As If There Was Any Doubt...

This tender moment of joy, delight and pride is brought to you courtsey of my brother, Munchkin's father. (No doubt he's rolling his eyes and shaking his head.)

(Sigh)

So proud...oh, so proud! Too emotional to speak! (Sniff)

Need Suggestions

I've got a layover in Honolulu from 9:00a to 5:00p on my flight out of Hawaii. Do any of you have suggestions on what I can do or where to go during my layover? This will be my first time in Honolulu, so I'm completely open to suggestions. I'm also open to lunch suggestions. Also, if any of you have been to Kauai and have "must see / must do" ideas, let me know. I'll be in Kauai for a week.

Brief Updates

Not much to blog about, so I'll just post a few updates.

Nemesis' birthday party was this weekend. The theme (because all of his parties have themes) was "Party Like A Rock Star". Dinner was at 59 Diner (going for the 60's rock & roll thing) then dancing at Chances. Fun times had by all (not to mention good topics for next week's discussions).

I'm finally taking a vacation! For real!! I'm going to Hawaii! I've never been to Hawaii before - even for just a layover. I'm staying with some cousins who live on the island of Kauai. A whole week of the beach!!! And Cingular/AT&T covers that island all the way down to the beach, so some special people will be receiving up-to-date reports live from the beach. (Just sharing my joy with others.)

So I've got my new show I'm doing sound design for (Noel Coward's Design For Living), then a wedding (you people need to stop with these weddings), then Hawaii the following Monday (yay!). After a week or so in Hawaii, then I come back just in time for my birthday party, then about 3 days after that, I'm off to West Virginia!

A Very Busy Two Weeks

It's been awhile since I last posted, but it's been very busy. Last weekend was Easter, the weekend before that was Dad's 60th birthday party and in between, Munchkin (aka my niece, The Grandchild) stayed with us for the week.

The party was fine. The only major snafu was the DVD with the glorified slide show of Dad through the years was from a corrupted batch of DVD's.

Translation: 1.5 weeks of work + 1 bad DVD = No slide show.

Very upsetting. So, I'm going to bore y'all with some pictures from the slide show that no one saw.

Moving on...

Like I said, Munchkin was in last week. It was a very busy week. She saw her first musical - Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (she's in the princess phase) and she was on the edge of her seat the entire time. This is quite an accomplishment considering the show ended a whole hour past her bedtime (she's only 3, folks).

Of course, we had Lolo's birthday, where she helped blow the candles, cut the cake and open the presents.

We went to the Children's Museum, where she went shopping, milked a cow, scampered about in a '69 Ford Mustang and held a puppet show.


The Zoo (thanks, Scott!). Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! (Ok, we didn't see the lions and bears, but we did see the tigers and others.)

When we didn't go on outings, the mornings were spent hunting and trying to pet the cats, the afternoons were spent coloring and helping Lolo tend his tropical orchard that was the backyard, and the evenings were spent dancing the night away. One of her favorite activities - playing with "my best Jock EVER"! (Poor Jock! And he endured all with nary a whimper, bark or sigh.)

Oh, The Pain!

In our first appearance in the Sweet Sixteen in 27 years, we lost last night to Memphis. 64-65. One point. One basket. My only consolation was that I was watching my show, so I couldn't witness (in real time) the pain and agony.

I need my support group to commiserate with.

Another Show Up (Go See It)

Nemesis and I just got back from opening night of my latest show, Anna In The Tropics. I did sound design for this one and I'm fairly happy with it. Yes, there were one or two last minute changes I was considering and I had to stamp out the urge for some additional tweaking, but overall, I think I'm satisfied with the design. (If given the chance, I'd probably tweak all the way to closing night. Sad, but true.) This show was lots of fun to research and build. I found some great Cuban music for this show. Unfortunately, I couldn't use a lot of the really good songs, so I tried to cram as much of it into the preshow and intermission music. Still, a lot of really good stuff got left out because preshow is only 30 minutes and intermission is only 15 minutes. So I have hours of stuff I couldn't utilize. (Sigh)

Here is where I extend my gratitude and gratefulness to Sunshine for the Mac Mini that is now our new soundboard and audio input source. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!! I LOVE IT!!! (Please don't take it away!)

Anna In The Tropics is a fantastic script - beautifully written. For those who don't know, it was the Pulitzer winner in 2003. It takes place in Tampa in a cigar factory owned and run by Cuban immigrants in 1929. The factory workers have just hired a new lector and he has chosen to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. (A lector is a reader hired by the factory workers to read and entertain them with the day's news and novels as they work.) I won't tell anymore except go see this show. Overall, it's a solid production - good ensemble cast and a well-designed show. It's playing at Main Street Theater (at the Times location) and runs till April 15.

