The board has really screwed the pooch on the management of this, in my opinion, and they are lucky to have passed it on a second go-round. It’s not that the plan is a bad one - it’s solid enough, even if I think we could have gone with some less-expensive options to placate the people who are really going to be struggling with it - it’s just the public relations from the board and the management company to the homeowners have been absolutely abysmal, to the point where people before the meeting were practically brandishing their pitchforks in full lynch mode.

In the end, though, enough people saw that it was the right thing to do to vote it ahead… now all the board needs to do is find a bank willing to negotiate 15-year term loans for the people that need them and settle a few final terms of the contract (they’ve been given a 3% leeway for increases since the previous bid expired). Once that happens, I can officially be poor… as Roseanne said when they shut the power off to her house, “well, middle class was fun”.

Of course, the intent behind this is to protect our investments and recover the value of the assessment in renewed appreciation on our homes, but as I said before, it’s still a mighty bitter pill to have to swallow.

In other news, it seems I will be playing Bob Cratchit as well as any number of other auxillary characters for the entire run of Unexpected’s Improvised Christmas Carol, opening toward the end of this month and running through December. I’ve already contacted my dialect-coach friend and in exchange for a nice dinner she plans on helping me master a rudimentary (and most likely comically exagerrated) cockney. So I’ve got rehearsals for that, and I’m also going to Austin all next week with the improv entourage, so while things aren’t quite like they were during tech week for Rocky, they are busy as usual.

Dan.

Interestingly, I thought McCain’s concession speech was remarkably stately and gracious, as though in defeat the old McCain that I actually liked before the campaign twisted him into a total dick had finally returned, kind of like Vader’s redemption at the end of Return of the Jedi. Too bad he couldn’t have behaved so nobly during his run for the highest office.

I am optimistic that Obama will reduce the opacity and increase the pragmatism of government, and perhaps do something to restore the dignity of the nation. There was a time when I would have thought four or eight years is such a blip in the history of a country that it’s hard to see how it even matters, but the last two presidential terms have taught me that eight years is actually a very long time in which a whole lot can get farkakte with the wrong person in office.

My cold is feeling a lot better today, although I am still coughing up a lung.

I think it should be illegal for a utility company that I have an account with to send me mail with red letters on the front saying “PLEASE OPEN IMMEDIATELY” if what’s inside is promotional junk that has nothing to do with my actual account. I’m looking at you, Verizon.

Dan.

I ordered the greeting cards online and they arrived on Wednesday, but were printed at about a quarter of the resolution of the original file I sent in and looked horrible, so without sufficient time to place another order I wound up spending an evening designing them myself, going to Kinko’s and getting them printed and cut there. Meanwhile I was unable to find suitable collage frames in the budget I’d requested from the cast, so at one person’s suggestion I undertook the task of making the collages myself and fitting them into generic 16×20 inch frames, which was of course a much larger project than I’d originally signed on for or imagined.

In addition to these, in a stroke of luck/genius I’d come across mad scientist alphabet blocks which seemed like a perfect cast gift, but in order to give everyone blocks with meaningful letters on them I would have to order several sets. In a quick correspondence with the business, however, I found out that not only for a small price increase per block I could select individual blocks, but for a slightly greater increase they would let me pick all six sides for each block, which meant I could custom-tailor a block for each cast member. So for a smaller price than ordering multiple sets I was able to get each cast member their own customized mad scientist alphabet block with letters that I found meaningful to them. Sweet.

On top of this, I wanted to give the cast members a framed cast photo, so I had to get that taken care of as well. So last week was pretty much spent embroiled in getting all that together, and my condo looks like an arts-and-crafts tornado ran through it as a result.

Emotions ran pretty high for closing weekend. All three shows had sold out early in the week, so we knew we’d have good audiences. It was a long run and a good run and of course the only alternative to ending it while still wanting to do more would be to end it once we were sick of it, so there’s no option but to grieve and move on. My only frustration was that after many months of pristine health that was nothing short of miraculous I finally succumbed to a cold on our closing weekend, which of course had to be when they decided to make a video recording of the show. Boo. Fortunately the cold hasn’t affected my throat much, but it hit my lung capacity pretty badly, which wreaked havoc on my solos. The various meds I put myself on also impacted my acting in general, I think. Oh well.

I’ve added some more photos of the production to my gallery, including a whole slew that were taken when we went to see the movie version at the Admiral Theatre, and a couple of the cast with our most famous guest narrator, United States Congressman Jim McDermott:

Some newspaper came and snapped photos of the event as well, but I haven’t heard anything yet about the article.

As sad as I am to see Rocky pass on from my living world and into my life’s history, I finally made it back to an ensemble workshop at Unexpected yesterday and was startled at how much I missed my life there and doing improv. As much as I love doing scripted work, there is a naked honesty that improv provides that other forms of theatre cannot, and the people over there are so excellent that it pains me retroactively to have been removed from them for so long.

I suffered from the usual I’ve-been-away-I-sure-hope-I-remember-how-to-do-this syndrome, but I managed a couple of really decent scenes (and one spectacularly terrible one, but that’s how the improv cookie crumbles) and once I got into it and the feeling of it started flooding back to me, I was almost shaking from how much I missed doing it. I really look forward to sinking my teeth back in over there.

Dan.

Rocky Horror only has six more shows, so please buy a ticket and come see it before they all sell out! (Oh, I just stumbled on another awesome idea for cast gifts, so that’s something else I’m looking forward to.)

Out of the blue, I’ve been offered a spot through Unexpected Productions to go down to Austin, Texas for a week in November and perform improv at an annual Microsoft conference, expenses paid (and a handsome stipend for myself to boot). Normally they request six specific company members, but this year they asked for a delegation of twelve and I suppose I lucked out in getting offered a spot in the remaining six. It actually took some time to decide if I would do it, as it means liquidating my remaining vacation time for the year, and just as our team is starting to ramp up it’s size. But on further consideration and consultation I realized that I would be a complete idiot to turn down the chance to have a free vacation somewhere warm and that I’ve never been before, where I’ll be getting paid to do the thing I love alongside some of the most fantastic performers I know. So I ultimately said not so much “yes” as “hell yes”.

Once Rocky Horror wraps up I’m going to have nearly half a dozen shows of various friends to go and see, improv to catch up on, and this conference in Austin. I’m still optimistic that November will be less busy than September and October were, but the gap is narrowing.

Dan.

In spite of this, it’s a great show and well worth checking out… we only have 8 more performances, so if you’re thinking of seeing the show be sure to get your tickets right away. Our Friday and Saturday performances have all been selling out as word gets around… Sunday matinées are a bit safer: we’ve been hitting about half capacity on those, although both this coming Sunday (with U.S. congressman Jim McDermott as guest narrator) and our closing Sunday are liable to be a lot more packed.

For the curious, we have some photos of the show, and I’ve uploaded a bunch of them to my album, including the following:

… Told you the show was sexy.

Dan.