concentrating on staying upright, and not on the words, they come to him naturally. Act One zips by a full ten minutes shorter than normal. Doc has trouble again, and Marley says a big line three pages too early. It's a good audience in size and response; they're really enjoying it, and the entire cast is giddy at what we expect will be a Future Ghost scene that will kill them.

It comes very close. They go crazy for the ghost and translator, and we're in that rare groove where the slightest gesture will knock them over. But right before we get to the heart of the scene, Doc kills it. He jumps ahead a full page, and the audience knows something is wrong. We lose them. We never get them back. Scrooge again falls apart when he confronts the Future Ghost, and the audience is now silenced. It's heartbreaking. We never hit this high before, and we scuttle it within a minute. Even Brick is mad; he lost a few good lines. I'm typing this almost 18 hours later, and my stomach is still sunk over it. It's crushing. But Brick and I get a good response on the curtain call. That helps. The show must go on and all that.

Refreshing

The rehearsal between performance weekends is usually a linethrough. You sit, you rattle off the lines. It goes by quickly. But we need more than that. We need to do the entire play onstage. And we do. We skip the makeup and costumes though.

It goes about usual. The attorneys get lost, the judge calls them to the bench and feeds lines, they go back to the play. There are times when we jump ahead a few lines or pages. Early on, the defense attorney blanks while questioning me, and it's one of my rare lines where I can skip his missing question and keep talking. When I'm up as the ghost, he skips a load of dialogue, and the director reels us back in to get those lines in. So, no, I don't think he looked at the script. I know I didn't, but I also haven't blanked in every performance of the show. I just scoot up on the witness stand and open my head and out come the lines. We finish very quickly.

We discuss the review. One actor complains that the first act isn't funny. Another actor counters that it is funny, but the audience isn't laughing. I keep mum. The play is funny. it's very funny. If you know the lines and deliver them properly and understand what makes funny. But we're not performing it as comedy. We're doing it straight. Mostly. Some lines are obviously punchlines. But some situations need to be played for laughs, and that ain't happening. Usually when the audience isn't laughing, that means you're not funny. That's usually a reliable indicator.

The cast party is announced for Sunday night at 6, but I've already made dinner reservations. I might drop in beforehand. Maybe not. If it's a bad show, no. I have no enthusiasm for the last shows. I just want to be done with it.

The keepsake cards are printed, and I'll spend Saturday attaching the magnetic tape.

Carol Consideration

I learned late that this week contained both a birthday and anniversary for a pair of buddies. We took them out for Mexican and heard about their Thanksgiving cruise. Your Sis has been on two cruises. I have been on none; I don't think ferries count. But now I'm very curious about cruises and wonder if this is something we can do next year.

We discovered the Patrick Stewart Christmas Carol adaptation last night, and we saw most of it. We got all the way to the departure of Christmas Present. It was sadly not up to the George C. Scott version, which I had just raved about with half of the couple over Mexican. The Stewart version has weak ghosts. They chaperon Scrooge instead of guiding him to recognize where things went wrong. The Marley was blase, and that's a mortal sin. Marley should spook you.

We rehearse tonight, and I still won't even sniff in the direction of the script. I suspect the cast party will be scheduled for after the Sunday show, but that's when I intend to take everyone out to dinner.

Picture of the Day
The Brazilian martial art of capoeira as displayed by members of a Santa Claus convention.

Taking Stock

Sometimes being a local celeb has its rewards. No, not me, Your Sis. We hopped into the town's Italian sports bar, and the owner is the parent of a current student. He chatted us up for a while and returned later to say he covered our bill. He certainly didn't have to do that. Especially since his kid is close to failing. He complimented me on the muttonchops, and I confessed they're for the play. Because I only had my plastic to pay the bill, I had to run out and find an ATM so I could tip the waitress. But I get leftover lasagna for lunch.

We watched the annual Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and it's just not the same without the ads for York Peppermint Patties. This year featured many ads for Kohl's, Macy's, and jewelry stores. All ads for adult consumers. Were any kids watching this?

