The Show in General

So there I was in September; things were fairly on-track for once. I had actually started updating The Bad Movie Report (two months in a row - woo!), kept up 50 Foot DVD, was entering into a new writing contract for a video game, so naturally, something had to come along and disrupt things.

In this case, it was a phone call one Saturday afternoon, from a fellow named Steve Fenley. I had worked in the Main Street Theater company with Steve back in the 90s, and I knew he had started a new theater in Northwest Houston. Now, I had pretty much absented myself from the stage for several years, albeit filling in at the eleventh hour for an old friend who'd had to fire an actor, and web project that I am assured will see the light of day "soon" - but I had, more or less, retired myself. Though I pondered returning, off and on.

The phone call concerned their upcoming production of Dracula, for which they looking for someone old enough and possessing - this is Steve's wording - the gravitas to pull off the role.

Now, I had been contacted well over a year before by the same theater for a peach of a role in The Fantasticks; I had begged off citing the distance I'd have to commute each day.

This time they got smarter. They offered me Van Helsing.

Every actor has a list of roles they want to play. Van Helsing has been high on my list for... well, ever. So long that back when I was in college in the late '70s, and the drama department produced the Hamilton Deane version, I was crestfallen when the director decided Van Helsing should be played by a woman.

Texas Rep was doing a newer stage version, one written by Steven Dietz, who is, according to sources, the "most produced playwright in America". Given I've only done three shows this year, and two were by Dietz, I believe this might actually be correct.

So, I waited a few seconds, to pretend to be thinking about it, and said "Yes."

More later. For now I inflict upon you a photo of Van Helsing's opening scene, in which he reads the letter from Dr. Seward begging him to come to London to treat Lucy Westenra, a letter containing phrases such as "You have an absolutely open mind, an iron nerve, a temper of ice, an indomitable resolution, and the kindest and noblest heart that beats. These things provide the equipment for the noble work which you are doing for the good of mankind." The photo is taken as Van Helsing turns to audience and says, "I, for one, would love to meet the man young Dr. Seward describes."




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Now playing: Ray Wylie Hubbard - Screw You, We're from Texas
via FoxyTunes

Thin Edge of the Wedge Dept.

Yes, I've been gone. Yes, I've been excoriated for same. Yes, I have a doctor's excuse. (Mine)

I come to you now while the boss' back is turned to point out this troublesome news item:

Police to Search for Guns in Homes.

Warrantless searches. In "high crime areas". If there is not a hue and cry about this idea, I quit. The terrorists won. Actually, they won quite some time ago, but people need to be reminded of that fact.

More later, including why I've been gone.
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Now playing: Project Pitchfork - A Cell
via FoxyTunes

On the Saving of Asses

My new chair arrived last Friday. My ass is saved, quite literally, thanks to a kindly contribution from the Stomp Tokyo foundation, a gift which which took care of the shipping and handling and allowed me to get to a comfortable place much sooner. The downside to that is I no longer had an excuse to finish watching the Boris Karloff non-thriller Voodoo Island, of which I am still attempting a rational critique for the Bad Movie Report.

Other fun involves August, one of the busiest months of the year for dentistry (and likely. other healthcare-type places). A week's scheduled downtime was truncated, leading to much bitterness on my part, and the writing of this blog at work. In between telling people that no, the doctor will not put off his trip so they can have their teeth cleaned. Well, really, the doctor might, but the front office ain't.

Okay, real reason for bitching: last Friday, before my chair arrived and my ass was still aching, I got dressed and was heading out to work to find my nine-year-old son watching the morning news, and he told me, "Bad news. Hurricane Dean is going to hit us."

"How? Last night it was even near the Bahamas."

"Well, they don't know..."

"Exactly. They don't know. Stop borrowing trouble, we have enough."

I got back from work and started assembling my chair; Eyewitness news was on once again, and the talking points went to, "What sort of damage will result when Hurricane Dean hits Houston?" Not if - when. News stories themselves included the word "if", but none of the lead-ins did.

As a lifelong Texan, I know a bit about tracking hurricanes. The Information Age makes it a little more convenient - I check the Central Florida Hurricane Center daily, which gives me access to all available tracking models. Which is good, since the usual avenues for tracking information seem to be more interested in saying "Everybody PANIC!!!" more than giving me actual coordinates.

Upshot, as I write this, waiting impatiently for the start of my shortened vacation: Dean is between the Yucatan peninsula and Mexico. When Eyewitness News was drooling over the ratings cornucopia of Irwin Allen-type natural disaster, the models showed the northern most track to lead to Northern Mexico - or, as we call it in the cartography trade, "Not Houston".

I was eventually angry enough to switch the TV over to, God help me, Wheel of Fortune rather than endure one more spouting of sensationalism. There's a reason I don't watch TV much anymore, and I am possessed of a powerful urge, should I run into any member of Eyewitness News in the street, to punch them in the nuts. And should it be a female member of the staff, to go even deeper into debt to have testicles surgically attached, so I can punch them.

Gathering and distributing the news used to be a sacred trust. As Criswell used to say, "God help us all... in the future."

Another Reason I Shouldn't Be Allowed to Deal with The Public

"I need to make an appointment for my son, for cleaning and check-up, this Friday."

"I'm sorry, but school starts on the 27th, so we've been swamped. Basically, August was booked up in July."

"He's got a cavity. Could you get him in then?"

"Ma'am, I couldn't get him in if his head was ripped off."

Boooooring

Nothing to relate. I yet live, although my aged computer chair attempted to murder me by actually snapping in twain. I currently sit in a wooden dining room chair while playing solitaire - excuse me, while I'm working - and I am having Andrew Borntreger/New Orleans Worst Film Festival flashbacks: "I CAN'T....FEEL... MY ASS!!!!!"

Still awaiting that wondrous first writing check which will reinstate my broadband and buy a new, more ass-friendly chair. These things are important.

Life Without the Internets

...is pretty boring. And stupid-making. Not being able to Google up any esoteric bit of knowledge I require is... frustrating, to say the least. I have been able to fall back upon my antique paper Interweb, ie, my reference shelf, about some things, but by and large... eh. Guess I didn't need to know it that badly.

I've started upon a new writing gig, but this one won't be gobbling up two years of my life, which is a good thing, but then, it won't be paying me for two years of my life, which is a bad thing. A little acting thing I've been working on will come to fruition next week, after which I'll have more time to not surf the Web.

In short, it's like a lot of points in my life: work rushes in to fill a vacuum. And if it's not work, it's a solitaire game called German Patience, which, I assure you, is the work of the devil.

I Don't Believe It Either

Whole lot of unpleasantness on the home front lately; I may bore you with it someday, but suffice to say due to a nasty set of coincidences - the Internet is currently an unfunded luxury at my home, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Irony of ironies, though: I have some access at the Hated Job.

That's not what I'm here for, though. To those two or three of you that check in here: there is actually a new review at The Bad Movie Report. Yes, believe it or not. It doesn't go officially live until tomorrow. Have a preview.

Time to go home now and... oh, I don't know. Watch a movie, perhaps.