Monday, January 29, 2007

Am I Asleep Yet?

For the life of me, I have nothing noteworthy to post. So, here's a game for your amusement.

(Hint, if you shoot them while they're coming out of the ground, it's easier.)

Friday, January 26, 2007

The Thing about Audiences

Sometimes, when you're on stage, you know where you stand with an audience. When they applaud loudly for what is applause-worthy, they laugh at what is funny, and they are respectfully quiet during sad or awkward scenes, you know that you have their emotions in the palm of your hand and that your performance is really reaching them.

However, when the opposite occurs, that is, when they are quiet when they should be loud and there is lots of rustling and/or coughing when they should be quiet, you can't help but feel like you're not doing a very good job, like, despite your best efforts, you just can't suspend their disbelief. It's quite discouraging.

Last night's audience was, as you may have guessed, somewhat like the latter group. They seemed unappreciative and distracted. Worse yet, they were occasionally distracting. For example, during a scene that is lit only by black light for an extended period of time, a woman wearing a large white coat (which was very, very noticable thanks to the black light) decided that that was the perfect time for her to get up from her fourth row center seat, and slowly make her way to the lobby, illumined for all to see.

During the show, nearly everyone in the cast made some comment about how the crowd was "dead" and "unresponsive."

However, when curtain call came, we received a standing ovation.

People are fascinating.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

An Open Letter to a Rude Man

Dear Sir,

When my girlfriend and her parents visited your restaurant, the Oceanaire Seafood Room, we expected a nice meal. We also knew that it was going to be a bit pricy, but, we were prepared because we expected that from the Oceanaire Seafood Room, because sometimes you have to pay for ambience at a fancy restaurant.

What we did not expect was your frank smugness and downright rudeness.

While it is true that, at least my girlfriend and I, don't dine at many exceptionally fancy restaurants such as yours, the Oceanaire Seafood Room, I don't really feel that our lack of knowing just exactly how you'd like us to respond to things gives you liberty to look down your nose at us and generally treat us like garbage using methods such as violently pouring our wine for us and your spoken rudeness that hid behind the paper thin veneer of politeness.

At first, I thought that you would be a great waiter, because your disheveled white hair in conjunction with the fact that your white coat and white apron kind of looked like a scientist's coat made you kind of look like Christopher Lloyd, of Back to the Future fame. Unfortunately for us (Great Scott!), there was no kindly gentleman hiding behind that kindly appearance at the Oceanaire Seafood Room.

In short, sir, you made the whole evening a particularly unpleasant experience, and so I will likely not be dining there, at the Oceanaire Seafood Room, again. Plus, with the number of times I've mentioned the Oceanaire Seafood Room in this post, maybe, just maybe, this post will come up in a Google search for the Oceanaire Seafood Room, and maybe, just maybe, this post will keep someone else from wasting entirely too much money on food that could be had elsewhere for a sixth of the price and without the added benefit of an unbelievably rude waiter.

No longer a friend of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in San Diego, California,
AC

Monday, January 22, 2007

My Secret Destruction

What can destroy a person? For Samson, it was his hair. For Caesar, it was that fateful decision to cross the Rubicon. For Britney Spears, it was marrying and having kids with Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel.

Today, I'm going to reveal what has the capacity to destroy me. I'll give you a hint: it's books. I love to read them, but it seems like even more than that, I love to find new ones that I think I should read, purchase them, and then quickly forget about them. It is as if my mind thinks that through the simple act of buying a book, I have the potential to receive the wisdom and knowledge that the book contains, and if I do not purchase them, I will UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES receive said knowledge.

I am enticed because by reading, I can not only reflect what I have read, but, in a sense, cause what I have read to reflect upon me. In short, I play the Narcissus to the books' clear pond.

However, though I always love books, I sometimes find that I am too busy for reading. Further, I find that I have a kind of feast or famine approach to reading, that is, sometimes I'll go from title to title faster than a fat man achieves the goal of heart disease, whereas sometimes months will go by without reading more than a magazine because I just don't want to commit to anything that can't be accomplished in two hours, i.e., most of the literary works I am interested in.

So, more for my own personal curiosity than anything else, I will be keeping track of the books that I read within by frequently updating this post for the year of 2007 just to see what I can assume numerically about my reading habits after 2007 ceases to be. Also, I will be including plays in the list, even though I'm sure that some people might consider that to be "cheating" and "beefing up one's book count the easy way."

It is to those people I say, "Come look at this pond."