I'm Outta Here! - Part 2

My gig up in West Virginia will be almost 2 months of summer stock. In otherwords, 1 week rehearsal, 1 week of performances. This theatre does 6 shows over the summer, with the shows divided among 2 different staffs. My shows for the summer are:

• Sweet Charity
• Funny Girl
• Chorus Line

I hear it's crazy mad, but a lot of fun people.

I'm Outta Here!

Well, for part of the summer, at least. I'll be working up in West Virginia during June & July. I've got some other applications out for the rest of the summer, so we'll see what happens with those. I'll be up in Morgantown, WV working with West Virginia Public Theatre as an Assistant Stage Manager. Morgantown is close to the Pennsylvania border - about 30 minutes south of Pittsburgh (according to my friend). It's somewhere in the mountains (as is a lot of West Virginia). Mean temperature in July (this is important): high of 83 degrees, low of 63 degrees. YES!!!! That makes me happy. I'll be updating as I get more information.

Anti-V Day

For those who know me, I hate this time of year. It's not even a real holiday. Do you get the day off? Holiday pay? I think not. It's an over-hyped day that only serves to kill more trees (to make those saccharine cards) and to discriminate, ostracize and marginalize those who are not coupled up. They saturate the stores (starting on Jan. 2) with those sappy pink & red displays pushing their cheap candies and cards. The bombard the media with commercials for their pathtic, over-priced products. They ambush you at restaurants with reminders of their special dinner-for-two deals. So in honor of those who are happily (or unhappily but don't want to admit it) single, here are some products geared to that large, over-looked and ignored section of the population.

Anyone got a voodoo doll?

Ain't that the truth.

Chocolate, like shoes, is one of the few reliables that will always make you feel good.

February 14 and April 15 - two of the most dreaded days on the calendar.

And my personal favorite:

The Knitting Circle

This last show I did had a fair number of knitters. They came out in full force by the second day of rehearsal. One actor came in with her knitting and the following day, there were no less than a third of our cast showed up with their knitting. The main instigator started converting others throughout the run of the production. She sucked in another actor, one of my crew and (sigh) me. I finally gave in to the dark side during our third week of performances. You don't want to see this piece. I'm attempting to knit a scarf, but frankly, I think I may donate this "scarf" to my cats. They like to lie down on it (while I'm knitting) or "help" me knit. Mind you, their version of helping is playing with the ball of yarn or swatting at the knitting needles (while I'm using them).

New Year's Eve 2006 - Update

New Year's (like Christmas) snuck up on me this year. It's been a stressful holiday season. The show I'm stage managing (Urinetown, The Musical) went into tech the day after Christmas. Literally. It's a huge production - cast of 16, lots of song-and-dance numbers and lots of light cues. LOTS. Most straight plays I've done have averaged about 30-40 cues. Most musicals have averaged close to 100. I think this one is close to 300. At least. I've been to scared to count, to tell you the truth. I do know that one of my busiest (and scariest) songs has 43 cues alone. So this tech week truly has been a hell week (there have been other stuff going on, but I'll save that for another post). On top of hell week (which was actually 2 weeks - tech week and previews), I got sick. In fact, I'm still sick, but at least I can function for most of the day now. Before today, I'd spend most of the day home, trying to rest up as much as possible before going into rehearsal. It has not been a fun holiday season. I'm just glad it's over and we finally opened. There were a few times over the past 2 weeks I didn't think I'd see opening night.

Christmas Traditions

My mom is the WORST out of the entire family about Christmas presents. Not buying them, opening them. She wants to open them ASAP. She's worse than my (younger) cousins. The most they do is case the Christmas tree on an hourly basis. Mom, on the other hand, will pick up the presents and feel them and look for tears in the wrapper ("since it's torn, I might as well open it"). If there are no tears, she will create them. Ok, she personally won't create the tears. She enlists "help". In past years, she used our dog. She would set the present down in front of the dog and let him sniff it. He would then be overwhelmed by curiosity and start pawing at it and start to tear it open. This year, my mom has upgraded. She used her granddaughter. She didn't even have to tempt her. Unopened presents are temptation enough for Munchkin. Munchkin knows her Lola can't refuse her anything, so anytime she wants something, she immediately runs to her. Munchkin wanted to open the Christmas presents NOW. She doesn't really care too much who the present belongs to, she just wanted to open them. So Lola decided to appease her need to open presents. It seems, however, that the presents she handed to Munchkin weren't presents for Munchkin - they were my mom's presents. How convenient. My brother and I stopped the Dynamic Duo halfway through present number 2. Folks, they were attempting to open their Christmas presents TWO DAYS EARLY. It's getting worse and worse with every year.

Music Junkies, Check This Out!!!

