I have a giant pimple on my face that has, to date, refused to develop a head. It is painful and I really wish it would go away.
This is probably the most exciting thing I’m going to post about as far as my personal life is concerned in the post that follows. I apologize for the mundane nature of my existence but I can’t always have a life that one would want to live vicariously through.
I guess the most exciting thing I could post about this morning is the fact that my nephew, Fred (currently in the Army and on tour in Iraq) is going to be a father today. His wife, Jennifer, went into labor late last night or early this morning and we should be welcoming his daughter Victoria into the world any time now. It’s got to be rough for him, knowing that he’s missing out on all of that, but knowing Fred I’m sure he’ll do his best to make up for lost time when he’s done with his duties overseas.
For my part, it was a pretty busy weekend.
and I went out on Friday night to see “ranney” at Studio@620 in downtown St. Petersburg. He’s working on a new one man show and was trying out material in front of an audience. It was great to see him on a personal level, and it’s always a treat to watch him perform. It was also nice to finally get a chance to go to Studio@620. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the space, and I was pretty impressed by what I saw. There are some really nice folks running it, and it is a joy to see art happening on this side of the bay. Tampa gets a lot of the artistic attention in this area, and it’s really cool to see that there’s a place doing some stuff outside of the mainstream that doesn’t require those of us who live over here to drive 45 minutes or more (thanks to all the wonderful traffic recently) to take part in it.
Saturday started off very early. Alex and I went to Weight Watchers first thing and then rushed over to the park for a baseball game. Fortunately the weather didn’t turn sour until around 11:00 so he actually got a chance to play. They lost, but it was a really good game and they came back from a 6 run deficit to take the lead at one point before the other team rallied and ended the game five runs ahead. After that I came home and got in a 15 minute workout in before heading over to Tampa for a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead rehearsal. It was our first time on the set, which is HUGE. Easily the largest set I’ve worked on in all of my performances with Jobsite. What’s really funny is that we’ve been rehearsing with a much smaller playing area in mind so bits that we thought might be hard to pull off are actually working quite well. All in all, I’m really excited about seeing this one go live (which is happening in just over a week!).
After I left rehearsal I stopped by the grocery store, spent the bi-weekly small fortune on food, and came back home. I thought about logging into World of Warcraft but the living room was free for a change so I took the opportunity to jump on the XBox 360 and play some Bioshock. 6 hours later I finished the game. What a truly amazing game. I understand that the endings were a bit of an afterthought and the the designer didn’t necessarily want to have 3 different static endings, but I thought that my particular ending was pretty satisfactory (I got the “good” ending due to not killing any of the Little Sisters). I’m tempted to play through the game again and try to catch the other two endings, but I’ll probably end up just checking them out on YouTube. I liked the game well enough, but I’m not sure if I really want to spend that much time playing it again for a few more achievements and some different cut scenes.
I actually got to sleep in on Sunday, which was nice, but I didn’t get a workout in because I made the mistake of logging into World of Warcraft. Two of my guildies got me a present that required me to do a little bit of material gathering to create, and as I’m a sucker for instant gratification I had to do so right then and there. After doing that I got a quick shower in and we popped over to my sisters house for Easter (which, for my fairly non-religious family, is essentially an excuse to get together and eat a bunch of food). Several thousand calories later we left (avoiding the requests to take home plates of evil foodstuffs) and came home long enough to change and head up to Clearwater to see Spamalot with our boys,
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kungfugimp,
,
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and “The John”,
, Drew,
, and
. Was great to see that particular gang and get out of the house with the whole family for a change (let’s face it – we spend a lot of time together in the house without actually spending time with each other). The
show was ok, but not nearly as good as the last time we saw it. Most of the cast on the national tour has changed since that production (in fact, the only holdovers were Patrick Heusinger as Lancelot and Christopher Sutton as Prince Herbert, both of whom where excellent in their multiple roles and easily the two best performers in the cast. I was particularly disappointed in Esther Stilwell, who took over as the Lady of the Lake from Pia Glenn. Her voice was fine and she did an admirable job, but she didn’t have the presence that Ms. Glenn had and as a character that is supposed to be a Diva presence is kind of important. Case in point – during the second act the character as a number called “The Diva’s Lament.” When Pia Glenn came on stage at the beginning of that number the audience erupted into applause which works wonderfully with the number. When Ms. Stilwell came on last night she was greeted by expectant silence. Overall, the original tour was considerably better and I’m glad I got to see it first.
That’s pretty much it for our wild and wacky weekend. As of tonight I’m back into rehearsals and pretty much non-stop until we open next Wednesday. If you’re at all interested in getting tickets to the show I suggest you do so quickly because they are selling fast and as of yet we have not decided if we’re extending to a fourth weekend or not.
