Journals

More links than blog posts lately. Sorry about that.

Still, this is delightful. Animator versus Animation.

In other news, I saw 1000 Journals last night at the Roxie with my friend Maria. It's a very nice documentary about a remarkable project.

Basically a man sent 1000 journals out into the world. People were supposed to fill as much or little of them as they wanted, then leave them someplace for the next person to find and do the same. When the journals were filled, they were to be returned to the man who started the project. People could send unfinished journals back to be scanned and then sent back out into the world. As word rapidly spread, a tracking website was developed, and enormous waiting lists for the journals queued up.

Only a few of the journals have been sent back, and 95% of them are out in the world... unknown.

At the encouragement of people who have become tied to the project, 1001 Journals as been born. People can start their own journals and send them out into the world. Start a journal and it's your responsibility. You become the contact person for people who want to work in it, or want to send it in for scanning and you're the one that will get it back when it's done... if it's ever returned.

I was sitting in the theatre, thinking that I should make a journal, when Maria turned to me and said "I'm going to make one. I'll send it to you first."

I'm very excited about it, and I hope that she makes the journal soon. I suggested that the instructions in the journal indicate that the last person to fill the journal should return it to the person they got it from, and that person will to the same, so that everyone who as touched it will be able to see what happened, and hold it again. This also has the side benefit of encouraging people to give the journal to someone they feel will actually return it eventually. Many of the stories in the film talk about people agonizing over giving the journal to someone they didn't really know, and it vanishing from the system at that point.

Seriously, 1,000 journals, and only about 30 can be accounted for as of the making of the film.

It's super cool, and I'll post the link to Maria's Journal when she makes it, in case you want to be on a waiting list. (i.e. if there's a list, you'll be expected to send it on to the next person on the list, or the person you give it to has to promise to do so.)

Apart from that, things are moving along as they always do. I'm trying to find the lead for the show I'm directing for the Fringe Festival, but refusing to panic about it. I made a breakthrough on the 411 screenplay and got an hour's worth of writing in yesterday. I'm making the puppets in Flash for the next Radiostar cartoon (which will be 33% longer than the last ones have been, so it'll probably take an extra week to get it done). Work is going well, and I generally couldn't be happier.

Addictions

Ok, I got hooked on The Guild and Retarded Policeman this morning.

The Guild starts off a little weak, but is one of those shows that gets funnier and funnier the more time you spend with it.

Retarded Policeman seems like a one note joke, but almost every show brings something new to the formula.
I'm embedding what is, in my mind, the pinnacle of the show. Retarded Policeman versus Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan's Laybrynth)

New Cartoon

I'm down in San Diego at the universe's biggest Comic Convention (175,000 people today).

But I've got the new cartoon done!


Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

The Government Controls your Dreams

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I had a dragon. I was an independent "pilot" who was waiting for a client at a landing area. There were a lot of people who needed a flight, but there was a strike at the airport and I wouldn't cross the picket line... except for my client, because I had seen the future through some device that showed me taking the client to her destination.

Crazy stuff, but after I hit the snooze on my alarm, I went back into the dream.

I still had the dragon, but was trying to figure out a way to get FCC approval for flights, since I didn't have (or need) a pilot's license to ride my dragon. I needed portable radio for talking to air towers, and a way to get the license without turning the dragon over to the government. Dragons don't exist, after all, and they'd probably want to either dissect him or appropriate him for military use.

So yeah, I spent the rest of my dream trying to get around government paperwork.

Once I woke up fully, I decided this wasn't as odd as it seems. Most of my "fantastic" fiction take a concept like, say, owning a dragon, and taking it to it's logical conclusion in the real world. All good things become bad things over time, just as many bad things can become good things over time. Also, even as a kid, my dragon fantasies where always grounded in practicality. Ever since reading the Pern books, I had daydreams of dragons... but they mostly revolved around how I would feed the thing.

It seemed very expensive.

Irony? You're soaking in it!

While I worked today, I listened to the latest mixes of the Sweetie Tanya soundtrack. Some of the songs are about as near to perfect as I can imagine them being. Others are very good, but still on their way. It's a thrill and a half to listen to these. They're so damn good, and I think it'll be a real treat for fans of the show, and will hopefully result in our being able to sell the show to other companies and make even more fans.

I did take a break to head down to the DMV and not only renewed my driver's license (55 minute wait, 5 minutes of interacting with the personnel) and got a parking ticket at the same time. I drive once a month, and boom.

Well, there you go.

Man in a suit

I saw Hellboy 2 last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I was quite stunned today to find out that the character of wink wasn't done with CGI. I've gotten so used to amazing creatures on films being done that way, that it never occurred to me what I was really seeing.

Headlines and statements

Like a lot of people I was appalled when I heard that Obama was supporting the bill that grants telecoms retroactive amnesty for wiretapping.

So I went looking for more information. Here's the full statement.

In particular, this phrase struck me. "It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. "

So, yeah, Obama is supporting what he considers a flawed, sub-optimal bill but acknowledges a major problem with it that he will continue to try to get fixed. Unfortunately, that's about all he can do right now. I am glad to hear that he still acknowledges that allowing retroactive immunity is wrong and will continue to strive towards something that meets our ideals and get something on the table that ends Bush's violations NOW.

This situation reinforces, more than anything, my distrust of our own media. The headlines I saw suggested very strongly that Obama was supporting amnesty for telecoms, but that's not the case at all.

From Cranky to Mushy

Feeling less curmudgeony today.

In fact, I'm even going to post this link that Sam Blanchard sent me.

Awwwwww

grouch

I think I need to change some gears somewhere. I went to bed grouchy last night and woke up cantankerous.

Objectively, I can understand it. I've had a lot of frustrations lately, most of which of an organizational nature, but also some of an artistic origin. Last minute reschedules that throw a carefully balanced day out of whack and even threaten to scuttle the work of a half dozen people, too many things on the same day so that I barely see the sun, hours spent reviewing material that ultimately isn't fruitful... it's not wonder I'm a bit cumudgeony. Still, I look at my behavior, and my mood, and know that I could be handling things more gracefully.

I'm too invested, if such a thing make sense. I take my own challenges and frustrations too much to heart. I feel responsible for everything, so when I encounter an obstacle to things working properly I feel that it's my fault or my job to make it right immediately. When people behave in a way that upsets my sense of order, or courtesy, I seethe but attempt to maintain a politic front because I feel that venting my spleen will damage the work.

My world is becoming very narcissistic. I have the power to make it work, or I have the power to destroy it all. This is making for a very grouchy Dan. Also a hypocritical one, at least artistically, as I had pointed out to me last night after Radiostar.

June and July are supposed to be my vacation months, but I'm not feeling particularly refreshed right now. Ironically, I have a lot of things to be happy about. The Sweetie Tanya CD is coming along nicely, and in truth Steve Kahn is the mastermind behind making it all work right now. As producer, most of what I've been doing is trying to assist with scheduling and people wrangling to make sure that the work can get done smoothly. The new animated version of Radiostar is eagerly embraced, and I really enjoy doing them. The short piece I've agreed to direct for the Fringe Festival in September is half cast (as opposed to half-caste, which would be a whole different kettle of fish) with my first choices, and the script is shaping up nicely.

But despite it all, I'm feeling surly.

I need to re-embrace the idea of vacation in July, and find the fun again.

Video made sweet love to the Radiostar

Confession of ignorance

So, I just read this article that talks about the different ways that the concept of free speech is handled in the U.S. and in Canada, with Canada being much more like the rest of the planet in advocating for limited free speech.

In particular, hate language is illegal.

If I felt we could actually trust the courts and the government to prosecute hate speech in a responsible manner, I'd probably fall a bit closer on the European/Canadian spectrum. I don't trust them, however, and so I end up in the "absolute free speech" camp.

And yet, what I don't understand is how first amendment rights merge with slander and libel laws. It seems to be that some of the statements made in the magazine in question (what, you haven't read the article yet? Go read it and then come back here) would be considered libelous. Does libel only count if you specify a particular person, as opposed to an entire religion or race?

I honestly don't know, but it does seem odd to me that you can't say true things about an individual that damage their reputation but you can say untrue things about a community that damages their credibility, standing, and even safety.

Or is my understanding of the libel and slander laws woefully shoddy?

My god, I'm political

I just made Obama's home page my "start" page in Safari.

This decision came after watching an edited version of a 2006 speech about religious diversity that David Austin-Groen had on his feed, and edited highlights of Obama's speech on the economy on CNN.

I realized that I want to watch the totality of these speeches, not just media determined highlights. I don't trust the news to fairly represent the issues, especially after seeing that a companion piece to the Obama speech was a snippit of McCain saying he'd "veto every beer..bill" in a speech. The man tripped over a word, for crying out loud. That's not news, and it doesn't deserve to be linked to Obama's speech about the economy.

I can already tell that McCain is not the man for me in the white house, militarily or economically. But I want to hear what they have to say, and not be distracted by the news media's three ring circus.

Is that too much to ask?

Sex in the City

I'm afraid I need to see your driver's license before we bang.

oh. You're from New York City?

I'll call you a cab.

Not for You

I got some mail today from the Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, Inc.

At first I was a bit surprised, but then I thought that it might be something about policy, or about Obama, or any number of things going on in my community. After all, there's no reason why the LBCF shouldn't contact me, just because I'm whiter than 80's Hair Metal.

