Dan Posluns

Zero effort on my part

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:08:59 MDT

It's been a week since the improvathon ended and I'm pretty much recovered. I stayed away from the theatre this weekend and was pretty lethargic on the whole, although I also attended the first of three weddings I have scheduled for the summer. I wore my classic five-dollar tuxedo (replete with stripes, polka dots and red suspenders) to that one... I'm enlisting a fashion-savvy friend to help me purchase a new suit for the other two.

I'm pretty captivated by the new iPhone coming out next month. Enough that I'm taking a long, hard look at breaking my contract with Helio to get one. It now boasts a GPS, which is one of the things that helped to sell me the Ocean in the first place, and it looks like it does a far better job of maps, directions and the like. What's more, I've been consistently disappointed in the Ocean's interface and that I'm locked out of the operating system. Right now the only thing it has going for it is the tactile keyboard, and that it costs me less per month than an iPhone would. But I could also conceivably write software for the iPhone... I've got a couple ideas brewing that I won't get a chance to explore unless I get one. So it's something I'll consider when they launch next month.

My boss wants me to play World of Warcraft to get a better grasp of some of their techniques. I've been resisting it as I try to avoid the sink for both time and money that those sorts of games are. He makes the argument that I just need to see how certain things are being done, but I suspect that it's impossible to really get a handle on those things without dedicating a significant amount of time to the game. I feel like I'm in a rather unique job where my boss's biggest complaint against me is that I'm not playing enough video games.

In truth, I actually have been playing more video games this past week or so, but mostly because I found out that it was possible to install Linux onto the PlayStation 3 that the company had given each of us last year. It turned out to be quite the harrowing process, but I now have it working to the point where I can play old Super Nintendo games on my 37" television with the PS3's wireless controller using an emulator, which is pretty darn sweet. It's also hooked wirelessly to my Internet connection and network hard drive, which means I could potentially use it as a multimedia server if I ever got my hands on some multimedia to serve.

I've been finding ants in my living room... small ones, and only a few here and there, probably not more than a dozen in total. It's a bit distressing because I find them in the middle of the room, with no indication where they're coming from but enough that it doesn't seem like a single soldier has randomly gone astray. I vacuumed, put down some traps and bought some Raid and I haven't seen any since earlier this weekend, but with summer just getting started who knows what I can expect.

It could be a wake-up call that I need to clean more proactively... I try to keep my place reasonably clean on the whole but I've been rather lax these past few weeks, and instead just tried to keep the status quo with regards to laundry, dishes and taking out the garbage. I recently purchased a Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner, though, and with its help the status quo over there has at least improved somewhat. Although I'm not convinced it's made much of a difference on the tiles, at least the tub seems to keep relatively clean with absolutely zero effort on my part, which is the sort of effort I can consistently count on.

That's most of the news... hope everyone that reads this is doing well!

Dan.

The only sleep I need

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:40:51 MDT

I suppose it's time I wrote about the Improvathon that happened this past weekend. It was a rousing success and I spent Monday at home recovering... it's Tuesday now and I'm mostly better at this point but I was still a little woozy and trembling then.

First of all, I don't have any romantic or nostalgic feelings distorting my memory of it. It was hard and it was brutal, and I'm really glad I did it but I'd have a tough time envisioning a circumstance that would ever make me want to do it again.

All in all, what I remember most is how long it felt, and how 14 or 15 hours into it when it felt like forever and I was ready to drop dead, I couldn't believe that I still had nearly 40 hours to go. And when I was 40 hours into it and the end should have been plainly in sight, all I could think about was how long that first 14 or 15 hours had been and that I still had that entire grim march ahead of me.

I was lucky that both Tony Beeman and Laurel Ryan accompanied me for most of it, but in the end I turned out to be the only one who would do the entire stretch.

The final few hours were awesome. Adrenaline kicked me into overdrive and it felt like everything before that point hadn't even happened, even though my ability to construct meaningful sentences with the correct words wavered every now and then. The first 50 hours or so were pretty brutal, though.

