/dev/zero

Take the quiz: “What do you love about making love?”

Intimacy
You love to be intimate with someone. You know every inch of them, you’re big on touching and any kind of body contact especially cuddling though you need to feel comfortable with someone.

Ok, I decided to post this anyway.

I would normally “blog” this, but I don’t feel like dealing with the blog interface right now, or taking the time to format my thoughts for posterity. I’m just venting.

As ya’ll know, I’ve been doing a play with The Labyrinth Theatre, associated with my church. It’s been a lot of fun, but I’m having some difficulty with some of the people. I had some problems with my crew (I’m the stage manager, so I’m basically “in charge” during a show) for a little while, but we ironed that out. Now I have a problem with a cast member, and that’s spilled over into having problems with my crew again.
Friday night Jarod and I were back stage, just inside the stage right door waiting for Jarod’s entrance. He reached over and closed the door, I reached over and pushed it open 4 inches or so, so it wouldn’t bang. He reached over and closed it again, telling me not to do that or it will bang. I reached over and opened it again, telling him if it’s closed, it will bang, but if it’s open far enough, the air pressure will just flow through without moving the door.
Now’s were things get ugly: He pulls it closed again and tells me not to open it again and “DON’T challenge me on this!” with a very angry tone of voice (or whisper, since this was during a show). I reached to open it again, as I do NOT want the door banging and start to point out to him that he has no business giving me instructions or orders. He gives me an angry look and reiterates: DON’T disobey me! (puffing up his chest, shoulders back, teeth clenched, the whole “I’m going to make myself look bigger and badder than you” physical intimidation thing. He thinks he’s a bad ass. I just got right up to him, nose to nose and very calmly explained “*I* am the _stage manager_. YOU do NOT give ME orders, and you, an ACTOR have no business instructing the crew, let alone me, how anything is to be done.”
He tried to give me the “do it my way or I’ll quit the show right now” bit. I called his bluff. He finished with “We’ll have words about this later!” then went on stage.
After he came off stage again, we all (him, me, my two stage hands) sat down and resumed our game of Spades, though he refrained from saying anything to me that wasn’t necessary to facilitate the game.
After the show a couple other cast mentioned that “Jarod said you got all up in his face?” “Yup. I’d do it again, to.”
Not surprisingly, today Kristina, the light board operator / wardrobe mistress (and formally the assistant director, though that role is now obsolete) cornered me and asked if I had “gotten in Jarod’s face”. I admitted I had indeed, told her what had happened with a matter of fact “Yeah, he tried to order me around, I let him know it wasn’t happening. I’m past it. He needs to move on.” Got the usual “Well, you need to do something different. I can’t handle all this drama back-stage!” (Drama? In theater? Ya think????) from her. I nearly told her off right there. I’m tired of everyone back-stage running to her to whine, as if she has some authority over me. (She doesn’t. Technically, at this point she reports to me.)

Anyway, after dealing with the few things I have to do at the beginning of the show, I come back to the green room and find they’ve started the Phase 10 (it’s Phase 10 today instead of spades) without me. (Phase 10 is a game where it’s easy to join in after the game has already started, during the first few hands.) “Oh, didn’t know you wanted to play. We’ll deal you in next hand.” Maggie says, then fails to do so. I object that she didn’t deal me in. “Ooops, sorry, next hand.”
The 3rd hand, she deals, forgets to deal me in, catches it herself and is about to re-deal when Jarod (who has not said a word to me since “We’ll have words about this later!”) states he “has a problem with people joining games once they’ve already started.” (in direct contradiction of his own “don’t worry, you can catch up easily” when he first taught me the game).
I expected nothing less from him. He’s an immature little punk who’s fooled himself into believing he’s both physically and intellectually superior to everyone around him (right down to the “I used to try to intimidate everyone physically and intellectually, but I finally realized what a waste of time that is.” speech the other night. The “I’m an enlightened individual” schpiel, while still exhibiting the exact behavior his “enlightenment” supposedly helped him banish from his psyche.)
What surprised me, and hurt, was that neither Maggie or Vance said a word. They just shrugged and proceeded to ignore me.
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I installed ForumZilla so I can follow all my RSS feeds in Thunderbird. It works fairly well for the most part. I get my brother’s blogs, the TheaterWorks blog, Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic blogs, the O’Reilly Contributed Hacks blog, even the feeds from a couple of Gallery 1.4.4 sites. Every time I launch Thunderbird it asks for my password for Livejournal, gives no error message, but for some reason 9 times out of 10 I can’t read anyone’s “friend’s only” entries. This is particularly annoying in the case of Tabby, who is a prolific blogger, but all her entries are friends only. I don’t know WHY it doesn’t work, it just doesn’t.

