It's always something

Posted 12:36 AM by sean
After bowing out of rehearsal early tonight, I managed to take care of a little bit of business and then caught up with the cast of the last show I was in. They have secured a run of the show, which is absolutely wonderful because they are good people and they've done a good show. They are also basing the cast around me, which is a gift I really don't deserve and will have to work hard in the future to have earned. It's gonna run four shows a week for the month of February, and they said there is real money involved now.

So, that's kind of wonderful. Apparently the feedback on the show was overwhelming and almost all of it centered around me. My friend Mac did a show that I directed some years ago where I called him to about six rehearsals, I let him screw around and do anything he wanted both on stage and off, and he got rave reviews and I remember him describing it as the highest ratio between fun achieved and work done in order to achieve that fun of any show he's ever done. Every time he said it, he seemed embarassed and I couldn't really tell why. Now, I know.

It's tought to be celebrated for something that comes really easy. It's like Atticus shooting the dog in To Kill A Mockingbird. But I'm not going to be too introspective about it, I'm just gonna try to remember it the next time I'm doing a trust exercise.

(Y'know, I don't have spellcheck on this blog and last post I wanted to write "labour" and here I'm not sure if it's exercise or exercize. The only year of school I really attended was second grade, and that was in England, so bear with me. Cheers!)

So, there's that

Posted 1:36 PM by sean
I called to reschedule my fitting for this show I'm doing and the girl I was talking to sorta made a joke about the terror alerts. I said, "Yeah, proud to be an American and all that..." just trying to go about my day, and she said, "I'm really starting to wonder, y'know." I think I actually said something like, "Yeah, I don't really give a shit about any of that, can I just reschedule my thing and get back to my life..."

I'm a prick, and the last blog I wrote about how prickly I've been might just be a harbinger of future manifestations. Anyway, I jumped on this poor girl who is simply lovely, and I need to figure out a way to apologize. I'll make cookies for rehearsal, I guess.

I'm a little bit blocked on my music, which makes sense. I've written four songs in the last week, at a certain point you run out of runway, so to speak. But it's making me anxious as hell. I've been wanting to get my music published for a long time and now that it's starting to happen it's not flowing like it usually is. I have three totally different things I could be writing for and I just want to listen to hip-hop.

I left my Ipod upstate.

There were several things I wanted to talk about, but the one thing I keep coming back to concerns "News". For the days after September 11, everyone was staring at the TV watching the planes hit over and over and over again and in a way it was kinda funny. I mean, we would sleep five hours and then, first thing when we woke up, we turn on the TV to see if there are any developments.

At the end of a basketball game that I've just watched, I can't wait for Sportscenter, to see the whole thing again. Same with the Democratic Convention, I wanted to know what everyone was saying and thinking.

The problem is, when it's personal news. If you have a friend who's getting married or, like, our cousin who is pregnant, I just want to call over there every twenty minutes and find out what's going on. But nothing is going on, they're still just pregnant. In fact, the only possible news is bad news. And I feel so stupid, I want to ask "How are you feeling now?" every thirty seconds, as if there is something new to know.

I think maybe the question, or the wanting to ask questions, is your way of having the news for you too. We watched the buildings go down a hundred thousand times because we couldn't bear not to share it, we watch Sportscenter so we can hear Trey Wingo freak out about an alley oop the way we just did twenty minutes ago. But with your friends, you can't just keep calling or hanging out or whatever. You just gotta accept that things smaller than the news are actually larger in many ways, and your only recourse is to sit and smile to yourself.

People give you shit

Posted 12:48 PM by sean
If you don't write for a week or so.

Here's the thing. Over the last little bit, I've been like a giant bleeding nerve. Everything that people say bugs the crap out of me. I find myself wanting to jump down everyone's throats for every little thing. When people say stuff that I agree with, I don't even waste time nodding, I just start scanning around the room for the next thing someone *might* say that I can pick apart. It's making me unpleasant to be around.

And that should make for good blogs, this is where I rant and get it all out. But the truth is, I know when the rants are justified (yes, I do, fuckers, I know you think half of what I say is bullshit, but that's only about a tenth of what I think of saying) and I know when I'm just picking.

We had our first read through of the Fringe show last night and, when asked about it, I said that these producers suffer from "a serious case of the sweets". I was bitching about the fact that these people are incredibly kind. That's a bullshit blog that will eventually be found and make someone unhappy, so I can't write it. I spent the weekend with my family and a couple of friends and every fourth thing someone said made me want to leave the room, until I thought about it for a second and was like, "Why did 'so, when are we getting dinner' piss me off so much, that's just stupid." I'm not writing a blog about that.

So, let's take a look at how the next year is shaping up.

August- I act in Fringe show, no-one sees it or cares. Jordana directs Mac's play, ditto.

September- Recordings for a product that I actually love. I will have five or six songs that I've written on the project, which means I will get royalties, to the tune of almost five hundred dollars a year!

October-November- Possible, and only just possible at this point, tour of Lucretia Jones Mysteries.

December-January- Preparations and rehearsal for "Fleet Week" written by Williams, Rogers and Williams, a musical born of frustration and disappointment.

February- Application to the Fringe festival, breeding more frustration and disappointment.

March-April- Second tour of Lucretia, only if first tour works.

May- After two barely successful tours, Jordana, Mac and I look at one another with the sudden realization that we are out of work, have just been turned down by the fringe for the third year in a row and having given up our day jobs. We all secretly blame one another, especially after being on the road together for four of the previous eight months. Jordana says she needs her own place "just to figure stuff out", Mac says he's moving back to Greensboro "maybe crash with my mom and dad for a while" and I sell my guitar and this computer to pay rent before moving in to the farm house upstate and drinking all of Ian's scotch.

Or maybe...

August- I act in a Fringe show that is well received, Jordana directs Mac show and gets raves.

September- The new product gets advance orders of 50,000 units and the recordings end up paying gallons both in terms of directing and royalties. I get $1,000 reprint fee checks.

October-November- We do five shows a week for eight weeks and while we are driving, we write and finish both "Fleet Week' and "Torch", and we grow really fond of both.

December-January - While we are in pre-production, the next set of recordings for the last two products comes through. Gideon realizes we have two complete shows that we could do readings of, and either one could be a killing depending on what an audience is looking for, but more than that we love both of them.

February- We submit two shows to the Fringe, but we also have several other producing houses in New York take an interest in both plays. A small bidding war begins.

March-April- We let the bidding build while we go on a second wildly successful Lucretia tour, going out west. At one of the shows in LA, Rita Wilson thinks it might make a hilarious movie.

May- We don't even check to see if we got in the Fringe because both shows have been sold to different production houses. All three of the recording projects I've worked on get Rock-n-Roll level orders coming in. We get an offer to put Lucretia into development for a feature film to begin shooting the following summer and we fight for and get to have Jordana play Lucretia, which works out perfectly because we discover she's pregnant. Gideon is now solvent, all three of us are on salary and have health care, Mac is invited to move to LA and in a stunning reversal of his previous jokes, he doesn't. That summer, we produce "License to Kim Jung-il" and it's met with half the crowd thinking it's self absorbed crap and the other half think it's brilliant. The following November, we produce "King Fat Fights Lucretia Jones, or Lucretia Jones Journeys To The Center Of The Earth" and, in what can only be described as an ironic twist, people from the Fringe festival ask us to bring the show there because they like the title...

So, we'll see. I would say that what will happen is probably somewhere in between, but if you know us, we're pretty convinced it will be something worse than the first scenario. Like, it'll be the first scenario, but on the first tour, we all get dysentery.