it's a new day

I woke up for the first time in weeks without something huge hanging over my head.

• The benefit I produced is over.  We made a night of honest-to-goodness good theater and raised a very decent chunk of money. 
  

• My Monday night show is over.  It was a great run and we went out on a fantastic show. 
  

• My Cirque audition is over, for better or for worse. It was a struggle and yesterday was tough and involved some ... personal growth, but overall these things will only teach you patience and humility.

Today: a quick voice-over audition, then Christmas shopping and soothing housecleaning. Ahh.
I'll just make some coffee and check my email.

Oh, you with the timing, universe/groupon/hotmail.

Number 94 fell swiftly, friends.

from my cousin Genevra's blog:

One of my favorite quotes, which found me a few months ago, is based on a Japanese Proverb:

Fall seven times. Stand up eight.

Earlier today I was not so much ready to stand up again as I was ready to spend the rest of my life face-down on the fucking ground so I would never have to deal with the falling again.

oh, by the way.

I'm producing a benefit.  You can see Beowulf vs. Grendel at it.
Here it is.
Please come.
It will be very good theater.  It's the kind of theater that makes me want to do theater. And I am DAMN picky about theater. Why do you think I never write about anything I go see on this blog? Because I usually have little that is nice to say, that's why.
Look, I even made the poster all by myself with a 1976 version of Photoshop. Click on it to make it big enough to be readable.

quelle nuit.
It's okay. I know I spelled that wrong. My French is awful, functional and entirely self-taught, so .. you know.
tal cosa.
Brandon's grandfather died tonight.
My friends, my cousins who have already suffered so deeply, suffered another loss.

I guess I'll pray that I can be of comfort.

Cagon

It's for reals:
I have an audition for Cirque du Soleil.

whuuuhuuut.

The way I understand it, they start off with a lot of people in the morning, then cut them down as the day goes on. I figure I'll probably be home by lunch, if not a late-morning nap.  Nonetheless, I gotta swing for the fences (wherein "fences" = "6:00, when the day-long audition officially ends").

I have to prepare a 2-minute piece to sell myself to them.

Dread. Paralyzing. Dread.

My Argentinian pen pal, Gabriela, is teaching me lunfardo, which is Argentinian slang.  She wrote:

Aquí llamamos "cagazo" al miedo y "cagón" a quien tiene miedo.

I'm going to very loosely translate this as:

Here we call being scared a "shit attack" and "massive shitter" is the person who is scared.

This 2 minute piece is a serious shit attack, guys.
Oh man, how I love language.
Oh man, how the F do I come up with 2 minutes where I am strongly discouraged from using any of it?

Why People Hate Actors

From an interview with Alec Baldwin, in which he states that he'll quit acting for television and film after he finishes 30 Rock:

“The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that.”

Maybe you never had that because that goal is some unbelievably egotistical sheeeeit.

appropriate and ready

I'm considering the Winter Holiday Banquet basket for my aunt and grandmother, who don't enjoy much, are allergic to most, disapprove of the rest, and already own all else. 

Even before I was old enough to give presents I knew that they were the worst kind of people to try to buy presents for.

"Overview: Scrumptious, appropriate and ready to give."

... appropriate and ready to give.

Well.
Shit.
Amazingly poorly done, but nonetheless SOLD, Terrible Copywriter.

two shows

Shows I do with my company, Barrel of Monkeys, are created VERY quickly.  School shows adapted, staged, learned, prepared in 6 rehearsals.  For the public performances we have even less time: 3 hours on Sunday morning, then boom, the next night it's on its feet in front of an audience.

This is liberating and terrifying. 
The only way to succeed is just to succumb to the panic and live in it. 

I did two of those shows today.

Today was a pretty souped up day.  
Today had a lot of adrenaline. 
Today had some complete failures in front of audiences - props fell apart, lines got lost, cues didn't come so they had to be guessed and timing was funky.  Laugh lines got no laughs.

Today also had some complete awesome moments of joy and an extended bit about toe jam to an immensely receptive audience of kids who were so repulsed that they squealed with delight.
Toe jam. Gross.  I yelled at them, "oh, you think it's gross now, but just wait till you get older, you're gonna love it."
Today was big. Tomorrow will be good.
success.

I blogged about the show on the Barrel of MOnkeys site: you can read my posts here and here, if you wanna.