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 |  I blog therefore I (r)am(ble). |
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Poems, Prose, and Promises. My name is
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Given to me by susanL  --- Created by kelly1202I write songs
I write poetry
I write short stories
I'm in love with susanL
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
Things aren't quite hunky dory yet, but we're receiving more and more signs that the recession has either hit or is about to hit bottom. Factory orders rose in February for the first time in six months. 1 With the amount of jobs that our economy has hemorrhaged recently, this is a very welcome sign that our manufacturing sector has or is about to turn around. A key manufacturing index, the PMI 2 has risen for the third straight month. 3 The fact that it's growing is good news, but it's current level, 36.3, still indicates contraction taking place in the sector. But the contraction is slowing from the 28-year low of 32.9 set in December, 2008. Pending home sales on the increase. 4 Existing home sales is finally on the way up. It's only 2.1% increase, but it is a sign that the housing market is beginning to stabilize. Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the NAR5 said, "...with the positive housing stimulus incentives now in place, we expect home sales to gain momentum in the second half of the year with first-time buyers absorbing a lot of the excess inventory." GMAC has resumed loans to sub-prime borrowers. 6 The credit noose is loosening. It's not loosening a lot and it's being loosened by a company who's financial situation is admittedly precarious, but it's a sign that the financial sector is abandoning its death-grip on fear. The stock market is on the rebound, passing 8000 for the first time since February and signaling that its demoralizing nosedive has perhaps ended. 7 The rally has been going on for three weeks now, making March the first positive month since before last fall's presidential elections. The USA and many other nations are still fighting with recession but unlike six months ago, the future is looking much greener.  Footnotes |
| Script Frenzy 2009 FADE IN: INT. BEDROOM -- NIGHT A husband and wife, ROBERT BRANSON and STELLA BRANSON, lay on their sides in bed, facing each other. Both are smiling and making googly eyes at the other while they wiggle around romantically under the covers -- not having sex, just being amorous. ROBERT BRANSON I can't believe how lucky I am. STELLA BRANSON I can't believe how lucky I am. ROBERT BRANSON You are the best friend, partner, and lover a man STELLA BRANSON Well you're the best friend, partner and lover a ROBERT BRANSON But you're even better than that. You're the best friend, STELLA BRANSON (now with a forced smile) But honey, lover bunny, YOU'RE the best friend, partner ROBERT BRANSON (pulling back from hugging Stella) Thank you for saying that, snuggle muffins, but I have to STELLA BRANSON (sitting up in bed) You're wrong! It's you! You are such a better friend, ROBERT BRANSON (turning away from her) So now you're going to decide what kind of conversations Robert and Stella both sit up on the two edges of the bed and face away from each other, arms crossed. STELLA BRANSON (broken up, on the verge of tears) You're the nicest, most sweetest man I've ever known. ROBERT BRANSON (seething, through clenched teeth) You're the nicest, most sweetest woman ANYONE'S ever STELLA BRANSON (starting to cry) NO! You're the nicest and sweetest and kindest. ROBERT BRANSON (screaming) NO! IT'S YOU! YOU'RE THE NICEST SWEETEST STELLA BRANSON (her head bowed into her hands, she starts out talking and transitions to screaming) This is too much. I can't take it anymore. Robert, the anger gone from his face, turns to look at Stella who still has her back to him. ROBERT BRANSON What's wrong honey? STELLA BRANSON THIS! This is what's wrong! We're always competing ROBERT BRANSON (bows his head in shame) Yeah. I know. You're right. Robert moves to Stella, puts his arms around her, and hugs her powerfully. ROBERT BRANSON (cont) I'm sorry, Chumpy Wumpy Bubber. I didn't mean to STELLA BRANSON (relaxes into Robert's hug) That's OK, Bubby Wubber Chumpins. I know that. Robert and Stella hug each other silently for a few moments and then turn to face each other, holding hands. STELLA BRANSON (cont) You know what? ROBERT BRANSON What? STELLA BRANSON Your apology. ROBERT BRANSON What about my apology? STELLA BRANSON You are the sweetest man EVER! ROBERT BRANSON Well you're the sweetest WOMAN ever. Both of them rapidly separate, move to the edge of the bed and face away from each other. STELLA BRANSON I want a divorce! ROBERT BRANSON Oh yeah, well I want one more. FADE OUT: |
