Tonight is our first performance in front of an actual audience, a two hundred-odd pack of facutly and students. No idea what my energy level will be like. Whatever it is, it is.

After dropping Maddy off at work, I went in search of an Odwalla or Naked or one of those smoothie juice things, specifically for one which claims to increase energy. I'd just parked in front of the Walgreen's at Castro and 18th when I realized that I hadn't brought my jacket along. Considering I'm supposed to be in Berkeley at half past five this evening, I went back home right then to pick it up. Only got to work a few minutes late, astonishingly enough. It's been a very stupid morning.

On the plus side, my Supervisor has increased my permissions for the company's publishing tool, and she wants me to become the main webmonkey. Lack-of-sleep hangovers and profession webmonkeying. My kinderbat days, all over again. I must get it right this time.

12:11pm

sure, you were lied to. we all were.

11:37pm

You'd think by now it would be obvious: learn the geography of a stage before performing on it. More to the point, how to leave it, where the hell the stairs are. Unfortunately, I had done no such thing before tonight's performance, which was in a different room than rehearsals. As a result, when I turned away from the eye of god after finishing my piece, I was blind. (Seems appropriate, I suppose.) I had not the first clue how to get off the stage and exit the room, which I was supposed to do as quickly as possible. I sort of wandered vaguely in what I believed to be the correct direction, very conscious of the fact that falling the three or four feet off the stage would be a very bad thing. Eventually I disembarked safely, just as Kara was beginning her piece.

It was an appropriate ending, really. I feel like I thudded, skidded, crashed. I remembered everything, told the story the way I wanted to tell it, but the audience reaction was not remotely what I expected. Sure, I've been doing this long enough to know they tend to react roughly opposite of expectations, but it was really disconcerting. It felt like they weren't enjoying it at all, that they weren't getting the emotions I was attempting to convey, that I was failing miserably. Dunno if that's the truth or not, but that's how it felt. Maybe it was because I followed Lynnee, and whoever does that is pretty much doomed, especially if they're also trying to be funny. (Lynnee, as I just implied, was fantastic. The audience loved him. More important to me is that he's having a great time and is happy to be involved. I was worried for a while there. I know he wouldn't hold it against me at all, but if he was having a miserable time I would feel responsible, since I got him involved in this to begin with.) I can't decide if it's good or bad that there were maybe a hundred people in the audience, tops. The next two shows are sold out, with a venue capacity of three hundred and fifty. The third show's venue holds six hundred and fifty, and about five hundred tickets have been sold so far. Maybe a full, paying audience would react differently? I don't know. They were pretty responsive to everyone else. I need to stop thinking about this.

As has been established before, nothing is perfect. I'm an independent contractor here. It came as a bit of a surprise, as I don't remember it being mentioned during the interview. Then again, maybe it was. I lose time. My memory is a sea of holes. Whole conversations evaporate days, hours, minutes after they happen. Both important stuff and irrelevant, but it's only the important stuff which tends to bite me in the ass.

It's okay, though. Being an employed independent contractor is worlds better than being an unemployed nothing-at-all, which is what I was before. Not seeing taxes withheld on my check stub is disconcerting, for sure. To compensate, I'm going to take thirty-five percent out of each check and putting it into savings, where it will remain until I pay my taxes next year. If I'm going to owe, then I'm damn well going to be ready for it. One of my brothers got royally screwed on taxes as a contractor because he didn't have enough saved away, and I'm not going to let that happen to me. (A lot of my motivation in life stems from a desire to not be like the men in my family.)

I'm supposed to have a meeting today with the Guy Who Hired Me to discuss my hours for the next week. He hasn't mentioned anything about it yet, probably because he knows I still have a lot on my plate. Meanwhile, My Immediate Supervisor is all kinds of pleased with my work, surely a good sign. She also says she'd like me to become an actual employee eventually. Her and I both.

Last night was the first Monologue dress rehearsal. I was mostly able to recite my piece without looking at the page. It's scary, but I actually take some solace in the fact that Lynnee's almost as nervous as I am.

