Break a Leg

Well, as everyone has been saying: it's been a long road.  So many memories; so many good times; so many complaints about time, character development, and facial hair; so much humus eaten out of the trunk of Hilary's car; and so much love. 

I always knew that the lads were a talented bunch, but the Finale really blew me away.  The professional quality, the amazing effects, the plots twists: outstanding.  My beret is off to you gentlemen.  It's been a privilege to be used, abused, insulted, berated, complimented, pandered to, patronized, showcased, and allowed to act like the idiot that I really am.

I was saddened a bit ago when I realized that I may never don the beret again.  But that's just negative thinking.  I mean, come on: I own the beret.  I can put it on whenever I want.  So...yay.

So what's next?

Well, I've got The Nutcracker coming up, an audition for Glengary Gless Ross, workshopping a new adaptation of The Tempest, and getting my 70 paladin geared for when Wrath of the Lich King comes out in a couple weeks...so, you know, I'll be busy.

I just wanted to express to all the fans out there how much you have made this experience worth it.  As they say: without an audience, it's just another rehearsal.  I have had a blast interacting with everyone and your support through this whole thing has been absolutely fantastic.  So, a huge THANK YOU to everybody who has watched, posted, commented, shared, and enjoyed.  It's been a lot of fun getting to know you guys and I hope you'll all stick around to see what comes after.  With a group of fans like you guys, I know that kinda goes without saying, but it just seems like one of those things that you have to say.  So, keep the site alive, keep posting, keep telling your friends/family/neighbors/enemies/random strangers/dogs/chickens/furbies what they're missing by not watching Break A Leg.  Thanks, guys.

Happy Jenday

You know, I always find it hard to come back from vacation, the older I get the harder it gets.  It's like "No...I was still on vacation...I was still vacating!"  To leave all the fun and revelry to come back to all the things that you HAVE to do but don't really feel like doing, i.e.: your life...this is just dumb...I need to find a way just to be on permanent free-time, just floating above reality and scoffing all the people still stuck in it...but I hate LA.

I finally went to the dentist yesterday.  It's only been about 5 years or so, no biggie.  I need two fillings, a word that starts with M that I can't remember, and possibly braces.  Well, I can't say I'm surprised.  Actually, I can: I surprised it wasn't worse.  At least I didn't have to have anything pulled or get a root canal or something crazy like that.  I try to take care of my teeth...but I just could never get into the habit of regular flossing.  So now I (and by "I" I mean the dental insurance I get through work) will be shelling over a not inconsiderable amount of cash to make up for 5 years of lazy.  Will I ever learn?

No. Nope. Uh-uh.

I finally finished my traffic school. Woo!  Just one less thing lurking over my shoulder.  Now if only somebody would put a deadline on cleaning my room, I could get something done around here.  The other night I was having this dream in which I found out I was going to die and the first thing through my mind was not fear for my life, but fear that somebody else would have to clean my room.  Is that how I want to be remembered?  Dirty socks and glasses and  random dusty pile of things accumulated over the years?  I've considered the prospect of having a "Clean Chad's Room" party where I get everybody gloves and gas masked and tetanus shots and pizza and beer...but I don't think there would be a very big turn out for something like that.  Still, one can dream.

I started rehearsal for The Nutcracker again last Friday.  This is an annual thing I do with a local ballet school for which they pay me pretty good money.  It's always weird to come back after a year of having not seen these kids and suddenly they're 4 inches taller and starting to look weird, when they used to ba all small and cute.  And me with less hair every year...the first year I did it I have nigh unto an afro.  Now: not so much.  But it's still fun.  It was just one of those things that fell into my lap and has turned out for the best.

So that's my weekely update.  Everybody in America, go vote on Tuesday.  Everybody not in America, scoff at our ridiculous political system as we scrabble in a last ditch effort to stave off another economic depression.  Good Times!  Yay, America! USA! USA!  The only good thing about a depression would be that then EVERYBODY would know what it's like to be an out-of-work actor.

Happy Jenday!

Wooo!  Wooo!  Oh man!  What a week!

