Break a Leg

Throughout my life behind the wheel, I have never owned a car that was less than ten years old.  There was the '79 something-or-other (I can't remember what it was but it would have been a classic muscle car if it wasn't a piece of shit); the '80 Volvo that I drove into the ground; the '93 Saturn that cracked it's engine block on my way over a mountain; the '92 Civic that got broken into so many times that I actually lost almost as much as the car was worth; and most recently: the '92 Mazda 626 that was like wrestling a bear anytime I wanted to go anywhere.  The thing would actually die if I came to a full stop.

Well, I have had enough.  So, I did some research.  I asked around.  I checked on sites like vehix.com and autotrader.com.  Finally, I decided on the car I wanted: a 2007 Toyota Corolla Sport...burgundy, sun roof optional.  I then spent several months actually trying to track one down.  I found one once at a dealer in Petaluma, but when the salesperson handed me the key and I went to turn it on nothing happened.  They were still working on the car when I left 15 minutes later.  Or the time that I found one at a dealership and immediately emailed them to see if the car was still there.  I quickly got a response that it was.  Of course, when I showed up after having driven 45 minutes in crappy traffic and some light gang violence, the car was, in point of fact, absolutely NOT there.  Then, what with practically working two jobs and having hardly any time off, my search kinda got put on the back burner.

Then this past Sunday, having very little to do until that afternoon, I decided that it was time.  I was going to go get my car.  I logged on to the website of the local Toyota dealer, did a quick search, and lo and behold: there was my car - sunroof included.  I quickly showered and got dressed, and then walked the 6 or so blocks to the dealer.  Yes, walked, so sure was I that I would not need to walk back.  I got to the lot.  There was my car.  I walked into the sales office, grabbed the first sales clerk I could lay hold of, and said "Sell me that car or I'll make you wish you had." 

Ok, it wasn't quite like that, but it would have been a lot cooler if it was.

I took the car out for a quick test drive, gave it the obligatory once-over, and said "Ok, let's do it."

It turns out I didhave to walk back home because I had to get a recent bill and a paycheck stub for the financial purposes of securing a loan.  And then walk back to the lot and got my new car.

I don't know if you can appreciate what having a new car (yeah, I'd say 2 years old is pretty new) is like after over a decade of driving crappy cars.  It's liberating.  The car goes fast.  And it does it quickly, if you know what I mean.  The thing handles like a dolphin through water.  And it's such a smooth ride.  The other night driving home, and I was going 90 without even noticing.  And it has a sunroof!  Not only does it go fast, but it feels like it wants to go fast.  For the first time in my life I actually enjoy driving my car, and its a wonderful feeling.

Happy Jenday and Happy Driving!

First off, let me apologize for not posting in a couple weeks.  My boss doesn't like me doing this at work, and I haven't really had time any time else, what with work and rehearsal and stuff.  Blah blah blah, apologies aside...

The Marin County Fair, July 2-5: 4 Fun-filled days of overpriced goods, long lines for nauseating rides, carnies, and food guaranteed to cause the runs as soon as you stick your fork in.  All that and I got in for free to boot!  Now, I don't go to the fair every year.  I think most of the reason for this is now that I make enough money to actually afford going to the fair, none of the stuff that in my youth I wanted to spend that money on holds any interest for me.  All the games with giant stuffed animal prizes, all the poorly made, gimmicky toys - like that foam lizard on a wire that looks like you're taking it for a walk - that pink brick of popcorn (which I have never fully understood), all of it: one colossal waste of money.

But hey, sometimes it's fun to blow a little cash.

The 3rd was a friend's birthday who wanted to to the fair with his wife and her parents and nephew.  I also conveniently had the day off from work.  Coincidentally, my shop had made most of the signage for the fair, and they were nice enough to give us some comp tickets.  Now, having an 8-year-old kid with you is an unmitigated excuse to go on all those rides that you are really too old for, but secretly want to go on anyway, like that big slide or the "haunted house" which is about as scary melba toast. But you have to go because you don't know what's in there!

However, I think the real reason I wanted to go was for the fair food.  Corn dogs, chili cheese fries, funnel cake, ice cream floats...a gastrointestinal nightmare and I enjoyed every bite.  Now paying $7 for a 12 ounce beer is pretty much highway robbery, but on a hot sunny day it's almost worth it.  So I only got two.

All told I spent around $40 for about $8 worth of food and drink.  That's why I'm not a big fan of the fair.  But it was fun.  Sometimes it's neat to follow the curiosity of a child around for an afternoon, just to remember what it was like.  And there was a pleasant side effect to the day: while standing in line my friends and I developed plans to put on some guerrilla Shakespeare under the overpass near my house.  We want to call it "Shakespeare in the Park and Ride".  The first production will be 12th Night.  Good times.