1) Who Moved my Blackberry? by Lucy Kellaway **
2) Art by Yasmina Reza*
3) The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem
4) The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh*
5) A Midsummer Night's Dream by Billy-Boy Shakespeare*
6) Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
7) Copenhagen by Michael Frayn*
8) Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
9) JPod by Douglas Coupland
10) The Pleasure of my Company by Steve Martin
11) Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse
12) Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard*
13) True West by Sam Shepard*

Also, if you are interested in any of the books that I've read, and you don't have them, I can either loan them to you, or, if you'd like, you can get them through an affiliate program that I have with half.com, and I can make a couple bucks in the process. Please use the following link if you'd like to do that.

eBay's Half.com, buy more for less.

* Denotes a play
** Denotes a book started in 2006

Friday, January 19, 2007

Note to Self

When you're doing a show with an actor who is reprising a lead role that he's done nearly a dozen times, and, in particular, when you are with him in a group of people who are supposed to be moving in strict unison during the opening number of the show, and he moves his arm at the wrong time, and, likely due to being flustered, very obviously proceeds to start to turn around when the group is supposed to be moving to stage right while facing forward, you will be able to keep yourself composed. However, when the group is turning at the correct time, and you hear him say in his gravelly voice, quite audibly, "Oh boy...", you will very nearly poop your pants as you try even harder to hold back the laughter that you had been holding back previously.

Relatedly, when you get off-stage, you will think to yourself with a smile, "God, thanks for this one. I love what I do."

Thursday, January 18, 2007

An Open Letter to Arby's

Dear Sirs,

Let me say that, in general, I am enamored with your restaurant's premise and its food. In an ocean of burger places, I find solace in your island of roast beef. Plus, your extra large cup is made out of styrofoam, which, while it will kill the environment, doesn't "sweat" when I leave it in my dressing room during shows and get all over the place.

Because that's what I stand for, Arby's, convenience with drinks over having an earth to live on.

Nevertheless, last week, as I stopped by your establishment for a delicious beef and cheddar, I found myself repulsed. Upon receiving my food, I took it over to the condiments station to add both Horsey and Arby's sauces to my sandwich, because they, much like Red Vines and Mr. Pibb, are crazy delicious. However, when I opened the bun up, instead of seeing several pieces of roast beef, as I am accustomed to, I only came across one large-ish one. It also looked slightly off-colored, but I, like the plain girl at the bar who's had one too many and is asked to dance with a man of questionable character, decided that this was my best shot.

After condimenting it up, I headed back to my car and got back on the freeway where I proceeded to unwrap my delicious treat. I eyed it with approval, just as one might eye the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist if one were hopelessly depressed and/or desperate.

And I was desperate. For a hot beef injection. My mouth watered with anticipation. I took a bite, and started to chew. However, something was amiss in my mouth; it was as if there were a party in my mouth, and only ugly people were invited. You see, my experience with Arby's has conditioned me to believe that roast beef will be tender and savory. This roast beef however, was a little bit chewy and spongy. I would bite down, and my jaw would be forced back open with the sheer resistance of the meat. I felt like someone had taken squid, hammered it into a thin sheet, dyed it brownish, and stuck it on my supposed beef and cheddar sandwich.

I am not one to quit, however, so I proceeded to chew what was in my mouth until it could be swallowed, and my revulsion at doing so can only accurately be compared to what people feel when they remember that Courtney Love isn't dead yet.

I felt betrayed. I was humiliated. I was lonely. I had no sandwich to help me through my lunch hour time of need. My lunch hour will never be the same. I will be forever skeptical.

Therefore, Arby's, I'm not asking for much. I just want my innocence back.

Failing innocence, I will accept twenties, but I want you to know that you're just making it worse.

With whatever love is left in my heart,
AC

Friday, January 12, 2007

An Open Letter to the IT Guy Who Fawns Over the Attractive Girl in the Next Cubicle

Dear Sir,

As you are middle-aged and kind of weird, and she is early twenties and devoted to fitness, I place your chances of what I can only imagine you are thinking of doing with her somewhere between the likelihood of the events of Jurassic Park actually transpiring and the idea that the 1969 moon landing was staged.

I just thought that you should know.

With love,
AC

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

It's Opening Night

After two weeks of rehearsals (the last two of which were twelve hour days), the show is set to open this evening.

I can hear you now: "Your show is opening on a Tuesday? What's that about? Did you take stupid pills this morning, AC?"

The answer to the basic issue posed by the previous three questions is that the theatre that is putting the show on is part of a resort which tends to be filled with vacationing folk who still reminisce about the "Great War" in their day to day conversations. These folks are looking to be entertained on a Tuesday night with a classic musical, and we are just the people to do the entertaining. It's a good thing that there's not a bingo hall close by, or we'd face some serious competition.

