Sickening

Over the weekend I stood in a concrete ruin, roasting in the hot afternoon sun, and occasionally said "E'en so, my lord." Doing Hamlet in an industrial ruin is the coolest thing ever, but cold as it is, the sun is pitiless. I burn easily, and sunburn isn't just a skin thing for me. It extends down to the brain. Ow.

The other night I decided it was about time to take the electric blanket out of storage. When last winter ended I zipped the blanket up in the plastic cover in which it (the blanket, not winter) came. Perhaps I should have washed the blanket first. I've never experienced a mustard gas attack, but I think I get the idea thanks to the frightening funk that billowed from this blankey. This wasn't a wafting odor; this was an olfactory attack. I hung the blanket over the shower curtain rod, soaked it with Lysol, turned an electric fan on it and went to bed. Around 2 in the AM I woke to the odor of Lysol mixed with mustard gas permeating the apartment, so I ran water in the tub and rinsed the blanket, then squeezed it out and hung it up again. I've only begun the decontamination process. Yeah, I want to put it on my bed, but I don't want it to make me sick.

Polish posters

Heck, just check out the Polish Poster Archive. Wowsers. Movies, theatre... Thanks to Shoot The Projectionist for setting me hip to this feast for the eyes.

Hamlet, My Fair Lady, Cheap Ginger Ale

My new bloglink, Shoot the Projectionist, which features, among other things, unusual Polish film posters. Just for Frank, here's a My Fair Lady poster you don't see every day... it took me a minute to make sense of it, but it's worth a look.

Last night's Hamlet graveyard scene rehearsal was fun, but everybody got the giggles and we had to drink a lot of ginger ale (in lieu of alcohol). The ginger ale helped me out because it killed my sweet tooth; I find a little cheap nasty sweet stuff from time to time saves me from spending money on the expensive and fattening sweets to which I seem to be addicted. OTOH the Solar Monarch (in the role of the gravedigger) is going to have to drink about twelve cans of cheap soda on performance day if we stick with the very precise beer choreography our director has mandated. Better him than me.

Theatre Surplus

Wow, there's a lot of theatre going on. How are po' folks supposed to keep up? In addition to which I'd like to see a lot of musical acts and dance recitals in town, but it's no use: I got to save if I'm gonna buy a Christmas. I've decided that 2008 needs to be the year I get serious about uprooting. I love Birmingham, but if I wanna make some kind of living as an actor I'd better get out of my cozy B'ham burrow and move along.

I'm told that cities with strong pro theatres have much less in the way of community theatre. I guess that means fewer shows to keep up with. I love having a vibrant and viral theatre scene, although it's no Chicago on the improv front.... Having one big pro theatre owning it all would be an interesting switch from startup theatre groups putting on a show in every other walk-in closet.

Scary

Edit: this was an incoherent bull-session monologue about why people do evil things, the Will to Power, blah blah blah, but upon rereading I realized it didn't A. make a lick of sense or B. make any points that wouldn't get red-penciled in an Intro to Philosophy course. That's what happens when you try to force a blogpost. It wasn't anything I'd want to read on anyone else's blog, so I apologise for inflicting it on ya'll.

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Here's what's really on my mind: going for a walk (as I usually do in the evening) will be a bad idea tonight. I hate dodging trick-or-treaters. They're doing the right thing, and I loved doing it in my day, but I feel all squirrely when I have to constantly tack around slow-moving kids in costume. I'll probably stay in and watch scary movies like Halloween (which I've never seen) and Muriel. Okay, Muriel isn't scary, but so far it's good.

New link-the Modite.com blog. Maybe it will inspire me to shift out of second gear. Its questioning about career and family has me wondering-since I'm not, and probably never will be, a good provider, will I never marry? Maybe that's not so inspiring after all.

Here's a great big mashup (a monster mashup?) from DJ Food. Bootleg remixes of pop tracks and found sound, with a little lesson in electronic music. It's a huge download, but I've been listening to it obsessively.

Dream Dollies

I don't want to be one of those people who talk about their dreams (I don't mind people sharing dreams, but it seems to be a serious pet peeve for a lot of folks) but I had an odd dream recently. I'm not gonna lay a plot synopsis on you, but the odd thing was that it was just about entirely negative: one lousy thing after another happened to me in this gloomy dream world. Thinking about this led me to realize that most of my dreams are like my life: an equal blend of positive and negative events and situations. I suppose I'm due a really happy dream now.

Oh, all right, twist my arm, here's the dream:

I'm at a dingy party, where I meet my real-life friend The Alabama Sister. Unlike in real life, she doesn't even pretend to be happy to see me. She chats with some rich guy who invites her to a much cooler party. I pretend that I was invited to the cooler party, but I'm blowing it off; no one buys it.

I leave the party and walk through cold, dark city streets, fretting over The Alabama Sister's no longer liking me. Soon the streets are full of happy, wonderfully dressed young couples, all of them on an Event Date. I keep walking, wishing I could find my home, resenting all the pretty rich young happy lovers.

Suddenly the streets have become a shopping mall, open late for some reason. I'm in a toy store, full of kids and their parents. I want to get out, but suddenly there's a doll in my hand. A whole table of discount dolls, all with scratches and scars on their realistic pretty faces, is somehow mine; I'm holding an impossible number of dolls in my arms. All the children in the shop are indistinguishable from the dolls, and they crowd me like zombies; they're drawn to the dolls. I fear the children, I fear the parents who may think I'm some kind of predatory Pied Piper, I don't want the dolls, I just want to go home, but I can't move as the child zombie-dolls press in... then I woke up.

Like I say, none of the ingredients of this dream were all that unusual for my dream life; it's the relentless yuckiness of the dream that's unusual.

Gaffing my kibe

Saturday we rehearsed the Gravedigger Scene from Hamlet. We're doing it as part of the Shakespeare at Sloss benefit production on November 11th, where patrons (at these ticket prices they're not just audience members; they're patrons) will be guided around the park and accosted by Players around every corner. Our scene is set in what's left of a burned-down cooling tower. We had lots of fun industrial ruin to play in, and I suspect the scene will prove to be a lucid and richly textured rendition of this marvelous contemplation of death... if we can be heard over trains and traffic. Sloss Furnace is a magnificent setting, but acoustically you'd be hard pressed to find a worse location for Shakespeare.

Anyway, because it was chilly out I made my annual mistake of thinking I didn't need sunscreen. You can't get burned if it's cold, right? Now I'm the color of a cheap hotdog, and I had to spend Sunday in bed. Happens every year.