"The baseless fabric of this vision..."

Okay, so my projected schedule was a little off. I'm commencing with the wigging-out now.

It's been one of those tech weeks. I'm still missing costumes and pieces of costumes. We have tonight off, and one rehearsal left, and my poor actors are crawling towards the end of their patience. Me too.

Oh, please, please, you gods of artifice, don't let my play look like ass.

I was good, though. I didn't lose my shit, I didn't come home and get drunk and listen to the Smiths, I didn't take it out on random pedestrians. I understand that this sort of thing happens, and that it's better for it to happen now than, say, tomorrow. So I retain at least a workable grasp on my sanity.

On the other hand, as my Faithful Assistant Peter pointed out, this is probably why Orson Welles was all fucked up.

Sigh. In a couple of days the question will be moot, and I'll be surrounded by my adoring and lovely friends, and I can set this puppy free to be whatever gem or disaster it's destined to become. At which point cue the drinking, either celebratory or obliterating, and seeing the new year in with a proper pagan hurrah, not to mention at some point sneaking in hammering out about 3000 or so words of The Vasty Deep. "And all shall be well, or not."

Elephant head.

Elephant head.

I worship a god with an elephant head.

I think I feel better already.

"Gotta go with 'Fuck it,' Bob"

Patrick, apparently furthering some dark Romany plot to get me to spit Seattle's Best coffee all over GWU's fine computers, sent me this this morning. Proceed with caution.

Two delightful items arrived in the mail on Saturday. One was my copy of Sandman: Endless Nights come home safe from NYC, which is as lovely as promised. I read the first three stories last night during a thunderstorm. That was pretty cool.

The other was Current 93's Emblems: The Menstrual Years, which I'd decided a couple of months ago that my collection was incomplete without, right about the same time it became unfrickin'available everywhere. (Strangefortune say they have it, but they lie.) I finally managed to track down a used copy, for a bit more than I'd hoped to pay for it, and it is now mine. It's lovely as well. I've been listening to it at work this morning, thinking how having a version of "They Return To Their Earth" that doesn't have a weird skip in the middle from whoever posted it on Audiogalaxy is worth the wait.

After rehearsal Saturday (a wet tech that went about a hundred times smoother than I had any hope it would), I was off to the Jim's Big Ego CD-release show and picked up They're Everywhere!, the brand-new album, and you should too. It's got great stuff on it, lots of which we Egomaniacs have been waiting to have on an actual CD for the last three years or so. Plus the cover art was done by Jim's Uncle Carmine (as I told Jim, I wish I had an Uncle Carmine - I feel inadequately Italian, somehow) in the style he used to do when the Infantino name meant comics.

The Tempest opens in four frickin' days. That's unreal. I alternate between perfect Zen calm and moments of panicked wigging-out on this. It hasn't even quite sunk in yet. I'll be fun on Thursday night, I bet.

Nine days to go; Inner critic goes apeshit

Been following, and occasionally throwing my two-bits'-worth into the void of, an interesting discussion on Making Light about fantasy genre cliches. It seems to be turning into the sort of thing I should tune out so close to November 1 (much like "The Well-Tempered Plot Device," which is one of the most snobbishly nasty things ever written on genre fiction - so much so that I won't link it here, so Google it your damn self if you're curious), but I'm a masochist, so what the fuck.

Sick since Monday night. Good old stress and change in weather. I have so far managed to avoid throwing hellish tantrums at my actors for not knowing their lines (and truth be told, the improvement between Tuesday and Wednesday rehearsals was both vast and encouraging), so that's alright. But I have been loopy and out of it. More so than usual, perhaps. As an upside, giving notes like "Prospero, hang onto your staff while you're being disrobed" is even funnier than it normally is.

Thankfully, I did get my half-day off on the 31st to attend to all the out-of-town peeps drifting in for Opening Night. So if you're one of those folk, I'll have from noon-thirty or so on to coordinate hooking up. Huzzah!

Oh, and the latest Last Dark Art is now up.

They have reached
The blue gates of death
They are at
The blue gates of death
They shall go through
The blue gates of death

Don't mind me. I'm not even here.

Wherein Shakespeare and I Immanentize the muthafuckin Eschaton

So it's not enough that during production of The Tempest the area has been plagued by Hurricane Isabel and at least two other nights of insane storms; I just ticked off the list in my head and realized that opening night will bring together in my fair city:
my mom and Swampi
Patrick and Bernice
Spyder
and Jeff McCrady and his assorted minions
...on Hallofuckingween.

I tell you, the resulting psychic shockwave of this convergence is bound to have repercussions. If sunken R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific and Great Cthulhu wakes from his slumber to stride across the waves and start eating Los Angeles, I will not be in the least surprised.

And in the case of L.A., not all that sad.

Stacy and I were alloting bedspace tonight for that weekend. I said, "Well, Spyder won't be a problem. We can put her on a shelf, or pull out the sweater drawer."

I am so goin' to hell.

A long awaited update to Full Fathom Five has just gone up.

Exhausted. Stressed. But happy. The Tempest and NaNoWriMo both start in two weeks. Fortunately, I'll be able to more or less let go of the one as I dive right into the other.

Aieee!

Living in a transdimensional phone box... Like ya do...

Courtesy of Patrick, check this out.

Running jumping fighting Daleks.

It seems to me that the only reason not to do this would be for fear of geeks spontaneously combusting with joy. So I'll be eagerly awaiting more news.

Maybe Spyder can ask him herself when she sees him tomorrow night, the lucky wee beeotch.

"Don'tcha see, John? It's you what makes 'em bad"

Frank Beaton in Las Vegas City Life tells it like it is about comics, Hollywood, and Constantine. Give 'em hell, Frank!

The Watchmen movie's starting to sound pretty good, innit?

As you value your sanity, do not go here.

... Dammit, you went anyway, didn't you? After I told you. You get what you deserve.

It's October 1. And, like a moron, I've signed up again.

Anyone who donates me a functioning laptop by November 1 gets written into the novel.