Happy Jenday!

If you have never had the opportunity to do stage combat, you are missing out.  In fact, there are fencing classes out there open to everyone.  Finish reading this and then go sign up for the next available class.  You'll thank me.  I promise.

First, it's a pretty good workout without any heavy lifting.  Second, you get to play with swords!

Right now I'm in training for my next show: The Three Musketeers.  Now, if you haven't read the book, that's fine, but you should put it on your list.  I mean, it's a classic, people - get with the times...as it were.  Anyway, the script is an adaptation that has some slight plot differences from the book, like the fact that D'Artagnan's manservant is actually his sister in disguise.  This is an interesting twist on things because D'Artagnan HAS no sister in the original.  So some obviously license was taken with the adaptation.  It's also extremely cheesy.  You think my acting as Jennifer is cheesy?  It is but a mere squirt of E-Z Cheese to the Mountains of Gorgonzola, covered in drifts of parmesan, and surrounded by the Great Jarlsburg Plains that is this script. 

But really, that's not the important thing.  Or rather, it's apparent that since the writing is, as I believe I have said before: fluffier than teddy bear shit, that it is the action in this production that will be the main source of entertainment, as opposed to an actual plot or anything.

Now, our fight choreographer is this really cool guy Rick who knows lots and lots about stage combat and acting and theater and stuff.  And a lot of the stuff he's teaching is not new to me, but it's always good to go over the basics every once in a while.  Plus, there are a lot of people that have never held a sword before, so we all have to get on the same page.  One of the things  about this process that I think was actually pretty brilliant is that he gave us a sheet of paper with two identical stick figures, each surrounded by the numbers 1 through 9, and said "This is you fight choreography for the entire show."  At first this was confusing.  Usually, I am used to each fight being staged individually.   But eventually the sheer, simple brilliance of it became apparent.  Each number had a plus or a minus in front of it.  Each number had a twin on the opposite side of the page, only inverse.  So if +1 was on the right side, then -1 would be on the left side at the smae level.  The + sign means attack, the - sign means defend.  So, we paired off, holding this sheet of paper in our hand folded in half so we could only see one diagram, while our partner would be looking at the other, and went through the process of learning these nine basic steps. 

And then we got to the part where we were thinking "Ok, but won't the audience get bored with seeing the same fight over and over?"  That's when Rick started throwing in different things: Retreat when attacking and Advance when defending, travel from one side of the room to the other, switch hands, use an off-hand weapon, two vs one...and on and on.  And suddenly,  people who had only a few days before picked up a sword for the first time were now coming up with completely new and inventive ways to do basically the same moves over and over.  It wasn't the What, it was the How.  As in: What are we doing? We're doing the same 9 mores over and over again.  How are we doing it?  You have your choice of weapons, a grab-bag full of new moves and only the laws of physics to stop you - wing it.

We do this for 3 or 4 or even 5 hours about 3 times a week at this point...and it's never long enough.  Just when we're really starting to come up with some interesting stuff, they send us home to, sensibly, get some rest.  But I was never good at resting anyway. 

Added bonus: really cute girls turn just damned hot when they're trying to kill you with a sword, even if it's just for pretend.

Happy Jenday and Happy Fighting!

This last weekend was our last weekend performing "All The Great Books (Abridged)" at Sonoma County Repertory Theater.  Closing a show is always sad...well, not always.  There are some shows you can't wait to be done with by the time you hit opening night.  But this was one of the shows that, despite how physically demanding it is, I could keep on doing indefinitely.

For starters, the show is just friggin' hilarious.  It's very smart, very well written, and very fun to do.  Secondly, my cast mates are a couple of awesome guys, and we all clicked pretty much the moment we met.  Doing a show with people you don't like can be a really horrible experience - like a rash in a uncomfortable place that you can't get rid of and which keeps getting worse because the only thing you CAN do is the one thing that makes it worse.  But doing a show with people you like and trust - that just makes things FUN.  And when we're having fun, the audience has more fun, and that's when things get really fun.  So, having that kind of positive experience come to an end is kind of a bummer.

But, as it turns out, it's not quiteover.  We have one special performance that we're doing at a winery owned by one of the board members of the theater at the beginning of August, and then 2 more whole weekends in Napa in the brand new theater they are building at the college there.  On top of that, all three of us got cast in The 3 Musketeers, along with a bunch of our other friends who are also a bunch of fun-loving jackasses, so THAT will be fun.  We had our first read-through of the script last night, and while the writing is super cheesy and fluffier than teddy bear crap, we all had a pretty good time, which can only be indicative of things to come.

