What a miserable couple of weeks. The show opened last week to less than full houses (no marketing budget to speak of), so I’ve had theoretically four days to rest and heal. Heal because the theater is in a reconditioned church, and the steps leading up the stage are not uniform, which is messing with my bum knee terribly. The acoustics in the space, however, are incredible.
I have a fair amount of downtime in the first act, during which I usually commune with my MP3 player. Now, however, my son Max has discovered the wonders of Daddy’s MP3 player. Since he doesn’t have his one line until near the end of Act Two, he’s commandeered it. At least I can take comfort in the fact he likes Alice Cooper.
I said “theoretically heal” earlier because this week has been anything but restful – my wife and I both had court appearances over tawdry matters which are now thankfully over, concurrent with putting my car in the shop for two days and the resultant further flummoxing of our schedules. And the Hated Job, of course, was the Hated Job.
So here I stand on Thursday, preparing to do the run home, wolf down dinner and hit the road for the theater routine again. It appears that we actually had a critic in last weekend, who singled out Lisa’s “sympathetic opera diva” (surely an oxymoron!) and my “thunderously evil” Moriarty for praise. Which I guess is why we do this.
In other troublesome news: as some of you may know, I’ve been running an Internet radio station at Live365 for almost a couple of years now. And as some of you may know, the entire Internet radio industry is in serious trouble, as the Copyright Royalty Board had decided to triple royalty rates for the Net retroactive to January of 2006. Please drop by SaveNetRadio.org for a fast and easy form to send your local reps e-mail messages (and, with a little more trouble, hard copy) telling them this is not such a good idea. If your local radio market has become part of the Clear Channel Borg, you know what I mean.
Due diligence requires that I mention I used the site, and got a canned reply from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson explaining how she felt copyright was indeed important and she would fight for the rights of copyright holders until her dying day, just as I (had not)requested in the letter that was apparently unread by anyone.
Which I guess is what I get for not voting for her.
