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December | 2009 | PJ Newman

Time Flies …

Long Time, No …

Gadzooks! It’s been over 2 years since we last spoke and you didn’t say anything! Sorry sorry sorry. I got sidetracked and between watching 5 seasons of LOST in a week and a half and facebook, well, we lost each other.

So, where do I begin? When last we spoke, I was Sleepless in Annapolis on tour with Peter Himmelman. That ended up being nothing if not unique (and eerie…as we speak, one of his songs just popped up on my iTunes!)

Aside #1: The “a” key on this computer is sick. I see I’ll have to come back when done and replace many. So, I’m going to try to use as few a’s as possible.

Aside #2: I cannot type a capital “z” Dunno. Just dunno. Marty Mac, my Mac guy, can’t figure it out. Says it’s software? Dunno

OK, so Himmelman…yeah….we’ll have to get back to him later. I just found my 2007 date book, so I’ll write about each incredible adventure as they resurface from my brainpan, like an aquarium air hose as it unkinks and the memories, as air, flow forth.

The studio finally got built and opened in December of 2007 and promptly closed down in December 2009. Apparently, there’s this thing called an “economy” and this “economy” is bad and it’s got it out for me.

And because I toured with Peter and because I was building my studio, I got fired from my job doing sound at the Tr•ct•r T•v•rn. I used to be in charge of sound scheduling and the such, but because I didn’t drink with the boss, I lost Most Favorite Nation Status. It got to the point where I was working maybe 3 or 4 shifts a month, down from 15 or more. So, one day I called the owner and asked for maybe 1 or 2 more shifts a month.
His reaction follows along these lines…”Well, I’m getting divorced and I can’t get this printer to work, so it’s time you don’t work here anymore!”
In hindsight, it makes perfect sense in the same way dancing for algebra does. Needless to say, I haven’t been there since. Probably blacklisted from Ballard Avenue anyway, me not being hip enough and all.

Oh, and by the way, you’ll recall from past entries here when I fell and whiplashed my entire musculoskeletal system at work a few years ago. So, 2.5 years later, I’m minding my own business (hell, I was asleep) and woke up (from said sleep) with an INCREDIBLE PAIN IN MY NECK. Think that maybe I slept badly (I mean slept well, because I know how to sleep, maybe not, but the point being that the act of sleeping was done properly, eyes shut, rhythmic breathing, dreaming of a Cuban woman, but maybe I slept incorrectly as in where my head was, angle-wise and the such). I asked my sister-in-law (whom I think is a massage therapist) to try to work the kink out. This was during the annual family pilgrimage to the Oregon Coast (Jo, do I need to capitalize the “c” in coast?). Everything she did was probably correct but it only made things worse. By midafternoon, I was in so much pain that chasing Vicodin with Vodka ended up being a waste of Vicodin and Vodka. I texted my friend Nicole (emergency room doctor supreme) and she replied “C6-C7.” I’m thinking, what the fuck do 2 different models of Yamaha Grand pianos have to do with this?
Partial Aside #3: We had a Yamaha C7 at the studio. It was built in the early 70’s so it was 7’4” not 7’6” as we know and love them today.
Right, so what she meant was that the C6-C7 disc in my neck blew ruptured herniated bulged and it was pressing on the nerve root that ran down my entire left arm, terminating at the index finger. I mentioned pain, right? OK, like on a scale of 1-10, 10 being hurts like hell and all, I was hitting mid 20’s. Didn’t sleep for 3 days. The drive home took twice as long because I had to stop t every rest stop in Oregon and Washington to try to stop the pain. The plus side of this was that Mifune got plenty of walks.
Longer story short, after x-rays, MRI, CT Scan, EMG (painful waste of 4 hours. When the doctor was done shooting electrical current through me and I asked him what he thought, he says “C6-C7.” Thanks…) a cortisone shot and much acupuncture, it looks like your intrepid reporter is due to go under the knife.
Film at 11.

Xmas looms it’s cheery head next week I’m doing sound in a shopping center for my friend Terry Morgan and then blasting down to the Oregon Coast yet again with Mifune for a few days to try to sandblast holiday music out of my psyche. Working at the Seattle Center New Years Eve. Something to do with fireworks and the rewriting of the constitution.

Don’t be a stranger.