It's an odd time of the year for us. I'm between play weekends, and she's preparing for a stack of grading over the holiday break. This formula of ending a semester after the new year is stupid and stupid some more. No teacher likes this. No kid wants homework over the break. And a failing kid can't miraculously save his semester with work done over the vacation. Your Sis and I had a sit-down yesterday to get our marital bearings. Everything is fine, but we both noted that we're stuck in the amber of cumbersome schedules.

An online buddy sent me a hand-drawn Christmas card. I use pictures of House as my avatar on our message board.

I made him one to mail today.

Time Off

As soon as I opened the back door of the house, Your Sister presented me with a bottle of Rogue Dead Guy Ale. It's for the ritual wings dinner. It's 38 ounces of Guaranteed Tipsy. Once the wings hit the table, I popped open the bottle, clinked it against her water bottle, and toasted her with "let the awkward advances commence!" Your Sis is a good gal.

I'm not even looking at the script. F' the script. I worked on the magnet yesterday, and I decided to forgo the usual illustration and just work with the reference photos. Frankly, I don't have the initiative to devise a swank design. I'm burned out.

I'm shopping for Mom through Amazon, and I think I know how to distract her from a depressing Christmas at home and occupy her holiday time with a stack of throwback DVDs.

Picture of the Day
Angelnaught.

Third Show

I try to arrive early for make-up, but Marley gets there first and grabs the lone chair. It takes half an hour to paint him up. I sit off to the side and quietly run my lines. Our makeup lady is also our costume lady, and she has two parts in the show. When the judge arrives, he immediately argues that she messed up a line. She argues back. The judge won't let it go and asks me for my script. It's in the car, I say. I ain't getting into this. The line doesn't affect the judge anyway; she says it to another actor onstage.

She also offers us the use of another space heater from the warehouse. I volunteer to take it, but only after I confirm with Scrooge that this won't blow our wiring in the dressing room. Nope, he says, as long as the heaters are off before we turn on the stage lights, there will be no problem. Of course it blows our surge protector. At least we have daylight for our costume change.

We vote to run a full rehearsal Thursday night onstage. We decline to just run lines at a table. We need as much familiarity with props as possible. I kinda sorta make the argument that clinches the vote.

Before we go onstage, Mrs. Cratchit pulls me aside to explain why she didn't join us onstage Friday. Normally, she sits in the gallery and leaps up to shout her lines before the bailiff escorts her out. This time she came running from the wings when it was her cue. She explained to me today that she's supposed to startle us with her lines. I try to explain: You can startle Cratchit, but don't startle ME. She laughs it off.

Act One is our strongest yet, and Scrooge is in the zone. We all focus on picking up the pace, and the first act flies by. We have some hiccups. Doc loses his lines, and the judge whispers them to him. Instead of covering it, Doc turns to him and says "I'm sorry?" Twice. During intermission, the attorneys joke about which ending we should have today based on the previous three nights -- A,B, or C.

Act Two boogies along until the future ghost comes onstage. Brick makes a rare mistake and forgets what the ghost is trying to say.

Doc: What was the purpose of your visit that night?
Ghost: MAURAUGH MMEHLLOM
Brick: ... I, um ... wanted to see what he was doing. [Doc locks up, the stage is silent.]
Me (whispering): redemption.
Brick: ... and redemption.

And we're back on track.

Scrooge again has trouble confront my ghost and collapses into blabber when he accuses all the ghosts of conspiring against him. Christmas Past refers to her hand for her lines. But today, the attorneys heed the judge when he whispers the lines to get us through the conclusion, and it's as smooth as we've ever done it. So it's D.

Dan and I joke about his minor mistake, and we all run to our cars wearing half our costumes. It's the end of tech week, this was our eight consecutive day of this show. We're brain dead. I get home, toss mom in the car, drive her to Spartanburg, hit the passenger eject button, and drive back home. And my head is dead dog tired by 9 p.m.