| Our poetry group, Southeastern Minnesota Poets, meets the first Wednesday of the month -- tomorrow. Our assignment for the upcoming meeting is to create a poem based on a fool. So a day early -- both for the meeting and April Fool's Day -- here is my poem. The Fool "I'm smarter than you," says the fool. "I won't need your help." "I already know it." "I've done this before." "I don't need you to show it." "And besides," says the fool, "I'm smarter than you," Gestures of kindness -- "I don't need that, no thank you." Offers of friendship -- "Get away from me, will you?" "I'm smarter than you," says the fool. Only the kind are afraid of nobody. Only the lazy confuse spotless with muddy. Only the wise realize that they're not. and only a fool feels free when he's caught. "I'm smarter than you," says the fool. "I don't need your help." "I already know it." "I haven't done this before," "but I don't need YOU to show it." "I'm smarter than you," says the fool -- to himself. |
| Last night, while driving home from picking up Susan from work, we were pulled over by the police. We had just turned onto the main street of our housing development when the blond-haired, medium build policeman, driving a white with black stripes Ford Five-Hundred police cruiser in the opposite direction, flashed his lights and followed me onto the street. Even though our driveway was only about fifty feet away, I pulled over to the side of the road -- it was night and I didn't want to spook the police officer. I grumbled something to Susan about being upset over the inconvenience, disconnected my seat belt so I could reach my wallet, and extracted it from my back pocket. Then we waited. It took him a couple minutes to approach the car. I was getting more and more annoyed as time went on because we both had to work fairly early the next day and neither of us were quite back to 100% health-wise. By the time the young officer made his way to our car, I had the window down and was holding my license out to him as an offering of peace. I was still a little miffed at having my time monopolized by the MAN when all I wanted to do was collapse into bed, stash my brain into a boiling pot of Friends Season 9, and disappear, inside of Susan's loving arms, into a pit of video game nightmares and sitcom dreams. But the officer had other ideas. "Where you coming from this evening?" he asked me, taking the proffered license. Sure, he was polite about it, but what did it matter where I had come from? I was sober, awake enough to drive, inside a legally registered, fully insured vehicle on the street in front of my own home. I hadn't done anything wrong and I strongly felt that I deserved to have a bit of attitude. "Just picking her up from work," I said acquiescing and gesturing with my head toward Susan, who was sitting, as calm as she always is, in the seat next to me. Yeah, I wimped out. I wanted to smart off, I really did, but I wanted to get back home and into bed more. He asked for my insurance. I fished it out and handed it to him. After verifying that I was covered he asked if I knew why he had pulled me over. I did. Earlier that evening, my passenger side headlight had burned out -- it worked on high-beam but not on low. He'd noticed when I switched from highs to lows so as not to blind him when I passed him on the road. Apparently, switching from high-beams to low-beams made him wonder whether I was inebriated or not. And the burned out bulb gave him permission to pull me over and check. Unfortunately -- for him that is -- I was sane, sober, and alert, or some combination thereof, and he had to settle with giving me a warning. He went back to his car to run my name through the computer and seemed a little disappointed that he hadn't run across a cornered fugitive with a mile-long rap sheet. I almost felt bad for him -- for a nano-second. Then I grabbed back my license, reconnected my seat belt -- just in case -- and drove the tiny distance to our driveway. Man! That was the longest fifty feet I've ever driven. |