Luck
pj

Nutcracker Review

Having sat through Dog knows how many performances of the Nutcracker the past 3 years, it’s no surprise that I never caught the nuances, nay, the heart and essence of this timeless (2 hours plus) ballet and philosophical treatise. Why it is only performed during the holiday season is beyond me. What better way to fill a beautiful spring day, a stifling and balmy summer afternoon, the turning of fall leaves, a Black Sabbath?

I usually begin heavily sedated and self medicated, leaving nothing to chance and everything within arms reach.
Why then, oh dear reader, have I suddenly became self aware, cracked the bottle of consciousness and inhaled a pungent whiff of understanding?

MICE!

I run the risk of repeating myself when I exclaim for all to hear:

MICE!

Who could foresee that filthy rodent, that layer of droppings carrier of pestilence and plague could make an ardent love of the dance masterpiece out of me?

No, not the white variety which cause explorers of science and industry to drool in their cloned sheep-filled dreams, nor the white gloved star of the big screen. But gray mice. With tails and whiskers.
And BIG!
Really BIG!
The size of children. Human children at that. That’s what caught my attention and caused me to delve into the magic and mystery of the Nutcracker.

Originally written by Madame Curie because fishmongers didn’t like to wrap their wares in plain paper and then re-written by Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Nutcracker conveys the eternal struggle between Vampires and their familiars the Mice. Charles Darwin, who wrote the original lyrics before his banishment to Helena, Montana, noted that while Vampires are more commonly associated with bats, the frequency range of sound emitted by bats is above the normal range of human hearing and gambled that rodents, mice especially, would gain the ability of human speech much sooner than their flying cousins. Although he was correct, he never lived to see his final victory in court when he sued Walt Disney over Mickey Mouse’s speech aboard the USS Missouri at the end of World War 2.
The version of the Nutcracker we typically see is done in Mime, due to the over spicing and subsequent fusing of vocal chords of the original cast during opening night in Canberra, Australia, in 1906 and again in 1973.

The ballet begins with guests filing across the stage. After they have seated themselves, the dancers appear and file across the stage. The curtain lifts and dancing begins. This part was boring, so I turned my attention to the pastrami sandwich I brought from home. Having forgotten to bring chips and a pickle, I return my focus to the stage, where a Vampire is now prancing and scaring the bejeezus out of the children dancers. He is a Vampire because he is wearing a tuxedo and a cape. He is tall and blonde and handsome in a totally non-Slavic way. The Vampire either brings several inanimate objects to life and they dance, or else he mesmerizes the other dancers and audience members into believing that he has. The undead dancer now spies what he hopes to be his soup course, a small blonde girl with curls, ribbons and Type B Negative flowing through her veins. After much swooping, swaying and general goofiness, he hands her what looks to be a doll, which the girl dubiously accepts and tries to leave behind. The Vampire has coated the doll with Super Glue so the little girl, whose name is Clara or Sara or Sierra, cannot drop it. Instead, a small boy emerges from the wings and tries to relieve the girl of it. AHA! The Super Glue adheres to him as well. He manages to pry the doll from the girl (along with the top 2 layers of skin from her palms) and casts the now bloody figurine onto the floor and destroys it by jumping repeatedly on it.
Two things (well, maybe 3…) happen at once. The Vampire grabs the boy and heads Stage Right, all the while ripping the limbs from him. The girls walks over to the destroyed doll and cries from the pain in her hands, not, as the Vampire assumes, from the destruction of the skin-covered toy. I try to get backstage to see if one of the dancers is single, or if not, morally bankrupt. Shot down, I return to my seat and find that the Vampire, thinking Clara mourns for the doll, runs offstage, selects a babe in arms from a stage mother and drains it’s blood, turning it into a Nosferatu. He hands the demon baby to Sara, who is horrified but still dancing. A blow dart hits her mid-thigh and she collapses on a chair, which somehow appears Downstage Right. She curls fetally and foams lightly from her mouth.

At this point, the ballet begins with the arrival of the MICE. Scores of them scurry onstage, shuffling to and fro.
In Darwin’s original notes, the Mice come to the Vampire with a list of demands for better working conditions.
A long scene of arbitration was cut from the libretto when the election of union officials dance called for the firing of live weapons into the audience and proved too expensive. The Vampire calls forth an army of child-sized child soldiers, armed only with their innocence and paper-mache short swords. These can be turned upside down and used as crucifixes against the Vampire if a coffee break cannot be written into the second act. A prolonged battle between the soldiers and MICE ensues, neither side asking for nor giving quarter, although quite a few cigarettes are passed between the armies. MICE Stage Left, Soldiers Stage Right, Vampire Downstage Center, Sierra on the floor, having fallen from the chair.