Probably the worst part was my feet and legs. They ached near constantly from all of the standing, and are still sore today. I brought three pairs of socks but I did a stretch barefoot because my feet were still utterly disgusting in my shoes. Barefoot made my feet hurt far worse, though, so I went back to wearing the miniature greenhouses. I sat whenever I could, but about half way into it whenever my rear end made contact with a flat surface my eyes would automatically start to droop and I'd be in danger of falling asleep.

Everyone tells me I did some phenomenal improv over the course of 54 hours, so I choose to believe them, even though my memory is blurry. There were definitely some good scenes that I do remember, and the ensemble and the audience basically turned me into a rock star during the final few hours or so. I've never had an experience like that, and it was awesome... everyone chanting my name and the audience going wild whenever I did just about anything. They all loved it, but I wouldn't say I was doing especially strong improv... it's just that when both the audience and the cast are on your side like that you can pretty much do no wrong, and as I slipped further and further into psychosis I could just substitute the rule "louder = funnier" whenever technique failed me.

At the end, I was given the "ultimate" challenge to play the game Dead Bodies, where the entire ensemble comes out and strews themselves over the stage, and I was required to run around the stage puppeteering everyone's limp, dead-weight bodies to recreate (as was the audience suggestion we received) the first Lord of the Rings movie. I'm told I received a standing ovation at the end of that, but I don't recall seeing it from where I was lying collapsed on the stage.

At the end I was given a couple of awards that included a sweet body pillow. One improviser who'd been uber-supportive of me almost the entire way vowed to buy me 54 drinks over our lifetimes, but I don't think I'll hold him to that, heh.

It would seem I now unofficially hold the world record for longest continuous improv performance, which is pretty cool. I'm contacting the folks at Guinness but I don't know if we'll meet their standard of evidence. In any case, I'd only hold the record until someone decides to go for 55 hours, at which point they're welcome to have it and with my blessing.

There's a lot of it that I can't remember and I'm trying to get the people who played with me to fill me in on the details. In the meantime, here're some highlights of the experience that I do remember:

What I've dubbed the "panic hour": around 3 AM on Sunday when most of what little audience we had were snoring, and (perhaps due to inadequate preparation) there were only three improvisers: myself, Tony Beeman (who had been with me since the start and while wasn't doing the entire run was doing a full 40 hours) and Jana Healy. Of the three of us, I am (in order of ensemble membership) the most senior, so being one of the most junior members of the company it truly felt like the inmates were running the asylum. This was, I felt, the most threatened the improvathon ever got, as it took tremendous willpower for us to drag our exhausted bodies out there and come up with more material for practically no one that was watching us. I was really proud of what we accomplished with only three of us, and Jana was the girl who pretty much saved Improv Christmas. Among a couple other things, that set included:
- Scene starts, where we just alternated two at a time between the three of us initiating as many scenes as we could without audience suggestions
- An invented longform where we tried to do long scenes telling a single story... kind of dark and moody, but the few people who were awake seemed to enjoy the different energy
- Hair-prov, when Jana sat down exhausted and demanded we make puppets out of her pigtails... which we did.
Playing in the guest slot with Quiet Monkey Fight, who were an incredibly tight trio all around. We did fast-paced high-energy scenes that got a little ridiculous but were a lot of fun.
Another guest slot with players from Jet City Improv. We invented Cracker-prov on the spot, and they also had the idea of improvising the entire 54 hour improvathon, where anyone could ring a bell and switch us to performing what it would be like in a different hour of the improvathon.
A fantastic long-form in the style Shakespeare, where I played the son of a blacksmith attempting to woo the king's daughter. Got to do some fun bits like a scene where I was climbing up the side of the daughter's tower, so we switched to "overhead view", where everyone lies down on their sides and the back wall of the theatre becomes the ground, and I climb all the way up by crawling on the floor to the front of the stage. That scene featured Tim Tracey, Michael Bils and Andy Schroeder. Dan from Quiet Monkey Fight also joined us on that one, making it extra awesome.
A musical improv hour Saturday morning, which I can remember next to nothing about except that it was loads of fun
A longform improvised around a Spanish poem narrated by Andy Schroeder, with myself, Michael Bils and Andy Robertson. We also did a longform called "Thread" where we followed around a single object, in this case a small washcloth. That one was tougher for me, but very interesting to do.
A longform called Found Objects, sort of complementary to Thread. Again, not my best show but Tim Tracey showed his undying solidarity by licking my deodorant.
Toward the end, a scene where we were required to spell the things we wanted to say, and I apparently was going a mile a minute
Playing a crippled dog in a scene where I was rather intimately manhandled by Jay Hitt, the managing director of UP.
"Blue Hour" both Saturday and Sunday at 2 AM, where we basically do comedy that's as blue as we can make it. Not my strong suit really, but everyone seemed to have fun.
And yes, Tony Beeman bit my leg, and it hurt. I don't really remember why or what the context was there, but I suppose it helped make the experience a complete one.
One of my better performances was in a Blank Slate longform, where I was endowed to be a 76-year-old physicist named "Fly", who we discovered both invented the technology behind cell phones and reverse-engineered the flux capacitor from the Back to the Future movies. I had fun getting pimped into explaining those two technologies with a metaphor using bobcats and watermelons for one, and then towels and basketballs for the other.
A game called Translation with the international visitors, where we all have to speak our native languages. I did a wonderfully fun scene with a brilliant French improviser who clearly had a background in clowning... we started as servicemen sneaking food from a buffet, and wound up having a hysterical food fight that ended with us trying to consume the food off of each other.
Having Randy Dixon, the artistic director of UP, interview me after my death about what memory I would like to take with me into the afterlife. We started out talking about my experience in university as an engineer who did improv and theatre, and I got to watch the international players reenact that. We finally settled on the Kipling Ceremony, where my dad presented me with my iron ring. It was very touching and heartfelt to watch, and didn't take place until very close to the end so I probably would've gotten all emotional if I wasn't struggling to keep from passing out.