And yes: I understand that going "woo woo" is generally not a grammatically correct way to start a blog, but it was the only way I could begin to help you understand about WAR.  I am physically and mentally exhausted and I loved every single minute of abuse...well, maybe not the packing up and leaving part, but the rest of it was...I..I need more words here...

All of this actually started last Sunday for me.  That was Packing Day.  Now, the thing about packing for a trip is that you get so excited about the trip that you think you might forget something and then you work yourself up into such a tizzy that OF COURSE you're going to forget something.  Even though your focus is nigh microscopic in areas, you still miss something.  So, going around with the feeling that I was forgetting something, I got my car packed for the trip.  Now, this was my first time actually driving to one of these events, so I was a bit worried about fitting everything I needed to fit, and then fitting everything everybody else needed me to fit.  Plus, I was worried whether my car would even make the trip or if I would die in some horribly stupid and totally avoidable accident and end up burning in a ditch having taken all the home-made camp tables with us.  However, since I am writing this blog, you may assume that didn't happen.  Thankfully, the car got packed, everything fit, that part was good to go.  I had to work the Monday before we were leaving, which is the reason I packed on Sunday. 

I also packed on Sunday because I was planning to stay at my captain's house Monday night so that we could leave at 4:30 in the morning on Tuesday, which meant we would want to get a fairly decent amount of sleep.  I always like to reduce the actual amount of time I have to take before I am where I need to be.  For instance: I have to be to work by 9:00am.  So I set the alarm for 8; when 8 rolls around I hit that snooze button once (twice I'm feeling especially lazy); shower, brush, and (occasionally) shave, and then I'm off to work by 8:40.  If I found I woke up early enough and was moving fast enough I might squeeze in a coffee and a bagel.  Maybe toast.  Who knows?  My point is expediency: make the best use of your time that you can.  Since I consider sleeping to be one of the greatest uses of my time, I generally try to plan ahead to fit more of it in. 

So: captain's house...hmmm, I don't think I fell asleep until about 11pm...which sucks because I didn't get enough sleep as I would have liked.  It's very hard for me to shut my system down like that.  If I'm used to going to bed around 11, then I can't fall asleep before then.  If I don't adhere to a pretty strict sleep schedule it takes me days to catch it up, and then I just keep falling father and farther behind...and now I'm just permanently exhausted.  And you might think: Exhausted?  Didn't you just take a week vacation?  Jerk?  And the answer is: Yes, but this is not your typical vacation.  There's a lot of work involved for us to relax this hard.

So, by 5am Tuesday morning we are on our way.  Energy drink in hand, early boarding party caravan in tow, off we sail to adventure.  Including breakfast at Denny's and temporarilly loosing one of the cars in our caravan, we made it to our destination in about five hours, which was pretty good time.  The problem way that it wasn't very good timing.  We got there two hours before the gate opened.  So, there we sat, in the middle of the desert, slightly before the middle of the day.  Fortunately we were in line right behind one of our friends from So Cal: Nick, which gave us a chance to catch up and the time went rather quickly.  I should mention now that Nick works in L.A. making all kinds of cool stuff for various production companies and a lot of cool things for himself to sell, which will be mentioned later.

Now, to get in on Tuesday like we were obviously planning to do, you had to have pre-registered either on line or through the mail.  We had 3 people in our advanced crew who had done neither.  For two of them it was excusable because it was there first time going.  So we had to kinda sneak them into camp...which was depressingly easy to do: they just drove in.  Now when you officially enter the campground, i.e., going to the registration tent and signing stuff and verifying you're supposed to be there, they give you a sight token that comes in necklace form.  Sometimes these are elaborate: like last year they were wrought pewter, and sometimes it's just a colored chit of wood on a string which is what we got this year.

Now, another important thing for all the people coming to the event to do was to land allocate, which means they go online, look at the sight map, say who they're camping with, and where they want to camp.  We had about 46 people do this for our group, which is a prety big group, though I think we only had about 30 people actually show up.  We were having everybody allocate for this specific site which was right on a corner of the lake and had a lot of shady trees and was really nice, and occupied by some viking last year.  But when we showed up, the autocrat in charge of the land allocation had put us on the complete opposite side from where we wanted to be.  The captain and Nick went to try and argue for the spot we wanted while I escorted the people who were not supposed to be there into the campground.  Eventually the captain and Nick came back in a small golf cart driven by who turned out to be the autocrat in question.  And it turned out that the camp she had allocated to be in the spot we wanted was being claimed by a lady that the autocrat didn't like, so she just switched our numbers on the map.  We offered her much booze for this and plied her with hugs.