| Things To Do With My Writing Finish it: I need to complete a project before I can redo it. Once it's done and redone, I can show it to my writing group and trusted friends. Then I can send it in to newspapers and magazines or an online writing contest. Maybe I'll win two copies of an anthology and a credit in the back of the book. And another line on my resume. Maybe I'll win $500.00 and a certificate. I'm sure it would look nice on the wall -- the certificate, not the money. But they can't create the certificate -- addressed to me anyway -- unless I finish the project and send it in. Keep a writing schedule: I need to develop a regular schedule for my writing. I need to make a list of each and every step and work hard to complete them -- even when I don't feel like it. Find an agent: I need to find an agent who knows the industry and likes my work. I already know many who do one but not the other. Know my place: I need to give my writing the room to become whatever it's meant to be. I may be the purveyor of the words, but I'm not the one who gives words their meaning. Too Much Obedience I take things too literally. "Walk around THE block," she said. So I walked around THE block -- THIS block. Others walked around that block or some other block or cut through the alley or walked for a ways and then came back. But I, dutifully, as I was instructed, walked around THIS block. How many other blocks have I missed by following instructions too closely? How many wondrous sights, hidden in an alley way or obscured on the other side of the street, have I missed by doing exactly what I was told? Obedience can be a blessing. It's certainly necessary in some instances. Like when taking medications or changing the batteries in my digital camera, but too much obedience is not the way to best experience life. The Writing Prompt Was Late I didn't like the prompt. I don't think it liked me either. Staring at me, laughing really, it mocked my inability to be inspired. But I was inspired. Doubly so! Just not by it. I was inspired by the class, by my fellow students, by the poems we read, and by the poems waiting to be written. In a way, I was even inspired by the prompt. But don't let it find out. |
| I only need three more days of blogging to make this a blue month -- only my second one ever. I'm excited because while things were a bit slower for us with Sarah finished with Dance Competition for the school year, we did end up having a rather busy month. So far, we've made all of our writers meetings, the two showings of the play and their rehearsals, the awards ceremony, and if that wasn't enough, everyone in the house, Susan, Rachael, Sarah, and I all found the time to be sick at least once. It's kind of funny. When I made the decision to shoot for an all-blue month, I had just a few ideas of what I would blog about -- certainly not the thirty-one I would ultimately need. But every day, when it was time for me to write that day's blog, something would present itself. It was almost magical. And a lot of my ideas came from being a regular commenter in so many other blogs. According to my favorites list, I'm following thirty-seven of them! So what's the secret to having an all blue month? I think it's deciding that no matter what happens, you're going to blog every day. It's like with quitting smoking. Many people decide to quit and most smokers end up trying to quit many times, but until the smoker makes the decision once and for all that no matter what happens, good or bad, happy or stressful, that they are simply NEVER going to smoke again, the quit attempt doesn't usually stick. At least that's the way it was for me. And I think it's the same way with blogging every day. There's three days left and I could still mess up and not see the all-blue month, but even if that was to happen. Even if I was to miss Sunday, Monday, and/or Tuesday, I still would have blogged for four straight weeks. Plus, with the momentum I received from making it this far, I truly feel the odds of making my blue-month goal are pretty good. Now here's a challenge. Is anyone out there willing to shoot for a solid blue April? There's a lot going on in the month. They'll, without a doubt, be a lot to write about. And to make the idea a little more attractive, I'll give a blogging merit badge to anyone who posts a comment to this blog entry and makes April an all-blue month. Any takers? |
| Yesterday, Complex Magazine8 posted an un-Photoshopped picture of Reality TV megastar Kim Kardashian and then replaced it with a touched up version a few hours later. The little picture switch has caused some controversy since the original, raw photo showed more than just a bit of cellulite. Should the fashion industry Photoshop out defects from their photo shoots? Ms. Kardashian has responded to the drama well enough, going as far as posting the non-flattering picture alongside the retouched one in her blog9. In the blog entry, she writes, "So what: I have a little cellulite. What curvy girl doesn't!?" And a little further down in her blog, she states, "I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect." It sounds like she has a healthy view of herself. So why is this such a big deal? If Ms. Kardashian is fine with her body and if she's correct that it's helpful for other women to see that just because she's a cover-girl, she's not perfect, then why did her photo need