I'll go back and edit this list as I think of more stuff or get feedback from friends.

The article in the Seattle P-I wound up being pretty cool. I was quoted directly twice, and a third time if you count the police captain she quotes at the beginning of the article that I played. (Good thing she didn't mention it was about the worst film noir scene I'd ever done.) The online version lacks the picture, though, so I scanned it in from the newspaper (full-resolution version).

So I had my fifteen minutes of fame, and I have to admit I enjoyed it. At hour 53 I came out and told the audience in my biggest rock-star persona that "I'm permitted two half-hour breaks where I sleep on stage, and I haven't taken either of them yet, so if I wanted to I could just sleep through this last hour and still complete the improvathon. But I won't do that, because you people are the only sleep I need!" Which of course got a massive and hilarious response. I don't know when - if ever - I'll have the audience in the palm of my hand like that again, so I'm glad I was able to enjoy it, even if I had trouble keeping my eyes open.

Dan.

Still alive

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:31:56 MDT

I'm still alive. More details when I think I can manage them.

Dan.

Miniature vultures

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:05:49 MDT

The baby goslings I posted photos of earlier are still coming around at my work, and look like miniature vultures in their adolescence. I wonder if adorableness is some kind of defence mechanism in baby animals that they lose as they age past their phase of greatest vulnerability?

(I was also able to get within inches for a photo of a baby bunny that lives with its family in a thicket by the river, but it was shot from my camera-phone so the quality is a bit lame. Bunnies are cute at all ages, but baby bunnies are priceless.)

My car has been the source of some financial grief... I took it in for its 30K-mile maintenance and wound up $400 poorer after they'd done the extra maintenance which is required at that point and also changed my transmission fluid. They also found things that they're recommending around another $500 in work for, namely:

One of the wheels is apparently bent, about $120 to replace plus another $230 for two new tires
Another $100 to install the aforementioned and realign the thrust (it's apparently pulling right)
My rear brakes are also apparently losing efficacy and in need of cleaning and a filter change... another $60

I'm currently getting some second opinions on whether or not any or all of this stuff is truly needed. I wanna take good care of my baby, though.