But seriously, it's a great show, and it's going to be a great run. Believe me, legs will be broken, and I mean that in the good, theatrical way.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

An Open Letter to CalTrans

Dear Sirs:

Firstly, let it be noted that I sincerely appreciate the way that you perform repairs and general upkeep on things that are and relate to our roads. However, as I was waiting at a red light at a crowded intersection this afternoon around lunch time, I noticed that the light was not just red, but that it was blinking red, which led me to assume that something was amiss. I found that it was doing so because it had been apparently decided that lunch time was the best time to work on that particular traffic light.

Needless to say, people were upset.

I humbly request an either/or solution to this issue. Why don't you,

A) Maybe think about working on that light at another time during the day when there are fewer people on the road, or

B) Allow me to punch you in the face. Your collective face.

Your concerned friend and loving companion,
AC

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Yes, Folks, He's a Hummer

Perhaps it's due to the tons of rehearsal, or perhaps it's due to the fact that I am functionally retarded, but whenever I'm not in rehearsal, I find myself humming or softly singing some part of some song from the show. Now, while this is presently a pleasant thing, I can think of two distinct potential problems*:

1) One line of a song that I sing goes, "Dai dai dai dai," which, as you no doubt have realized, sounds suspiciously like "Die die die die." I can only imagine the pained looks/talk of "silent alarms"/outright weeping when I start mutter-singing that line at a liquor store/bank/child's birthday party, and

2) While it's all fun and games now to constantly have the music going through my head, I can only imagine a day when I will start humming a song from the show, and I will wish that someone would rip a hole in my stomach, insert a hefty-sized garbage bag full of live kittens into said hole, and then suture that hole shut while screaming at the kittens to "Claw your way to victory" and "Stay away from the acid; it'll just slow you down" in an effort to get my mind off of anything related to the show.

On that day, it will just be fun, and no games.

*In ninth grade, I was in a punk band called Potential Problem. Even as I sit here looking at that name, I can't help but smirk at the fact that I capitalized it. Our songs had clever lyrics like, in a song that talked about Sid and Nancy, "Why, why why? Why did you? Why did you have to, turn him into, $*&#? He was just fine, he was just fine, without you!"

While I guess I could say that the band's influence on me was a good thing in the long run, as being in the band is what made me pick up the bass guitar (when the three of us started the band, only one of us knew how to play his assigned instrument. That's right, assigned. We got together, decided we should be in a band, and assigned who should play what. For the record, I think that the first time we assigned instruments, we had the guitar player playing drums. We were maybe not as clever as we thought we were at that time), for a long time the stronger influence of being in the band was that I distrusted "preppy" brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Nike in favor of acceptable brands like Dickies and Vans.

Sigh. I'm such a poser. Do the kids still use that expression? Poser? Oh well, back to my Warped Tour cd.

p.s. This may very well be the best idea anyone has ever had, and that statement includes indoor plumbing and pigs in a blanket.

How to Feel Good About Yourself, AKA My New Year's Resolutions

1) Lose at least 1 pound -- As long as I don't go on a twelve month bender of overeating, overdrinking, and other assorted means of worshipping Dionysus, I figure I've got this one in the bag. At the very least, I can just not eat on next December 30th, and that'll probably get the job done.

2) Use allusions that people will get -- Dionysus was the Roman god of wine and frivolity, who is represented in a painting by Damon Denys like this:

Frankly, at the end of the day, in addition I should perhaps think twice about referencing a deity whose thumb ring, shirtlessness, crown of leaves, and pleased with himself look all suggest that he might be a little too eager to come over and watch Brokeback Mountain with me.*

3) Not get fired -- Again, this should be fairly easy to attain, so long as I keep up the good work, and I mean that in the biblical sense, like being kind and charitable and restoring sight to the blind. It could happen.

4) Invent teleportation -- This is, admittedly, the wild card of the resolution list, but it hearkens back to a time when I, as a child, was convinced, convinced that I could build a time travel device using solely the various leftover parts from washing machines that my grandfather had in his back yard. Though that plan didn't come to fruition, I am certain that this one could work because I just rewatched an old Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror and they had a teleporter on there, and (warning: abrupt shift) as Disney's Fantasmic show would lead me to believe, I am only limited by my imagination, or, in this case, other peoples' imaginations. Also, I just really want one because, really, who wants to be driving all the time? Can you drink while you drive? You can, but it's seriously discouraged in this so-called "free" country. However, while we're told not to drink and drive, I've never once heard, "Don't Drink and Teleport." Think about it; you'll see that it makes a lot of sense, and I think that you'll come on board.