to be retouched in the first place? Wouldn't they be promoting a healthier self-image for woman if they routinely showed that the perfect body is as elusive as OJ Simpson's credibility or Michael Jackson's comeback tour? Jocularity aside, I think our society needs to rethink the value of promoting images that are neither reasonable nor sustainable. Young people need to learn that having a perfect body is way down on the totem poll -- if even on it at all -- from the more important goals of growing emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. There's nothing wrong with looking good and there's nothing wrong with taking care of your health and body. But what's on the outside is absolutely no indication of what's on the inside and focusing on what's pretty to the eyes over what's pleasing to the heart will not lead to happiness. And isn't happiness what we all want? So should the fashion industry Photoshop out defects from their photo shoots? I say NO! Footnotes |
| A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the awards ceremony for a local short story contest 10. In that entry, I mentioned briefly about going to Perkins afterward. Well let me tell you, the after party was just as much fun as the main event. We laughed, joked, and ate copious amounts of BLTs and side salads and in between mouthfuls, we even managed to share a story or two. At the end of the evening, as everyone prepared to hit the road on that blustery winter night, Betty Benner, the second place winner from the contest, read us a poem that she had created on a white, paper napkin while we were visiting. It was funny and playful and most of all, captured the spirit of our wonderful assemblage of friends. All in attendance loved it. Last Wednesday we had our monthly writer's open mic meeting in Plainview, Minnesota11 and for her part, Betty read us the final version of her awards ceremony poem. With her permission, I present it to you here: Stopping by Rochester Perkins’ on a Windy March Night by Betty Benner “Nothing’s perfect. Like for instance life.” At the end of the table Tom waves both arms for emphasis. “Juggling kitty cats,” he says-- “denying the impulse to step on tiny yapping puppy dogs.” Brenda looks down at mayo in her hair. Tom and Susan share bacon lettuce tomato. Side salad with ranch and French for Krista. Kit chooses cheeseburger with fries. Dee eats it before we can name it. Betty warms up with soup. Faith lingers over chicken and fruit. Customers one through eight. Waitress rolls her eyes at the phone call to Travis, manager of Austin’s Perkins. We tease him, say we are cheating on him. Nothing’s perfect. But here, this night this company writers succumb. These prizes this laughter this….this We could search the Sufis for a quote. She lifts her pen, writes diagonally across the softness, admires how the ink spreads on the soft white paper napkin. How the point pokes holes in the flimsy fabric. She reads what she has written by the light of the dash on the windy way home. © 2009 by Betty Benner Footnotes |
| Grrrrr!!! I'm angry -- I'm angry with morning. The morning is an affront on all things noonish and beyond. Someone should sue the morning and force it, by law or by might, to retreat to a more reasonable hour. Noon should be the new six. Noon would do a fine job as the new early morning. It would be plenty awake and with the warm sun riding proudly in the sky, it would have plenty of light to carry out its affairs. And six, what would become of six? Six should exchange its August place on the alarm clock circuit for a mid-slumber wake-up call to pee. Yes! Noon should be the new morning and six should be a mere bathroom call. |
| The leader of one of our local writing groups, computer programmer and local author-celebrity, Helen Chen12, sent out a link to a comical and eerily true worksheet13 that can be purportedly used to create the kind of maximalist sentences that the late author David Foster Wallace14 was famous for -- especially in his nearly eleven hundred page masterpiece, Infinite Jest15 -- and with a little bit of dedicated time and energy, can turn any wannabe writer with a little bit of sincerity and concentration into a run-on sentence wielding, literary genius just like the master, the afore-mentioned David Foster Wallace, who in his hey-day whether acting the peripatetic reporter or the desk-bound novelist, could, with little more than a dollop of ingenuity and an extra serving of perspicacity, pump out interesting, and flowing lines of inveterate and persistent prose. To make a long story short --  -- I decided to put the above-mentioned worksheet to the test. Just like the example listed on the website, I started out with a collection of three