So I open it up and find that it's a flier for a "Health Summit on Diabetes and Obesity: a growing epidemic among California's minority communities."

Hrm. Not really for me, as I am neither in danger of diabetes or obesity. I am a minority in my community, which is largely Chinese and african american, but I don't think that's what they are referring to. I wonder if every person in Oakland got the flyer, or if I should be expecting more erroneously targeted flyers to appear in my mailbox?

-----------

It's a slow work week. I've been doing lots of photoshop batch jobs, and lots and lots of uploading to servers, but at the moment, I'm mostly waiting for the deluge to begin. It'll be crazy for a few months straight, starting next week, but for now.... all is quiet on the Oakland Front.

So, considering how much I've been hearing about the housing market going to hell, I thought I'd see what I could afford. I love where I live, and have no burning desire to move, but if rates are super low right now, it would be irresponsible to see if there was a way out of the rent market.

I tried a few online rates calculators and established that with what I have in the bank for a down payment, and what I am comfortable paying monthly on loans/mortgage...I can afford property that costs around $200,000. In short, I can live out in the middle of the central valley, or in the absolute poorest neighborhoods of Oakland and Richmond. I'd be a home owner, though! Or at least a condo owner!

Of course, I'd have to give up my hardwood floors, tall ceilings, claw foot tub, two blocks from BART, top floor with no one walking on your head apartment.

I'll stay put for now. I'll check again in six months and see if things have gotten significantly worse/better by then.

Windy

It's a curious week for me. WestEd work is slow, so I'm getting caught up on a lot of small issues and maintenance.

This also means cleaning up the home office a bit. My computer is processing gigs and gigs of raw photoshop documents, which means I can email, do some web stuff, and other tasks, but not audio editing, video work, or other photoshop work. My job has therefore been to dink around and occasionally swap the DVDs out.

One of the things I've turned up was my old journal from my trip to Dublin, Ireland. It's always interesting to look back at things like this, and I gave it a quick scan. My mood fluctuated a lot during that week, and I wrote some truly awful sonnets.

Awful.

I would be tempted to just transcribe and toss the paper journal, except for the scrawls made in it by the drunk in the pub where I met Sandra and Catia, the Norwegian and Swiss who wrote in it as well, and of course, the little phrases and pictures that Sandra and Catia themselves wrote.

It's kind of a cliche, but it's still true. Travel changes you. I walked out of Ireland with a slew of experiences and a dear friend. Also a bunch of really bad poetry. Did I mention the bad poetry?

I went out to Chicago last weekend. The genesis of the trip was in talking with my friend Debbie, and deciding that the week after we closed Sweetie Tanya would be an excellent time for me to get away from things for a bit. Also, it was her birthday, so that made it an even better deal. I've now been to Chicago twice since my old Seminary days and I still have a deep affection for the city, even if my original time there was filled with struggle.

There's a feel to the city that I just really, really like. I love the midwest comfort food, the brickwork everywhere, the no bullshit attitude of the people I meet, and the fact that we couldn't walk five blocks without coming across a storefront theatre. This is a town that embraces its arts in a way that we just don't see in the Bay Area. Some people coo at babies. I coo at young theatre companies.

While in the Windy City, I drank too much, ate too much, slept too much and had a splendid time. I saw an innovative but mediocre show and an utterly brilliant one, and the two were in the same theatre complex in Evanston. Yep, the two shows I saw weren't even in Chicago proper. The brilliant one, however, featured one of the improv comics that had couch surfed with me back during the SF Improv Festival. I hadn't originally planned to meet up with any of the Storybox improv folks, but a last minute inspiration paid off with an excellent show.

I returned to Oakland with a slew of things on my to-do list, meetings to attend, and projects to pursue. I haven't made as much project as I should for mostly social reasons, and the schedule packing will continue through next week. Still, I continue to hope to get the 411 screenplay (first draft) done by the end of June.

This makes it sound like the trip didn't change me. That was a theme I was developing and didn't follow through on. Truth be told, it's not always immediately clear how that change will manifest. The most obvious thing is that I desperately craved alone time when I got back. I had a fantastic time, but I had virtually no alone time during the whole trip. I didn't realize how much I needed it until I got home. I have a strong introvert side, and it's easy to forget that when I'm in my regular rhythms.

Also, I was constantly tired while I was away. That was partly jetlag, partly the excess of beer and food, but also the exhaustion of the previous months settling in on me. I have a lot going on, but I don't have the pervasive deadlines right now. Things get done when they get done. Earlier is better, but we aren't racing to meet an opening night or any other such thing. So, the coils of tension in my shoulders are unwinding... and I am so very tired as a result.

I'm waking up more and more, each day, but it took a bit.

Interim

I have several things I could post about, and I will eventually. But I was searching for an image of "failure" for a project, and I found this video.



The Stupiest Woman In The World - video powered by Metacafe

Clearly, our hope must be in future generations, cause it sure as hell ain't in the current one.

child found

The child I put out a missing persons post for yesterday has been found at a women's shelter and is on her way home.

Keep a lookout

I got this email from my friend Cynthia (Producer of Chinese Angle and set genius for Sweetie Tanya) last night.

"My family is suffering a crisis and I need your help!

My niece Lisa Gregory( you may have heard my stories about her) has gone missing from the Antioch CA area on May 14, 2008 with her 2 year old little girl Katie.

My sister has legal custody of Katie as well as Lisa's older daughter. Lisa is drinking heavily and endangering Katie. The police have the missing persons' case. There are existing warrants for Lisa's arrest for other drinking related issues.

The report is also in the state-wide data base.

We need your help. Please forward the attached to people in Northern California where Lisa was last seen and claims to be going into a live-in rehab with her daughter.(We think that is unlikely as most rehab won't take children.) She may have traveled into Nevada or even Oregon, we really have in way to know. Her funds are limited and she may be staying in a cheap motel.

If you see her call the police immediately. Please don't confront her as she will likely flee in a risky manner that could cause greater harm to Katie.

THANK YOU for your support. If any of you have ideas on other ways to find her please let me know."


I don't know a lot of people in the area mentioned, but I'm putting this out there in case someone knows something or sees something.

Tabs

Things are looking up.
I loved this article about Senator Joe Biden calling Bush on his bullshit.
article here
Bush used the anniversary of the foundation of Israel to slam anyone who wants to try to negotiate with Iran.
Bush's comments

Biden's response?

"This is bullshit."

and it really, really is.

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A girl who was raped went on YouTube to out her attacker and find some support.

article here

I read this and just hurt. It hurt because so many of "Tanya"'s lines in the show mirror the comments of victims about there not being any justice in the system for rape victims. We state in the show that one in three women are assaulted in the course of their lives, and the article lists one in four women under 25. A small difference, and when you got 25 and up I have no doubt that the 33% figure still holds true. It makes me want to vomit...

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Invisible Forest updates

It appears that The Invisible Forest was reviewed by a Swiss Jungian Analyst. Given that the movie is essentially a tour through a dreamscape, that seems extremely appropriate.
An excerpt:
In filmmaking, Antero Alli, playwright, poet, actor and director, is a Pied Piper of the imagistic, imaginal world, enchanting, enticing, with the mercurial, quicksilver flute of his instinctive, intuitive style. Perhaps this is especially true in The Invisible Forest.
The review is here.

Antero was also interviewed up in Oregon, where he's been showing the film.

Here's the June schedule for showings:

Thursday June 5, 9pm: DIVA Center, Eugene OR. $5.
Friday June 6, 9:30pm: Hollywood Theatre, Portland OR. $6.
Sunday June 15, 2pm: NW Film Forum, Seattle WA. $8
Wed. June 18, 8:30pm: Pickford Cinema, Bellingham WA $7.50
Friday June 27, 7pm: Shiny Object, West Sacramento. $5.
Filmmaker in person at all screenings.

Four for Four!

The SF Bay Guardian came out today and had this to say:
The return of "Sweetie" Tanya (after its debut run at the Darkroom in January) feels like an off-Broadway-bound show that's generously consented to remain off–Union Square for now. Dan Wilson's inspired take on Sweeney Todd — re-imagined as a tale of sexual and class exploitation at the economic fringes of the white yuppie-hipster makeover of the Mission, narrated by a schizophrenic homeless man (sharply played by Bryce Byerley) — is more than mere spoof. Just as the original Sweeney had a real beef that made his monstrous deeds explicable if not necessarily forgivable, "Sweetie" Tanya (a terrific Kate Austin-Gröen) derives her campaign of vengeance from a situation as much personal as political, aggravated by the harassment she receives behind and over the counter at a Mission coffee house. Beneath its delightful foam of frothy comedy, "Sweetie" Tanya hides a depth charge of caffeinated cruelty and outrage. Among the show's many qualities are some very good songs (from various contributors), sung especially well by Austin-Gröen and costar Alexis Wong, and backed by composer and musical director Steve Kahn's fine five-piece band. There could be more in way of plot development, the staging is occasionally too static, and the supporting performances are uneven. But none of these weaknesses much impinge on Sweetie's remarkable success. (Avila)


That's four reviews, all of them positive. All acknowledge that the show is flawed, but so much fun that the flaws are easily (and happily) overlooked. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl.

Are schoolgirls really giddy? I honestly don't know, but if they are, I'm as giddy as one.

Press

Opening night for Tanya was tough. Six people, two of which were critics. One of them, the critic for the San Jose Mercury News, left like a shot after the show (which hadn't forced a single audible laugh out of the crowd). I was convinced that we were going to get reamed.