…were such drama queens? <tongue firmly in cheek>

Apparently last night after karaoke, Jennifer kept Jarod company while he waited for his roommate to come pick him up. There are two versions of what happened during this time.
Jarod says Jennifer commented that Jarod came to this show with just a “high school and college theater” background so couldn’t truly appreciate the frustrations she and Jamie have, coming from a more “professional” background, working with Ray.
Jennifer says Jarod had been complimenting her and Jamie on their talent, telling her how “amazing” they were and she tried to shrug off the compliment by saying that they only seem that way, compared to the “high school and college actors he’s worked with in the past”. (Jarod is the baby of our cast, at 26. He just graduated from a local talent agencies “acting school” last year.)

At any rate, Jarod was acting moody and broody during the show today, so while everyone else was on stage and he finished the bulk of his part today, we got him to tell us what was bothering him in the green room. He claims when she said it he attributed her words, and his internal reaction to them, to the alcohol they both had consumed, but that when he woke up this morning that was the first thing he thought about and it had been bothering him all day, that his feelings were hurt.

I discreetly spoke to Jennifer about it and her reaction was that he’s being a drama queen and she did not mean to cast any aspersions on his level of professionalism or “hurt his feelings”. I was hoping I might get her to talk to him about it, just to smooth thing over, heal his ego. Her attitude is that he needs to grow up.

I got some dirty looks from my crew today when I asked them to set the stage for Act I, Scene 1 after the matinee show. They wanted to go to lunch and set the stage when they got back. I asked them nicely and got an argument. When everything else was done I came back and it still wasn’t done. It takes 2 minutes tops.
I walked to the front door where they were kicking back and I asked them to do it again. “We’ll do it later.” “How about doing it now, like I asked you?” More dirty looks and rolled eyes as they jumped up to do it, but they were back in 30 seconds. (I’d already done 2/3s of the work anyway) They both jumped into their cars and tore out of the parking lot. When I got to the lunch place they were chatting with the AD. After lunch she pulled me aside and gave me a lecture on the use of “please” and “thank you” and how she doesn’t want to deal with this kind of tension. No shit, Sherlock. I tried asking nicely. When I ask nicely I get either ignored or argued with. When I make it more forceful, suddenly I’m the one showing a lack of manners.

Anyway, the evening performance went off without a hitch and I had a chance to talk to my crew during the show to show them the list of items that needed to get done after a show that I was getting stuck doing all by myself (though I didn’t bring that up). After the evening show, they hopped right to it and we had everything cleared up and put away in no more than 10 minutes, and they stuck around until I released them like I asked. MUCH better.

We then all met up at The Abbey, a near by restaruant / bar. It was karaoke night. I sat down with the gang (including my crew, the AD, and 3/4ths of the cast. The producer / director and the theater / house manager came later.) but was informed that I couldn’t sit at the crew table unless I was going to sing. I refused at first and sat with the cast. After seeing some of the other patrons go up and “sing” (I use the term loosly) I agreed to do a song. When I told them what I was going to do, two of them immediatly chimmed in that they’d do it with me.
After singing Garth Brooks Friends in Low Places (yes, believe it or not, I’m a Garth Brooks fan. Besides, it was the only song in the list that I recognized well enough to be confident I could sing it) I am no longer a karaoke virgin.
I tried to get a couple of the other guys to go up and do Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna’ Take It with me, but no one new the song. Pity.
I had a blast. Hopefully we’ll do it again next week.

The buttler didn’t do it.
Fearing for it’s life from agentscarlett, the can went into hiding. Eventually agentscarlett gave up and the can felt free to come out of hiding. That’s when misseianna made her move. She tried to frame smoofy but forgot that smoofy was in Japan.
But smoofy is clever. She new we would never suspect her while she’s in Japan. This as her perfect opportunity to frame misseianna. smoofy sent her secret ninja fairy assassins (with special custom stealth fairy wings) to open the can and cook it’s contents. The can disappeared into the deep, dark underbelly of the pantry, hiding with the down and out, refried and baked beans. Trying not to be noticed by the Hamburger “Helper”, cowering in sites where no decent, self respeciting entre would be caught dead.
After the ninja fairies were killed by the watch cats, the chilli can again came out of hiding. Only to be opened and eaten by… The Mother!
Yes, The Mother ate the can of chilli. The last person we would suspect did the deed!