Matters are not improved by the fact I got my first speeding ticket two weekends ago. I totally did it to myself, too... I normally go around 70 on the highways, but it was 1 AM and I was tired and going out of my way to drop off a friend, so I was doing 80. The lady knocked the infraction down to a 70 which significantly reduced the fine, but where I really got nailed was on driving with expired tabs. I hadn't even realized the tabs were expired and I'm certain I never got a renewal notice... and sure enough, when I went to the DOL website to renew them they didn't appear to have my mailing address on file. The speeding violation was only about $130 but the tabs were another $250. I sent the ticket in with the request to plead guilty but with mitigating circumstances I want to explain to the court... hopefully I can get it reduced somewhat. I worry mostly about the impact this will have on my driving record and insurance... does anyone know what I can expect? In any case, I figure more than three years of habitually doing 10 over the speed limit without a ticket diminishes the significance of this.

So much for my stimulus payment, though.

This was another improv-heavy weekend, in part because the Ghost Tour in Seattle has partnered with Unexpected so we're now running an extra show for them on Fridays and Saturdays. I worked every show this weekend, performing in five shows as well as running lights for one and judging for another.

The three smaller shows I played in weren't especially strong, but I'm pleased to say that the two more important ones (Theatresports and the Sunday show) went very well. This was the weekend that we had the Japanese contingent visiting and playing with us, and they were fantastic... they were incredibly high-energy, and just brought a different cultural style to everything. Plus most of them spoke very little English, so the stakes of everything were constantly raised when they performed (the audience loved how their best English-speaker would translate for them in hushed tones as scenes were already in progress).

Friday night Theatresports was a Japanese team versus an American team, and the Japanese team won both in the judges' score and in the audience's esteem. (Which is no slight on the American team; rather it's a compliment that they were able to create an environment where the Japanese team could be so successful.) Saturday was when I played, and we had mixed teams: three Americans and two Japanese on both sides. Our team lost but performed admirably, even getting a perfectly scored scene on a gibberish opera. I didn't do the best job ever but I was solid and had the audience on my side, which felt great.

Sunday's show is typically small but we had a decent-sized audience for it this time, but what was a real surprise was the reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who was there to gather information and photos for a piece on the upcoming 25th anniversary spectacle. Again, I didn't exactly play a perfect game but I did really well overall, which is a nice feeling when the press is watching you. The piece comes out Friday, I think, which has me excited to see if I got into a photo or any other sort of mention (which in particular might happen as I'm doing the entire 54-hour improvathon).

I think my high-school French is finally paying off, because both Saturday and Sunday I was able to use it in a game... inspired by having Japanese people on the team, I wanted to play a game where nobody could speak their native language, so the Japanese would be the only ones speaking English. I would speak my best broken French, as would another guy, and the third remaining Anglophone would speak Spanish. The game wasn't as good as I'd hoped, in part because the suggestion I got for the scene (laundry room) wound up only being conducive to having a couple of characters in it, rather than all five of us. I was surprised in the Sunday show when one of the other players brought that game up again, though (even though we didn't have the Japanese players for it). I spoke French while two others spoke German and Chinese, and while fairly simple the scene was a big hit.

What was really amusing about it is that after both shows I had people accuse me of being far better acquainted with the French language than I claimed to be. Both times I was quick to excuse it as perhaps being a side effect of my Canadian French-tutelage, but I was pretty astonished nonetheless, knowing the difference between myself and legitimate Francophones as I do, not to mention people I know who did French Immersion and the like. Maybe it's all just a matter of perspective.

It's not too late to sponsor me for the Improvathon! Contact me with what you'd like to donate... $5, $10, $10,000... it's all good! The Improvathon begins this Friday at 6 PM and runs till Sunday at midnight, so if you can manage it please come see me!

Dan.

Some respectable moments

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:56:01 MDT

A few weeks ago I found out that Cirque du Soleil had, in fact, set up camp right in my backyard at Marymoor Park for their Corteo show. What's more, they'd been there since the end of April... I'd somehow paid no notice to the giant blue- and yellow-striped tent when exiting the highway.

