I Am Jacks Wasted Life

Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
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That’s right, we don’t care about nothing!

No, no. That’s not really true. And I love fluffy kitties….

Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been busy, busy, busy, and I’ve been emotionally drained as well. So, I haven’t written. And the longer it takes me to get an entry entered, the harder it is for me to start.

So if you are still here, buckle your seat belts, ’cause here we go!!

As you may recall, I’ve been a busy actor of late. We started rehearsing Zoo Story right after Night of January Sixteenth opened. Both Raven & I have had health and stress issues that have taken some time and effort to clear up.

I’m really proud of my work on Zoo Story. It’s my favorite play, and I’ve done it once before, but I still feel like I was discovering new intricacies with each performance. When ZS closed, my attention turned full-time to the preparations for Raven’s 3rd Annual Golden
Birthday Party and the return of the Fire Inspector who apparently has too much free time on his hands. It was also around this time that my co-worker who’s position I am assuming actually left the company.

This also coincided with Raven and I having what I can only describe as our most difficult time during the 6+ years we have been together. We had a couple of real long nights, and I had a couple of really bad days. I think it’s fair to say that we have persevered and are even stronger now than we were. It hasn’t been a fun few weeks, but it’s worth the effort.

In other news, It looks like I will probably only have a day job through 12.31.06. Our parent company was acquired, and our product is no longer being sold. So we are providing support through the end of next year. At that point, I may try and find another position witihin the parent company, or it may just finally be time to pull up stakes and try out a new locale.

Speaking of, we had our Movioke Idol trip to Los Angeles last week which was a great deal of fun. It was unfortunately, painfully brief, but we were able to visit Travis, hit up the Bondage Ball, and see U2! Ironically, the part that almost didn’t happen due to scheduling conflicts, the hanging w/The Trav-man, may have had a longer lasting effect than anticipated.

See, Chicago has been the next step in our plans for a long time. Now, we’re starting to seriously consider Los Angeles. After all, if we’re going to try and be movie stars, we should go while we’re young (or young-ish) and we know we’ll love Chicago, maybe even want to settle down there for child-rearing and such. Therefore, maybe we should give the west coast a try?

We were having trouble deciding between “I’m 37!?!?” from Clerks and “Prologue” (Pumpkin & Honey Bunny) from Pulp Fiction. The voting was pretty even amongst those polled, but we finally decided on Clerks.

The scene from Clerks is a little consistently funnier and much dirtier (Blowjob discussions are always crowd pleasers!) and we also thought it was a little tougher in terms of its rapidity, and would score us points for difficulty.

Once we decided that, I made an Audio CD of the dialogue in that scene. Raven & I listened to it on repeat all the way to the theatre, we both listened to it while we were waiting to go backstage, and we listened to it on the way from the theatre to the The Local.

At this point I should probably mention that it was requested that contestants arrive at 8:30 to check in. I seem to have managed to get the worst traffic karma in the world of late. What is normally a 3 minute stretch of 35E took at least 25 minutes and apparently there was no reason other than two State Troopers with their lights flashing sitting on the side of the road and chatting. Oh sure, there probably was an accident there or something, but seriously, get off the damn road if you’re just going to sit and talk about how much the Vikings suck! (Sorry Kaiser.)

So, we arrived a little after 8:30 but still well before the 9:02 registration deadline. They had us draw a number for when we’d perform and I drew 21. There were 30 teams that had qualified. (Actually 29, I’m pretty sure due to a clerical oversight one team qualified on two separate weeks.) Surprisingly, only 13 teams were present however. This may have been due to the last minute change of date, but was surprising nonetheless. We were pleased that we didn’t have to start too early in the lineup. (This also allowed time for some of our friends with other obligations to arrive and still see us perform.)

There was also a surprise in the appointment of three “celebrity” judges, as opposed to the lone judge that was previously designated, the emcee. The judges were from Mpls St Paul Magazine, The Pioneer Press, and, of course, The Onion. This was a little nerve-racking since we didn’t know what their expectations would be. I mean, the emcee gets to hear all the vulgar and dirty scenes every night, would these judges be as appreciative?

I suppose I should mention at this point that we went all out for this one. We had costumes. We had props. We were prepared.

I wore my steel toe boots, khakis, a white T-shirt, and a black dress shirt unbuttoned. Raven wore acid-washed jeans, a poofy white blouse, and a blazer. She even managed a good imitation of the teased hair in a ponytail. I also grabbed my Pizza Hut baseball cap for the first few seconds of the scene when I play Willam.

For those of you who’ve never done Movieoke before, let me clue you in on something. Portions of film without dialogue seem perfectly natural when viewing a movie. However, when doing Movieoke, where there are no sounds other than the ones you produce with your microphone. Silences of as little as 10 seconds can seem like an eternity. There is a moment in our scene where no one talks for at least 8 seconds. Normally, we just ad-lib some thoughts of the characters, but since we were being judged on our accuracy, we thought that might not be best. Therefore, we brought in a tiny bag of Cheetos and put some coins on an appetizer plate to simulate the purchase of an item and making change.