I was wrong.

Let's hope it gets some butts in seats this Thursday.

images

Since my job focus has switched to developing multimedia pieces, I've become disconcertingly aware of people's appearances. I don't mean in person, but as I shuffle through the hundreds of photos I have, trying to find one that fits the content I need to express.

I find myself asking myself questions like, "why aren't there more kids of color in this classroom? I can't show the same kid three times. Oh, this teacher is kind of wall-eyed, can I use this shot? What the hell is that device on that kid's head?" (I still don't know the answer to the last one)

It kind of makes me uncomfortable, because I like to see the beauty in every face, but some people are photogenic and some aren't. I don't like feeling like I need to exclude representing someone because they have funny eyes, or bad teeth, or any other feature that marks them as being "different". At the same time, if I want people to look at the project that is being described, I don't want them wondering what that thing is on that kid's head.

Like with film and theatre, it's about drawing the eye to what you want to communicate. I deal with this all the time, but for some reason, it's bothering me more in this context.

Hope gained

Today went... surprisingly well.

I needed to be in the city for a video conference at noon, and also to meet with the new project manager at work. I got a call at 9am from Kinkos, saying that the Sweetie Tanya glossy posters were ready two hours early.

Nice.

I leave early for SF, pick up the posters and do my supervisor meeting early. The video conference also ends an hour early and was actually quite productive. I am supposed to be at the Exit by 3:30 to move our flats, because another group needs the dressing room our flat are stored in. I get a call at the end of my meeting saying that the rehearsal was cancelled and I don't need to make an early trip.

Nice.

I pick up the truck at 5th and Mission. I love City Car Share, I really do. I get to Hal and Cynthia's about 4:15pm and we load everything into the truck and their car. We tie it all down and drive very slowly back to the Exit, arriving at 5:02pm. We're exactly on schedule.

Nice.

We unload, then Hal and I go to the rehearsal room to get props, table, chair and bar. We get everything loaded, unloaded at the Exit and get the car back to City Car share a full hour and a half before it was due.

Nice.

Steve shows up and starts to figure out the band setup after the Exit manager gives Peggy and Rhiannon the lowdown on the space, the lights and the sound board. We've all worked here before, so this is mostly review. I've been terribly worried about how to plug the band into the sound board, but Steve has a perfect low-tech solution: we'll use the band's monitor amps and point them towards the back wall. The sound will then bounce to the audience and not overwhelm the singers. Brilliant, and eliminates the host of tech problems I was expecting to deal with.

Nice.

The group before us, Medea Knows Best, had a light plot that fulfilled 85% of our needs, so they just left it up for us. We only have to refocus three or four lights and re-gel four or five others. The lighting plot isn't much more complex that what we did at the Darkroom, but the difference between the light on our lovely cream colored set walls versus the black curtains of the darkroom is night and day. It looks infinitely better.

Nice.

Cynthia and Hal put up all the flats, adjust the bar size to something that looks better and gives the performers more space. The Odwalla cabinet looks awesome. We still need to tape and paint scenes, add the door and do more general dressing, but it already looks like a coffee shop. Tomorrow we'll do most of that work before 7pm. Wednesday will bring minor additions. We'll easily be done before the preview on Thursday.

Nice.

We finish load in at 10pm and go home. We didn't have to stay late at all. I made a list of props we need, and things I seem to have left back at the rehearsal space. I'll get most of those resolved between 5-6 tomorrow. Our tech will involve starting and stopping for light cue building, but since all but one song is being done live, sound shouldn't be much of an issue.

It's all been a little too smooth. A lot of work, to be sure, but no fiascos, no huge setbacks, no problems we weren't expecting. Quite the opposite. Problems I expected to happen never materialized.

Niiiiiceee

Richer for Poorer

"Riches" closed last night. As I think I've mentioned here, it was an artistically successful show, but a horrible failure in terms of audience draw. It's just hard to get folks to want to come see a play about divorce. I even had one acquaintance do box office for us, but left before the show started because she wasn't in an emotional place where she could handle the subject matter.

Discouraging.

We are using all the flats for Sweetie Tanya, so the Riches set guy left them all lined up for us in the Phoenix Theatre. We got them in Bahati's truck and drove them the five blocks to the Exit. I'm really pleased that these are all wood flats, using thin, thin wood for the surfaces as opposed to canvas. Canvas flats tend to wobble and sag in unconvincing ways. These babies felt sturdy, and were still extremely light. I haven't actually used flats for a show in quite some time, so I'm really glad that we had access to them.

I've been obsessively worrying about the set, and the lights and the sound system. Most of the reason for my worry is that I wouldn't get to really see or work with any of them until Monday night. To be a few days away from opening and to be pretty in the dark about how things actually look is normal for theatre, but it doesn't get less stressful for me. More and more, I have excellent people handing these parts of the productions, so I'm not as hands on as I once was. That is a great boon for me and I'll probably live longer, but it's still a bit unsettling to not be exercising direct control.

But, today a large portion of our set got moved into the theatre. We had to store it in the "Stage Left" dressing area, because "Medea Knows Best" was in the midst of an enormous strike. I was just glad we didn't have to move it to the rehearsal room and then move it again tomorrow. Having those flats moved over has eased my nerves quite a bit. I know how many we have, I know how heavy they are, and therefore how hard it will be to assemble them as needed. I saw Cynthia and Hal the other night, and Hal said that the cabinets are looking great, which is the first real feedback I've gotten on them, and that calmed me a great deal as well.

It's all going to work out.

I closed a show last night. I open a show in four days (five, if you don't count the preview).

Sparta? This is madness!

an unexpected break

I'm sitting in Union Square, working on the fourth hospital show (end of the mini-series), but my battery is waning so I'll be forced to relocate to the rehearsal studio soon.

No show today, as we only had two people show up for the matinee. Frustrating, to say the least, but it is sadly something I consider to be a normal part of small theatre life. It no longer even has the power to throw me into despair. It's happened too many times. Good shows that for one reason or another don't get the buzz they deserve. I've had a few people say that it's my best work yet as a performer, but very few people will see it, it seems.

A shame.

Emotionally, I've been feeling too washed out lately to get riled about it, though. The typical highs and lows of Tanya eat up what little energy I have left after increasingly grueling days at work.

More and more I just look forward to May, and especially to June.

Still, today I sit in the square, enjoying the gorgeous weather, and it's just too nice to feel emo, even if I can't help but feel numb.

A refuge

Dave sent this out, but for all his malice... it's good to know that there's a place I can go.

psychic

years ago, when I deeply feel for someone and we had been going out for almost a year, she began corresponding with someone on the east coast. It was someone she had admired professionally who had also become aware of her work. I knew almost immediately that it was going to be the end for us. She didn't really know it for another month, interestingly enough.

It's a trick I've managed a few times, always involving people I've dropped my walls with. I know who they are going to fall for before they do.

It's not a terribly useful psychic gift.

Sunday morning recap

Sunday morning. I'm chilling out and loving it.

"Riches" went well this weekend. I'm not word perfect, but that's to be expected with this much text. Every now and then a tiny line that doesn't actually impact anything gets dropped, but the audience is none the wiser. This isn't shakespeare, after all, and no one is following along with their own text on their lap. The important thing is that people are laughing at all the right spots, and some of them are leaving with tears in their eyes. It's a powerful bit of theatre, and I hope more people make it.

Audiences so far have been small, but pleased.

As for me, I'm doing well. I was able to go to Brian's birthday gathering yesterday, and that was lovely. I did the afternoon early-bird set (basically, me and the Austin-Groens) and then came back for an hour after the show closed. I got to see Zack and a bunch of animators from the SF Academy of Art.

I'm not feeling too freaked out at the moment. We start rehearsing again for Tanya on Thursday, but many of the technical details are pretty much worked out, or are being worked out by people who are more than qualified to handle them. I am again reminded what a blessing it is to be working with a qualified and committed TEAM. I do far too much myself, and I'm glad to be a little more balanced nowadays.

That said, that last few weeks have been particularly hairy. I missed Radiostar updates for TWO WEEKS. The reason was a good one, however. Between TBA, Tanya, and Riches, I've had no time in the evenings, and I've also been editing our first pass at a Radiostar serial format. I.e. a storyline/persistent universe that lasts for a full four episodes. That's over two hours of raw audio, broken down into 25 scenes. I think it'll be well over an hour of audio when it's all done. The first week is now done and ready for posting on Wednesday. The next two episodes will be cake, since I've already done a lot of the hard lifting over the last two weeks.

I hope to get one of them done today, actually.

but for now? Sunday morning, I'm going to goof off on the X-Box for an hour or two before tackling more Radiostar goodness.

Lion's mouth

March may go in like a lion and out like a lamb, but as we enter April, I feel more like I'm putting my head in the lion's mouth.

Riches opens on Friday. This is tech week. Whee! The show is feeling good, but there's still a LOT to do.

We're continuing to find the enhanced and groovy sound of Sweetie Tanya. Dealing with personnel fluctuations there, but everything looks doable. The team was have is pretty kick ass, and that goes a long, long way.

WestEd work is kicking my ass, and just bought a new pair of shoes, so that means less flex time to address other concerns.

I won't even go into my inability to get caught up with Radiostar right now.

This is the month of crazy, plain and simple.
If you don't hear from me here, it's because I have nothing useful to say and don't feel like whining.