declarative sentences:This is hilarious. I wish DFW was around to read it. I'm sure he'd have gotten a chuckle from it. Following closely the steps of the worksheet, this is what my three sentences became: This was hilarious and I seriously wish that the late and comical David Foster Wallace was still among the living to read it as, without a single question in my sometimes overtaxed cranium, I'm sure he'd have gotten a hefty chuckle or even a total belly laugh from it, bookmarked the auspicious web-site from which it came, and probably dashed off a sesquipedalian email or perhaps an artfully contrived snail mail to the article's celebrated author -- or possibly, he would have simply made a subconscious notation of the jocosity and jocularity of the cleverly conceived discourse and merely reminisced about it during moments of apathy, lethargy, or tediousness. Footnotes |
| Every second has a fingerprint. Every tiny tick of time owns a piece of the legacy of the universe and can positively identify where it fits into the never-ending stream of years. Here on Earth, this relatively small, mostly spherical satellite of the yellow dwarf star in the center of our galaxy, the sun, we only need a handful of events to pinpoint where a particular moment fits into the sea of eternity. Take a look at CNN's Most Popular Headlines list to see what I'm talking about. Here's what the most popular headlines at CNN looked like at 1:21pm on 3/23/2009: 1 Armstrong in hospital after crash 2 Bruce Willis remarries 3 Sylvia Plath's son kills himself 4 Alaska volcano erupts 5 Excerpt: Parents, your kids aren't... 6 'World's cheapest car' ready July 7 FAA: 14 killed in plane crash 8 Cop car designed by cops 9 Dalai Lama denied S. Africa visa 10 Newspapers in death spiral? We only need to get to the third item to know exactly what date this list refers to. I think there's a game in here some place. Do we all remember Name That Tune -- I can name that song in seven notes...? Well, now we have a new game. Instead of trying to recreate a popular ditty from just a few plunks on the piano, why not try to create an entire day just from a few carefully worded events? Can you picture it? Are you still with me? Can you tell me how many news stories it will take for you to Name That Day? |
| susanL and I had a wonderful afternoon. Up until she had to be to work that is. My cousins Dean and Randy, both brothers, are in town and we met them for coffee at Panera. Dean and Randy are the only boys of my aunt Helen, who happens to be my Godmother, and my uncle Duane. They also have a sister, Sandra, who couldn't be with us for coffee, but who I got to see later on at Helen and Duane's place. You'd think that having grown up in the same place and around the same time -- Randy is two years older than me and Dean is eight years younger -- that I would know quite a bit about my cousins, but unfortunately, due in no small part to the lost years when I was associated with the cult, we just hadn't kept in touch. The last time I'd seen them was back in 2007 at Helen's 75th birthday celebration. And with all the focus on my aunt and her special day, we really didn't get a chance to talk a lot. So this afternoon, we had a lot of catching up to do. And boy did we. I learned about Dean's moving out to California in '93 to go to school at USC. I learned the story of how he and his wife, an orphan from Panama, ended up together, and I learned the reason he ended up in architecture when like any young college student, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Randy is more of a listener than a talker, but during our brief encounter today, I did learn that he is an avid reader, enjoys novels with a dark or rebellious theme, and has been working at a paper company for most of his adult life. It seems like those are the kinds of details I would have learned about earlier. I'm almost 43 and we were raised within a few miles of each other, but due to a lot of reasons, I had not taken the time or made the efforts to keep abreast of my cousins' lives. I feel kind of bad about that now, but I'm glad that we have started to make up for that lost time and that I'm reconnecting with more and more of my lost family. Later on, after susanL had to go to work, I went to visit Helen and Duane at their home. Sandra, Randy, and Dean, as well as my mom, were all there and we had another great conversation. It's too bad that I didn't see the value of keeping up to date with my second cousins earlier, but luckily, I'm being given a chance to make up for that now. |
I know that some of you are fans of limericks. I am too. In fact, a few years ago, I created a limericks only forum. Why don't you stop on by and leave off a limerick greeting?