Here's the official review, and again it's designed simply to get everyone's name in print:

Cratchit in full glory:

Second Show

The director calls us to announce an early call for make-up and lines. Unfortunately, only 2/3 of the leads get this call. When Doc and Brick show up at the normal time, Doc has missed half an hour of practice time. I drive him over to the stage, and we run the last scene as the audience begins to dribble into the building. We try to give Scrooge mnemonic devices. The script has plenty of them -- "fabricated future and counterfeit corpse" -- but they don't stick. Christmas Past has written the first words of her last two lines on her left palm, and now she's worried about the audience seeing them.

When the director called, I was in Spartanburg picking up Mom. It's a three-hour round trip, but she wanted to see the play, and she doesn't like mountains. I leave her to Your Sister while I go to the theatre early. I've warned them about what this play has become.

The dressing room still has no heat, and all of our clothes are a toasting 30 degrees when we put them on. So we at least feel properly Victorian. The costume lady has fixed my britches. I realized right before last night's show that the backside has split open. Thank God for black underwear.

Act One drags and drags as people clamber for lines.We've done this show every days since last Sunday. Our brains are mush. The line trouble is spreading to other actors. Scrooge mangles his first scene with Fred the nephew, giving away the scene's punchline early and forcing himself to repeat it to get Fred off the stand. Marley forgets the easiest line of the play ("A year ago today."). He is forced to say "I don't know" and Scrooge has to work Marley's correct line into his own. The leads are becoming fairly adept at ad-libbing by necessity, but that skill is backfiring: They add to many words to their dialogue and become lost when they realize they're not saying script words anymore. Brick sits next to me the entire first act, and he is shaking with laughter as the others lose themselves and freeze onstage. When we are alone during intermission, we practically on the floor laughing. We've reached that point. It's all goofy now.

The crux of the play is Act Two's conclusion, and that begins when Christmas Future takes the stand. Tonight, Scrooge leaps over an entire page of material with him and detonates the crucial "confession" scene. As he harangues the ghost, my character is reduced to simple yes and no answers. But tonight, Scrooge asks a question requiring a noun-verb answer, and I don't have one. I mumble a generic answer and then look to the translator to improvise and answer. He wisely jumps us ahead in the script. But Scrooge is now lost more.

The end is again the two actors scrambling their conversation, and we three ghosts are lest on the far stage left, whispering to each other as we realize we are wandering in the wilderness and our Moseses are working without maps. Tonight, the judge is clearly feeding them lines from his bench, but they are ignoring the actual lines as they follow their own dim notions of where they are in the script. We finally, finally get to the blessed line that gets us offstage ("Let's all go to my house for a party"), and we practically run passed the attorneys before they can leap back into the quicksand of wrong lines.

The director pulls me aside right before I leave. "You never complain," she says. I feel a little two-faced about this. I vent here, but remain optimistic there. I don't see the need to grumble aloud and add to the drama. I ask here why I should grumble there. I get to be Cratchit, and I have the most fun role as Future Christmas. I don't have to carry the show. I know my lines. I'm the youngest cast member. We're almost at the end of opening week. Monday's wings and beer are closer every hour. And we both joke: This is the best ad-lib exercise anyone could ask for. It's a different show every night.

The missus, my mom, and I dissect the show when I get home, and we stay up very late recreating what we saw. But here's the highlight of the day. As we talked earlier about British accents, Mom asked if we would sound like Monty Python, whom she could never decipher. How can they be funny if you can't understand them? Oh, but they're hysterical, I contend and grab my Python scripts. I read her the Dead Parrot sketch in my normal voice, and my Mom is grabbing her sides in laughter. I've tried to advocate Python to her since high school. And here we are.

Yeah, why should I grumble?

First Show

It's a blur of emotion but here are the highlights:

1. This is the grand ribbon-cutting for the new theatre space. Tonight's audience will be treated to a presentation of planned renovation and hit up for donations. Our play is a fundraiser, of sorts. As soon as I'm backstage to dress, a rumor spreads that the playwright is here. Now, Brick is a Facebook friend of his and assures who he can that the guy is in Florida, acting in this very same play. This doesn't help. Marley is apoplectic. The director is thrilled. She was introduced to an audience member, misheard the name, and thought he was the playwright. She learns her mistake and leaves the green room to apologize to the guy.