I couldn't very well pass up on the opportunity to see Cirque when they were across the road from me, so I splurged on tickets. I didn't like the idea of driving and parking when they were so close to me (parking is $15), but heading via the main entrance was going to be too long to walk and a river surrounding the park keeps me from simply crossing from my condo. I'd explored a little last summer with my bike but not been able to find an alternate entrance that was close to me... so I scoured the satellite view of the Google map looking for some way across, but ultimately was unable to find any. So instead I drove to the east side of Marymoor and parked near the store I go to buy my bagels at, and cut into the park (and also a lot nearer to the tent) from there.

The show was pretty incredible, although I got the feeling that their tour was perhaps a little less spectacular than those at their permanent venues. The ringmaster in particular needed more *oomph*. It was interesting watching the performers with their perfect bodies and their unfathomable strength and agility... I'm used to envying people I see on stage who can do things like sing and dance far better than I can, but I don't find myself envying the circus performers. They are a little too extreme, their existences a little too bound to their troupe, and it doesn't seem like an appealing lifestyle. My friend likened it to watching professional athletes... it's fun to watch, but you don't find yourself wanting to be them.

In my own more mundane performance world, I've been doing as much improv at Unexpected as I can. I've had some respectable moments... including a Shakespeare scene that occurred in a special Theatresports show this past Saturday (it was celebrating the departure of one of our members, so the teams were him versus about 25 of us). This Sunday, though, I was part of a Harold that was entertaining but ultimately silly and superficial from my end. That was for a much smaller audience but it still left a sour taste in my mouth afterwards. Of course I have the Improvathon in less than two weeks, so over the course of 54 hours I should be able to purge myself of any improvisational sin many times over.

Speaking of the Improvathon, I have a few discount tickets available ($10 from me instead of $14 on the web/$15 at the door), so contact me if you're interested in seeing it. Also, you should consider sponsoring me even if you aren't coming to see it (or aren't local, even)... you can sponsor me either for a flat amount or an hourly rate for however long I survive out of the 54 hours; the donations go to the theatre and are tax-deductible, and make me look important.

I've been seeing more movies lately than I normally do, considering I don't normally see movies much at all while they're in theatres. I don't really have time to expound upon them, but here's my quick summary:

Iron Man: Awesome. Don't know if it's gotta-own-the-DVD awesome, but it was a great time.
Indiana Jones: After all the negative hype I'd heard, nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. A good fun time, but will always live in the shadow of The Last Crusade. Biggest problem was that it suffered from what I've dubbed Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle Syndrome, where the sequel to an action movie takes good content and spoils it by doing such over-the-top physics that it makes you lose the ability to suspend your disbelief. Many sequels these days are guilty of it... I'm looking at you, swordfight on the mast of a ship being dragged into a whirlpool from Pirates 3.
Prince Caspian: Solid overall. Trim about half an hour from it and get back to me.

It's a good summer for movies. I'm really looking forward to The Dark Knight, and a couple others will probably get my ten bucks as well. Between that and new Doctor Who episodes I'm pretty much set entertainment-wise.

Dan.

Being a flamingo

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:41:47 MDT

So it's been a somewhat interesting week. We're finally starting to see some summer weather... this Memorial Day weekend in particular has been gorgeous. Unfortunately I think I've come down with a cold... I stayed home Friday with a pretty serious cough, although right now it seems to have gotten considerably better, so maybe it was just a 48-hour flu.

I auditioned for a production of Godspell but didn't get in. It's okay because I was really only interested in the role of Judas, and I happen to know the guy who got it is a fantastic triple-threat so there was really no contest. Besides it gives me more opportunity to focus on improv.

I've been seeing a lot of the geese I posted about earlier, but with no sign whatsoever of the goslings until two days ago, only the parents. I was pretty sure the young ones had all been killed... it was nice to see them again. They've grown a ton as well... soon they'll be indistinguishable from the other vermin.

I took the opportunity to do a rather unusual gig this Saturday. Woodland Park Zoo just opened a flamingo exhibit, and to help promote it they got a bunch of us from Unexpected to dress up in pink tee-shirts and headbands and move as a flock throughout downtown Seattle, milling about and occasionally standing on one leg. It was more than a bit stupid, but the weather was beautiful and it paid $100 for four hours of being a flamingo. Pictures were taken... I'll try to post some when they become available.