With the MICE offstage, I quickly lose interest in the remaining scene and the entire second act. I was able to coax the dancer in question into a quick-change booth, only to discover she didn’t accept personal checks or debit cards. A defeated but enriched man, I leave the theatre with a new appreciation of the Dancing Arts and somebody else’s jacket.

The next day, the stage crew called me. They had read my much-heralded review of the Nutcracker and wanted me to see it from their Point Of View…ONSTAGE! By onstage, of course, they meant backstage, where it’s all guts and no glory, half finished crossword puzzles and the finest of the pastry arts.

THE HEART OF THE BEAST!

Arriving fashionably early, I helped myself to the dancers’ deli tray, not wanting them to get grease on their costumes or cramp up onstage from a hastily eaten snack before curtain time. (REMEMBER: DANCING IS LIKE SWIMMING. NO EATING AT LEAST 45 MINUTES BEFORE DANCING. 30 minutes is fine for light stretching and pectoral flexing, but nothing too strenuous.)

The Stage Crew is the unsung hero of the ballet. Without their strength, courage and more than enough bodies for the job at hand, these hard working men, women and undocumented aliens force the show to go on regardless of international exchange rates. I am introduced all around and given carte blanche backstage. “J” (names abbreviated to make it more difficult to find them in the phone directory) is working the “rail,” a preposterous series of ropes, weights and pulleys that make curtains and scenery appear on stage as if by magic. I now know better. He shows me the ropes, as it were. From his vantage point, he commands a view of the stage and the large television showing the Raiders losing to their cheerleaders.
“S,” or Steve as he is called, is the L.D., or Lighting Director. His job is to light up the stage from a booth far enough from the stage that any mistakes can be easily blamed on the architect or Stage Manager, today being a friendly if not incompetent Siamese Twin whose brother is the lead dancer.

Having free rein backstage, I mingle with the cast who are preparing themselves for today’s performance. They adjust their stage makeup and tighten their Kevlar dancing togs. Butterflies are not uncommon before the curtain rises. They battle this by going over their routines in place and by spitting large phlegm balls at understudies. I offer my hip flask to the dancer from yesterday. She accepts it and offers me her tonic for pre-show jitters, a “Tussintini,” equal parts gin, vodka, cough syrup, purified water and chocolate Pop Tarts. Shaken not stirred. A bit chunky, but after 3 pitchers, I don’t seem to mind.
The Vampire lurks about. He makes suggestions to the stage manager about his personal lighting, to the rail operator about how the curtains should part just so for his entrances and exits and to the custodian to see if he has found another cache of wooden stakes in the wings.
As I presumed, most of the dancers are kept in cages backstage. These cages are large, well ventilated affairs with slots in the bars to allow food to be passed in with metal sticks without worrying about getting too close. Many a catering staffer has found him or herself minus a finger trying to feed and water dancers. To my surprise, another cage houses the DANCING MICE. I assumed that they used MICE found in the basement and alley of the theatre and herded them onstage with fire hoses and electric prods, but delighted in knowing the ballet used more “humane” methods. Thinking back, this makes sense, as there are numerous performances of the Nutcracker during the Holiday Season and no way to ensure the proper number needed for each matinee. It is also very green, this recycling of MICE. I am told that the MICE who survive the run of the ballet are served to cast and crew at the Wrap Party, a belt loosening and top-secret soiree after the final performance but before sentencing.
At this point, the “Orchestra” is lead in single file in chains and handcuffs. Those without hands get the day off, but are fined a day’s pay for not showing up. While claims for the score’s authorship in continually in doubt, it is nevertheless played with gusto and air guitar. The “Musicians” look criminally familiar; almost as if the kitchen staff from the Cambodian restaurant behind the theatre was rounded up (at gunpoint) and frog marched into the orchestra pit. My spider sense tingles when I see crates of live chickens, portable gas fires and 3 waiters following the ensemble. The conductor, though recently deceased, makes a splendid entrance in drag and a bronze urn. The musicians take no notice and continue to prep appetizers. The tympanis have become large woks and deep fryers. The double bass starts to smolder until the reeds douse it with soy and fish sauce.
As the audience is wheeled in, a scuffle breaks out between the musicians and the MICE. A P.A. (or Production Assistant) allowed a few musicians to take some of the smaller and more succulent MICE for a walk and they, in turn, went for a wok! The remaining MICE complain that they must still pay full price for food.

