Last week was kind of hectic. I got to have lunch with a couple of friends, which was nice, and perform in a couple of shows, which was also nice. On Thursday I went to see the preview of Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s production of Rent, in part because it’s one of the few (and least expensive) opportunities I had to see it, but also because one of the leads (who was also the lead when I did Damn Yankees back there in 2007) was going to propose to his girlfriend (also a lead in the show) during the curtain call. There was a pretty respectable cross-section of people in the theatre community who came to see the event, and it was adorable to watch. I’m not personally close to either of them (I’ve only done one show with the guy and had never met his now-fiancée), but the theatre community is small and with at least half a dozen people on that stage whom I knew and far more in the audience, I think it felt like a family affair for everyone.
Friday’s SecondStory show was nothing remarkable, but Saturday was my first Theatresports performance since December and I was both anxious and excited to get back on that stage. I was on a team with one apprentice and two veterans, all three of whom were women (I was a bit disappointed we didn’t go with the team name “Token Male” one of them had proposed). It was a really fun combination of strong performers I don’t often get to play with, and when you are, in fact, the token male on the team it means you get to play just about every guy role that comes up. We ended the first half with a five-point deficit but managed to come back from it and win by three points, which means we’ll get to play again next weekend. We had a good audience and I felt like I had a pretty solid show overall, with the opportunity to do some respectable scenework, which is what usually concerns me the most when I’m in Theatresports, so that felt good.
I bit the bullet and finally joined Netflix over the weekend. Technically I started a month-long free trial but I know I lack the willpower to quit something like that once I start it, and at $9/month it doesn’t exactly break the bank. The catalyst was getting this fancy new Internet-enabled television that hooks directly up to your account and lets you stream movies and television shows directly over the Internet. You see, I know I’m not enough of a moviephile to ever make a traditional, mail-based Netflix account worth the money, and in fact am likely to find it more onerous than just renting DVDs from a retail shop because I will worry about whether I am watching them and sending them back soon and often enough in order to make it worth my investment.
The Internet streaming is something new and very cool, though. So far I’ve watched a few episodes of the first season of Weeds on it and am surprised by how good the quality is. You can tell it’s been compressed and every now and then it jumps a single frame or so (almost unnoticeable), but by and large it looks almost as good as an actual DVD and doesn’t stutter or stammer like I’d expected it would.
The downside is that while there are a lot of streamable titles on Netflix, only a small percentage of their total library is accessible through this feature. So I am still trapped with the DVD-by-mail conundrum, even more so as I now need to work to keep my DVD “queue” full, but many of the things I want to watch are available by streaming, so it takes a lot more browsing to find things to put in the mail queue.
Netflix apparently has a “friends” feature, so if you use Netflix you should befriend me and share your ideas for what I should watch!
Dan.
Tags: entertainment, improv, theatre friends, toys