I'm not sure exactly where the nervousness is coming from. We're both familiar with being on stage in front of an audience, doing spoken word, and even working from memory—you know, acting. I cast Lynnee in my Twilight Zone episode because he's so damn good at it. I guess the time crunch has a lot to do with it. For my part, I've never done such a long piece off-book before; even my Big Speech in Night of the Living Dead was much shorter, and I was able to use mnemonic tricks. Not to mention in character. This time, it's just going to be me on alone stage, revealing my darker thoughts into the eye of god, not to mention an audience who will probably be ready for it to be over by then.

Which is not a slam on the show itself, by any stretch of the imagination. From what I've seen, the cast is really amazing. It's weird being around them, though, a bunch of late teen and twenty-odd year-old genetic girls. It's hard not feel like what I am: a thirty-one year-old, non-genetic girl. In addition to not identifying as a girl, Lynnee is older still. As a result we've tended to be shy and keep to ourselves, but everyone's been really nice, and they seem genuinely glad to have us aboard, even at this late date. They've all been rehearsing since November, and we...haven't.

2:08pm

At lunch, a coworker and I walked the scant few blocks to Rainbow. She said she'd been in once before but found it overwhelming. I get that. It took a few years before I became comfortable with it, and for much of that time I was scared off by the parking. Now, of course, I've learned the secrets, and park near it every day.

Anyway, it was fun, and we had an interesting talk. Thankfully, I'd forgotten that I nicked myself when shaving this morning, so I didn't have to be self-conscious about it. I hope it's healed by Friday night, but even if it isn't, I'll be on stage and nobody will be able to tell. I hope.

She referred to me as "skinny," and was surprised when I said that I consider myself to be twenty pounds too heavy. That felt nice.

4:00pm

Dark Passage, beautiful photography of abandoned mental hospitals. In another era, one of these places would have been my home. Even now, they have something of a siren song quality.

sometime after midnight

Another late rehearsal; we didn't leave until a quarter to midnight. I'm going to be all kinds of exhausted tomorrow, and am so looking forward to sleeping past five on Saturday morning.

Still, though. This, the pre-opening crunch time, is always my favorite. You're down in the trenches, and you know you've got to pull it together in spite of the odds. It's really quite exhilarating.

By the time I actually got onstage, it was half past eleven. My energy level was all off, and I don't think I did a good job. In spite of the fact that I'd rehearsed the piece a dozen times over the course of the evening, in a hallway or a stairwell, my brain just wasn't cooperating when I got up there. But it's okay. I know I'll do better tomorrow night.

When we had a few minutes to steal away and eat, I got a tuna sammich from the student union. At Lynnee's suggestion, I had it with guacamole. Yeah, I know, but damn, it was good. There was also plenty of dijon mustard and pickles and tomatoes and oil and vinegar. It was like a Tuna Suicide. That's it! I'm a genius. Now the big bucks will start rolling in.

The DJ then made a funny, saying that Yoko has never had more appropriate accompaniment. Because, you know, guitar feedback is unlistenable noise, just like Yoko's voice.

It was one of those moments in which I realized that I am very, very different from most of the population, if not downright alien. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It simply is. Research has revealed that the recording has been released twice, in two different mixes, on just about the only albums by Zappa and Lennon that I don't have. Figures.

On the way home from rehearsal, I listened to Pirate Cat Radio. They were playing the Dead Man soundtrack, one of my favorite Neil albums. It's largely feedbacky guitar and samples from the movie. I've even played some of it my show.

It wasn't until I got home that I remembered that it was my show. Monday nights from eight to ten, dorkweed. KROB was kind enough to cover for me, and intentionally or not, was playing something damn near perfect. It's good to know that if anyone actually intended to listen to my show (ha!), they were not disappointed.

As for the rehearsal? Oh, you know. The usual. Nerves, and all.

4:19pm

Ossie Davis died on Friday. Therefore, I'm going to repost something vaguely relevant I wrote on August 5, 2003:

So Bubba Ho-Tep, which Maddy and I saw in February during the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (with Bruce Campbell and director Don Coscarelli sitting behind us, no less) is finally being properly distributed. Which is a happy thing, because it's a fun movie and deserves to be seen.

Unfortunately, it means that there'll a lot more writeups like this one, from a typically sloppy Film Threat article article about Campbell:

See, in Bubba, Campbell is playing Elvis. Elvis at 68-years-old, that is, and he's in an East Texas nursing home, suffering from a cancer-ridden penis and waiting to die. Then the rest home is attacked by an ancient mummy who is sucking the souls from the residents from any available orifice. There's only one thing for the King to do: team up with an elderly black man who thinks he's JFK and take on this Egyptian ghoul.