There once was a website for writing, With mods to prevent needless fighting. In such a safe zone, The poets were known For sharing instead of back-biting.  There once was an internet site Where poets and authors could write. Called writing dot com, It's friendly as mom -- A place to amaze and delight. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** It's almost April. Many of you, especially those who participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 16 every November, may know what's so significant about the month. Sure, there's Easter, Spring Break, and the start of Major League Baseball, but for writers, April means the other big league, writing screenplays. Script Frenzy 17, NaNoWriMo's little sister, invites everyone with an idea and some free time to churn out 100 pages of screenplay or stage-play goodness in a month. And it doesn't matter how you divide the 100 pages up. You can work on a feature length movie or play, put that sit com idea that's been buzzing around in your head since Thanksgiving on paper, or pen a collection of interconnected, or even unconnected skits. The bottom line is to let your creativity flow and create 100 pages of script. If you don't know how to format screenplays and stage-plays, don't worry about it. The organizers of Script Frenzy have your back. On their website, they've posted instructions for many aspects of scripting 18, including how to format both the screenplay 19 and the stage-play 20. And to make the deal even sweeter, one of the best scriptwriting software packages on the planet today, CeltX 21, was created by scripters and is distributed for free. So come on! What are you waiting for? Snug up your running shoes, sprint on over to the official Script Frenzy site, and sign up. You'll be glad you did. Footnotes |
In his blog for Wednesday, alfred booth, wanbli ska posted a Cleaved Haiku and encouraged his commenters to join along ("Invalid Entry"  ). A number of posters, your's truly included, created our own poems using his prompt as a starting point.Here is the Cleaved Haiku that I came up with: sea spots run along the dark empty beach... where jetsam and flotsum merge beside the windswept coastline to form man's limit as turquoise waves crash |
| The day had "LONG" scribbled across it in a large, block font. The thin, stylistic engravings of the letters whispered late Renaissance, but the firm, stocky even brazen serifs screamed early Victorian. At any rate, their existence alluded to an arduous if not onerous day. |
| We're living through tough economic times and this has lead a number of people to worry that we might be heading toward a "worst case scenario." We've seen the housing bubble burst and take with it the precariously balanced financial sector. So, are we headed for a depression? I don't think so. Here's why. We've been hearing news reports about how unemployment is at its highest rate in twenty-five years and how the housing market is worse than it's been since the early '80s. But let's think about that. If conditions are at the level they were in the early '80s, they aren't THAT bad. We were going through a recession, that's true, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the early '30s. The energy crisis of the early '70s was worse than what we went through in 1981 and what we're going through today. So basically, we're not even close to the kind of economic downturn that lead us into the Great Depression. But just because things aren't as bad as they were in the '30s doesn't mean we're not heading in that direction -- right? Well, let's see if there are any economic indicators that suggest that the recession might be finding its bottom. New housing starts surged 22% in February. That figure hasn't risen for eight months. http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/17/real_estate/housing_starts/index.htm?postversion... The Producer Price Index -- the measure of what domestic producers receive for their goods -- not counting the volatile food and energy sectors, rose .1% in February, up from .08% in January and higher than expected. http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/17/news/economy/producer_prices.reut/index.htm?post... Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase all reported profitability for January and February. Three institutions whose fear of failure brought on a large portion of the doom on Wall Street are already operating in the black. http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/13/markets/thebuzz/index.htm General Motors "discovered" that they have more cash on hand than they originally estimated and thus do not need the additional bailout funds they called for a couple of weeks ago. The restructuring they started to implement as a requisite for receiving their initial infusion of funds is starting to pay off. They are already on their way to profitability. http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/12/news/companies/gm_cash/index.htm Sure there are still signs that our economy is in the throes of recession. There are signs that we may not have hit bottom yet. We're still receiving news of further layoffs and of companies floundering and failing. But unlike two or three months ago, we're receiving positive economic news as well. We may still have some suffering ahead, but at least the recovery is in sight. |
