Friday Sickness Random Ten, Cat, and Penny Dreadful Updates

Oh, man . . . a bad sick has taken hold of me, bit by nasty bit, this week. Starting with a cough on Sunday, adding weakness and wooziness on Wednesday, then nasal problems yesterday, and now general fuzziness of mind and cloudiness of judgment. Great.

And on top of it, I had to deal with doctor appointments for myself and both cats, and also getting my car towed and dealing with two days of bureaucracy and a trip out to Far East Brooklyn to get the car back, which was pretty awful, except Berit and I saw some some inspiringly depressing landscapes and architecture while walking the long, desolate distance between the bus stop and the car impound . . .

For recreation, there is at least a ball field nearby . . .

Here's a little more view, down Flatlands Avenue, for context . . .

A friendly-looking place to live, right . . ?

. . . which I'd love to try and find a use for in some Gemini CollisionWorks film/video project at some point, Maybe I can write off the whole towing incident on the company taxes as a location scout. If I was ever able to fulfill my dream project of making a film of Jeff Noon's great dystopian novel Vurt, changing the location from Manchester, England to Brooklyn, I now have some definite shooting locales.

Wednesday, during the day, Bryan Enk (co-creator), Timothy Reynolds (set supervisor) and myself had to have a PRE-pre-tech for this weekend's FINAL episode of the Penny Dreadful serial at The Brick (and by the way, for those of you getting caught up online, the video for Episode 11 is now posted).

It's a complicated, double-sized episode, and we have a HARD changeover from the mainstage show up at The Brick right now (Times:365:24:7, which I hear is great and is getting pretty good reviews), so we have had to plan everything out carefully. That night, we ran the show and worked out kinks, but I had to leave after Act I (which ends with the scene I directed) as my illness was getting the better of me.

Today we had our standard pre-tech, setting the light and sound cues without the actors, so that hopefully at least 85% of the work is done before the brief time we have tomorrow to run the show with full dress/tech and make corrections. As has happened at least once before, we couldn't do the whole show in the time we had today, only about 3/4ths of it, so we're going to have to run the first act as planned tomorrow, send everyone off on a longer lunch break while we finish the tech for Act II, then come back and run the rest of the show (it'd be nice if we could call everyone later and finish before they show up, but we lose actors who are only in the first act at 1.00 pm).

At least the show is looking a lot better than I feared it would. The difficulty with Penny, always, has been that I'm stuck using the light plot that's up for the Brick's mainstage show for each episode. Sometimes, I get lucky (my light plot for The Granduncle Quadrilogy, which I didn't plan in any way to work for Penny, actually may have been better for the latter than the former). Times:365:24:7 uses The Brick (terrifically) in a very different, environmental way than usual, which means I don't have very many lights pointed at out stage area (which is where our seating area normally is, and vice versa). Somehow, though, it all worked out, and with the addition of the footlights I'm sharing with the mainstage company, it's actually looking pretty much up to Penny standard.

It's sad leaving Penny and its cast of characters behind, but it's been a good long run since November, 2007, and the story has run it's predestined course. If you are interested in seeing it and you don't have tickets, better get 'em now -- tomorrow night's 11.00 pm show is sold out, and the two shows on Sunday (2.00 pm and 8.00 pm) have between 10 and 15 seats left, and we CAN'T oversell with the setup for the show. And be prompt, there is and can be NO late seating. The door will be locked, you can't get in once it's started. Even if you bought a ticket.

So, today's Random Ten, from 25,641 in the still-being-cleaned-out iPod (with related YouTube videos, where available) . . .

1. "Cry" - The Malibus - Leave Me Alone! - USA Garage Greats
2. "Debbie Debbie" - Gary Wilson - Mary Had Brown Hair (Stones Throw)
3. "I'm Drowning" - Flaming Groovies - Super Sneakers
4. "Right Now And Not Later" - The Shangri-Las - Myrmidons Of Melodrama
5. "Big Leg Mama" - Little Walter - The Chess Years 1952-1963
6. "Mind Control" - Z - Music for Pets
7. "Willingly" - The Shannon Sisters - A Million Dollars Worth of Girl Groups Volume 3
8. "Slippin' And Slidin'" - Little Richard - 18 Greatest Hits
9. "Back To Front" - Stiff Little Fingers - All The Best
10. "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" - Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen

(and now Berit is making fun of me for dancing along to the arrhythmic John Zorn track that followed the 10 above, and says I'm "weird" because of it . . .)

And as for this week's cat photos . . . here's the babies posing in the window again . . .

Here's Hooker planning to once again chew on my Crocs, as they offend his fashion sense (but dammit they're the only things I can comfortably work in all damned day!) . . .

Here's Hooker confronting his nemesis - the squirty-water-bottle we use to drench him when he's being bad . . .

And yet another sweet windowsill pose . . .

Back to work on Penny tomorrow morning at 8.00 am. Oy.

Well, I can't say anything right now about this last one (no spoilers here), but it's a BIG ONE, and I assure all the fans out there it's a more fitting finale than the BSG one (or, for that matter, most double-length series finales).

Now to make some ziti with extra-hot sauce (courtesy the bottle of sriracha sauce I got) to try and keep burning the sick out of me . . .