*While I don't necessarily have anything against the movie, the prospect of watching it with a shirtless guy just kind of gives me the willies.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Laptop = Hours of Tears = Opportunity for Inanity

So, I tried to post yesterday from my apartment from my laptop, but either blogger or the laptop opted to, instead of post what I had writ, make my writing disappear into the darkness and the abyss of the world wide web. I tried surfing the net in order to find it, but I ended up worrying that I would get hacked and that cyberthieves would steal my credit card numbers and that I would end up in a commercial that featured my body being voiced by a fifteen year old girl who was talking about how she was excited that she got a whole bunch of new "Hello Kitty" schwag.

So, long story short, I cut my losses, and returned to my bottom line: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...Miss Lewinsky."

Now, onto something that has merit: I have rehearsed for the show twice now, and it is just about the most fun that I have ever had. It also doesn't hurt the ego that I seem to be picking up stuff very easily, and that people in authority have commented happily on it.

I would say "Go Me," but I think that those first two paragraphs drove my nerd factor way up, and, frankly, I might just burst into tears if it goes up any higher. Or, if I may, I may just burst into one giant tear, and slowly dissolve and dissipate into the carpet, and, as I am looking forward to tomorrow, I don't think that that's the best idea.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Christmas Time Is Here

Though it's a few days early, I'll pretty likely be away from a computer until next week. Also, I'll be starting rehearsal for Fiddler at that point as well, which means that old AC is going to be a busy, busy boy who is loving what he's doing. Let's just hope that it doesn't kill me.

In any case, thanks for coming around here to see what's going on in my little noggin'. Merry Christmas to you and yours

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Why My Roomie Is Funny

Me: All right, guys, I'll drive home. Why don't you guys just take a little nap?

He: Wuh? We only live like twenty minutes away!

Me: I was hoping you would fall asleep, and I would then take us to Vegas. You know, as opposed to going to work tomorrow.

He: I don't know, AC; that might get us the bad kind of unemployed.

Later...

Me: I think even the bad kind of unemployed might be nice.

He: As opposed to the good kind?

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Blatant Self-Awesomeness

I had put this up on my myspace, but since I don't link to that here (for some reason that at the moment I'm forgetting, and I'm pretty sure you can get there through links on the video) I thought that I'd put it up. This is video of the solo that I had in a production of Godspell last summer.

In case you're wondering, I'm the large fellow with the solo. See? That's why I put a pig as my profile picture. Get it?

Prepare Ye

Add to My Profile More Videos

Why God? Why Today?

Why is it that a major program that we use in our office has a specified number of users that can use it at once? Why is it also that the number of people who have to use it on a daily basis exceeds said specified number by at least ten or fifteen?

It is because of questions like these that the insides of my head will soon be decorating the walls of my cubicle. It'll be kind of like, "Why? Why? Why?" KABOOMOWHAMMOBLAMO!!!*

*The sound of my head exploding. I didn't expect it to sound like that either, but how can I really argue?

Monday, December 18, 2006

Thursday, December 14, 2006

On Being an Adult

Did anybody else think that one day you'd just be good at making good choices and good with finances and good with all the things that we watched our parents and grandparents do well?

I know I did. One day I'll get there.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Coffee

In addition to the remodeled cafeteria, there has been added a little coffee shop. I go down there from time to time when I feel the need for some sugary sweet coffee goodness.

This morning, I felt such a need.

After the group I went with this morning finished ordering, the next person in line ordered a double shot of decaf espresso.

Why in heaven's name would you order a double shot of decaf espresso? Isn't espresso's point that, in exchange for drinking foul tasting sludge, you get extra caffeine? So, he just opted for foul tasting sludge?

Why? Are there any espresso drinkers out there who can enlighten me?

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

How I Get in Trouble

Yesterday morning, a few minutes before ten o'clock, a supervisor came over and asked to speak with me and another person for a moment. I had a meeting at ten o'clock, but that meeting was suppsed to have been in the conference room right behind my desk, and, to that point in time, no one had arrived. So, figuring it was safe, I went to speak with that supervisor who told us how the customer service line setup was going to be different.

I got back to my desk, and there was still no one in the conference room, so I rechecked the email invitation, and I found out that the meeting was on a different floor. So, I hurriedly packed up some paper and a pen, and rushed away from my desk. When I entered the meeting, some people were smiling, and I quickly apologized to the vice president who had called the meeting for being late. The meeting ended up not really concerning me.

However, when I returned to my desk from the meeting, I had a voicemail. It said: "Hi AC, this is the vice president. It's 10:05; do you know where you're supposed to be?" That message was followed by an abrupt hangup.

While I guess it ended up working out, I think that the moral of the story is not to be lulled into meetings with people talking about inconsequential things like phone lines when there are other, more important meetings that also don't really concern me to attend. That, or, you know, actually figure out where the meetings that one is supposed to go to are located.