Yes, this is why I love being an actor: it's pretty much like being back in junior high, except now we can drink.

Oh hey, speaking of fun stuff: anybody out there heard of mybrute.com?  It's a pretty simple thing: you create a character, you make it fight other characters, it levels up.  That's it.  Become my pupil!  go to chadomancer.mybrute.com.  Go on, you know you want to fight me.

Happy Jenday!

I have mentioned the show I am currently in: "All The Great Books (Abridged)".  Let me give you a slighly more behind-the-scenes account of things...

The show is hard work.  It's literally a 1 hour 45 minute aerobic workout.  In fact, the other actors and I generally start sweating about 5 minutes in, and just get soggier from there.  The show moves.  And we are selling out pretty regularly, which is awesome.  The theater is talking about extending the show, due to its popularity.  We already have several special performances set up in other venues.  If you are in the Bay Area in the next couple weeks, I strenuously invite you to come and see it.  I promise you will laugh for the better part of two hours.  And if you do plan on coming, get your tickets in advance, because, as I said, our shows are selling out. Details at www.the-rep.com.

Many people who have seen the show ask us (the three actors) how we prepare for such a physically demanding show.  And the honest truth is that we arrive about an hour and a half before the show starts.  We get some frozen yoghurt - vanilla with fruity pebbles for preference.  We do a light, unstructured warm up for about 2 minutes.  We run through the fights, the dance, and the finale.  It's about 1 hour to show time at this point, so we sneak out the back door.  We go up to the dressing room.

Now, I feel it's important to point out that the theater used to be a corner drug store back in the late 1800's.  So the building isn't what you'd call "modern".  Above the theater are a series of offices, shared by the theater company and a local holistic massage academy. 

I assure you: there are no happy endings.

In fact, one afternoon, we arrived at the theater and were running lines to get our heads back into the show.  We were doing this at speed and volume, and guffawing along the way.  Suddenly this woman bursts into our tiny, antiquated dressing room and demands "Don't you know you aren't the only business here???"  We apologized profusely, but this didn't seem to sway the woman.  "I am in the middle of giving a massage RIGHT NOW!!!"  Now personally, I find the use of extra exclamation marks appalling, but they really applied to this woman.  Again, we decided on using tact, and apologized and promised to keep the noise down.  What we COLD have done was said "Actually no, we had no idea anybody else was here because there are no signs, only closed doors.  And since those doors are always closed, and we have no way of knowing who else is in the building, why don't you go take a long walk off a short peer?"  Again, this is being tactful.  We had some more explicit words chosen, but for the sake of decency, I leave you to come up with them on your own.

Anyway, the theater is a rather...intimate space.  Patrons have to actually walk backstage to get to the restrooms...which can be awkward when we're getting ready to go on stage.  "Oh, hello...number one or number two?  Won't be long, will you?  Only, we have this show we'd like to do." But it all works out.

So, back to the point: the ritual.  Our ritual, once we have done the warm up and the fight call and have ascended the stairs, is to result to complete ass-hattery.  Three guys, one dressing room, and all the machismo you can muster.  There are also Gatorade and peanuts.  Over in the corner sits a small mini-fridge, which is our goal for the end of the night.  For, within the mini-fridge lies a plentiful stock of what some might call ambrosia, and what some might call hillbilly juice. That's right, folks: Pabst Blue Ribbon.

You see, after an extended mental and physical workout, you need something to take the edge off.  And you definitely don't want something heavy.  But water just won't do, nor will Gatorade.  Pabst Blue Ribbon has become our magical elixir.  It's light, it's cheap, and it really doesn't taste bad at all when it's ice cold and you're thirsty as hell.  So after each show, we race up to the dressing room, stripping off our costume along the way, open the door, break open the fridge, crack open a cold one, down it to the dregs, finish derobing and get dressed in our normal clothes, then go downstairs to see if any of our friends have hung around afterwards so that we can give them sweaty hugs.

One one such post-show occasion, some of one of my fellow actor's friends had stuck around.  They were sitting there jawing about the show, when one of them turned to me and said "Aren't you in that internet show?  Break A Leg, or something."  I thought that was pretty awesome.  We conversed about it briefly, the conversation quickly got swept away into other matters of unimportance.  Still, it was a brief glimpse at fame, and a tip that people ARE still watching us.  And they are waiting for more *hint hint*.

Anyway, after our nightly schmooze session, we (the actors and the stage crew) head back upstairs for yet another cold, frosty, and delicious Pabst Blue Ribbon, and then we head whichever way the wind blows.

All in all, it's a good time.

Happy Jenday!