Break a Leg

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!

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

So, Three Musketeers closed, much to my chagrin, and Books started again, much to my delight.  I'll get to those in a minute.  The thing I REALLY wanted to talk about was what happened in between those two shows: I got a weekend off!  Oh my god, it was amazing!  I had forgotten what it was like.  Sleeping in, not having to be anywhere, being available to hang out when friend's call last minute...it was fabulous.  My cousin was in town from Tennessee for my grandma's 85th birthday.  I got to celebrate all weekend without having to worry about being somewhere later or any of that silly theater nonsense.  The only downside to this was that my cousin didn't get the chance to come see one of my shows.

See, as an actor, it's part of the whole parcel and package that I want people to see me perform.  What's more, I want people to see me perform well.  I also want them to see shows I think they will enjoy, even if I'm not in them.  So, when I'm doing a show I'm pretty proud of, like these last two shows have been, I want everybody to come see them.  "Come!  Come see this awesome show! Come see that I'm not a total waste!  Validate my existence!"  The Three Musketeers was a fun swashbuckling romp, and Books (Abridged) is one of the funniest shows I have ever been in.  I've seen different versions of some of the different (Abridged) shows.  They are hysterically written, but from what I've heard, not always performed as well.  I feel pretty proud that the actual writers showed up to our performances and congratulated us.  It's been a fun ride.  I just wish that more of my friends had been able to make it to the shows.  C'est la vie.

In other news that probably only I care about, I won another radio karaoke contest today.  Thank you.  The theme was to pick a song sung by the opposite gender, so I went with "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bengals.  Then I sang it in a farcical, gravely Russian accent, and through in random interjections hitting on the back-up singers, or explaining the song to somebody "off-camera".  My favorite part was at the end when I explained how to walk like an Egyptian.  First you put one hand in the air, palm down, like you're saying "you have to be this tall to ride this ride".  Then you stick your other hand out behind you like you're expecting somebody to give you a low five or maybe a secret cookie.  I think that may be the single most accurate set of instructions I have ever given in my life, though why the cookie has to be a secret, I'm not sure.  It just does.  The prize for this contest was a rare set of in-game gear that just came out.  The DJ running the contest is one of the actual makers of the game, so it was pretty cool to get some shwag from that guy.

Anywhoodles, I'm just enjoying a few evenings off at the moment, though I have performances this weekend.  Taking a chance to do some laundry...especially since my roommate's cat pissed all over a pile of clean clothes in my room.  Catching up on my blogging *cough*.  Hell, I even logged onto World of Warcraft for the first time in almost 3 months.  Craziness.

I was just sorta thinking that...my blogs should probably be more about trying to make it as a professional actor and what I'm doing to prepare myself for the rat-eat-rat world of auditions and agents and diets and treatments and tabloids and stalkers, and then I thought: Screw that, I'm getting another beer.

Happy Jenday!

Ah, life in show biz...and sign biz...and general just biziness.  To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what today's topic header really means - I had some vague idea when I started writing - but it's funny if you read it as "Jenday licks forks".  Hehe, yeah.  Anyway...been a busy couple of weeks for me: working almost 8 hours a day and then shows and rehearsals and stuff...blah blah blah.

Actually, work has been somewhat slow.  The summer is usually slow, but the recession has also affected things, so I've had to push my "look busy" skills to the limit.  Even so, with this much down time, my boss can't help but notice me screwing around.  Now, for me "screwing around" isn't trolling chat rooms or randomly searching the net for porn (cuz I know where to find it).  No, screwing around for me is designing stuff...which is ironic, because that's what they hired me for.  However, it seems that most employers will frown on people designing stuff that they weren't told to design.  Like the Entropy Tower.  An entropy tower is a device for rolling dice - basically, you drop the dice in the top and they come out the bottom...it's kinda pointless, actually, but it looks cool.  It is, in essence, a way to overly complicate a very simple action.  I got the idea from Scott Kurtz's webcomic- http://www.pvponline.com/2009/07/30/taking-a-crit/  You can also see what the hell I'm talking about here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/39578858@N07/3857141173/

Sorry, the "add a link" option isn't working for me.

So that's fun.

Then I get an email Thursday night from Yuri asking me if I'm available to show up on Saturday to shoot a scene for some new hush hush event thingy.  It just so turns out that I have been planning on going camping for months this last weekend with the cast of 3 Musketeers.  It was a hard decision to make, but I had to opt for the camping, especially since I had already dropped a couple hundred bucks getting new gear.  Plus the fact between Thursday and Saturday I would have no time to pack my stuff, so my car was loaded and ready to roll Wednesday night.  Hell, since then I haven't even had time to unpack so my car is still full of crap.

Only one more weekend of 3 Musketeers left.  I'm pretty sad about that.  I really love this show.  It's a great cast, it's a fun show, and sword fighting - I can not iterate enough - is awesome.  And we only got a 3 week-run.  It's sad, really, especially since we set the theater's all-time record for audience attendance on Thursday.  We beat the previous record by 12.  The show that previously held the title? Taming of the Shrew - Pirate Style, starring and inspired by yours truly.  Yes, I'm sounding my own horn a little bit, but hey, it's nice to be proud of something.  There are four more shows, this next Thursday through Sunday at 7pm in Ives Park in Sebastopol.  Thursday is pay-what-you-can night.  Not that any of you would be able to go...

Speaking of which, I just wanted Yuri to know that I'm proud of him for sticking to his guns, and I'm grateful for the opportunities he has given me and still gives me, and it's nice to see that something is starting to happen with this little artistic endeavor of ours.  Right on, man.  See you guys soon.

 Oh, and go see Inglorious Basterd.  That movie is awesome.

Happy Jenday