Then to set up: as I mentioned before we had been sitting out in the sun for about two hours before we came in.  It was about another half hour by the time we got to our site.  Setting up a campsite as elaborate as ours is not easy.  So it was that I quickly became sick to my stomach and was in danger of getting heat exhaustion.  After about a gallon of water and quick sit-down I was back up helping everything get set up.  Once that was done, it was off to Taft for provisions.

I have mentioned that this is the middle of the desert.  I mean what could be out there of such great interest that people would actually consider building a town out there and living in it?  Well, that would be the oil fields.  You can see the oil pumps slowly bobbing their massive iron heads like those like devices that look like birds and "drink" water out of a cup.  They haven't seemed to have caught on to the notion of sidewalks in Taft and dirt predominates most of the yards.  Anytime you see a lawn it seems blaringly incongruinous.  It is something of a hick town, if you'll pardon the phrase.  So, when a group of pirates come walking into the local Albertson's and start piling the contents of the Wine & Spirit section into handcarts, it causes a bit of a spectacle.  Of course, being a spectacle is what I do, so I payed the curious stairs little interest...unless she was cute... Now, with a camp the size that we had there was no way that we would be able to stock up for the entire week, so this would be one of many provision runs.  Loaded down with our goods, it was back to our temporary home.

The rest of this account won't be as detailed or specific in it's scope as it happened over a week's worth of time that was spend almost entirely under the influence of alcohol.

The next day we swam out to one of the islands that we had so piratically claimed last year by erecting a make-shift flag pole out of a stick and then attaching somebody's underwear to.  When we got there the stick was nowhere to be seen, but my underwear was still there caught up in some brambles, which we all thought was pretty neat.  We got a new stick and re-staked our claim of the island.  Nick sliced his thumb open trying to open a beer bottle with a glass jar we found on the ground.  Silly bastard.  I also managed to gouge my shin on some rocks when we were coming ashore, so i guess we were even. 

Later we discovered that another pirate camp had swam out and stolen the by this time quite crusty pair of boxers.  And you know what they did with them?  They added them to their collection.  Tradition is one thing, but toting a pile of used underwhere year after year from event to event speaks little for a camp's sense of style and/or good taste.  The part that really got my britches up was that they didn't even stake the island for themselves.  Now that is just inconsiderate, in my opinion.  But it's ok because we don't like that crew very much anyway.

People trickled into camp over the next few days and much time was spent catching up, singing songs playing games, and, of course, drinking.  At one point Nick broke out some boffer weapons that he had made and we decided that swinging them at each other would be really, really fun.  There was this big foam mallet, a big foam wrench, and a couple of plastic swords that had triggers in the hilts so you could squeeze water out of the ends.  Excitement ensued.  At one point I tried to trip a girl, but she knew enough self defense to throw me over backwards as we went down.  At this point I did one of my patented combat rolls and ended up on my feet, and now with one of the swords in either hand.  Shortly afterwards, the self-same girl hit me in the eye with the mallet, bruising my eyelid and effectually bringing an end to our rough-housing.

Another really neat thing that happened was this: Nick has these friends Joel and Casey whom we met last year and been fast friends with ever since.  Joel is known as a master brewer: he makes all these cordials and meads and things which are just absolutely delicious.  The currect queen of The West (the SCA is broken up into all these little kingdoms) loves this drink Joel makes called Apple Piety.  It's mostly vodka, but it tastes just like apple pie.  It's amazing.  Because of the queen's fondness for this drink, Joel got her to get the king of The West to give us, The Crew of the Dreadship Black Rose, a Letter of Mark, which officially give us the right to annoy the enemies of The West.  Now, the funny thing here is that where we were camping is in the kingdom of Caid (kai-EED).  So the king gave us permission to annoy his enemies right in front of their faces.  See, there was one night where we all got decked out in our finest clothing...or at least most of us: this is the point where I realised I forgot my boots and my good pants, and we went to Court where all the official awards and commendations and things were being given out for things like good service and stuff like that.  Both the kings and queens of the West and Caid where there holding court.  We got called up and payed homage to the king, and I gave him some rum, and he read off this speech (during which he quite clearly said "annoy" several times) and gave us this piece of paper.  After all was said and done and we were standing to leave, as we turned around and because I couldn't help myself, I called out, in front of the Court, mind you, "Unlike some other pirates, we still know where our rum is!"