Miracles and prognostications

Yesterday afternoon, as I emerged into the San Francisco sunshine, the path of my day suddenly struck me as something extraordinary.

I had breakfasted in Santa Barbara, been driven to Burbank, flew to Oakland, and taken an underground train under the Bay to San Francisco... all in the number of hours I could count on my fingers.

This would have seemed miraculous a mere century ago. Any of these actions in 1906 would have been the stuff of pure fantasy, the most outrageous science fiction. (Ok, maybe not having breakfast in Santa Barbara, but otherwise....) The radical shifts in human experience over the last few generations is profound, and it is so easy to forget about them, so easy to forget that the way we live today has very little resemblance to how humans have lived throughout history.

And, of course, it continues to change at a lightning pace.

My attention was drawn to this article from Newsweek in 1995, decrying all the optimism about the internet.

A short quote: "Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?"

And yet, today I am working from home, use Wikipedia regularly for basic fact checking, and help people use online classrooms for training seminars that include participants from all over the country. Most of my dating life comes from people I meet online, and many professional and personal relationships started and are maintained online. MoveOn.org uses the online world to push hard politically on a regular basis.

Some of the critiques of the 12 year old article still remain, but the vast majority of his comments reveal someone who can only see the state of the world as it is, not how it will continue to change. This particular pundit saw the state of the internet at 1995 and mocked those who were envisioning the miracles of tomorrow, the logical extensions of what they saw in the present.

I am not a technological visionary. I don't know what the next twelve years will bring us. I don't know what the world will look like in my dotage (although I am hoping for something other than a smoking ruin). But I was suddenly reminded that we are indeed in an age of miracles.

Paradise Lost

I've come to some interesting realizations about myself and my relationship to the city of Santa Barbara. I lived in Santa Barbara as a student at Westmont College from September of 1988 to May of 1990. Freshman and Sophomore years only, with my education there cut short by the economics of my misguided decision to get married on May 27th, 1990.

It would be irrational to describe my time at Westmont, and in Santa Barbara, as an idyllic Eden, but in my mind it has taken on that flavor. I've not spent too much time wondering about this, but my recent (I just got off the plane) visit has led to reflection. Things in college were as real as anywhere else, and hardship and pain were by no means banished from the campus. Students died on a mission trip to Mexico. A star soccer player fled the country under sexual assault charges. The lone vocal Democrat on a campus of Republicans endured a great deal during the election.

Personally, I experienced loneliness, heartache, stress, and sorrow.

So, why is Santa Barbara my Eden, other than the fact that it is the most heart breakingly beautiful city in America that isn't located on a tropical island?

Two things, primarily, stand out. First, it was the end of my adolescence. I went straight from Santa Barbara into my wedding, and then to Chicago. The day I stepped away from that city, I became a man in the truest sense. I shouldered a man's burdens, responsibilities, and struggles. I entered a marriage that would send me into three years of depression before it finally ended in February of 1996. While bad things happened, while there were hurts and struggles and pain, it was still the pain of someone who was in many ways an innocent. Jeff Maurer said to me one day, "there are those who are innocent and those who are not. Dan, at this point, you are still an innocent."

An innocent in Eden. But once I left that place, my innocence was not to last.

The innocence I lost has little to do with sexuality, and more to do with responsibility, deepening awareness of my own capacity for hypocrisy, weakness, and inadequacy. As I traded Santa Barbara for Chicago, I also lost my conviction in certain right and wrong. My blacks and whites began, more and more, to bleed into shades of grey. This was a slower process, certainly, than the time it takes to drive from California to Illinois, but nevertheless, these two cities represent for me a time and place of innocence and potential, and a time and place of struggle and loss.

That's one thing. The second is that it was in Santa Barbara that I found what has become my life work. To be sure, I started acting in High School. I did shows at College Park and with my church, Hope Center. But it was in Santa Barbara that theatre went from something fun to something transformative. It went from a hobby to a passion.

Looking back, it would not be unfair to say that two men outside my family deeply impacted my life before I turned twenty. One would be my pastor, Roger Dill. The other would be my director and teacher, John Blondell. I've said before on these pages that everything I do with theatre, on some level, is my trying to get back to the experiences I had on that campus, the belief that with art we are doing something that can truly impact people. I may have been the only person who felt that way at the time, but again, as I look back, the word "transformative" is emblazoned across the sky.

Thus, when my hostess tossed off a casual question over breakfast, I about fell off my chair. "Do you know John Blondell?"

Oh, the man who irrevocably shaped my idea of what theatre is? The man who provided the educational and philosophical foundation for my life's work? The man who inspired and excited my mind and soul more than any other teacher before or since? Yes, actually. I do.

Although, in truth, I don't. The John Blondell I knew has, like the city and the school, become a figure of legend in my personal history. The real John is no more the mentor I knew than I am the student he had in his first years at the school. He's a man with a long history, two kids, and who knows what else. All of us have changed immeasurably since 1990, let alone people who have in the imagination taken on almost iconic importance.

So, as fun as it would have been, it is probably best that he did not attend the wine tasting we went to that afternoon, although he had been on the guest list. I would most likely have embarrassed myself more than I did.

This is a digression, however, from the question of Santa Barbara as Eden. I did six shows while in Santa Barbara: Peter Pan, Mother Courage and Her Children, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare on Location: Just the High Points, An Evening with Williams and Mamet, and The Dining Room. Of these six shows, five of them are points of frequent recollection, fondness and inspiration. (The Dining Room simply taught me that I don't much care for A.R. Gurney's writing.)

All of this history, this mythology, this baggage, I carried with me this weekend. I'd visited Santa Barbara before, on single-day work trips that had just enough time for me to drive up to the campus and walk around for five minutes, find the memorial for the students who died in Mexico, and then leave in order to return to the airport. This was the first time, however, that I'd spent time wandering the city with someone who lived there. The first time I had accidentally turned down a street I had known, walked past a building full of memories, or really taken the time to feel the passage of years.

It was very, very hard to leave.

Double Agent

Bahati loaned me her copy of Casino Royale at rehearsal the other day. I haven't watched it yet.

On a plane, off on an adventure, the airline magazine has a large photo of Don Adams as Maxwell Smart on the cover, shoe phone clamped to his ear.

Secret Agents. Super Spies.

Sometimes I feel like Bond. Not the Bond of the novels, thuggish and misogynistic, but the Bond of the films. In control, smooth, and blessed by luck. I have just the right words, my timing is flawless, and every setback proves to be a launching point to move me forward. Everything clicks.

More often, however, I feel like Maxwell Smart, or Inspector Clouseau. Bumbling, fumbling, walking into walls, making a general ass out of myself. Sure, Smart and Clouseau bumble into saving the day, but that's the way it is with comedy and fiction. But in the real world, bumbling is bumbling and rarely do you step into a two foot hole at a full run without breaking your leg in the process.

The scary thing, though, the truly frightening thing, is when everything feels like Bond, but when all is done and you take stock of where you are, and you realize that it's *your* home base that you blew up, *your* colleague mistaken for an opposing agent that you shot, *your* little world reduced to ashes.

Every Clouseau thinks he is MacGyver. Every Smart thinks he's Bond. Every Charlie Brown steps up to the pitcher's mound, ready to be the hero but knowing in his heart that he's more likely to be the goat.

But I'm mixing my pop-culture metaphors. Let's move back from the round headed kid in the jagged stripe shirt.

I've been flipped inside out, back to front all weekend. Visiting someone I have known for years, and yet know very little about. Rediscovering a city I once called home, but that oftentimes asserted itself as a sequence of powerful memories so insistent that they pulled me out of the present. Encountering people I did not know, who greeted me as warmly as my own tribe, while I stood awkwardly aware of my outsider status. I have been amused, amazed, inspired, illuminated, revealed, intrigued, ashamed, astounded, aloof, intoxicated, aroused, apprehensive, nostalgic, gastronomically pampered, and existentially befuddled.

Within the space of 48 hours, I have been all over my emotional map. I haven't been driving a supercharged BMW that can fly, swim, shoot rockets, and convert itself into an irresistible boudoir. I've been bumbling, stumbling my way around, colliding, ricocheting, and tumbling from point to point... and horribly aware of it most of the time.

I am Maxwell Smart with self-awareness.

I can't even pretend to be Bond.

Obama's speech on Race

It took me a couple of days to get around to watching it, but it really is something remarkable. Frank, honest, and unapologetic. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out

Fun

I was never a Speed Racer fan as a kid. That was more of my brother's domain. But I have to say that this looks like it may be the most fun you'll ever have watching a movie.

Well, I got my tech troubles all worked out finally, and I think I'm pretty much back on track. Of course, now I can't find my script for "Riches". It's probably at our rehearsal space. This would be a bigger deal if I had actually had time tonight to work on my lines, but as it is, I spent most of tonight doing the work I didn't get done this afternoon.

Feh.

On the plus side, I had a meeting with our light designer for Tanya, and on the BART ride back I wrote down all my thoughts from a meeting with Steve Kahn yesterday. A short film got sparked in my head while sitting in his back yard, checking out his little fish pond. I have a cast in mind, and a pretty extensive breakdown of what happens in the film. It would be a short film, maybe 20 minutes, tops, and with no dialogue whatsoever.

It would be fun to do, and a good practice run for a feature length project that is looking like something to do in 2009....

Ok, technology is great. It allows us to do amazing things. It's shiny.

When it works, anyway.