Some of what I'm about to say could be considered spoilers, so proceed at your own risk. (By the way, Billy Zane deflowered Sherilyn Fenn's character on Twin Peaks. Since the second season is never ever going to come out on DVD, it hardly matters, does it? Can't be a spoiler for something nobody's ever going to see again, can it? But I digress.)

"The King" teams up with "an elderly black man who thinks he's JFK." Let's process, shall we?

Both the movie and the Joe Lansdale story on which it's based spend a fair amount of time on just how Elvis ended up in that rest home. Long story shortened, it may not actually be Elvis, but an Elvis impersonator. He's not even entirely certain himself. The issue is never really resolved—I'll bet that if you asked Lansdale, he'd shrug—and it doesn't need to be. I personally think the story is more poignant if it isn't Elvis.

The article, and most others I've read about the movie, doesn't even hint at the ambiguity. It's Elvis, and that's that. Why? I'll bet it's because the fanboys who've thus far written about it are so creamy over the idea of "Bruce Campbell as Elvis" (a brilliant bit of casting, no question) that they don't even want to think about the possibility that, if you pay attention to the actual story, that may not really be the case. It's all too complicated. Bruce as Elvis! Woohoo!

Meanwhile, the Ossie Davis character simply "thinks" he's Kennedy. Sure, his story, involving dyed skin and a brain operating from remote, is far-fetched. But when the plot revolves around a mummy—let alone one who wears a cowboy outfit, for reasons which I don't think quite survived the translation from page to screen—doesn't "far-fetched" become a relative concept at best? I mean, if you can accept within the context of the film that supernatural, soul-sucking mummies are real, why can't Kennedy now look like Ossie Davis? Granted, my personal theory is that both characters are deluded, which makes the film all the more touching. And, yes, I'm aware that the synopsis of the film on the official site also says he simply "thinks" he's Kennedy. Sometimes an official synopsis can be poorly written. Take a peek at UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode guide to see what I mean.

Anyway, could it possibly have something to do with the fact that most of the people writing about the film are white Bruce Campbell fanatics who don't know or care who Ossie Davis even is? Hell, the only credit the Film Threat article gives for him is Cotton Comes to Harlem. Ouch. I'd have probably gone with Jungle Fever, but that's just me. He's so calmly fierce in that movie, it gives me chills just thinking about it. But, once more, I digress.

After the screening in February, Campbell and Coscarelli—both of whom still seemed amazed that someone of Ossie's stature would agree to do a little cult film—answered audience questions. One they did not answer, but which I think illustrates my point was: "Did Ossie Davis's character remind anyone else of Chef's dad from South Park?"

Ugh. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be a pale-skinned film geek.

jeez—you may have pale skin, but you still need to lighten up!

In any event, I'm feeling better today. The first rehearsal is this evening in Berkeley, and Lynnee has been brought on as the tranny-boy presence. I am so psyched about getting to work with him again.

I just got my first paycheck, considerably sooner than I expected. The last time this happened, it was also my last check. And yet, I'm still here.

Anyway, the feedback was valuable, and I'm editing the piece appropriately, strengthening it. Better to offend one person out of forty than a considerably higher number at the show itself. In truth, there were probably others who were bothered as well, but nobody else said anything. Nothing negative, anyway; there was lots of praise for it, including a peck on the temple from Heather Gold, who performed after me. I'll be reading the revised version at K'vetch tomorrow night, so we'll see if anyone salutes on that particular flagpole.

I also hosted for an hour. The show was a "performance marathon," starting at four and lasting until nearly midnight. I'd originally offered to host for three hours, but I'm glad I only got the one, as my energy level was already perilously low when we arrived, like I was still hungover from an emotionally rough Friday night. That's the problem with being in demand—sometimes, you just aren't feeling up for it.

I'm learning to say "no," however. Like, I was all but offered a seat on the Jon Sims Center Board of Directors. I'm all kinds of flattered, but I'm going to decline. It's only supposed to be about ten hours of work a month, perhaps a bit more when there are events like tonight's. Flattering, as I say, but I just don't think I can commit the proper energy to it. I'm all about the energy rationing these days.