Rock Me, Joe

Phew. Rehearsals every single day for Kitsch. Getting tired, but there's work to be done.

And today, a day late (as yesterday was taken up with reorganizing last night's rehearsal due to cast member illness), I finally get to the Random Ten (out of 25,580) from the iPod, with links to associated YouTube videos where available . . .

1. "Skin Deep" - Stranglers - Aural Sculpture
2. "Valerie" - Amy Winehouse with Mark Ronson - Mix Disk - Dad
3. "Rubberleg Twist" - The Isley Brothers - Twist And Shout
4. "Percy's On The Run" - High Broom - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 8
5. "I'm On a Boat" - The Lonely Island (feat. T-Pain) - Incredibad
6. "Little Bianca" - The Bitter Poet & The Sound of Angst - Rocket Red Fingernails
7. "Funny Anymore" - The Heartbeats - East of Croydon
8. "Super Good (Parts 1 & 2)" - Vicki Anderson (as Myra Barnes) - James Brown's Funky People (Part 2)
9. "You Better Get a Better" - The Beatstalkers - Decca Originals: The Freakbeat Scene (1964-1968)
10. "Cruisers Creek" - The Fall - 458489 A Sides

Work proceeds on the production of Kitsch: Or, Two for the Price of One, which opens in . . . whoa . . . just under four weeks. Yeesh.

More info on the show HERE

Rehearsals have been a lot of fun for this show. I'm getting to pull out anything and everything I've ever learned from movie comedies of the 30s and 40s (and a few things from Warner Bros. cartoons as well). Double and triple-takes, slow burns, slapstick, comic sound effects . . . they're all showing up.

Theater for the New City has been a somewhat enjoyable place to work. I like the space itself, and the feeling of community you get there, which has been welcoming to me in faster order than I figured it would. Of course, with the easygoing atmosphere, you also get the kind of laissez-faire attitude that results in showing up last night to find the rehearsal room double-booked, so that we wound up rehearsing in a hallway. We still wound up doing perfectly good work that I was pleased with, but as the hallway was next to the bathrooms, we had to take an extended break from work and discuss blocking for another scene when a show upstairs broke for intermission and our working space became a corridor again. The work was still excellent.

Still, I am enjoying the feeling of "going to work" in a theatre that I'm not on staff at for a change, as well as visiting an old neighborhood of mine every day. I used to live around the corner from TNC on 10th Street, and I've been revisiting some of the restaurants I used to go to regularly for take-out while there (the food at Paquitos, where David Mcintyre and I got burritos every night while we were writing Even the Jungle, tastes exactly the same 18 years later). A lot more Indian and Ruben's Empenadas in the diet than usual. The area's a lot more gentrified, of course, but not as much as I had figured, actually.

So we're pretty good on this show, but I'm still a hair concerned about having all the design elements and music set in time without last minute craziness. I'll catch up on that on Monday (which is now a "day off" from rehearsal, but not from the show).

And as for today's cat blogging, here's a shot from last week of how I prefer Hooker to join me when I'm on the computer and trying to work or just enjoy myself -- this way I can pay attention to both the computer and the cat . . .

And, from this morning, here's how he likes to get attention from me while I'm on the computer, where he makes it clear that he is more important than whatever I'm trying to do online . . .

Time to begin psyching myself up for tonight's rehearsal . . .