2. Scrooge is the last to arrive from the makeup session. With half his costume on, our tech lady sneaks in the green room to confess she's lost the sound cues on the computer. Everything is gone. He's kind about it until he learns this actually happened last night, and she's waited til right now -- maybe ten minutes before we start the show -- to tell him this. He has to put on his street clothes, wade into the audience, and reset the tech PC, come back, change into his costume, and psych himself back into character.

3. We stand in the wings to start the show. All the lights are out, and we're waiting for the stage lights to come on so we can take the stage. There's a knock at the backstage door. It's the tech lady. She doesn't know how to turn on the stage lights. Scrooge has to save her again. When she's gone back to her station, he mumbles that this will be her last show with this duty.

4. Despite a strong beginning and a responsive audience, the leads go offscript at the same spots as last night. The audience deflates, and the first act feels like a marathon. The two attorneys are so focused on their lines that they have ignored their stage movements. Doc is locked in a short pattern of crouching and staring away from the witnesses to scrape the dialogue from his brain. Scrooge tries so hard to croak his lines in a Scrooge-like fashion that he doesn't remember where he is. He smothers every punchline that should be powering this show.

5. Mrs. Cratchit decides not to join the other witnesses onstage. As I sit in the gallery, I plan some rewrites to work around her absence. On her cue, however, she appears and does her lines.
6. Cratchit gets some laughs.

8. Act Two begins with both actors standing up to introduce two different witnesses. That's not in the script. The judge salvages the scene.

9. Future Christmas steals the show, but Scrooge leaps offtrack midway through our scene. So does Doc. Within one minute, Brick and I repeat a line three times because Doc has asked us the same question three times. Then it gets bad. Scrooge mangles the grand unveiling of Marley as the fake Scrooge body. He forgets the indignant accusation scene. The judge, despite holding the script in his hands, loses his words for his verdict. The two attorneys utterly and completely botch the ending in such a way that they have removed the exit lines. The characters -- all of us -- now have no way to get offstage. The climactic conversation is shredded and reassembled in a panic, and we lose both the momentous declaration of Christmas, our departures, and the twist revelation. It feels like forever. In short, they fuck up huge in this, our grand opening of the stage and optimistic fundraiser. Now, really, what excuse do we have for not casting younger folk, again? Could they do any worse than these veterans?

The cast finally take our bows to polite applause and walk into the audience to meet and greet. There's some polite congratulations, but the Future ghost and his translator are clearly the stars. We shouldn't be, but we know our lines. We get the humor, and we can surf the script for the most laughs. Also, we have slapstick, and that's hard to compete with. But if the leads had their stuff together, they'd mop the floor with us.

I change, grab some reception food, and drive home cursing at the windshield. If they had sabotaged the show on purpose, this wouldn't hurt any more. I avoided this theatre out of fear of this kind of shambled productions, and now I feel suckered. I showed up, I learned my lines, I gave my other actors consistency with which to hang their cues, and they blow us up. Going back to Asheville's theatre sounds really good right now.

Oh, and the theatre president and the spring director are both vying for my commitment. The president wants me on the board, and the director wants me to starts what I assume is a new company. It's not the best time to woo me when I want to clobber the leads. Death hate bile.

Open Dress Rehearsal

I was nervous all day Thursday, and the giant hot cocoa from Books-A-Million probably didn't help. But as I shopped for Christmas gifts through the book aisles, I mumbled my lines to calm my nerves. It's much easier this show compared to the last shows'. Those took an hour. These lines take about five minutes. Here's my goofy image for you: A peacoated Bob Cratchit mumbling about Tiny Tim while thumbing through Dracula.

It's the usual pre-audience jitters mixed with a giddiness that this week is nearing the end. Opening week is always a slog. It's eight performances in as many days. Except this theatre likes to take a day off before a show opens, a tradition that's lovely if your cast knows its play. Needless to say, that didn't happen this time.