The Event

First performer of the night does a scene from The Two Towers where Gollum is talking to himself. She does really well, but audience reaction is pretty low key. Phil & Abe do the Drill Sergeant scene from Full Metal Jacket, and the audience is really into it. There are a few other scenes done, but for whatever reason they don’t worry me. Generally it was poor audience reaction and a few people had some trouble syncing with the actors on the screen.

Finally, it’s our turn.

We get onstage, and as our scene starts I put on my cap and stare at the ceiling. People start laughing. This is good. We run through the scene. People actually cheer when we use the Cheetos and Coins for sound effects. We finish the scene. Every time a scene before us got a really big reaction from the crowd, my heart sunk a little bit. This is easily the best and loudest reaction to any scene that night. I expected that our little cheering section would be loud, and I figured we’d get a good reaction in general, but even our closest competitors were cheering. For a few seconds I am simply numb. I managed a bow and slunk off stage left to our little corner of the bar.

The last performer of the night is Zut. My stomach re-tightens a bit. Zut has done kick-ass renditions of Fight Club and The Usual Suspects before. The copy of Usual Suspects he had didn’t have subtitles, he did it from memory. He is good. Miraculously, he does a scene from The Wire, that no one knows, and subsequently, no one seems to get.

Fifteen Minute Break

They start to announce the winners. Phil & Abe get 3rd place, a $50 Gift Card to The Local. I think this is good, we had a better performance tonight.

Second Place goes to the girl who did Gollum, $100 Gift Card.

Aw crap, it’s all or nothin’ now. I certainly thought we did better, but what if for some reason they didn’t like us???

Phil & Abe and their table start pointing at us and clapping. I cross my fingers and give them an “I hope so…” look……

Then it’s announced. We got first place! Round-Trip Airfare, Hotel, and Concert Tickets to U2 in Los Angeles, CA.

Fuckin’ A

What Dogma character are you?
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The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.

– Lady Bird Johnson

People at my new job keep asking me if I get nervous before I go on stage. I think it’s interesting, because I am almost always completely calm backstage.

Sometimes, right before my lines or a big scene, I’ll get a little churn in the old tummy, but generally I’m cool. It’s the same thing with Movieoke. Karaoke however, is an entirely different story. It generally takes a lot of self-administered pep-talking to get me to get up and sing in front of people. And yes, it must and can only be self-administered. When people try to coax me into putting in a slip I always get self-conscious and slip back a confidence notch or two.

I dunno why that is. Part of it is obviously rehearsal. By the time you have an audience for a play you’ve (hopefully) had it down for a couple of weeks. That would explain my karaoke reticence, and yet, I’ll hop up and do a Movieoke scene I’ve never done before with little to no trepidation.

<shrug>

Speaking of Movieoke, the final day of Movieoke Idol is this Sunday. I’m trying to approach this the way I approach most things, which is my patented blend of positive cynicism. I’m certainly hoping that we win, but I also realize and acknowledge that there are many reasons why we may not.

Oh well. Please send us any spare positive vibes you may have laying around this Sunday night! I’ll post the recap of the event on Monday!

So, in the interest of getting the ball rolling, I offer up some brief summaries on what is going on in my life.

• My new job: Everything is going really well. Not only is it just enough out of my comfort zone to be a challenge, it’s also giving me an opportunity to learn more about a rare species.
• Theatre: Night of January Sixteenth is going well. Two weekends down, two to go. Rehearsals have already started for Zoo Story and I’m super-excited to be doing the show again. (Even though more sleep wouldn’t hurt me right about now….) If you are in the area and have any interest in seeing me perform I strongly urge you to come to this one. (Unless you’re easily offended. If so, you should wait for whatever the next play is. Maybe….)
• Ren Fest: Sadly, I have only made it out once for part of a day. I hadn’t realized when I took the role in NoJS that every Sunday show would be a matinee, which makes it nigh ridiculous to attempt to make it out to site. Couple that with starting my new job and rehearsing a new show and you may understand when the one day to sleep in has overshadowed my festing. (I’d also still have to leave early to make it back to White Bear Lake by 7PM.) I hope to make it out this Sat or next, and hopefully the whole enchilada of closing weekend.
• Movieoke: Movieoke Idol has been rescheduled for 9PM on Sunday September 18th. It will still be @ The Local in Downtown Minneapolis. Raven & I are ready to Movieoke our heats out to win this trip and audience reaction is included in the judging. So again with the pleading: If you think this sounds interesting at all or even like me a little bit please come out on Sept 18th!
• Politics: Haven’t had a lot of time for Politics lately. (See above) But a quick reminder for any St. Paul-ites out there to vote for Chris Coleman in the September 13th Primary, so we can send Republican Randy home.
• The Internets: I’ve been doing a boatload of administrative work on my various sites. Chaos Effect & jackswastedlife.org underwent software upgrades recently, and I setup a Beta installation of the new Callboard as well. I also recently realized just how many damn people I know use LiveJournal, so starting with this post, I will attempt to cross-post to my account there whenever new ramblings boil over onto the virtual page.

I guess that more or less sums up my life at the moment. Hope all is as well as it can be with you and yours in these nationally troubled times.

Remember: It’s always darkest just before they turn on the lights.