The house lights go down. The only sound from the audience is the regular whispers from ventilators and iron lungs. The conductor sits on his podium, not moving until the orchestra tunes up. After 30 minutes, “J” sneaks into the pit and pushes play on the iPod on top of a large walk-in freezer now between the violins and the salad station. The music rumbles to life and then abruptly stops when a trombonist/busboy plugs in a coffee maker and shorts out the pit. Batteries are found and the music comes back to life. Not so the conductor, who remains immobile and most probably still dead.
The dancers coolly await their entrance while standing in troughs of cold water 9 inches deep. Failure to move on cue results in a stagehand tossing an electric extension cord in the trough.
Act 1 begins and the dancers stumble onstage. The first scene has the characters crossing from Downstage Right to Left as if they’re entering the DMV or tipping cows. The iPod skips and goes back and forth between Milli Vanilli and Metallica. The dancers, having never really paid attention to the music anyway, trip over each other somewhat in time. The scrim (somewhat curtainy, somewhat not) raises (rises?) and we’re in what seems to be the food court in a shopping mall.
Dance
Dance
Dance.
The Vampire is just about to prance on stage when I whisper loudly, “DUDE! YOUR HAIR!” His eyes widen and he reaches up to his head to investigate. I see a small mirror and hold it up to his face. He hisses and falls backward over 2 orders of Fisherman’s Favorite (#12), Black Squid and Pork Crispies (appetizer #3) and enough rice for a Moonie wedding. He recovers quickly, knocking over only 8 or 9 dancers to get to his spot, constantly feeling his hair between leaps and bounds.
I notice that many of the dancers have switched roles, either because of rotation, injuries or restraining orders. The dancer playing Clara (or Sarah or Larry) has been replaced by a small pale girl with dark hair and several crucifixes and garlic wreaths dangling from her neck. The boy who grabbed the doll from Clara (sic) is the same. I walk up to him and mention that it is rude to grab, that he should ask politely if he might see the doll. He haughtily spins away and is about to utter a curse when I taze him on the neck. He twitches for a moment before I stuff him into the cannon. I grab his hat, clamp it on the head of a passing waiter and shove him onstage. The Vampire swoops down on him, briefly considering the Randomly Fried Yum Yums (appetizer #8), then snaps his neck and tosses the body on the chair Downstage Right. Sierra, whose next routine was a lap dance with a soldier on the very same chair, improvises a pole dance on the tree, not realizing that it is merely a painted canvas drop (and attached to the scene behind it), A loud ripping sound fills the stage, causing every dancer to look down. Bumping, grinding and general hilarity ensues. Meanwhile, the injured iPod settles on Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like A Lady” and half of the dancers nervously look back and forth.
At this point, the MICE are uncaged and swarm to the waiter instead of Sarah, who has untangled herself from the backdrop and searching the floor for dollar bills and her right contact lens. She then attempts to wake the soldier who has passed out in the chair. Unable to revive him, she grabs four of the MICE and fashion them into a settee upon which she climbs on and lashes out at the other MICE. They, in turn, ignore the soldiers who have amassed onstage for the battle sequence and make polite catcalls at Sarah, who is considering returning to secretarial school and/or another line of work, parole notwithstanding. Insulted by the MICE’s seemingly newfound pacifism, the soldiers roll the cannon onstage and light the fuse. Shredded boy whizzes from the cannon’s breach and covers anything in a 2 block radius.
I find my dancer who is e-mailing her resume to Norway and we exit Stage Left.

As much as I have fallen in love with the Nutcracker, I feel that some updating must occur in order for this masterpiece to reach a wider market. With that in mind, I am currently adapting the ballet for all audiences and all tastes.
Coming soon: The Nutcracker as performed by Transformers, Debbie Does Nutcracker, Rocky Versus Nutcracker, Rambo Versus Nutcracker, Night of the Living Nutcracker, Slum Dog Nutcracker, Full Contact Nutcracker, Crouching Tiger Hidden Nutcracker, a Roller Derby Nutcracker and my personal favorite, a Samurai version of SEVEN Nutcracker.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

The Snowman Review

The Snowman
Act 1

Firstly, and please don’t think me a racist, but I believe the dancer playing the Snowman to be a zombie.
We crossed paths backstage and his lifeless pallor, dead, blank eyes and breath that reeked of rotting human flesh was a dead giveaway. Plus, he wore a t-shirt that read, “Kiss Me, I’m Dead!”