The rest of War was largely the same: there was drinking and bacon singing and drumming and wenching and gaming more drinking and more bacon, there was the grilled cheese sandwhich competition,  there was getting conscripted to help move hay bales, there was finding the girl I met last year and being called "suprisingly gentlemanly", there was waking and breaking down camp, there were goodbyes, and there was, sadly, going home.  At this point I was so exhausted, but the time I got home I had nearly reached the outer limits of my endurance and was closer to literal physical exhaustion than I have been since basic training.

And I'd do it all again in a heart beat.

Of course, after I sit down for a minute...

And if anybody ever wants to come with us, just let me know and we'll see what we can work out.

Happy Jenday

Posted late due to Vlad's birthday blog to me, which, due to it being nice AND about me, I had to keep up a bit longer.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Jenday....

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I'm sorry to the three people that read my blog that I didn't get one up last week.  I have many fantastic excuses and even more really poor ones.  I'll address some of them now.

1.) The Thank You  Video: I got an email from Justin last Jenday while I was at work asking if we could shoot some stuff for the video that night, so I was preoccupied with that, as well as being busy at work.  And now you may ask yourself: "But Jennifer, shouldn't you write your blog the night before like Jimmy does so that it will be ready to go when I log on first thing in the morning to see new content?"  To which I answer: SOME people like to be prepared and plan ahead.  Personally, I prefer the organic experience of writing the Jenday blog ON Jenday.  It's like...when you read it, I've just written it, so you're closer to my mind state at the time.  Or I could say: I'll write it when I'm goddamn good and ready!  Or I could say: I was busy playing WoW and I forgot and now I'm bored at work so here's some tripe.  Anyway, the blog slipped my mind.

2.) WAR!!! I'm sure you're all bored of hearing the tales I spin of going camping in pirate garb.  Anyway, I'm going to another one of these events and I think we have the largest group of people going ever...which is about 30.  Usually it's about half that number.  With that many people we've been trying to get things organized well in advance so there will be as few logistical problems as possible when we get there.  As one of the crew veterans and one of the people that captain trusts (for some odd reason) I've had a bit more responsibility thrust upon me, which has distracted me from other things, like the blog.  Any way, the blog slipped my mind.

3.) Red Tape: I got a speeding ticket a couple months ago and about that time my registration was suspended because I didn't have proof of insurance when I got pulled over.  I HAVE insurance, I just didn't have the card with me.  So I've been spending a lot of mental energy and time on getting a hold of my insurance card, finding out how not to pay the Sonoma County Court $1000, getting my registration updated which required a Smog Check though I got the car from my grandfather and apparently there was something funky about the pipes and I had to take the car to this one guy that my aunt has known since high school to get the test done but he doesn't do that anymore so he gave me the number of the guy HE takes his car too and I had to take a half hour off work which changed into an hour because the test took longer than expected...Anyway, the blog slipped my mind.

By the way, did you know that if you get a speeding ticket and you opt to go to traffic school to keep the point off your record you can now do it online?  I signed up for this one course that I can work on whenever I want.  I just have to get 100% on each test, they mail me a thing, and I send it to the courthouse, and I'm done.  No fuss, no muss.  I just have to finish it before December 18th which is super easy, so less stress for me, which is good.

So, despite that whole thing I said earlier about the organic process and sharing a moment with you, my reader, I'm writing this on Monday because by Jenday I will be far, far from civilization.  That's right:  I'm going to Bakersfield.  Well, near Bakersfield.  Taft, actually.  It's still the middle of nowhere...or rather, just to the left of the middle of nowhere.  And I will be in pirate garb with a horn full of ale surrounded by women in corsets.  I tell you: it's a grand life.

