I spent the weekend closing down the show, which is always sort of bittersweet: you're glad to be done with a project, but it's always a little like burying a vague acquaintance that you were fond of. You wish you knew them better. However, I immediately (tonight) jumped into a mini-rehearsal for the next show, which amounted to me doing my monologue twice and then sharing a beer and a smoke with the director (we go a ways back). Now I just have to make my irritated brain commit six pages of text to memory, and my brain isn't really thrilled about it. It complains. "This sucks," it whines. "Can't we download some porn instead?" I sympathetically answer it. "No," I explain to myself, "we are on dial-up. The best we can do is Fark's 'Boobies' posts." "Ugh," replies brain, "that's terrible. It's like buying jerky at the 99-cent store." Brain is pretty irritating, so I dump scotch on it and wait for it to become quiescent.

Speaking of brain-quiescence, the wife and I pay-per-viewed The Italian Job over the weekend; it was like consuming a generic blue-and-white package of MOVIE. As in: "I am absorbing this [MOVIE]. It features [TALENTED ACTORS] (alongside a certain [CHARLIZE THERON] who fails, impossibly, to [REMOVE SHIRT]) involved in [CRIMINAL ACTS] and [UNSURPRISING BETRAYALS] that, after [UNCONTORTIONATE TWISTS] finally results in a showdown between [OH WHO GIVES A FUCK?]" But in the end I must give it up to both Marky Mark, for displaying a heroic, Theronesque stubbornness against removing his shirt, despite the fact that failing to do so renders his entire presence somewhat puzzling; and also to Edward Norton, who somehow managed to grow the world's most depressing moustache, and then ceded his entire performance to the hairy little lip-mongrel.

"Action!"

(Sotto voce) "Quick! Depressing moustache! What do we do?"

"Go buy a boat or something. I'll sit here on your lip and kind of spaz out or something." (Notices dailies) "Look at us! We look like Hal Linden!"

"I love you, depressing moustache."

"You big lug. Just don't shave me like Courtney Love does."

"You've got a deal."