I've spent most of today trying to get my copy of Parallels to NOT crash every time I launch it.

And I have stuff due on Wednesday.

Joy.

fiddle, fit as

At 6'3" and 195 lbs, I'm a big guy. I'm not a big guy though. My dad was closer to 300 than 200, but while I managed to inherit his kidney stones, I haven't inherited his obesity. That said, my eating habits have always been heavily influenced by my roots, which go back to Missouri on both sides of my family before they meander their way back to Ireland and Scotland and other pasty nations. So, lots of starches, complex carbs, sugar and grease. I don't much care for sushi and I didn't consider it a tragedy when my urologist told me that I shouldn't eat a lot of spinach, kale, or other dark leafy greens because they were dangerous for my brand of kidney stone.

My lack of dietary purity has been a point of concern for some, and annoyance for others. This is the San Francisco Bay Area, after all, and people take their carnal temples pretty seriously. Still, I walk a lot, and am in decent shape for a 37 year old thespian, computer tech, and playwright.

When I was approached to play David Rich in Triple Shot's production of "Riches", I was pleased. When I read the lines in the script where David talks about all the time he spends at the club running around the track, playing racquetball, swimming and weight lifting, I didn't flinch. After all, it's not like I'm taking off my shirt.

Or am I?

Two nights ago, Bahati Bonner, my esteemed director, said "Oh, didn't I tell you? You need to work out. Towards the end of the show, we're going to have you in a wife-beater. It's easier than dealing with distressed clothes."

So, I'm suddenly cutting out as many starches as is reasonable (I should cut them all out, but we'll see how long I can maintain that discipline), focusing on a more vegetarian diet, and doing push-ups and sit-ups three times a day. My chest has begun to feel very sore, and a few minutes ago when I tried my second set up push-ups for the day I found I couldn't do even my paltry minimum. I'll be tackling it again in a few moments, but it was a rude awakening.

I have three weekends to fight against a lifetime of less than optimal habits so that I don't look ridiculous on stage.

freeze

Thanks to Kim Richards to sent this link out.

I'm not a performance art fan, but this isn't so much performance art as ... well ... I guess it is. It's just cool. A single frozen person is no big deal. We see them all the time on street corners in the city. But over 200?

inching back to me

I'm in a weird state. I'm pretty much back to health, except for the cough that I'm sure I'll live with for a bit. I'm back to work, although work is still pretty quiet at the moment. Rehearsals are in full swing, Radiostar is exploring more extended narratives which is causing a few growing pains. New arrangements are coming in daily for Sweetie Tanya....

and I feel directionless.

This is probably just the after effects of a week of illness. I was unable to do much of anything, so I feel disconnected from everything.

Every day is an improvement. I trust I'll have my spirit back by tomorrow... or maybe the day after.

bleh

I sound like Wolfman Jack. This dates me, and if you don't know who I'm talking about, go get culturally educated. I feel fairly awful as well, although I am most definitely improving. Pema sent me a recipe for a cold busting tea that involved seeping six cloves of garlic, a couple inches of ginger root, most of a lemon and some ground red pepper in my tea kettle until it burst forth with a particularly ... powerful brew. I can't say I like it, but it certainly does clear the sinuses and I've had three glasses of it today. Many thanks to Jill, who brought over the ingredients on her way to work.

I clearly can't complain too much when I have beautiful women near and far aiding in my recovery.

Still, I have gotten very little work done, either job or personal. I just can't maintain focus or interest in anything active. Even video games get boring after a half hour. Normally, that's a sick person's godsend.

What I have managed to do, however, is read Thom Camp's novel and Brian Schirmer's screenplay. Both of which I utterly and totally enjoyed. Reading them, however, has made me even more frustrated that I haven't been able to scrape the focus together to work on my own projects aside from some basic email management.

Yeah, I know. I'm sick. I need to deal with it.

In fact, I'm gonna go to bed, right now... at 10pm....

I'm not old, I'm sick.

too hot

I woke up yesterday with a mild case of "cold nose". Congestion, sneezing, a general "this sucks" feeling everywhere. I stayed home form work and slept most of the afternoon. I did, however, to go rehearsal. I was able to rally for 2 and a half hours, but I felt awful at the end of it. I felt slightly warm, as well.

This morning I woke up restless, hot, and with my skin as sensitive as dry parchment. I tried to sleep most of the day, but my visions were mild fever dreams and not restful at all. I looked in vain for my thermometer. Kitchen, bathroom, living room. Finally at 3pm, feeling loopy and concerned that I am not MORE congested than I am, I found it in my pencil drawer.

I have a 101.7 fever. I took it twice, just to be sure. I downed some ibuprofen, and will wait an your to see if it responds at all. If it doesn't, if it is 101.6 or higher, I will go to the hospital and have them x-ray my kidneys to be sure that I am not passing a stone. Or more to the point, that I'm NOT passing a stone, but that a stone would very much like to be passed.

I have a grim feeling about this.

Home and Away

Last night was a small game night over at Brian's. Just three of us, but a lot of fun as Mateo had a lot of Halo game variants for us to try out. Playing with gravity can be fun, and the absurdity of it all kept us laughing all night.

I crashed at Brian's, since he had scored me a pass for WonderCon, which is this weekend, and it seemed foolish to head home just to come back into the city first thing in the morning. I had packed everything I might need, including my copy of Thom's novel that I *finally* printed out, and the laptop so I could do any editing of Radiostar if I found I had time.

I've gotten about a third of the way through the novel, but I didn't touch Radiostar until got back home this afternoon.

WonderCon is a decently sized comics convention, but after ComicCon in San Diego, it can't help but feel somewhat anemic. Brian and I walked the floor for about three hours, doing at least a cursory look over of every book and table. Comic conventions are curious things for me. I am very fond of the art form, and have enough comics and geeky DVDs in my house to make it quite clear that I am a fan. Still, I don't buy lots of memorabilia, back issues of comics, endless collections, t-shirts, or knick knacks. I don't feel at home at a Convention, but feel like I'm in the home of a neighbor. Close, but not really where I live.

I see actors from shows I enjoy, but don't feel the need to get autographs. This is true even for the actor who played Lita on DS9, who I had an enormous crush on (and still do.. she's still hot). I only really saw two things I was tempted to buy: a card game from Phil Foglio and a Star Wars print that was exceptionally well done artistically and elegantly funny. I may still get the card game, but I have nowhere to put the print (a very 1920's style print of Leia in her Jabba slave girl outfit, as if it were an ad for an exotic revue... with the word "cancelled" at the bottom).

For the most part, however, the Con, like all Cons, felt like an orgiastic geek consumer frenzy. More than anything else, I felt inspired to go home and edit Radiostar and play with the new Wacom tablet I just bought. I wanted to create art, not buy it.

So, home I went. I didn't play with the tablet, but spent several hours on Radiostar and took a few more halting steps towards improving my piano playing. (I can read some music now, and play the Cm and G7 chords with both hands)

I might have finished Radiostar, but tonight was Joseph's birthday gathering, and that was unequivocally the priority. The evening was, as to be expected, a delight. There was an unexpected amount of focus on the recent success of Sweetie Tanya, which surprised me more than it should. I don't see my friends nearly enough, and so in many respects the show feels fresher for them than it does for me. I start rehearsals for "Riches" tomorrow, and am much more aware of what lies ahead of me than what lies behind.

Missed Adventures and Invisible Forests

I got an email yesterday that invited me to do something wild and impractical last night. I had made promises and commitments, however, so I postponed for a more scheduled wild and impractical event in a few weeks. A few hours later, the person I had made promises and commitments to called to cancel our plans due to personal crisis. This ate at me for the rest of the evening.

It is a point of honor to me that I honor my commitments. I am not perfect in this regard, but if I say I will do a thing, or be somewhere, there is a 95% chance that I won't back out on you. But still, last night's event *was* something that could be cancelled, but I chose a pleasant and planned evening over a wild and impulsive one.

This bothers me.

I don't mean that I want to become someone whose word cannot be trusted, or someone who can't be relied upon. But I do want to be someone who can say "this is an adventure, and *this* can be postponed" and embrace the adventure. I should have been on a plane last night, had dinner with a friend, and flown back a few hours later, just for the madness of it.

Madness.

Madness and Dreams are the themes of Antero Alli's new film, Invisible Forest. This is the film I grew my beard out to lengths that helped destroy my relationship with my then-girlfriend. The film I bleached my entire damn head for. It's strange, and beautiful, and meditative, and very much of a piece with my first project with him, "Hungry Ghosts of Albion" back in 1999.

It's showing at the ATA on March 14th. Here's the info:

Vertical Pool presents the San Francisco premiere of
"THE INVISIBLE FOREST"
(2008; 111 min., USA) A Film by Antero Alli

Friday March 14th, 8pm
Artist Television Access
992 Valencia (& 21st St), San Francisco
Admission: $6. Filmmaker and actors in person.

Venue contacts: 415- 824-3890. http://www.atasite.org
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=2799
Filmmaker contact: 510-464-4640. antero@paratheatrical.com

A theatre director traverses the internal landscape
of his dreams in pursuit of the radical visions
of French Surrealist, Antonin Artaud.