My co-worker just introduced me to this website:

http://www.pandora.com

Set up by the Music Genome Project, the website builds radio stations based on your music choices. Here's how Pandora works: you enter a song or artist and based on the entry's music characteristics & attributes, Pandora goes through it's MASSIVE library and compiles your radio station. It's so cool!!! The day my co-worker introduced me to this fabulous site, we spent about 2 hours plugging in different songs / artists and seeing what songs Pandora pulled. (That was a productive day at work.) So if you're stuck in a musical rut, go check it out!!!

Your 15 Minutes Of Fame

Ok, as suggested by a comment on Nemesis' blog, I've decided I'd release my cast list for the movie of my life (pre-productions pending). I haven't quite decided if it's going to be a tragedy or tragi-comedy. (It varies from day to day.) The problem is that the last time I had a definitive cast list was a few years ago. Since then, some of the characters have been dropped and some have been added. If you have any suggestions who you'd like to play you or if you have suggestions as to who should play someone else, please comment. (This also gives me a chance to see which 5 or so people actually read this blog.) Come on, this is your chance to be immortalized!

Aggies 12, t-sips 7

Aggies 12, t-sips 7!!!
(Just in case you didn't notice the score in the blog title.)
Yeah, it was a good Thanksgiving weekend!

I went up to D-FW to spend Thanksgiving with family. I think it was the larger family gatherings (from Dad's side) that we've had in a while. I stayed with my brother, sister-in-law and Munchkin in Dallas and we trouped over to Ft. Worth for dinners at my cousin's place. He, his wife and their twins were housing my parents & my other cousin who was visiting from Oregon (some state waaaay up northwest where it gets cold). And yes, I did say "dinners" (plural). That was not a typo. We had the pre-Thanksgiving dinner, the Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and the real Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. My brother & his family had to miss Thursday's dinner, so it was decided to have the "real" one on Friday when they could join us. The end result being that I waddled out of the D-FW area on Saturday.

It was great being on vacation and seeing them. I brought my dog up and the kids LOVED him. He's a Golden Retriever and he's almost as tall as my niece and my cousin's twins. They hugged on him, loved on him and (in the case of my niece) sat on him. Every once in awhile, I took pity on him and let him into the backyard to give him a break from the little people.

Munchkin (aka my niece). She's now 2 1/2 and speaks in full sentences. In fact, she rarely stops speaking. My first morning in Dallas, I woke up to the dog licking me and Munchkin talking to the dog. She'll talk to just about anyone or anything ("hi house!", "I miss you Bear-Bear", "play in my room, Jock"). Another morning, I woke up to see her talking on my cel phone just "like Daddy". (BTW - Bear-Bear is her favorite Beanie Bear and Jock is my dog.) She's such a funny little person.

The Saturday I came back, I met up with Nemesis & D who was in from San Francisco. We had a great time catching up and she taught us great variation on Scrabble called Speed Scrabble. I'm hooked! (Thanks, D!)

Oh yeah, and the Aggies won against t.u. 12-7!!!

Election Updates

The blogging came to a screeching halt due to the elections. That was an exhausting, interesting experience. We had a flurry of final rounds of fundraising events. Then I spent the last 2 weeks working out of one of our client's headquarters. She lost, but we knew it was going to be an uphill battle. She was a Democrat running in a VERY Republican district. (That's ok, we took the Hill, so it all balances out.) Anyways...

I was working the polls for early vote and on election day pushing cards for her. So yes, I was one of those people who would run up to you and remind you who my candidate is and what she was running for. I had a few interesting responses. One guy strong-armed me (you know, that football blocking move when they stick out their hand to push you off). Another guy literally sprinted to the poll. He got out of his car and ran to the poll then ran back to his car after he was done voting. Then I had a guy ask if my candidate was pro-life. Not an unusual question. I got a number of those working the polls. I told him she was pro-choice, then he proceeded to preach to me for about 10 minutes. I just nodded my head when I really wanted to say "the poll is that way and you're lucky you're voting in the morning, not during the last 10 minutes before the polls close". I definitely didn't engage him in a debate, because my coffee hadn't kicked in yet and I'd probably still be there debating with him. It was already going to be a long day and I didn't want him to make it any longer. It was election day and I worked the polls from 7am to 7pm with about 2 hours for lunch. Election day ended back at headquarters with the beer and everyone glued to the computers and TVs. Needless to say, as soon as we saw our numbers falling and we knew we couldn't win, the party started to dissipate.

This election cycle was definitely an interesting experience as I was slowly sucked further into the political world. Oh, and it's not over. We have a December election for a contested race and we're already crunching numbers for future elections.

