Break a Leg

Hi all!

While we desperately search for someone good to do our DVDs, I've made a Blip.tv Break a Leg player that runs all of our episodes in order. Check it on our front page and sit and watch the entire run of the show, from Ep 1 to 17!

Enjoy!

Also, for some writing tips, read my blog over at: www.yuribaranovsky.com

Hope you're all still doing well! We'll have more news soon, I SWEAR.

Let me preface this by saying: I love Break A Leg and everyone involved in it.

Having said that, let me say this: Yuri, you suck.

I'm kidding, of course, but one of the most difficult things about working with these guys is timing, i.e., aligning schedules so that we can all b e in the same place at the same time so that we can get some work done.  It is a monumental task, I assure you.  Solar eclipses happen more frequently.  I have two examples to share with you today.

Number One: Earlier this summer, during the run of The Three Musketeers, some of the cast and crew had decided to go camping one weekend.  We had been planning this for months.  The plan was to do the show in Sebastopol on Friday night, then go out to Bodega afterwards, set up, and have fun, then do the show again on Saturday, go back out to Bodega, have more fun, break down camp on Sunday morning, and go do the show one more time.  This was the ONE weekend all year that I had planned to go camping.  For those of you who don't know: Bodega is about 2.5 hours from San Francisco.  Two days before this whole plan was to be implemented, I get a call from Yuri asking if I was available that weekend to shoot something that was supposed to make fun of Twitter.  The ONE weekend I planned to go camping, plus the fact that I had to do shows every night in Sebastopol, and he wants to know if I'm available.

No, I was not available.

Number Two:  Being an actor means that I frequently am involved in acting-related activities.  I know, it's crazy, but hear me out.  I am currently in a production of Picasso at Lapin Agile at Napa Valley College.  The show was written by Steve Martin in 1993 and is about a fictitious encounter between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in a bar in France in 1904.  It's pretty funny.  The show opened last Friday, which meant I was in tech rehearsal every evening, after having already worked for 8 hours every day at my regular job.  Also, this past weekend, I had auditions for various shows around the North Bay.  I was pretty booked.  But on the whole, my schedule is usually a little more forgiving than that.  So, it was, of course, on THIS weekend, when I had absolutely no time, that Yuri calls me and asks me if I'm available to do some voice over work.  I have been begging Yuri to let me do some voice over work almost the entire time we've been working together, and he calls on one of the very few weekends where I couldn't possibly make it work.

It's not like I don't try to make time.  In fact, a couple summers ago, I didn't audition for any shows and worked to leave my schedule open so that Yuri would be able to call on my at any time and I would show up wherever, ready to rock and/or roll.  Months went by and I never got the call.  Finally, a show comes along that I really want to do, so I got out for it and get cast.  As soon as I do, what happens?  I get a call asking if I'm available to shoot. 

Why, fate? Why?  Was it something I said?  Do I have to do that weird beef-dairy thing on Fridays or whatever?  Do I have to sacrifice a dozen virgin marmots?  What?  Help me out here!  Gimme a hint!  Throw me a bone! Gah!

Ok, rant over.  Back to your regularly scheduled Jenday.

I couldn't write a post here two weeks ago because I was at WAR!  And then I could have written a post last week, but didn't quite manage it because I was recovering...from WAR!

For those of you wondering what the hell I'm talking about: I am a member of the Society for a Creative Anachronism (SCA).  They have events that go on all the time, which are sort of like Renaissance Fairs, but much more involved.  For one, you're camping for days at a time in garb.  And for those of you who still have no idea what garb is: for me, it's shirts with big puffy sleeves, breaches - not pants, big hats with plumes, knee-high boots with the big bell that folds over, and a lot of leather goods.  And no, it's not some creepy fetish party...well, they have that, but that's not what I go for.

So, in the beginning of October every year, they have an event called Great Western War.  And it's called War because there are actually battles that go on.  The battles are usually fought to see who will be the next king in that area.  Except for one of our crew who just started participating in the battles, my friends and I don't go for the fighting.  We go for the camping, dressing like pirates, drinking copious amounts of booze, singing our lungs out, finding suitably friendly wenches (which is mostly just an activity that I partake in because everybody else seems to gotten themselves hitched...suckers), and generally engaging in many and various shenanigans.  It's fantastic.