So, enjoy the Thank You Video, which is one of the raddest things the BaL crew has ever done, and I'll see you all next week.

Happy Jenday!

So, I read a lot of fantasy fiction.  And I'm not talking about porn, as the number of this blog may suggest.  The last couple of books I've picked up really got me thinking about one of the most popular conventions in story telling: young, naive, but latently talented guy meets old, experienced guy and they save the world.  There are other people along the way, but it's mostly Frodo and Gandalf, or Garion and Belgarath, or Eragon and Brom...over and over and over.  There's always somebody who's been watching them all their lives and suddenly turns out not to be Aunt Pol, but Polgara: Immortal Sourcerus, 2nd Deciple of What's-his-bucket - the ancient god of blah Blah BLAH!

This convention is shaped by our internal needs to be somebody special - that little farm boy who grew up to be king, or the beggar girl that suddenly finds herself possessed of one of the rarest powers in the world and only she can protect the good and the handsome and intelligent prince inexplicably loves her.  This is nothing new.   Stories like this were being told back before Greece was even an island.

Why do we read these books?

Well, because of the other stuff: the other characters, the other goings on.  We KNOW that the young kid and the old guy are going to save the world.  Oh yeah.  And so we can cast fireballs and fly dragons.  Cuz that would be so cool!  Ok, so more of the good stuff and less of the convention is what I'm going for.  Look at Terry Pratchett's work and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Elves and a superior race?  Superior bastards is more like. Now dwarves: dwarves are good.  They make stuff, the live in mountains, they fight, and they drink.  Magic?  They empower their hammers with the magic of ass-kicking, skull bashing, and head-butting...not necessarily in that order, though.  And humans...in stories they're all a bunch of dullards, except for the one special kid and one old fart, and the thief with the heart of gold, the big dumb warrior and the sexy mysterious magic-using broad that's like 1000 years old but looks 16.

Now in MY story, it's a dwarf, a kobold, a scaven, and a couple of halflings that have nothing to do with each other.  The world they live in is called Beta.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  It's a test world.  And things in the test world don't always get finished.  And sometimes things don't work they way they should.  And people find ways to eploit those disfunctionalities which make up the basic space-time fabric that is Beta.  All the normal people go about their lives playing by the rules as they've been layed out.  But there is always somebody who doesn't want to play by the rules and wants to get all the leet gear and pwn all the nubs lol!!!11!  And of course, somebody has to stop them.

Enter our heros.  Now the dwarf...is a samurai.  How much more unconventional can you be than a dwarven samurai?  And his Emperor sends him on what should, by all accounts, be a wild goose chase.  The emperor send the samurai on The Quest for the One-Sided Coin.  Well, it's looney, but a samurai has to obey his emperor or he will bring great shame on everybody.  So the dwarf goes off and meets the other characters accidentally in a tavern.  Which is TOTALLY conventional, but it's a gaming world convention and one that I felt I could allow.  The kobold is a martial artist specializing in the Drunken Master style; the scaven is a thief who is part man, part rat, and all disgusting; one of the halflings sufferes from a complete lack of fear and/or good common sense; and the other halfling is at one time trying to master the arcane powers inherent in nature and alternately get into a wider real estate market.

Hilarity ensues.  I promise.

I've been working on this idea for quite some time and have a few bits actually written out, with tons of ideas for side characters dreamed up over a life time of living with a wild imagination.  I am going to start turning my will towards this project.  Because it is constructive.  It is something I should be doing.  Lately all I've been doing is drinking and playing World of Warcraft...this is not healthy.

With the First Season of Break a Leg coming to an end and the prospects of future projects uncertain, and IF content will still be needed on this site on a regular basis, then I may, from time to time, subject you to more of this story as it unfolds.  I know I promised something like that in the past with that little cartoon thing, but after the majority of my work got wiped when the server at work crashed...I sorta lost heart.

Oh, and to make this blog have to do with Break a Leg: We should go to conventions like WonderCon and Comic Con and be ourselves to attract attention.

Happy Jenday!