I like chilli. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s tastey.
A few weeks ago I picked up a can or two while grocery shopping. I promptly forgot about it. No biggie.
One day I decided I wanted to have chilli for lunch. I couldn’t find the can. I searched and searched the pantry but no sign of it.
A few weeks later I’m in the pantry looking for some canned veggies to fix with dinner and find the can. “So it is here.” I say and set it aside.
Today I remember the can and go to make it for lunch. It’s gone. I searched the whole pantry and the can not there.
And no, Mom didn’t eat it. I’m pretty sure of that.
It’ll show up the next time I reach for a can of peas or something.
It’s teasing me. I feel it.

I slept in today then didn’t do anything in particular for the rest of the day. My first day off in over 2 weeks.
Tomorrow I have to take care of some beaucracy at CCCCD.

Opening weekend went rather well. Aside from all the problems with Ray I mentioned in previous posts, performances went well and none of the audience was aware of his problems with lines. Sunday matinee was the best performance yet, if the worst attended. Apparently no one showed up for the discussion group after the show either, so Ray was able to go home early.

The goodbye BBQ for Leanne at the Semanuk’s was a lot of fun.

Before curtain today I informed Ray he was not to go on stage and stand there coughing behind the set before the lights come up. He tried to argue with me about it. “Theater is a living thing. It’s a living organism. A dancer can trip and fall back stage, a trombone player could miss a note. Theater isn’t perfect, it’s just something yo work at.”
I tried to explain that “perfection” is a goal that we work or. We don’t expect to get it, but we try.
Jennifer joined in, on my side. Ray started to argue with her. I called places and he made as much noise as possible going from the green room to the stage. He made sure to step on every one of Jennifer’s lines through all of the first act.
I had a chat with Kevin during intermission and we decided to wait until after the show to talk to Ray. He chatted with Ray after the show but didn’t bring up the issue of making noise back stage. They just talked about motivation what lines to punch and so on.
I spoke to Kevin and Laurel both after the discussion group and Kevin informed me he will be giving Ray some notes on the subject tomorrow before the matineé tomorrow. We may see Ray disappearing from our lineup soon if he doesn’t get his act together.

As I was leaving the theatre tonight, he met me at my car and apologized for making a scene, explaining he was “passionate about theater”, yadda, yadda. All I can say is if you’re passionate about theater, you should be more professional about it.

Well, opening night went pretty much without a hitch. The false column that gets put up on the wall during set change fell over back stage before the house opened and sustained some minor damage. I had trouble fitting it into it’s sockets during set change. I’m not sure if this was because it is slightly out of alignment now or if I just need more practice trying to get the pins in the sockets in the dark.
The blocks on the back of the “hotel room” door that are supposed to “lock” the door when the characters try to leave both broke during the performance, but luckily there was a crew member right there to hold the door shut anyway.
Other than that, everything was spot-on for my tech crew. All doors opened exactly when they should, closed when they should and my crew did a flawless set change (other than my fumbling with the column). I remembered to double-check everything was in it’s proper place before leaving the stage after set change.
Our leading ladies, and the Valet were all nearly perfect with their lines. Our leading man… well he was as bad as he’s been all through rehersal. He keeps dropping lines and any line he has that’s more than one (short) sentence he “paraphrases”. The problem is when he sounds like he’s struggling to remember his line (which he is), he sounds redundant when he says the same thing multiple times (which in the script are all three different things) and in some cases, he paraphrases the whole MEANING of the line out of it, either destroying the cue for the next actor, or something that is important later in the play.
There were some minor flubs with timing of house lights and so on. I had been told by Kevin that I should escort the actors to the green room before house opens (the path from the dressing rooms to the green room passes right through the lobby, so we can’t open the house until the cast is back stage) then notify Laurel, the house manager, that it’s OK to open the house.
She then opens the house and exactly 7:05 I take the house lights down. The lighting operator then waits 2 beats then brings up the stage lighting and the play begins.
Except apparently how I was TOLD to do it isn’t how it was supposed to happen. Laurel came back stage 5 minutes into the show to tell me I was supposed to wait for her to notify me that the house was ready, and that the reviewer for the Dallas Morning News wasn’t seated yet when the house lights went down. OOPS! But not my fault. Kevin didn’t tell me that part. Well, lesson learned. In the future Laurel and I will communicate better.

