Blogroll Reducks

Lucas has reminded me through his post here that I haven't posted a current version of the blogroll for awhile.


Again, for those of you in late, yes, there are ways I could have a blogroll off to the side in LiveJournal, but not in this page format that I like (and not, I believe, with a free account), so I post my Bloglines list every month or so (or more, in this case).


Most of the interesting things I've discovered online in the past year have been found by going through other peoples' blogrolls, and I hope that some of these links may provide entertainment/informational value to someone else.

I apologize for not having this in an LJ cut as usual -- something is buggy this morning and no matter how many times I put the text in a cut (it's showing me that it is right now) it doesn't preview or save that way, and it's wound up posted and removed several times.  Go figure.

( 150 Pages of Interest Inside )

What's Norwegian for "Pier One Imports?"

Alesund, Norway -- August, 2002

(I actually used a bunch of the names in this sign for characters in my novel, Worlgdinprogcess -- I thought they had a kind of "Frank Herberty" feel to them . . .)

Four More Days

So, four days to go until Temptation opens.


Today, we run the show in a rehearsal space at La Tea/Clemente Soto Velez from 3-6.00 pm. With the full cast, it seems, which I wasn't expecting. One latecomer. Fine. Good.


Tomorrow, I'm building and fixing in the space all day, running out and getting whatever else I need. Michael Gardner and Art Wallace show up from 6-8.00 pm to do some set fixes for Mountain Hotel -- hopefully including that rickety door of theirs that I'm also using -- which opened last night (hope it went okay). Then my cast shows up at 8.00 to run the scene/set changes. Over and over and over. We need it; the acting is in fine shape, much better than fine shape, but we need to get the set changes down and smooth. I'll be down four cast members, unfortunately, but whatever, needs to get done. The rest will just have to go over the set change breakdown Berit's making up. Should post that backstage as well.


Tuesday, I do everything else that needs to be done. The space looks to be mine all day and night, so I take over and spend Halloween alone at The Brick, with lots of music and work. Maybe I'll bring a movie or two to watch on the big screen in the evening, if I can work and watch at the same time. Cannibal Holocaust? Eraserhead? Road House?


Wednesday, I do everything that needs to be done that I forgot about on Tuesday in the space before 5.30 pm (including going to the Halloween costume store for the supplies that I need that I am NOT going to try to do earlier). There's an 8.00 pm show (Guardian Angel/An Evening with the Family), then the cast and I come back in at 10.00 pm to do the one run-thru we can in the space with full cast, costume, set, and tech. I hate this. I hate doing this late rehearsal. Has to be, but I hate it. No other time to do it, and it's needed. Dammit. We'll be done at 12.40 am at the absolute earliest.


Thursday I fix anything that didn't work in the dress/tech, and hang out at the space all day, checking and double-checking every little thing obsessively. Maybe nap. Cast shows up at 7.00 pm (or earlier if they're as paranoid on an opening night as I am, we go up at 8.00 pm. Actually, probably a little later . . . one actor will be rushing from another show he does. Maybe 8.15. Maybe 8.20. I'll open house right straight up at 8.00 pm. I've got 20 minutes of cool pre-show music.


Berit's stuck over at The Ohio, of course, managing house and techs for the other Havel Festival shows. I think she can make the late Wednesday night run, but I'm pretty much on my own completely for this show, like old times. Berit does work when she can -- last night she made up the actual fabric part of one of the screens, and the whole big 8'x6.5' screen sits in the middle of our apartment now, looking great. Rather than just go with a translucent white fabric entirely for them, since there was going to have to be a dividing line in them anyway, given the dimensions, we decided to go with a more opaque cream color on the bottom and an abstract, floral-esque, translucent fabric on top, which can look like wallpaper (of various colors) or a garden backing depending on how I front/back light it. Lovely. Unfortunately, partly because of this, we've wound up with a definite front and back sides to the screens, so they can't just be moved into place anywhichway, making the set changes a bit more complicated. Berit worked them out yesterday, and all should be well when we have the documentation, and after we run them and run them tomorrow.


Also need to call Equity to find out where my sig page is -- I faxed them the application etc. a few weeks ago, but without the rights page (there was a whole magilla with Samuel French and the rights that's too big to go into here). They got the rights page (for ALL the Havel shows) a week or so ago, maybe a little more, and everyone else has been getting their signature pages for their shows this past week except me, it seems. One of my AEA actors is, rightly, concerned, so I better call them again (I called Friday, but couldn't reach who I needed to and just gave up on it for the day). I just hate talking to Equity on the phone -- I may be a member myself, but when I call them as a producer I feel like they're immediately combative for no good reason. Not always, in fact probably not even most of the time, but just enough to bring out my phonephobia about talking to "authority" figures on the blower. It's probably all in my mind, anyway.


Don't know what the story is going to be on my electrics, either. I'm getting the sense more and more that I'm NOT going to have dimmable control of all my practicals, and I'm going to have to wind up getting and hanging massive amounts of extension cords from the stage to the booth so I can click the lights off and on from a power strip. Lovely, huh? It'll look okay, but not as nice as I'd hoped -- all bulbs at 100%, so all the standing lamps will just be a straight 200w, the bare desk bulb at 75w, and various other small lamps (and the chandelier) at 20-60w. I hope I'm just being a worrywort again, and I'll have the board control of the lights I was told I would, but I am indeed a worrier so I can't help it. Just gotta keep telling myself, "Don't borrow trouble."


Okay, Hooker-cat has decided to get up from resting on a chair, come over to me, complain, vocally and loudly, that I'm not paying attention to him, and stand on me like this:





. . . yet again (with the addition of reaching out a paw and bopping me on the head, then head-butting me in the armpit). So I'd better give him some time before effoeing to rehearsal (and before that, OK Uniform to return some unused costumes (if I can) and The Ohio to get some things from Berit).


Maybe more soon, but very possibly not until Friday . . .