| In short, the show went fabulous. All the actors were in character throughout the entire evening, even during the dinner portion, and the audience responded very, very well. The show started the second they walked in the door. Two greeters gave each guest a secret pass-phrase and showed them a secret handshake. They then walked down a hallway to two more greeters who were waiting to let them in. We weren't sticklers about knowing either the pass-phrase of the handshake, but it did give us some time to tease the guests and thus set the tone for the evening. From 6:30 until 7:00, or so, we all circulated among the guests, joking with them, in character, and offering water and coffee. Since my character is a drunk, I especially had fun when it came to pouring their choice of beverage. "I'm sorry, but I'm gonna hafta wait until your cup stops spinning before I can pour your coffee." All of the guests played along wonderfully and made the show such an enjoyable experience. Tomorrow is the final night. Saturday we had 58 guests and we're expected to have as many as 20 more than that tomorrow. Even though the other show went so well, I'm still a tad nervous -- mostly because this time, we both have to work all day and I'm worried that we might not have the energy level we had Saturday. Oh well, one way or another, in a mere 25 hours from right now, our 2009 St. Patrick's Day show will be history. |
| Susan and I like making up words to describe things. Sure, we have a lot of adjectives already, but there's always room for more. For instance, if something is big and ugly, it's bugly. If something is rough and yellow, it's rellow. Well, early this morning, Susan came up with a word for me. From here on out, I'm referred to by her as cevil (pronounced KEY-ville). It's a cross between cute and evil. Now mind you, I'm not the really bad evil that runs over dogs, beats up old ladies, or fails to put down the toilet seat cover. I'm the other kind of evil. The one that just can't seem to stop tickling the love of his life. Yep, Susan is intensely ticklish and even though I'm a generally decent person, I just can't get enough of tickling her. So, from here on out, I'm cevil. |
| My blog title reminds me of the Rod Stewart song... Tonight's the night. It's gonna be alright. Cause I love you girl, Ain't nobody gonna stop us now. Tonight Susan and I will be taking part in our first play together. It's a rather small one. I only have five lines and Susan doesn't have any, but we do each have a vital part. Susan will be a "serving wench," actually helping to serve the dinner to the forty or so guests in attendance and I will be the town drunk. I talked to Debi Neville, the organizer of this event, if we can film it and I have her approval. We're not going to be filming this evening, though, as she thinks we'll be more comfortable and give a better performance on our second night. We're going to be filming with my panasonic camcorder. It's a bit old, but it should be sufficient for this show. As soon as we get it streamed to YouTube, I'll post the link here. The final dress rehearsal went well this afternoon. This is the first play for a couple of us and so there were some butterflies about, but all in all, we have a wonderful crew and I'm looking forward to a good show tonight. The food that they're serving this evening is corned beef and cabbage, fresh loaves of bread, cheese blocks, and some kind of potato dish that I know they told me but for the life of me, I can't seem to remember now. Since it's a dinner theater and the premise of the show is a secret potato party during the Irish famine of the 1840's, we bar patrons are going to have our own table and get to share in the food. The serving wenches too. I don't know how much of it I'll be eating, though, as I can't stand cabbage and I'm thinking I might be too wired to eat while the show's going on. At the very end of the play, after we thank the guests for coming, all of the cast is going to sing the first verse of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Susan and I have been trying to get down the exact words all day and for some reason, we keep getting stuck on the final line. Hopefully we won't tonight. When Irish eyes are smiling, sure, tis like a morn in spring. In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing. When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay. And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure they steal your heart away. As I write this, we go live in an hour and a half. We've gone over the script, the Irish birthday blessing we'll be giving to one of the guests, and the song we'll be singing at the end. We're as ready as we're ever going to be. So, I hope that your thoughts will be with us as we break a leg or knock 'em dead or whatever we're supposed to do. And that brings me back to Rod Stewart's song, Tonight's the night... Kick off your shoes and sit right down. Loosen off that pretty French gown. Let me pour you a good long drink. Ooh baby don't you hesitate cause, Tonight's the night. It's gonna be alright. Cause I love you girl, Ain't nobody gonna stop us now Yep, tonight's the night. Ain't nobody gonna stop us now! |
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