We show up at the warehouse early for our makeup. Marley takes an appropriately long time to get ready. We have yellow stage lights, making heavy makeup for the rest of us unnecessary. White lights wash actors out, which is why they need strong make-up to retain color. We get to the stage and fine the dressing room has no light. We put a lamp there a few days back, but the power is no not working. This doesn't go over well. Some folks scramble to the audience bathroom to dress before our guests arrive. I stay in the dressing room. There's enough ambient light for my carrot-powered eyes. Marley complains these are no accommodations for actors becuase he must complain. Marley trivia: He's a licensed clown. I just found that out. We do get the good news later that the actors have their own bathroom downstairs. Our play is so short that I never had to go during rehearsals, but I have one of two spry bladders in this cast.

We have about 15 people there, including Your Sis. She warned me beforehand that she'd only catch the first act our of exhaustion. The director gives a curtain speech to prepare the audience for potential power outages, the actors huddle on the stage-right wing, and then we take we start the show.

It starts strong and stays strong for about the first 20 pages. The Cratcihit scene goes well, and the nephew scene goes well. Then we move to the fundraiser, and Scrooge goes off the rails. The judge had prepared a full script and made arrangements for the two attorneys. if they're in trouble they are to request a sidebar and hear the judge whisper their lines. Scorrge does this. But it happens again so often that the judge starts whispering the lines as the actors stand near his bench. His Issac Newton wig and real mustache hide the cheating well enough, and this subterfuge saves the play all night long. But this works as long as the actors face the judge. When they turn out to the audience and lose their place, they are sunk. And that happens a lot.

They also skip around the script, regain their balance, and repeat lines to get back on track. That happens a lot. Again, I'm sitting onstage for the entire first act, and it feels much longer than the 60 minutes the act stretches. It probably should run at 45 minutes, but the pauses and line-juggling inflate the running time. We lose the humor almost entirely. There's no timing or sparkling delivery. We have turned a banter script into a melodrama, and you can feel the audience yearn for more. Our tech operator decides to cut the stage lights before the act is over.

We regroup during intermission, and Scrooge, -- the tech chief -- spends the entirety of it working on wiring the camera. Oh, did I mention this is being taped. We didn't know that until we showed up and saw the camera. The camera guy says he needs a wired mic for the second act, and we wonder what if anything he could hear from the first act.

We start the second act. Almost immediately, it goes wrong. The attorneys call for witnesses in teh wrong order, and the judge has to impovise. He makes a sterling decree about following the witness docket (and this is nowhere in the script), and he saves the collective bacon. The leads corkscrew their way through the act and receive lines from the judge. When everyone is onstage for the play's twist revelation, Scrooge loses the lines completely. And this is the situation I feared most: He's trying to cue me without feeding me the proper line. As the Future Ghost, I can mumble an interjection and hope that my translator can follow my gestures and feed Scrooge a line he can follow. I do that, and he does that, but Scrooge doesn't reset. He's still lost. He fumbles for a bit, and eventually, wisely, skips ahead, and we kind of regain balance.

But then the climactic attorney negotiations is utterly shuffled. The bailiff loses his cue, and he is supposed to start the stage exodus. That doesn't happen. The attorneys vamp to try the cue again and eventually get him to say his line. The cast dribbles offstage. Our momentum is gone, and now we're just trying to stop the pain. The show ends with dead silence, and the audience only realizes the show is over when we come out for the bows.

My nerves are utterly gone. I've done my lines in front of a crowd, and my brain finally accepts that I have a smaller role and can feed me less adrenaline to gear up for the show. It's a big relief. My nerves were so amped that I was starving by intermission. The judge and attorneys are allegedly meeting Friday afternoon to run lines. I breeze through mine during my commute.

I talk to Your Sister at home, and her questions about the play are all answered with "he screwed up." Supposedly, a bad final rehearsal portends a strong show. But this was our best rehearsal so far. What is that an omen of? At least we didn't lose power during the practice.

Picture of the Day
Save us, punk Supergirl!