I’m hoping that the rumor I heard on the way in is true, that there will be a human sacrifice performed during intermission. And I, being a guest of honor and above reproach, get to either pick the sacrificial lamb and/or
actually remove the organ in question. At this point, I’m planning on picking the entire tech crew.

The ballet, The Snowman, was commissioned by the LDS Church and written by Herman Goerring whilst awaiting jury duty in Nuremburg. The music was liberally borrowed from the 3 B’s (Bjorn, Benny and Beck) and played within a variety of pitches and keys by a nimble, if not criminally underage orchestra made up of escapees from a local clean coal mine. The premise of the story is one of eternal struggle, i.e.: Boy Meets (Creates) Snowman, Everybody Dances, Something with Animals, Snowman Dies, Drinks Afterwards at Kevin’s.

Children dancing. I don’t know what it is about kids in tutus having a fake snowball fight that reminds me of throat surgery and the incredibly painful recovery thereafter. A single (we assume) boy, playing in the snow with only his domineering mother as company, builds a snowman in the image of the Master Race, which, in this case, is a cross between the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Ron Jeremy. The boy believes that having a frozen juggernaut as a playmate will elevate his status in god only knows what. The mother, seeing the “Snowman,” drags the boy offstage to wash his colon out with soap. It’s the 3rd performance in a row that I’ve had to watch this play and just witnessing the mother try to walk across stage like a normal biped still astounds me. I heard she failed to get the part of a stationary tree and had the choice of either taking the part of the mother or staying late and licking the dance floor clean.

At this point, the Snowman comes to “life” and does his version of the Snoopy dance. The boy races out to him and drags him offstage so he cannot have any solo time. Stage goes black, as does my mood.

We next open to a charming set of the interior of what is either the boy’s house or an IKEA showroom.
This is where shit gets hazy for me…
A) How did the Snowman lose more weight than Oprah in 45 seconds?
B) If this dancer is supposed to be a cat, why does she have a tail and why isn’t one of her ears dangling by bloody sinews from her skull?
C) Why doesn’t the Snowman blow a fuse when he sticks a finger in an empty tree light socket?
D) What is the boy doing with a life sized wind up ballerina and where can I get one?

The next dancer is what the light guy describes as a jester. Joker? Fool? He doesn’t have any naked photos for clarification. Stage goes thankfully dark.

The next scene has the Snowman pushing the boy on a sled. Every time he pushes the boy away, he dances and jumps as if he’s just taken a bathrobe-clad bowel movement. After a few of these, the “bunnies” and something with a tail and an ass like November join in. The meaning of this is not immediately clear, but my lack of painkillers and bloody marys has me questioning everything I think I see onstage.
A human female sings offstage left. Seven white clad ballerinas with 3 black buttons running down their chests (an obvious homage to Stalin) perform a deliciously slow striptease, so slow in fact that the clothes do not come off until they return to the dressing room.
End Act 1.
Begin uncontrollable spasms.

Act 2.
Dark stage as the overture swells. It sounds familiar…Duh duh dee duh, duh dee dee dee.
It’ll come to me.

Flashbacks. The forest scene. Five trees. Five dancers. As the Snowman and boy appear onstage, the dancers dive behind the trees and search for anything to use as a weapon.
Mini snowman clones slither about upstage, followed by Santa (?). The boy cringes behind the Snowman, as do I. Santa passes out pills to all of the dancers, who pull previously unnoticed flasks from their dance skins. Whatever was in those flasks that washed down whatever Santa gave the dancers now has them dancing for joy with idiotic grins plastered to their faces. The snoclones (now numbering 7, the number of the beast?) perform a Munchkin-like dirge with the high stepping jackboot antics that Mr. Goerring made famous back in the day.

Those damn PENGUIN CHILDREN again. It’s like Mengele is backstage with a scalpel and a sewing kit.
Snowman and white ballerina dancing while not dancing, touching while not touching. The Dance of the Unclean? Once again, the ballerina begs the Snowman for some action, but he only has eyes for the boy, who has been carried away by Santa. The ballerina, frustrated, eyes the mini snowmen with renewed interest.

OK, I finally figured out what these new creatures are…Jackalopes! You know, you see them in truck stop post card racks, but never up close.
I can die a happy man now.