Got a Memorial Day barbecue tomorrow, then hopefully a pretty quiet week thereafter, which should be nice.

Dan.

Magic of the form

Mon, 19 May 2008 12:32:57 MDT

I realize I've been a little bit remiss in keeping up with this journal. Things have been busy-as-usual... one of the major disadvantages in having so many friends involved in theatre is that they're usually busy on weekends doing shows, and often the best/only way to see them is to go see their shows. Unfortunately the time after a show is one of the worst times to actually hang out with someone. Plus everyone is always in different shows, and I've got my own shows at Unexpected keeping me busy as well.

I still managed to see Chess and Aladdin these past two weeks, as well as Bat Boy: The Musical (although I didn't actually know anyone in that one, but was researching the show to see if I'm interested in auditioning for it when SecondStory does it next season... it was interesting enough and I probably will, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it). I'll be seeing Annie Get Your Gun this week as well, and that still only clears about half of my list of friends in various productions. The good part is that I'm getting exposure to shows I likely never would have seen otherwise.

I'm still incrementally rebuilding myself over at Unexpected. It's a bit tough because we're experimenting with this new (for us) form called "Spoken" that's pretty challenging to do well. I did it both Friday and Saturday this past weekend and Saturday's was better than Friday's, but I still feel like I'm waiting for the real magic of the form to manifest itself to me. I'm starting to feel more comfortable again, though... we did our brand of a Harold last night and it was a lot of fun.

One of the features of working at ArenaNet is that we are able to order lunch in from a rotating set of restaurants every day and have them automatically deduct our paycheques and have the food delivered right to us. My only problem is that it almost always means having a late lunch, as the food doesn't typically arrive until 1:30 or so. Apparently most developers are okay with this because they live on aberrant tech-industry schedules or something, but my circadian body wants to eat at noon, damnit. I've gotten somewhat used to the 1:30 timeframe, but it doesn't run like clockwork, and every minute past that deadline I start to freak out a little more. This was especially bad last week when we added Asian Spoons to our rotation, and I paid the price of being an early adopter by not getting lunch until 2:30. At least we won't be ordering from them again.

I don't want to get into details, but I was recently the victim of a stealth tee-shirt mending. The more specific victim was one of my favourite tee-shirts from the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company that I bought during my last trip to NYC, that unfortunately developed a hole in it. It was mended in secret for me... I know some awesome people.

Last week I went with a friend to see the touring of Kids in the Hall (thanks Darla for giving me the heads up on it... I know I still owe you a proper e-mail!). It was awesome to see some of my biggest comedy heroes performing live... although the venue was completely flat, which made it absolutely terrible being in row 30 out of 33. They did mostly new material, which was great. It went by so quickly, though, and I'm still struggling to remember a lot of it... moments like the Statue of Liberty being assaulted by the hero "Superdrunk" and crying out: "help me, poor and tired, you owe me!" I also enjoyed Scott Thompson referring to Seattle as "Vancouver's B-side" in his Buddy Cole monologue, and I felt supremely nerdy as I accurately called out both the Gavin and the Chicken Lady sketches long before their namesake characters appeared. In short, it was an awesome time.

That's about it for now...

Dan.

Assuming I live through it

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:58:24 MDT

I am getting used to life without Urinetown. I'm not much less busy than I was before, especially since I have my standing gig with Unexpected Productions. Getting back in shape with them is going to take some work, though.

I ran lights for most of their shows this past weekend, but participated in the 8:30 show on Saturday, which wasn't Theatresports (that happens later on at night) but a more stylized form called Blank Slate. It was a pretty decent show for me, although I could've performed better. I had one flash of inspiration towards the end of the of the show, when I was playing a girl that one of the other characters had been pining after. He attempted to win my character over by using a metaphor for life that his recently-discovered biological father had given him... I responded with "that's amazing, my dad told me the exact same thing!" Bam, comedy ensues for the remainder of the scene as our roles reverse as my character starts fawning on him, and his becomes extremely anxious.