After the show we joined our patrons at Cappucinos for a party. There was wine and beer served, as well as some decedant desserts (Chocolate cake, vanilla-strawberry cake and tiramisu). The patrons received thank you gifts (a Labyrinth Theatre tote bag with some goodies in it). One of the patrons came around asking everyone to autograph her program. I was flattered when she asked for mine as well. I was hungry so I ordered some dinner with my wine (FYI: Cappucinos’ chicken milanaise is WONDERFUL!)
After everyone else had left, including our leading man, myself, Vance and his sister and the Js (Jennifer, Jamie and Jarrod, the other three actors) moved out to the smoking patio and had a vent session about Ray, the leading man. Jennifer was worried about having “burned her bridge” with Labyrinth Theatre as she perceived herself as constantly bitching about Ray, but I pointed out that I certain didn’t see her bitching very much, and what I did see I completely agreed with, as did everyone else involved with the show. It was interesting hearing the frustrations of the rest of the cast over Ray. I won’t relate most of what was said, since it was very un-kind and I do still want to keep MY bridges open with any future potential theater employers. I’ll just say there was a lot of venting going on. Around 12:30 we heard breaks squeal hard, then a series of loud bangs. I wandered over in that direction to check it out. Half way across the parking lot I heard screaming coming from that direction, so I sprinted the rest of the way. By the time I got around the hedges I saw a sports car in the median strip and lots of debris. There was already a truck there with a light bar going. I called 911 from my cell phone and reported the accident. By the time I got to the site there were about 20 people standing around, most of them not knowing what to do. There was a young girl on the ground, conscious, but with a very large bump on her forehead. There were several people talking on cell phones, but apparently to friends and family, not 911. It was a Trans-Am that the young girl (probably 16) took around a corner WAY too fast and ended up taking out a “Welcome to the city of Richardson” brick wall in the median srtrip. Her friends were trying to keep her calm and console her, and she was crying that she’d “rather be dead” as the car wasn’t hers. After about 5 minutes the ambulance showed up, followed by a police and a fire truck. I had to convince several cars that tried to stop and help that they should just drive on as the paramedics were already on their way and they’d just get in the way. By now there were probably 50 people standing around, almost all of them under the age of 20, apparently everyone knowing eachother and the victim. There had been others in the car, but they weren’t hurt.
It was about this time that I realized the car was still running, so I opened the drivers door and shut it off and put the keys on the dash.
That car is history. And the city will have to rebuild that wall.

Too tired to post much.
The show opens tomorrow evening.
Got home from rehersal / working on stage, theater, props, etc, last night at 04:45.
Went home early tonight (02:00) because I hadn’t eaten anything since noon and was getting REALLY hungry.
Came home, opened the fridge, found Mom had had a nice steak for dinner. Since I hadn’t had a proper multi-course meal in something like 3 weeks, I popped some of the steak in the microwave to reheat, opened a can of green beans and made some instant rice. I’ve been living on sandwiches and hotdogs since rehersals started.
Since I was tired and I was eating “real food”, I decided I wanted wine with dinner. I VERY rarey drink alcohol, but the urge for a glass of wine hit me. The only open stuff we have is a box (!) of white wine, which really doesn’t go with steak. I have a bottle of port up stairs that moved with me from California (Originally purchased to share with a certian young lady, but that never happened), so I fetched and opened it.
At dinner, enjoyed port, caught up on my email inbox. Going to bed now. Must remember to lay out my “theater tech” clothes to take with me to work tomorrow.

We have two days left until opening night and Ray, our leading man, is worrying everyone involved with the show. He knows most of his lines now, but in any line that’s longer than one short sentence, he tends to “paraphrase”. Sometimes (often) the meaning gets lost. He’s also prone to changing a word or two, words that are key to another characters next line. For instance, he’s supposed to ask “Where’s the light switch” in one scene. The Valet responds “There isn’t one.” The last couple of rehersals, he’s been changing it to “There’s no light switch I notice.” leaving Jared, our Valet, to scramble to respond appropriatly. If it was just that one line it wouldn’t be a big deal, but he does it all the time. He’s also missing cues.