The Trailer
http://www.fractalvideo.com/HTML/IFFV2.html

SYNOPSIS
A theatre troupe camps out in a forest to perform their director's vision of Antonin Artaud's magic theatre of ghosts, gods and spirits. During their forest experiment Alex, the director, is haunted by disturbing dreams where Artaud appears and mocks his theatrical ambitions. When these strange nightmares persist, Alex stops sleeping in an attempt to regain control over his mind. Sleep-deprived and with his sanity pushed to its limits, he seeks help from a Psychotherapist who suggests hypnosis as a means to discover the source of his problems. What follows is a journey through the internal landscape of Alex's subconscious memories and dreams, a sojourn that leads us to a place beyond belief, beyond words, and beyond the mind itself.


CREDITS
ANTERO ALLI, GARRET DAILEY, CLODY CATES, JAMES WAGNER, DAN WILSON, JESSICA BOCKLER, NICK WALKER, ROBIN COOMER, SYLVI ALLI, JOJO RAZOR, DAVID GAUNTLETT, and JULIET TANNER.

Cinematography by CHRIS RASMUSSEN (HDV), SEAN BLOSL (Super-8 film), ANTERO ALLI (DV). Edited by ANTERO ALLI (offline) and CHRIS ODELL (online). Written by ANTERO ALLI, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (excerpts from "Romeo & Juliet" and "The Tempest"), ANTONIN ARTAUD (excerpts from "New Revelations of Being" and "The Theatre and its Double"). Music by Sylvi Alli and others. Produced by VERTICAL POOL. Conceived and Directed by ANTERO ALLI

"The Invisible Forest" Movie site
http://www.verticalpool.com/if.html

Antero Alli -- Filmography
http://www.verticalpool.com/filmography.html

sweathog

"I've got a yoga class on Monday. You wanna come?"

I've talked about taking yoga for years. I was dating a yoga instructor for a while, for crying out loud. I've made plans to do weekly yoga with people. But it's never happened. Soooo, "sure!"

I'm a bit nervous. I know this is an intermediate class, and I'm sure to let her know that this is my first yoga session EVER.

One of my bosses is at the studio. I'm only half surprised. It's that he's at THIS yoga studio that is surprising, not that he's at A yoga studio. He asks, "you're doing the next class? Awesome!"

"Yeah, it's my first class, ever."

He pauses, grins at me, laughs. "Really? It's BRUTAL!"

The room is jam packed. My companion has never seen it so full. We haven't even started, and the room is humid and smells of sweat.

I am able to participate in maybe half of the poses and exercises. Some are physically beyond me, some I cannot due because of light headedness or head-rush headaches from all the up in the sky, down beneath your knees cranium action. My clothing is utterly and completely drenched. I don't mean that I have a good sweat going, I mean *drenched*. Some of the moves, even exhausted, I can pull off. They are very similar to things I've done in Suzuki class, and both the instructor and my companion are surprised and pleased when they see me rally. One or two moves I do fairly easily that even my companion has a hard time with. For the most part however, I am left to gasp and admire the power, grace, strength, and stamina of those around me.

It is *very* humbling.

If I am going to continue going with her on Monday nights, I will need to get a mat, and I will need a DVD I can do beginner yoga to during the week. My upper body strength is unimpressive, and my stamina is tragic.

But I got through the class. Tomorrow I will be a creeping cramp, but tonight... I got through the class.

Sure, I'll use them

I know some extremely cool people who do extremely cool things. One of them is Kalina Wilson, who does things like make shower curtains out of decommissioned boat sails.

I am not yet that cool, but I did make some purchases in a fit of optimism that I would actually utilize them. I.e. I got a wacom tablet and ordered some books on learning piano as an adult. The former item I've wanted for a while, as I'm rather sick and tired of doing Photoshop work and drawing by mouse. With my nifty new 1080p projector, doing art on my wall is a pretty pleasing proposition. The books are because of the 88 key Yamaha keyboard that I bought for "Sweetie Tanya". It lives in my home office now, and it's silly to have something so lovely and cool there if I can't play it.

These are possibly irresponsible purchases since I go into rehearsals for "The Riches" in a couple of weeks, and go back into rehearsals for the remount of "Tanya" two weeks after the Riches opens. Still, we had a piano in the house growing up and no one knew how to play it. I remember plinking on it every now and then, but it feels like an opportunity lost. I don't even know why the thought of taking lessons never came up. I played trumpet very briefly in grade school, but my grades dropped so they took it away from me. I played guitar in High School, but never really had a knack for it. Still, I love the idea of taking little breaks in my day and playing a song.

Most of my creative energies lately have been directed towards Radiostar, which seems like of like a lame excuse for not doing other things because I've been doing Radiostar for the last two years. Still, lately it seems like editing the shows has been taking up more of my time. What's probably more true is that I've been far more social over the last month than normal, so my creative time has seemed less and less.

That and the XBox 360. Stupid XBox.

China, Album, Wandering, and Cock

So, in about an hour I'm going to head over to 21 Grand for a screening of The Invisible Forest. This is the film I shot back in August for Mr. Antero Alli, where I grew my hair and beard out to insane lengths and then dyed it all white in order to play an actor who was playing Prospero. I've seen an almost finished cut of the film already, but I am very curious to see what a paying audience thinks of it. It's a very beautiful film, but I'm too close to it to know if it will make sense to people not involved in the project. Films about madness and dreams are funny that way.

The Sweetie Tanya cast album is limping forward right now, although everything is currently depending on me getting all four musicians into the same room at the same time so they they can jam the songs they have and get a feel for how they work with bass and drums. I've never sat in on something like this before, so it promises to be quite the experience.

I've just been asked to appear on the Jennifer Justice show on Feb 19th. This is a somewhat underground comedy-variety-interview show that Ms. Justice was doing out of 50 Mason until they had to close their doors due to some mysterious problem that most likely involves the Yakuza and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. All I know at this point is that I will be the guest for a segment called "Ask a Man's Cock". What my cock has to say will be a matter of great interest and surprise, especially to me. Normally all it tells me is that it wants to go into a nice, warm, wet, dark space and throw up. I wonder if it wants to vote for Hillary or Obama. Neither are normally its type.

I've started being a bit more intense about monitoring what's going on with Radiostar, since we're getting between 12 to 15 thousand downloads a month. I've already identified a couple of daily download robots and blocked those, but other potential non-humans are harder to target. One IP address downloaded the same show 43 times in eleven days, but there was no clear pattern in when those 43 downloads happened, and any remote site that has a Flash based medial player that is referencing our stuff could generate those kinds of responses. The fact that the IP address comes out of China adds another layer of mystery since my understanding is that everything online in China is being filtered through their servers before it gets to the end user, so 43 people in Beijing could very well be listening to our shows, but we're only seeing the government server they're passing through.

I'll continue to monitor shows that get extra high amounts of traffic and see if I can determine any other patterns, but for now I expect to see our "audience" shrink over the next few months while I remove access of the bandwidth sucking robots that are coming way to close to costing me extra domain hosting monies.

Life has generally been greatly improved since I started working at least three days a week from home. I get much more done here, and when I *do* have some down time, I can be much more productive with it. For example, I did laundry, swept, vacuumed, and mopped the kitchen during time I would normally have spent waiting for downloads to complete, or walking to and from the office. My home smells like pine sol.

Yesterday I took the day "off", since I had only about an hour's worth of work to do all day, and only about fifteen minutes work that I knew of. I ended up walking all over Lake Merritt and downtown Oakland with a new friend who lives nearby and who was also off work. It was a gorgeous day and I can't remember feeling so good and refreshed between 11am and 4pm on a Thursday.

Slack doesn't slack

More news about friends. Nina Bargiel got some good ink on her perspective as a WGA writer and a striker. It's worth taking a look at, especially if you're not really familiar with what this means for the average screenwriter.

cause she's bad-ass

Heather McCulley, the inspiration for "Sweetie Tanya" just demonstrated what a bad-ass she is.

Heather's story will make an excellent Lifetime movie some day. I hope to pen the script.

The White Terror

I went to go see Crisis Hopkins and Revolving Madness at the Climate Theatre last night. I didn't mean to become part of the show, but these things kind of happen. Contributing a location for one of their scenes was standard audience behavior, but then they needed a book to pull words from and I was one of the few people in the audience carrying a book around with me. I've just started reading the Devil in the White City, which got a variety of comments from the gang onstage. At the end, as the end of the freestyle love-contest, they were trying to get people up on stage. They eventually got one guy up who was a good sport about the whole thing, but they wanted more people.

I am not a rapper. I do not aspire to be a rapper. I have considered practicing freestyle rap improv as a skill builder, but have not done so yet. Still, you do not leave improvisors on stage, twisting in the wind. It was very clear that no body else was going to go up and vibe was getting a little uncomfortable, so I stood up.

I muddled through. People seemed impressed that I didn't completely fall apart on stage and had a good humor about it. I also seem to have acquired a new nickname: the White Terror.

Yo.

Delayed reaction

Things have been good on this end. Sweetie Tanya closed to a jam packed, sold out, wedge them in with a crowbar show on Saturday. We'll be doing it all again in May, at the Exit Theatre Mainstage, so the usual bittersweet feeling of a show ending wasn't present. We're not done, we're just taking a vacation before making the show even better.

The next project is getting the CD made, and I go into rehearsal for "The Riches" in a month. I need to do some space negotiating for this fall as well so that I can work on getting the rights for a show that Dylan Russell will direct.

So much for my slow year.

You can stop laughing at me now.

No one believed me when I said that this would be my year for doing LESS, but I have turned down a couple of projects! I just didn't expect Sweetie Tanya to do THIS well and it's kind of gloriously ganked my expectations for 08.