I wish things had gone so well in Theatresports that night... I was only supposed to be running lights, but one of the teams unexpectedly responded to a challenge by switching out all of their players with everyone working tech, front of house, music, etc. So there I was suddenly thrust on stage with three other people of mixed improv experience, in a scene that was pretty much doomed to tank from the get-go. I wish I could say that I miraculously saved it somehow... but instead I think I just piloted us more squarely into the pavement as we crashed and burned. Bleh. Even though I know it wasn't all my fault, it's the first time people are seeing me back from my hiatus, and I wish things had gone better. I know I'm capable of doing better. I want people to think of me as an asset, not a liability.

Maybe it will help matters that I've signed on to do the 54-hour "improvathon" in June. That's an entire weekend of unrelenting improv in June, from Friday evening until Sunday at midnight. (We get five minutes every hour for the bathroom, and are allowed two 30-minute breaks to sleep, but we have to stay on stage and will probably wind up being used as props.) It's a pretty stupid thing to do, but I'm kind of excited to see what will come from it, and it will hopefully sharpen my skills somewhat. That's assuming I live through it... I've pulled some all-nighters in my day but I doubt I've ever been up for anything close to 54 consecutive hours.

June is a busy month for Unexpected, as it's their 25th anniversary and there's a party as well as an international improv festival. I was confused at first that there might be overlap between the festival and the improvathon... the festival draws performers from all around the globe, and I can only imagine how a bleary-eyed me would react if around hour 40 or so I was suddenly performing with a bunch of folk who only spoke Japanese. Turns out the events are mercifully distinct, though.

I've mentioned before the river that runs outside my office at work... well last week there was the most adorable family of goslings camping on the bank of the river with their parents. I managed to crawl to within about six feet of them or so (before one of the adult geese started bobbing his head and snapping menacingly at me) and snap pictures with my cameraphone. They turned out somewhat poorly, but someone with a real camera and telephoto lens managed to take these:

In addition to this, a coworker brought in her pet birds and one of the doves saw fit to perch on top of my head. All in all it was a good day for bird-related surprises.

It's a couple weeks late in coming, but I'd like to take a paragraph or so to mourn the passing of the Weekly Radio Address. These were parodies of President Bush's radio addresses done in collaboration with The Onion, and just about the most brilliantly hysterical stuff you've ever heard. They have an archive of three years' worth of material up on the site, but for those of you without the time or inclination to go browsing through I've cherry-picked some of my favourites here:

Giving Thanksgiving Thanks
Airline Terror Alert (If you don't get the joke then it's explained here)
June Terror Update
The Decider
The True Meaning of Christmas
A Holiday Tradition
Local Elections

Seriously, the whole collection is hilarious and you'd be remiss not to check it out.

Dan.

Strange sense of passing

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:11:32 MDT

This week turned out a lot better overall than last week. Except I banged my hand on something backstage yesterday, and it's been aching a ton today.

Urinetown had its bittersweet ending. We got a standing ovation (well, I'm sure the ovation stemmed primarily from people who knew the cast, but regardless), and we finally took the elusive extra bow that we had been instructed only to take if the audience was just that insistent.

They had to add an extra row of chairs to the front of the stage to try and accommodate the insane demand for tickets. I love Urinetown, but it's not usually popular, and it's nice to do a show that's both. We all lament the impracticality of extending the run; it's nearly impossible to do such things in a theatre of this size without extensive planning, funding, and the kind of foresight nobody in their right mind would have possessed. This is a show I wouldn't mind doing ad infinitum if I could.

I held a closing weekend party at my place on Friday night, and about an hour into it we had a blackout - the first I've experienced since moving here (apparently a car hit a pole with a transformer down the street). There were about a dozen of us, suddenly left only with the light of the fireplace and a couple of tealights... so we got out a bunch more candles and it became one of the most fun and intimate parties ever. (When the power finally did return a few hours later, we hurriedly shut the lights back off again.)