I can tell Kevin is getting tired and worn out. He’s getting irritable and snappy. He actually snapped at ME tonight over a missed tech cue. The cue was missed because the method he wanted us to use to deliver the cue to the person who had to perform the action was physically impossible. When this came up during notes I tried to explain this to him but he just told me he was “angry” because we “had just gone over how to do it.”

I was standing right there when Amanda, the understudy for both ladies parts, asked about how much she was being paid (she wasn’t aware that she was paid until last week) and Kevin explained that she would make $6.50/hr for working crew, $5/hr for understudying and $40 if she actually has to perform a role.
Wait… $6.50 / hr for being on the crew? The crew that reports to me? And I’m not being paid?
I understood I was doing this as a volunteer. I didn’t realize my crew got paid. I’m going to have to talk to Kevin about that.

Four weeks you rehearse and reherse.
Three weeks and it couldn’t be worse.
One week, will it ever be right?
And out of the hat, it’s that big first night!

Will it ever be right, indeed.

Interesting that it won’t tell me who that person is.

Finally, a major corporation who’s sending the message: "Use our trademark in your spam, pay the penalty."

Someone asked me what model of light board we got for the theatre.
It’s a Lightronics top of the line TL-2448

We were “trained” on how to use it today. I put that in quotes because the first words out of the mouth of the guy who came in to do the training were “I don’t actually know how to use this thing.” He quickly showed that he knew nothing about how it works, other than a couple of specs he picked up from reading the anemic user guide. I figured out I knew more about light control boards than he did, and I’ve never actually used one.
The company that installed it is rather less than impressive. 4 of the 8 banks of lights they installed didn’t function at all, including 1 of the 4 main fresnels. They brought their technicians/installers back out and determined that “The dimmer packs all work fine and the board is working fine but they’re not talking to eachother.” So they’re going to replace the dimmer packs on the non-functioning banks of lights. They will have the packs drop-shipped from the manufacturer overnight, so they won’t get here until Monday (it was already after close of business today when they decided this was neccesary). They asked if Tuesday was going to be OK to have everything working (”After all, you don’t need them until Thursday, right?” Uh, no, Thurs is Opening Night. We kinda need to have our lights working before than.) Clearly, though they sell theatre equipment, they’ve never done theatre. Apparently what they really do is sell lighting to churches, so they don’t normally deal with real theatre lights, or theatre schedules. Yeah, fresnels and elipsoidals for a professional stage production is a whole different ballgame from soft floods for the sermon on sanctuary chancel.

Anyway, our leading man is starting to scare us. Here we are, almost two weeks into rehersals, 1 week to opening night, and he doesn’t have his lines down yet, let alone his blocking. Everyone else has their lines and most of their blocking. Even reading directly from his script, he can’t get half of them right. During a break, he asked if I would understudy his part. Uh, no. I’m the stage manager. 1) I don’t make that call, the producor and director do. (Especially since the actors, including the understudies, are paid.) 2) In a professional theater (eg: one operating under an Equity agreement) I would be forbidden to understudy a part. 3) We already have an understudy for that part. 4) The fact that he asked is really scary.

In re: point 1 above. Amanda, the young lady understudying both of the female roles, was actually surprised tonight when Kevin handed her a paycheck. She didn’t know she was getting paid for her part. Lucky her. I’m not.

Rehersals from 7:00 to 10:00 all last week, 3 days this week, and 6:00 - 11:00 the next two nights and all next week. Several hours a day of set construction on top of that and it’s a lot of work. Nothing like walking into a rehersal session and taking charge while still covered in saw dust.
Tomorrow at 4:00 the lighting people come back to teach us how to operate our new light board. Actually having looked at the board, I don’t figure they have a whole lot to teach us. It doesn’t look that complicated. Probably the most complicated part is how to pre-program the queues.

In the last 20 minutes I’ve received over 100 blog spams. They don’t show up because MT 3.0 allows me to screen comments, so the spammers are just waisting their time and my resources by spamming my blog.
At this point these comments, from a large number of IP addresses, amounts to a DDOS. I believe someone is using a remote control utility to use compromised computers all over the ‘Net to send it’s spams.
I may have to turn off comments for a while.
(Livejournal comments will not be effected of course)