That said, I had an odd experience last night. I was coming home after Radiostar, and on my little two block walk from BART to my apartment, I had a wave of fear crash over me. I had my pepper spray in hand, as I've done for the last couple of months, and the streets were clearly empty all around me. As three cars approached, though, slowing down along side me, I started to feel a kind of scrabbling terror. The word "drive by" popped into my head, even though we don't GET drive-by shootings in my part of Oakland. They were all approaching a red light, and I knew that. Still, my heart began to race. The light changed, and like a scared rabbit, I got home, eyes darting about and my hands clammy.

I got inside and pondered my reaction. A delayed reaction to the mugging? Certainly. I knew this would happen at some point. Irrational fear, triggered by walking home in the dark on the same street, at the same corner where I got assaulted. Totally logical, but I still don't like it. I've never had fear as part of my landscape. I've walked halfway up Manhattan at 2am, carefully staying to well lit streets, without even the slightest fear of my life. But now I'm getting it a block from my apartment.

Moving won't fix this. It's part of me now. I just hope that last night won't become a common occurrence.

oddly calm

It's been a very busy week at work, and socially as well. I saw Golden Thread's collection of short plays dealing with issues in the Middle East, and with being Middle Eastern. A mixed bag, but a very good evening for reflection and companionship. Game night before that, and then the show last night. It's been a week of excitement with the show, as the SF Weekly came out with a two page spread about the show. I was completely gobsmacked. We got a very positive write up in the SF Bay Times as well. Getting the call on Friday that the SF Weekly critic had just been on a local Jazz/public radio station, animatedly praising our show for two full minutes during rush hour pretty much sent me into orbit.

We had a good, but not sold out show on Friday night. They were a quiet bunch, which I hoped was due to the exhaustion of seeing a 10pm show on a Friday night. I seem to have been right, as they warmed up as the show moved on and the applause was thunderous at the end of the evening. People keep telling me that this is a show that could "run forever". It's a bit frightening, actually, to be sitting on something with this much potential. I can only comfort myself that I haven't screwed it up yet, and to keep trusting my instincts.

Today I had a film audition that I very nearly didn't go to. This would have been a large mistake, as what I thought was a faux commercial by Academy of Art University students turned out to be a national commercial for the University itself. I spent a half hour with the director and his crew and had a lovely time with them. We'll see if I get the role or not, but regardless of that I'm very glad to have gone.

It also got me downtown to meet with a friend and walk around Chinatown like a couple of tourists. My movements through San Francisco's Chinatown have always been a "get from A to B" affair, and casually strolling and window shopping on what must be the most temperate day of the year has settled me into a deep and graceful calm. I'm attending laundry and dishes, and doing a general clean and re-organization of the house right now.

And I'm profoundly happy.

Weird Weekend

I think I can officially declare this a really weird weekend. Good, but weird.

We had another battery of shows this weekend. Sweetie Tanya has begun to actually, literally sell out. For a small black box show in the Mission to start selling out during it's second weekend... it's pretty freaking awesome. There's lots of talk about our need to do a "bring your own venue" Fringe Festival remount. Whether we do something like that in September, or if I can secure us a theatre around June is unknown. But the consensus seems to be, this show is too hot to just let die after 8 shows.

To compound the weirdness, I was interviewed by some folks from Comcast before the show on Friday. We had to rapidly get the set on stage, and dress it while the camera crew set up. I had been alerted that they would be there by the fabulous Peggy Powell, but it's still very odd to rush to get your show ready, and then stop in order to get the microphone put on right and then get fed basic promotional questions. They seemed pleased and they remained to film the first half of the show, so if anyone sees "local event news" on a Comcast station and wants to tape it for me, that would be cool.

It gets even stranger though. As cast and crew Google "Sweetie Tanya", strange things have begun to come up. In particular, we've had TWO people post "missed connections" on Craigslist for people that they were checking out at the show. Call me strange, but a musical about sexual harassment is not someplace I would consider to be prime territory for scoping out your next lover. Then again, all the guys on stage are being so creepy, that maybe all the guys in the audience look good by comparison?

Before the Friday show, I was over at Zack Stern's for a round of "Rock Band". I've heard the hype on this game, and I have to say that I really had fun with it. I'm decent on guitar and bass, but I completely suck on drums. I mean, I played guitar back in High School, so fret work of the basic type required by the game feels pretty natural. Getting my hands and feet coordinated for the drum pads was a humiliating task. Still, I wish we had done it on a night I could have stayed longer. After the show I went out for drinks with Neil Howard, his fabulous wife Lex, and Eleanor Reinholdt. Normally, I'll go out for a single drink and then bolt for the BART, but with Neil and Lex out all the way from NYC, I decided to go ahead and make a late night of it. I don't do the $40 cab ride home often, but what'cha gonna do? We stayed until the bar literally threw us out... at 1:40am!

I love San Francisco, but that's just ridiculous.

Saturday night was another late one, as I went to Consumating's "Prom" after the show. I went to the first prom two years ago, shortly after discovering the site. I met a lot of great people that first night, so I had been looking forward to Prom 2. Arriving after midnight, however, was a bit anti-climactic. I didn't have the benefit of the hours of drinking that everyone else had, and the party was much thinner than the first one. Still, I got to see Nina and to finally meet Will. So for me the trip was well worth it. I got to meet a few new people who I had only experienced online, but mostly it was just nice to see some familiar but infrequent faces. I ended up crashing at Brian Schirmer's place afterwards, much more tired than I realized.

Sunday was characterized by sleeping too late on the couch, relaxing with brunch, devouring a book on the way home, taking a deliciously hot bath (while still devouring the book) and Radiostar. I got a show about a third edited before heading into the city with our new microphone stand for our weekly recording session. We haven't met over the last two weeks, and we decided to take our first experimental steps towards the planned Radiostar SERIAL. This involved the return of Jennifer Jajeh to our ranks, who has been MIA for months now.

My evening was just beginning, however, as I needed to get to the DNA lounge in order to catch Kurt Larson's return to the stage. I found out long after I met Kurt that he had been in the band Information Society, but as I was into "Contemporary Christian Music" at the time the band was at it's hottest, I failed to have more than a peripheral awareness of it. So, this was really my first experience of Kurt's showmanship. I had heard a good sampling of his work over the years, but never seen him perform live. It was a hell of a show, and jam packed.

It's always strange to watch people throwing their bras and panties at the guy who you've spent hours hunched over Magic: the Gathering with.

So yeah, all in all... a weird weekend.

let's hear it for the little guy

This from Neil's blog. It looks like United Artists is the first major studio to sign a new contract with the Writer's Guild.

This is the beginning of the end of the strike. Three cheers for the writers! And let's hope that nobody else needs to strike in the coming months.

Press

Some amazing press is coming out for the show, so I thought I'd share a bit of it.

We have a lengthy article in Backstage magazine, which can be found online here.

An excerpt:
"In San Francisco's artsy Mission District, theatre experimentalists stage premieres in hole-in-the-wall spaces, mostly for youthful, adventurous audiences. One such company, Cassandra's Call Productions, is mounting an original musical "for people who don't go to a lot of musicals," says company founder Dan Wilson. The venue, a tiny black box called the Dark Room, is known for campy adaptations of films and TV shows.

Even so, "Sweetie" Tanya: The Demon Barista of Valencia Street is different. A modern-day Sweeney Todd meets Monster (the film about serial man-killer Aileen Wuornos), it departs from tradition in that writer-director Wilson engaged 13 songwriters, including himself and music director Dave Malloy, to create the score."

The article is more about the process, since all the interviews were done about halfway through the rehearsal process.

A full on review is offered up by Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly.

"There's a ghoulish little musical by the name of "Sweetie" Tanya: The Demon Barista of Valencia Street playing at The Dark Room in San Francisco's Mission District and it's terrific black-box stuff for all kinds of reasons.

This musical is a spoof of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, involving an unhappy San Francisco barista's bloodthirsty way of coping with difficult customers. But it takes on such a life of its own, that the relationship with the source material feels more like the seed of inspiration for the show than its overbearing shadow."

Sweetie Tanya has come to town

We opened tonight. The day was fraught with 70mph winds, major power outages in the Mission, bridge closures, BART delays, and torrential downpours. I was convinced that no one would be in the house for our opening night.

Then, almost miraculously, it cleared. We not only had people in the audience, we had far more than I had hoped for.

And the show worked. It worked pretty much exactly as I had hoped it would. I was feeling pretty confident after our tiny test audience saw it the previous night, but I wasn't expecting the thunderous applause at the end of the show. I wasn't expecting the continual laughter throughout, and the gasps of shock, and the bloodthirsty delight that came from our small crowd.

We nailed it.

I'm so exhausted.

I'm so happy.

Invisible forest

I shot a film earlier this year called "The Invisible Forest". The film is almost done, and the director has a nice trailer up here. The trailer gives a really good sense of the film, and the sharp eyed will see that Gary Dailey (The Fear Project: Pinch) and Juliet Tanner (from Crowded Fire) are also in the cast.

I saw a pre-pre screening of the film on Christmas Eve. I quite liked it, and the few issues I did have I told Antero about, and it seems that two of my concerns had been voiced elsewhere and will result in some minor (but significant) adjustments to the final copy. It's a very meditative, visual film. It's very beautiful. I'm looking forward to hearing what others think of it, because I'm entirely too close to it to have any objective sense of how it works. It's more like a painting than anything else. I have so many memories attached to almost every shot that it's hard for me to decontextualize the film. So, if you see it, please let me know your thoughts.