Some of the highlights of this year's Great Western War as is follows:

- We captured the vessel of the Captain of the Royal Navy for our king's enemy and put him in the stocks.  We took pictures so we could present the proof to our king.  Good times.

- We stole an entire party.

- The Great Bacon Cook-off of Ought 9

- We reclaimed (and renamed) Consensual Clam Sex Island.

- Epic Tug-o-War battles.

- I taught the Middle Ages how to Walk Like An Egyptian

- Sword Dancing

- The Great Kabob Marathon

- The Haitian Rum Auction

- Bacon!

- And the usual singing, drinking, and debauching.  Actually, to call it "the usual" sort of cheapens it, because it's not usual, it's epic.  Basically imagine a party that doesn't end for a week.  At the end of it you're exhausted, scarred, bruised, burnt, blistered, and your kidneys hurt...but MAN what a ride.

Happy Jenday!

Hey everyone --

Short blog but with a video! It's something we did for a company called Zemoga, a series of short videos that poke fun at Twitter.

This is one of four. Anyone recognize some of the actors?

So, you know that part in Return of the Jedi where Lando flies the Falcon into the heart of the Deathstar to blow up the core and then try to make it out again before the whole thing goes kafooey, meanwhile there are TIE Fighters swarming all over him making it harder to escape and his wingmen keep getting torched?  I kinda feel like that.

When I bought my new car earlier this year, it kinda complicated my financial situation to the point where I actually have to, you know, pay attention to it.  Like rent.  I have two roommates.  Usually how it works that I send a check for the full amount to the landlord and then my roommates pay me there share, which is fine and usually works, except that one of my roommates usually doesn't get the check to my until a week or two after it's due because we literally don't see each other for weeks at a time.  But that's fine, it all comes out in the wash.  Otherwise, I just need to be a bit more frugal with my money, eat at home more often, drink cheaper beer, and avoid unnecessary expenditures like the $330 speeding ticket I just had to pay...good times.  And then, in 2 weeks I'm going to Great Western War, which is no small expenditure.  On the positive side, I have money from the shows I've been doing all summer supplementing the bank roll, or at least what is left out of that money after paying for the gas required to commute 40 miles twice a day 4 times a week...sigh.

It's doable.  It's just more to have to think about than I really want to.  Kids, being a grown-up sucks.  Avoid it if at all possible.

Speaking of just one more thing to think about: this has been a pretty busy year, and it is by no means of the imagination over.  As I mentioned I'm going to War in a couple weeks.  I'm also starting rehearsal for new 2 shows: The Nutcracker (like I do every year) and Piccaso at the Lapin Agile.  The Nutcracker is in Marin; Piccaso is in Napa.  I've managed to work out the conflicts (I hope), but there are going to be a couple days or so that will be a close run thing.

Can I safely pilot away before the whole thing blows?  I guess the only thing I can do is punch the engine, do a couple barrel rolls, and hope.

In other news, All The Great Books (Abridged) closed for the second time this last weekend.  That means that my summer is now officially over.  It was a pretty fun ride.  This show was the first time that I had done a show for several months, then set it aside and did a completely different show, the returned to the first show in a completely different place.  It was kinda neat to be able to do the same thing two different ways.   There have been a couple shows in the past where we have done special performances done in special places, but those were usually just one-shots and a pretty simplified version of the original.  The Books (Abridged) Redux was, if anything, more technically difficult because we were in a bigger space and had to completely rearrange how things ran.  If you've ever seen any of the Reduced Shakespeare Company shows, you know that they are extremely fast paced with lots of entrances and exits and a metric crap ton of props.  When you have to make an exit, change out of one costume piece into another and then grab a prop and get back on stage in the course of about 10 seconds, you need to know exactly where you need to go and what to do when you get there.  Because the space at The Rep (first run) is so much different than at Napa Valley College (second run), brilliant moves that we had worked out and had been running for months were now the dumbest choice possible.  There were a couple times when we slammed each other pretty hard when we were both going for the same entrance coming from opposite directions and going full speed.  Still, a LOT of fun.  The other guys and I are already doing other shows, all going off in different directions for a while.  But we'd all do it again in a heart beat...just give us a minute to catch our breath.

Happy Jenday