The previous two weeks have been something kind of miraculous. Aside from all the things going on that need my attention, I've been procrastinating hardcore. Here's a list of a few I've seen in the last couple of weeks that I might given mini-reviews of later, but for now you're just going to have to deal with the letter grades.



The Devil & Daniel Johnston A
Thank You For Smoking B+
Inside Man C+
King Kong B
Videodrome D+
A History of Violence C
Tsosti A-
V for Vendetta B+
Wild at Heart D

So yesterday, I got a job playing at Howl at the Moon in Pioneer Square for "The World's Greatest Dueling Piano Show." The gig is three nights a week and $100 a night plus tips. The basic job description calls for playing spontaneous renditions of songs being requested by drunk people. And if you know me well enough, this is something I've been doing my ENTIRE LIFE.

The show I went to Saturday night after the Mariners game was packed elbow to elbow and people were tipping insanely well, as in like, I couldn't fucking keep count. I auditioned playing some faux-Joplin, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" and "Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta" and was hired immediately based on that alone. I start on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. But even if I was born for this job, I'm still a pile of nerves. Especially since I applied as a server/host and somehow, thanks to my very long, very overdone resume, ended up auditioning to become the centerpiece for the show itself.

The universe is weird. ("Kiss me while we're out of focus.")

The next few days, I'll have to practice like crazy and up my game. (I'm a little less limber since I stopped being a music major.) Ontop of that, there are play rehearsals, car payments, passports and a hundred other things to think about.

Here's to making lists in my sleep...

But tonight I think I'd rather just go dancing.

Zen

There's so much going on in my world right now that I have trouble sitting down and deciding where to begin. I'm mounting a production of Here Come the Alligators slated for the weekends of June 9-11 and 16-18. Auditions are taking place this weekend at the University Heights Community Center. A table reading will take place the next Sunday and the week after that, we begin rehearsals. How did this all happen so quickly? Wasn't it just last Friday that was lugging my suitcases into the foyer, wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself?

What it ultimately comes down to is channeling my obsessive tendencies in some self-validating way, knowing that if I don't start doing something now, I'm just going to keep sitting around and keep making excuses for why my life is not working. (BOR-ING) Even if I do harbor crippling insecurities about my ability as a writer, director, composer, self-motivator, whatever, I can't deny that these things, above all, seem to give me a much larger sense of identity and contribution than anything else. And so regardless of whether or not I trust myself to put this all together with virtually no one else's support, this is something that I am doing. Period.

Aside from all of that, I've been booking interviews for part-time positions as a barista/server not only to accomodate this project (which is coming straight out of my own savings), but to keep myself at financial equilibrium for when I go overseas this summer. This means, Xiaochang, that the month of June is out for me. In the next few months, I'll be as busy as I've ever been. But the plan after all of it through is to move on, maybe even move up.

*sigh* I don't want to address my reservations about all of this happening at the speed it is happening and yet I feel as if I must. Because while I'm quite proud of Here Come the Alligators, a part of me feels very, very exhausted of it. After all, it was supposed to have been a side project. Am I bereft of ideas, or is this just a "happy accident"? I certainly don't feel as if it adequately represents my capabilities as a playwright. And I'd like to think that while I'm rehearsing for this show, it'll give me further motivation to continue other projects and avoid writing anything similar.

We'll see. There's a lot to think about. But for now I just want to go to bed.

"Gnarls Barkley makes UK pop chart history..."

I think I'm in love. Here's a link to The First Great Song of 2006.

So tonight I went to ACT production of this play. A quarter of the audience walked out during intermission. I thought it was one of the most macabre, visceral, hysterical pieces of theatre I've ever seen. It was... well, how I describe it? Think Cronenberg meets Kafka meets Maurice Sendak if they were interpreting Cain and Abel set in a totalitarian prison. Throw in some car battery torture, implied dismemberment and a glowing green girl (no, I'm not joking) and you get appoximately a tenth of what this play is supposed to be. In other words, it reminded me of why I try writing theatre in the first place. Anyway, I don't think I can write anymore about it without absent-mindedly giving certain things away. Sati found it claustrophobic and mentally distressing to which I replied, "Well, yeah. But what about the GLOWING GREEN GIRL?" I've determined to drag someone else to see it with me again before its April 16th closing. The big question is, who will be my next victim? Come on, you know you want to.