A lot of people in the cast spoke about what a big deal this show was for them, and how difficult it was for them to leave it behind. That resonated a lot with me, in part because these were people who typically perform in many more musicals than I do, and in more elite venues (a bunch of them are already soldiering towards tech week for Annie Get Your Gun over at CLO/SMT).

It's a big deal for me as well, of course, but perhaps in a different way that's only beginning to sink in. It actually caps a small but significant chapter of my life that began about a year ago, when I first started out on a campaign to be in this show. That sounds a lot more focussed and deliberate than it actually was... in truth it was just a back-of-the-mind agenda that weighed on and informed a lot of my decisions from around the time I first heard whispers that SecondStory might even be considering the show. I was already auditioning for Forum there at that point, but it certainly increased the importance for me that I get my foot in the door there. It's the same impetus that made me audition down at TMP and ultimately get cast in Damn Yankees (and dismissed from their production of Urinetown without the benefit of so much as a callback, but I digress). When I think of how narrow the odds were that any of this would happen (still wondering who got hit by the bus that bumped me onto the roster) it boggles me. Likewise when I think of the incredible friends and relationships I've managed to build over the past year and the fantastic experiences I've had, all indirectly tied to the pursuit of this show.

So now that it's over I feel a strange sense of passing, for the show but also for the experience that brought me here. Not to say I'm done with Urinetown - certainly if the opportunity were to arise I would want to do it again, and I still have dreams of playing Lockstock or Cladwell someday. But still, it's a very little thing that managed to have a tremendous influence on my life... expanding my circle of friends, teaching me skills I might have never acquired otherwise, and bringing me new opportunities and experiences that I'm sure will lead to more down the road.

And that's just every kind of awesome.

Dan.

Asking too much

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:50:17 MDT

This past week could have been better. I've been kind of down on the whole... among other things I had a friend who was going to be visiting me from Canada but got too sick to fly, and I had to cancel a whole weekend's worth of awesome plans. I also screwed up the dance to "Snuff That Girl" rather badly on Friday night's performance of Urinetown, which happened to be the night that they were taping us. It doesn't bother me too much as I don't think anyone ever gets to see these recordings, but still... why must they tape on Fridays, when we're returning from a week off of performing? Saturday and Sunday's performances, by contrast, both went quite well for me.

All three shows were sold out this weekend (sold-out matinées are virtually unheard of). I don't expect tickets for the remaining two performances will last very long, so if you wanted to see it please buy yours pronto.

We finally got one of our other reviews printed, this one in the Seattle Gay News. Another extremely positive review, and someone pointed out that I even got my own nod - albeit indirectly - as the "demonic" (huh?) spotlighter. While the role of the spotlighter is basically a bit and has little to do with the person occupying it, the cast observed that by virtue of this little extra role that got assigned to me, it actually edges me out with the most stage time of anyone in the show. I think that's kind of neat - kind of like how I felt about getting my face featured in the Seattle Times review - where it feels good even though there isn't actually anything meritorious about it.

Much in the spirit of the Gay News talking about me, it seems that Facebook has decided that I am gay, in spite of my declared orientation on the site, as it has started targeting ads for gay singles websites towards me. Normally I wouldn't care how inaccurate Facebook is with their data mining techniques, except that these ads consisting of shirtless men and endless innuendo are both gross and wearing on my patience. My current theory is that they saw that I'm a guy who likes Broadway musicals and drew their own conclusions from that... it'd be nice if I had a way to convince them otherwise though.

They got everyone at work a second monitor, so I now have two gorgeous flat-panels... only problem is that they are exactly the same model but one is more washed out than the other in terms of colour levels, so it gets distracting as I often have the same colour spanning both screens. It's still a boost to my productivity, though.

Another thing that bugs me? It hailed again this past week. Twice. While we aren't getting frequent snow and none of it ever sticks to the ground, I'm getting pretty frustrated... we should be well into spring and bordering on the edge of summer at this point. It's been staying near winter temperatures though and I've been very patient, but my patience has its limits!

So yeah... there were a few good things but last week kind of sucked overall... if this blog seems even-Steven it's because I'm naturally omitting a lot of the details. I'm hoping this week will shape up to be better... it shouldn't be asking too much.

Dan.