The Ice Princess makes her stage debut. Except that the dancer who played her part yesterday hurt her back, so they stapled 3 of the smaller children together to create a new Princess. It’s almost plausible, until the staples tear and they come apart mid-leap. The original dancer hobbles out with the power cable of her electric blanket trailing her like a rat’s tail. She executes her moves well, only screaming with pain when she lands on the child with exposed staples. One of the dancers appears to have an Uzi, but I can’t tell if it’s loaded. It is and she’s using it to keep the jackalopes in line as they do a tango.
The boy is hiding upstage behind a tree while the Snowman makes a pathetic advance on the white-clad ballerina. Santa and the Ice Princess catcall from downstage right. The 7 snowclones have become 13 since 2 dances before. Santa giving what looks like Kool Aid to 3 dancers while the rest sigh with relief.
Quick…jackalopes disappear, white ballerina gill nets the penguin children and drags them offstage and the snowman grabs the boy.
STAGE BLACK

The baby who has been crying throughout the last 3 performances hears its cue (silence) and leads the orchestra into the last piece, wherein the boy, having tired of dancing and frolicking with supernatural beings, cries out “FUCK THIS” in a high pitched exclamation. This should be noted as the only piece of dialogue in the ballet and was wholly improvised.

(The following is notes from the first of 3 performances that I kept slipping in and out of consciousness)

There’s something disturbing about the relationship between the boy and the snowman. Theoretically, the boy is the snowman’s creator and the snowman displays many lost boy/pee wee herman/uber child-like attributes, but the boy/creator/god seems perfectly happy to let the snowman thing call the shots.
The dancing trees kind of freaked me out for a minute, but then I remembered that I have my knife with me.
The snowman wears whiteface, a mime w/o the beret and striped shirt. He has his hands on the boy’s shoulders and nobody says anything. The boy now runs (on point) across the stage and is feeling up 2 ballerinas. Snowman sees this and crosses upstage, playing skull bongo on the boy as one ballerina leaves and the other is searching the audience for a tattoo.
You’d either like this next part or be revulsed…HUMAN PENGUIN HYBRIDS! Emperors by the looks of things. Yellow feathers either side of the head, pouches stuffed with mackerel and krill.
The snowman is now dancing with the primaballerina except she’s not wearing blue anymore.
That’s beside the point. Point being, that the ballerina offers her “stuff” to the snowman, who rebukes her advances….refuses to cop a feel, accidentally let a hand grope an offered breast and grab an ass strutting like my cat when I pet her that certain way.
After the dance, the ballerina kisses the snowman as the boygod runs across stage and jealously grabs the snowman’s hand.
They cross to stage right.
Santa (?) enters upstage right w/ 3 reindeer or bats or something.
Rough trade, robes, chafing
Snowman hiding boy behind tree as Santa discusses animal husbandry. Reindeer leave small piles onstage as the boy and Santa plan menu.
Snowman doing the Lambada (The Forbidden Dance) with the Ice Princess, the one in blue (forget about what I said earlier).
Anyway, they’re doing their thing as the dancer in white tries to exit stage left before a ménage a trois is written into the second act by the boy. The snowman, being just about the only one onstage wearing pants, seems to be the “male” character, even though he squanders every opportunity to assert his masculinity and take what is rightfully his, after tithing 15% to the boygod.
Not sure about this scene. Santa, reaching into his bag of tricks. Santa as PIMP! The Ice Princess is definitely into the idea of the 3 way, maybe the prima is as well…..SHIT, he’s got 6 dancers onstage humping his leg and whispering teasers from the new Keanu Reeves movie into his ear, but all he wants to do is hold onto the boy.
I am sickened and saddened at once, or was it the truffles I’ve been placing between my cheek and gums since 10:30 this morning.
The boy, tired of the embarrassment caused by his creation, strikes him down with a snowball (how ironic) and a pot of hot chocolate. In a dream sequence, the boy kneels at the corpse of his creation while the ghost of the snowman dances upstage.
The End
Company Bow
Find Booze

The woman who plays the boy’s motherkeepermistressbodyguard stays on
point no matter what she’s doing. Me, with no arch whatsoever, cringe
from 75 feet away.

New light console showed up yesterday as previous one would dump the
show program at will. Will wasn’t amused. So, after getting the new
board programmed, everybody takes turns programming weird shit and
effects into the memory, never quite sure if it will override the ballet’s light program when the light guy isn’t looking.

Ballet parent/little league parents……

xoxox
pj