NEXT!

Started a long rambling post today analyzing my feelings of inadequacy and failure since the demise of my theatre company.

Blew it up when I realized it was veering fast into whiny drivel that I was forever going to regret writing if I ever hit publish. If you're interested in that BS side of me, wait until about 2AM on Friday 9/22, when I can almost assure you that I'll be drunk enough to get maudlin if anyone provides the impetus to maudle.

Was reminded yesterday that I am to teach a workshop this afternoon to a group of NC theatre eductors today at 5PM. I have a 45-minute drive from office to workshop site during which I can figure out what I shall babble about. Fortunately I only have an hour to fill, which shouldn't be much of a problem.

Trying to get everything line up so that I can be gone for a week is harder in the fall than in the summer, especially this particular point in the fall. But the light at the end of the tunnel is somehow SoCo colored...

This NY/Philly Bash/Management Training trip will include my first trip on America's 2nd-oldest form of mass transit, the train. I will be Amtrak'ing from Philly to NYC on Sunday and then back to Philly Thursday morning. Any specifics to avoid when travelling by train would be welcome, as I have never utilized this mode of transportation before. But it's pretty damn cheap, so no matter how bad it could suck, it's still cheap.

I'd like to see a show while I'm in NY, but it's hard to pick something that won't induce divorce, or at least violence, on the part of the wife. She loves theatre as much as I do, and is much more fond of musical theatre, so me seeing anything on Broadway is right out, unless I want the cat to be my only bedwarmer for the foreseeable future.

I'm a little sad that the Crocodile Hunter guy croaked, but I'm more sad for all those snakes and crocs in the Outback who now have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for. Their existence is now meaningless, since the one thing they wanted, above all else, to kill, croaked from a stingray. The outcry from Croc Local #317 for territory infringement is going to be huge at the next Animal Kingdom Labor Rally and Sheep Chow.

My end of year CD may have to be a double disc this year, with great releases from Sam Bush, Yonder Mountain String Band, Darrell Scott, Johnny Cash, Gov't Mule and so many other killer bands. I'm missing the Violent Femmes play a street festival this weekend in Greensboro because of tech rehearsals. Damn that money-grubbing nature.

I noticed something this morning on my drive into work, a woman, obviously Latina, standing on the corner talking to another woman as they waited for the school bus to come take their children five blocks down a quiet residential street to the elementary school. But what I noticed was not that particular bit of idiocy, it was the look on the woman's face, that particular kind of embarassed half-smile that says from all the way across the street that "I kinda know what you're saying, and whole-heartedly disagree with you, but I'm too big a wuss to say anything about what a jackass you are, so I just smile this little smile, duck my head a little and hope that you'll stop speaking (or breathing) soon." It's an interesting mannerism that I've never seen an actor manage to duplicate on stage, but see in real life all the time.

I played poker last night. I played 2, count 'em 2, $1 SNGs. I finished 3rd in the $1.50 turbo HORSE for an overall $2 profit. Yay me. But it helped me wind down after focusing lights for the night, and I played well, so that's all I needed to do. End obligatory poker content.