The Car The Car The Car Is On Fi-Uh!

Luckily, it wasn't MY car.

I've been working 13-hour days getting the lights ready for Babylon Babylon - it's taken me a LOT longer than I expected to get them ready, as always happens when I have to do a considerable rehang on my own (I need to always multiply my estimated time x2 when a solo rehang is involved). Yesterday, I had to finish cabling, then focus all 28 lights being used in the show, which involved bringing up a light individually, running down the ladder from the booth, up the 12-foot ladder to the grid to focus (sometimes up and down several times as I adjusted my lighting "standins" - two extended mic stands with paper taped to the top) then back up the ladder to the booth. Repeat x 28. Big fun.

I probably looked pretty silly, too, as I had brought and was wearing my pyjama pants to work in, but no one else was going to be there, and it made it a lot more comfortable.

The show itself is still coming together, and is almost there. There are previews tomorrow night (which will be rough, but it needs an audience to move forward) and next Thursday (which should be fine and slick) before opening a week from tonight. I still have to go in and finish writing the cues, and make the fixes from what I saw last night. I'll try and take some pictures of the run tonight to share.

Oh, right, pictures! That's what I started the story about. So anyway, I was up on the ladder, focusing, when there was a car horn honking out in front that got more and more insistent, then just held down and wouldn't stop. I stomped down the ladder, and for some reason had the idea that it was our landlord honking - he's never done that, so I don't know why I thought this, but when I'm parked in the "free" space in front of The Brick sometimes (it's a former driveway, so there's no meter there, and you can stay there all day without paying or getting a ticket), he will come in and order me to move so he can have "his" spot for his big green Expedition - Berit always gets angry about this ("It's NOT his spot!"), and it's a pain, but well, he's the landlord. Best to stay friendly.

So I open the front door of The Brick and find myself looking at the landlord's car right in front, the alarm going off, with constant honk, lights flashing, and wipers going, and a GIANT plume of fire coming through a hole in the hood that it has obviously burned through. Impressive.

So I ran back inside and to the rear of the theatre (I know that, Hollywood notwithstanding, cars generally don't blow up, but seeing that much fire coming from one is unnerving) and called the FDNY. Someone probably got them before me, because almost immediately after, I could hear the hoses going, and thought it was safe to grab my camera . . .

Wish I'd gotten some with the actual fire, but oh well . . .

I feel bad for the landlord, but at the same time there's that evil part of me with the tiny inward grin remembering all the times I was in the middle of a good rehearsal process and was interrupted with the yell that I had to move my vehicle, NOW! I told a couple of people about the past incidents and they shrugged and said "Karma."

(Berit, with a big "comic" take, called it "car-ma." ugh.)

So, back to the theatre, but first, todays random ten and cats - from the iPod today:

1. "Weird Nightmare" - Elvis Costello et al. - Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus
2. "Where the Wolf Bane Blooms" - The Nomads - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
3. "Tear It On Down" - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Black Magic
4. "Brick Is Red" - Pixies - Surfer Rosa
5. "Life of Crime" - The Flatmates - Love and Death (The Flatmates 86-89)
6. "Ambiguity Song" - Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
7. "Power" - John Oswald (Deep Zen Pill with Brother Bam Shock) - 69 Plunderphonics 96
8. "Nice 'n' Easy" - Frank Sinatra - The Capitol Collectors Series
9. "Oil Gusher" - The Raymond Scott Project - Powerhouse volume 1
10. "Sexy Trash" - Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master

Wasn't able to take any new cat pictures with everything going on this week, but I have a couple sitting around that weren't the best from past weeks. Here's a nice pudgy Hooker-cat on a shelf, wishing I'd stop bothering him:

And with Moni on a chair, almost in their Yin-Yang Kitty pose:

Tomorrow morning, we have the first meeting/work session for Spell. Sunday, rehearsal for Penny Dreadful in the early morning and The Magnificent Ambersons in the evening.

I'm tired, but it's a GOOD tired.