Sick Days

I've been sick for a week. I'm in tech week for the current show I'm working on, so my schedule has been crazy. Any time I get sick it is always during tech. It's been miserable. Between the day job and rehearsals that do end till 11p, I haven't had any time to rest. So my boss (for the day job) made me take today off and it was glorious. Almost. I wish I could say I did the whole "lady of leisure" routine today, but since I was feeling miserable for half the day (when the drugs kicked it), it wasn't as productive as I wanted it to be. On the other hand, I did get to sleep in till 2p (I got up to eat, take my drugs and move to the TV) and run some essential errands, like get some new windshield wipers (since it's been raining) and getting my hair done. I was excited about that. Now I'm sitting at the coffee shop, casually and calmly sipping my coffee instead of gulping it in the car and waiting to leave for rehearsal. I know, very boring stuff, but it's been a delicious, slow-paced day. I haven't had one of those in a long while. Now I feel ready to attack the rest of today.

Taking Care Of Some Overdue Blogs...

N: So what's between a bear and a twink?

Me: A straight guy.

One of the boys complaining about the current dating prospects as we were commiserating over coffee.
(If the terms are confusing you, go ask your trusted gay pal.)

My current work/rehearsal is crazy - even crazier than usual. I'm working on a new show - Jean Sarte's No Exit (Huit Clos). This show is at Rice University. It's an interesting experience. They're all young, inexperienced actors and I have to keep reminding myself that they're baby actors. I can't assume anything with this group - like I said, they're inexperienced actors & students to boot. So aside from working on the show, we're trying to train them in routines & habits that we in the professional world take for granted - warm-ups, checking with the stage manager, line notes, blocking, etc. (One of the positives is that it's an opportunity to instill in this young, impressionable group a sense of fear and blind obedience to the Stage Manager! Muwah-ha-ha-ha!!!) What's been really intriguing is watching these kids move from the cerebral to the physical. Let me explain. These are Rice students (the nerds & geeks that most of collegiate Texas makes fun of), so there's lots of analysis of the symbolic, the philosophical, political & social influences, etc. They ate up the tablework. Getting them to transition from table to stage has been another matter. One of the most commonly heard phrases during the first couple of weeks of rehearsal was "you're over-thinking". We've forced them to distill the 2 paragraph explanation down to a 3 to 5 word sentence that starts with "I want" or "I need".

I digress.

Regardless of whether they turn out to be great actors or just ok, they're a good group of kids. Another upside to working at Rice is that I'm 2 buildings away from really cheap beer. I mean REAL cheap! Shiner for $0.95. Oh yeah!

Hello Kitty Meets Darth Vader

'Nuff said.

Survey Courtesy Of Nemesis

W H O . W A S . T H E . L A S T . P E R S O N . T H A T?

1. You hung out with? Merida
2. Rode in a car with? Merida
3. Went to the movies with?: Joel
4. You went to the mall with? Mom
6. You talked on the phone to?: Joel
7. Made you laugh? Merida

W O U L D . Y O U . R A T H E R?
1. Pierce your nose or tongue?: Nose
2. Be serious or be funny? Funny
3. Drink whole or skim milk?: Whole
4. Die in a fire or drown?: Drown - I have a low threshold of pain
5. Spend time with your parents or enemies?: Parents

A N S W E R . T R U T H F U L L Y.

1. Do you like anyone?: Yes

D O . Y O U . P R E F E R.
1. Sun or moon? Moon

2. Winter or Fall? Fall - I get to wear the fabulous fall/winter shoes, but not have to suffer through the cold

3. left or right? Right

4. 10 acquaintances or two best friends?: 2 best friends

5. Sunny or rainy?: Sunny

6. Vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream?: CHOCOLATE

A B O U T . Y O U.
1. What time is it? 1:17am

1. First Name?: Janel
3. What do you want to do? SHOPPING!!!
4. Where do you wanna live? Paris
5. How many kids do you want?: None at the moment
6. You want to get married? Eventually
8. Are you double jointed? Nope
10. Can you cross your eyes? Yes
11. Do you make your bed daily? Nope

R A N D O M.
1. Which shoe goes on first?: Right
2. Ever thrown a shoe at someone? And ruin my shoes???
3. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? Twirl
2. Have you ever eaten Spam?: Ahh, Spam!
3. Favorite ice cream?: Cookies & Cream
4. How many kinds of cereal are in your cabinet? None
5. Do you cook? When I have time.
6. Current mood? Kinda iffy.

IN . THE. LAST. 48 HOURS. HAVE. YOU.

1. Bought something: SHOES!
2. Sang? No
3. Been hugged: Yes
4. Felt stupid: No
5. Missed someone: Yes
6. Danced Crazy: No
7. Gotten your hair cut? No
8. Cried: Do tears from laughing so hard count?
9. mad: No
10. been kissed: Grrrrr...No

. S T U F F .
1. Have you ever been searched by the cops? No
2. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone? With someone
3. Do you believe in ghosts? Not really.