Well, dear readers, I am so tired – how tired are you – I am so tired that I fell out of bed and broke my pyjamas. Oops, wrong joke. I’m so tired that I did the punchline to the wrong joke. I’m so tired that I’m incoherent. Of course, I’m incoherent when I’m not tired so right now I’m incoherent to the nth degree. All this by way of saying that I’m tired. The reason for this extreme tiredness is that I went to bed at one and awoke at three-thirty and could not go back to sleep. I got up and just stared at the computer until six, at which point I dragged myself back into bed and got another couple hours of sleep. And I was tired to begin with. But I had no time for being tired as I had to be alert and awake and alive, but alive, but alive. I added some questions to my list, shaved and showered, and then moseyed on over to a CVS to get some Ricolas, after which I moseyed on over to LACC to do our event. We ended up with about thirty people, which is better than we’ve been doing, but still very disappointing to me, especially the lack of current students. The students who were there got a rare opportunity to hear and learn from six talented, bright directors, who told us about their craft, what they look for in auditions, things they hate, things the respond to, things never to do, what songs they would prefer never to hear again as long as they live – I asked a lot of questions and the answers were varied and always interesting and informative. Because there were six people, I never got through all the questions, but the ones I didn’t get to were more general things about the state of musical theater today. We had some good questions from the audience, too, and I was just a wonderful event. The laziness and endless excuses of LA actors never ceases to astonish me, and we even talked about that a bit. Not only can’t they be bothered to attend a free event like this where they can actually glean some information that could lead to getting hired by these six very busy directors, but these lazy, entitled types are the same people who don’t even show up for auditions for which they have firm appointments. We all told those kinds of horror stories. Two of the attendees were asked for resumes by one of the directors, which just goes to show you that it sometimes pays to not be lazy and to take your career and craft seriously. One illuminating thing that Daniel Henning had to say that really hit home with the actors in attendance was that the audition should be a joyful thing and should be approached with craft and energy, because you’re getting to perform – he said they shouldn’t think of it as an audition ordeal but a chance to actually do what they love to do. And if they do that and are good and deliver, chances are it could lead to getting hired. Another thing I was interested in was why the two bigger musical houses will rarely take chances on directors they haven’t worked with. The answer is that the shows are put up so fast that they simply cannot afford to have any screwups – and each has recently been burned by directors they took a chance on who were not prepared. It’s too bad that happened, because there are a lot of really good people who would bring new and exciting energy to their productions.
After that, I came back to the San Fernando Valley and had some chicken soup, then picked up no packages and an important envelope. Then I came home, made plans with edisaurus and her ever-lovin’ Greg to meet at Musso and Frank at five-thirty, which gave me about ninety minutes to relax. I put on a Blu and Ray and immediately fell asleep and got up about ten minutes before I was due at the restaurant. I hurried over there and was only about five minutes late. We had a wonderfully wonderful dinner – there’s just nothing better than being with intelligent, nice people over a good meal. We talked about Jews and Baseball and their current project, and discussed an idea I had that they seemed to think would be a really good documentary if one could get it done. So, I’m going to do a little leg work and see what’s possible. I had the combo Louis (as did edisaurus), and Greg had the pounded steak with country gravy. I had bread pudding for dessert (edisaurus had some of it, too), and Greg had caramel custard, I think. We all then went to Amoeba and met a friend of theirs (who I’d met before) and we spent an hour there, looking at things (I still had major credit left and bought a couple of items and STILL have major credit left). I could barely keep my eyes open, so I bid them a fond farewell and headed home.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I’m so tired I’ve got a banana in my ear. Oops, wrong punch line.
Today, I shall really try to sleep late, but then I have to write a blurb for our show release, and get audio samples to our web guy, both of which I should have done yesterday. Then I have to deliver a box o’ CDs to a local dealer, and then I’m coming home and sitting on my couch and not budging for the rest of the day and evening. I’ll put the show release announcement up at midnight, or we’ll hold it until tomorrow at midnight. We’ll see if we can get it all done.
Tomorrow, I have no idea what’s happening, other than announcing a CD, hopefully printing out some decent orders, and getting the master and booklet stuff off to the pressing plant and printers. Tuesday, I’ll be with my engineer in the morning, doing just a few tweaks so that he can send the Carrie mixes to the mastering guy, who can then hopefully get it all assembled quickly so I can approve it and get it off to the pressing plant. Then it’s just a bunch of errands and whatnot, prepping the next soundtrack release, presuming I figure out what it is (I may delay one week in that announcement), going to Barry Pearl’s for Thanksgiving dinner, and then having our first Gardenia rehearsal on Friday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep late, write a blurb and get audio samples to the web guy, deliver CDs, eat something VERY light, and then try to relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland because in case you haven’t heard – I’m tired. How tired are you?