Christmas day I spent at Dave and Kate Austin-Groen's place. I visited my aunt in the morning, then headed over to their place for a mind-bogglingly delicious dinner and a long afternoon and early evening of conversation and games. I like my holidays stress free, and this fit the bill perfectly.

Brian Schirmer got me a t-shirt that says "I'm big in Japan", which is an ongoing joke at Radiostar, due to our unusually high download stats from that country. Dave and Kate got me another t-shirt that says "I want to direct". I wasn't expecting any gift exchange at all, but my embarrassment quickly gave way to delight at the shirts.

Today, I work from home and discover how cold it is in my apartment. I wish I had direct control over my steam radiator...

get this...

It's just become sickly funny.

I had two more actors drop out of the show last night. Boom.

We have five rehearsals left.

The reasons why aren't important, although I understand why one of them needed to leave. The other, well he clearly wasn't invested in the show once he realized how small it was, so I halfway think he just took the first excuse he had. That sounds bitter, but it's not. Others in the cast had noticed it too, so I don't feel like I'm projecting.

Regardless, as of 6:20pm last night, I was down two actors. I was able to fill one role within ten minutes. I called Paul Jennings, who had originally turned down the role for schedule reasons that no longer apply at this stage in the game and he is on board and will be off book by his first rehearsal. This is good, since he only gets four rehearsals before we open.

The other actor was playing two roles. A bit harder to fill. The call has gone out, and the call appears to be spreading rapidly. The community is rallying for us, and I deeply appreciate it. My remaining cast has been in a bit of shock, but are pulling together regardless.

Various ideas have been floated of what to do if we can't get this last actor. One was to do a "concert version" of the show, which would work but is not my first option. Another idea was to turn one character, who isn't a person so much as a psychotic hallucination of a person, into a puppet. This will cost us some choreography, but it fits perfectly into the logic of the show and would be hilarious. I don't know if we'll do that, but I bought the puppet a few minutes ago so it will be here if we need it. That will make the casting a little more loose, since we don't need someone who can act, sing and dance. Just act and dance.

I should be completely freaked out by now, but I'm not. All I can do is what I am doing. The show will go on, one way or another.

The show always goes on, dammit.

break

My new duties in my day job involve lots of Flash, Photoshop and Powerpoint/Breeze work. As a result, after doing tech work professionally for 12 years, I am just now starting to experience a bit of discomfort using a mouse. So, I'm taking a break and doing a little typing instead.

The show is going well, and it feels so nice to say that. It's hit a point where rehearsals are fun, and my stress over the show is back to what I would think it should be. Of course, the stress level I expect is very high, but at least I no longer have questions as to whether or not the show will HAPPEN.

There are moments of relaxation, however. Dave and Kate Austin-Groen restarted their annual book party, which was on Saturday. Last year didn't happen due to birthing issues, and I had missed the previous two years due to show commitments. This was, therefore, a real treat. I gave a book about the schools of philosophy as expressed through the Simpsons, which went to a computer programmer who I believe will actually read and appreciate it. Lucky break that. I got a book called "A Humument" from Martha Soukup, which is a victorian novel which has had each of its pages painted over, revealing individual words and phrases that offer up observations about love in the midst of a refrigerator magnet type narrative. It's strange and beautiful, and I am looking forward to slowly savoring it. In addition to the books, lots of wonderful people were there, including Dylan Russell, Arwen Anderson, Brian Schirmer, and Kevin Montegrande.

Later that night I went with a new friend to go see Crisis Hopkins playing at the Climate Theatre. I haven't seen much theatre in the last month, and it's been even longer since I saw any improv. Julie Potter has stepped down from active membership, it seems, but the quartet has filled out with Lily Harvey, who I've always been a fan of. I laughed hard enough to bring tears down my face, so I consider it a good evening. I didn't hang out for long after the show, however, as I have been feeling the exhaustion rather more than usual.

The easy reason for this would be "age", but that's not the real reason. I'm sure that my temporal location as a man in his late 30's is having an impact, but the fact is that I don't get home until almost 11pm every night, and got home much later for much of last week, and when I get home I can't just fall right asleep. I should probably read, as it might send me to sleep earlier, but instead I've been picking up the XBox 360 controller and playing an hour of whatever is in the tray before slamming my head against the pillow.

As a result, I am tired all the time.

I know that I should just fall asleep when I get home, but part of me is unwilling to release that little time to play and let my mind disengage from everything that is going on. I wish I could figure out a way to have that disengagement without it resulting in so much fatigue, but with Christmas coming up next week, and New Year's after that, I'll have a few chances to chill out and catch back up on my sleep. Once I hit January, my weeknights will be completely open... at least for a while.

Honey, have you seen the cat?

Heather McCulley found this one.

So, South Korea has cloned cats with modified genes. Why modified genes? They say that it is a step towards being able to clone animals that suffer the same diseases that humans do, so that more precise research can be done in finding cures for human illnesses. Let's lay aside the ethics of creating animals for the express purpose of suffering for a moment, although you may guess at my stance based on the phrasing of this sentence. Why would the first thing they clone be glow in the dark cats?

I see a new pet market forming.

I am a dream

Antero has posted a little clip from The Invisible Forest, the film I died my head white for this summer. The final product should be done in January, but this is a neat preview.

Also, fun for anyone who wants to see what I look like as a crazy, white haired old wizard.

ew

In my apartment building, near the mailboxes, there is a small table. People can leave things there for the other tenants, and sometimes UPS puts boxes there for people who aren't home. It's a very useful table. I leave postcards for my shows there, as do some of the other theatre people who live here. I've seen books, New Yorkers, knick knacks and odds and ends left on that little table for anyone who wants them.

This morning there were six individually wrapped twinkies.

I thought that was rather odd, but was not tempted by the synthetic sweets. I used to like Twinkies when I was a kid. Hell, I was practically raised on Hostess snacks. Still, whenver I've succumbed to the nostalgic urge for a HoHo or a Hostess Cupcake, I've felt let down. My tastes are changing, and it really does taste pretty awful.

When I came home tonight, there were three Twinkies sitting there in their individual wrappers.

I've been wondering about it for a while now. Who picks up Twinkies left on the garage sale table?
Did they enjoy them?
Do they feel..... dirty?


I would.

Time for a new job

I so want to be an astronaut right now.

And I can think of at least one of the four that would work.

A question from a non-breeder

As part of her Advent Calendar of Hilarity, Becky Haycox continues to bring the holiday funny with this photo gallery of unhappy santa visitors.

Now really, children being terrified of Santa is not news. It seems that ever since we've had department stores, we've had Santas to terrorize our young ones. What I wonder is this: Why would otherwise loving parents do something to their children that they know will turn them into terrified and screaming balls of sound? Do we so buy into the idea that this is something that you MUST do that you're willing to put your child through that? Do parents secretly *enjoy* seeing their children suffer? Do kids scream in fear so often that it no longer curdles their blood? Why not, when you can clearly see that your baby wants nothing to do with the frightening man (and really, Santa right up there with clowns on the scare-o-meter), just get out of line and walk away?

"You're going to embrace the magic of Christmas if I have to drag you kicking and screaming through the candycane fields and elf infested warrens of the north pole, and you'll like it you little monster!"

And Merry Christmas to you, too.

Bits and Bobs

Brian Schirmer brought this to my attention. Good lord. It is official U.S. policy that we can go to any country and kidnap people and bring them back to the U.S. without the permission or sanction of the country that they are in. Now, I don't particularly like the idea that someone can embezzle a billion dollars and get off scott free simply by hopping the border, but I like it even less that as a country we've taken the stand of "If we want you, we'll get you, and damned be the laws or rights of any other country that wants to stand in our way." Basically, we've once again given the finger to every other country on the planet. I swear, I wonder why we have any allies left at this point.

Becky Haycox made me aware of this debunking of a myth I had never even heard of: that candy canes are rich in religious symbolism and were developed out of piety. The more likely version, based on evidence, is that the only thing religious about them was church leaders taking the existing candy and having them made into shepherd's crooks in order to keep the restless children occupied during holiday mass. What I find rather disturbing about the whole thing, however, is the historical retrofitting of something highly banal to make it spiritually profound.

It's much like an article that one of Neil Gaiman's readers pointed out, detailing the numerous "authors" of the poem "Footprints" and what has become practially a sub-industry of legal wrangling, chest puffing, and positively hallucinatory arguments of asserted authorship. Absuridty of the highest order.

As for me, things are moving along. Sweetie Tanya continues to move forward. In some ways, it's all golden. In some ways, shakey. Yet, the shakey things aren't about the quality of the work that's being done. I am still having casting issues, or might be. I'll know for certain tonight. I've stepped into the role of the Boss after holding auditions, offering the role to two people and those people having to turn it down for reasons either mundane or heartbreaking. I'm not prepared to enter the Equity waters at this stage of the production (Equity is the Stage Actor's Union for those of you not in the field), and I don't want to keep hunting endlessly for an actor when we should be rehearsing. So, unless a "Boss" falls into my lap (so to speak), I'll be performing in January. What this means, however, is that if I can't resolve this other casting issue by tonight, I need to look for another performer again. I can't step into both roles.

The lesson to be learned, boys and girls, is never to rehearse a show over the holidays.