I'm too bloody tired to try and come up with a snappy opening or anything for this. So, let's just go:

Saturday, blissfully, the wife and I got to stay home, no rehearsal while the behind-the-scenes folks endured what's called a "dry tech"--that is, no actors called, and the tech geeks just sat around somewhere with thousands of pieces of paper trying to figure out what all the bizarre fucking glyphs and whatsas and who-dats written on them could possibly mean. "Is this the light plot?" "It's an outdoor show, stupid." "Oh. Right. So what is this? Prop list? Costume plot? Scene breakdown?" "It's a receipt from Arby's." "Jesus Christ. Well, I'm starving anyway. Where's the Arby's food?" "Carla's dog ate it while we were looking at the light plot." "WHAT? It's an outdoor show, goddam it! There is no light plot!" "Maybe it's the phone list." At this point, usually the weeping and screaming begin. This is why I don't typically work tech. It's all snowdrifts of paper, recriminations, skull-clutching misery, and the only one who ends up eating anything is somebody's fucking dog.

But we paid for our indolence on Sunday, when we had us a 10-hour day out in the park, in the sun, with the bugs, and the six-pack-toting rubberneckers, and the frisbee-ers, and horrible old Yellow Face, who burns us, burns us. One thing about performing outdooors: it's quite unlike performing indoors. Particularly when one is accustomed to fringe theater indoor environs, which typically resemble retrofitted butcher shops or abandoned buildings once used only to film Nine Inch Nails videos. No, performing outdoors has its own set of interesting challenges, particularly when one is competing with things like the fucking Seatac flight approach, which is, evidently, directly overhead of our park space. So in addition to ramping up one's volume just to carry your voice out into empty ether, one also occasionally finds oneself trying to outbelt the roar of an overhead 747:

"Yea, Sister Marguerite, leave off thy ministrations to my overtaxed trouser-salmon, and do favor me with a kiss!"

"Oh, Father Flote, I do serve to--"

ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR

"-and that is how the Pope was undone in Auxerre! We will not miss his insolent dances, nor his cabbages. But it is important to remember that--"

VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM

"--which I hardly need say is why we shall never again be plagued by the hideous Kelp-Men from the sea, now and to forever!"

After spending that hellish Sunday, ten hours of simply BLASTING OUT THOSE FUCKING LINES, I woke up this morning with a curious sensation: my abdomen hurt from using all those lazy-ass, beer-accomodating muscles to project an acceptable volume. When I awoke, I sat up and my gut winced. What the fuck did I do? I wondered muzzily. Then I remembered. Oh, yeah, stupid . . . you did theater. Again.

I'm probably boring my tens of readers by going on about this play, but Jesus, I don't have anything else to write about. I am consumed by this thing, every day! I don't even have a good screed about something terribly obvious, like, say, Arby's.

Don't look at me. Talk to Carla about her goddamned dog.