If you're not very familiar with it, I suggest you run - not walk - to find a quality live production of MAN OF LA MANCHA. Maybe the one here that opens May 8.

See, I wasn't all that familiar with the show before rehearsals began. I knew what everyone knows, of course - "Impossible Dream" and "Dulcinea," and "I, Don Quixote."

I now understand how this piece can evoke the passion it does from those who've seen it, performed it, or been otherwise touched by it. It's a perfect piece of theatre, tight and layered. Among the best musicals for people who are jaded against musicals.

It's touching and empowering and a joy to be part of. This production in particular is going to be pretty damned good.

...and we don't even open for more than ten days.

Rachel's birthday is today, and by some amazing stroke of coincidence two other people in the cast also have birthdays today. After rehearsal, we went out, had some good food, drinks, then all returned to the hotel. Something like 13 of us went to the Lancaster Brewery - ate a lot, drank more.

Thing is, some smooth criminal in our cast, who phil shall remain namelessphil, went and paid the check for us. We were instructed to leave only a tip for our beleaguered waitress for having to deal with rambunctious and loud actor types. We probably doubled her night's take, at least, with what we threw down, but ... that's not the point. It was a very kind, totally unneccessary gesture of generosity from a guy who's probably not going to pay for another drink the duration of this contract. Many thanks, masked stranger quixote.

Happy birthday, Rachel... and the rest of ya...

First day or rehearsal for "Man of La Mancha" at the Dutch Apple is complete.

None were harmed.

Everyone seems great! I say that now in hopes of not having to refute it later. I honestly think it'll be pretty smooth sailin'.

(knock on wood)

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT... drumroll, trum trum turrah, etc.

My plans for the next few months have finally firmed up.
AT THIS POINT my schedule read as follows: (The farther away the gig, the more subject to change it is)

Captain of the Inqusition in
MAN OF LA MANCHA at the Prather's Dutch Apple in Lancaster, PA from May 8 - June 14
Tickets call (717) 898-1900

Thomas Andrews, Esq. in
TITANIC at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope (episode IV), PA from June 18 - July 6
Tickets call (215) 862-2041

Chauvelin in
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL at Bucks County Playhouse from July 9 - July 20
Tickets call (215) 862-2041

Turn 29 on July 25... one year to carousel...

Chauvelin in
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL at the Poconos Playhouse in Mountainhome, PA from August 13 - 17
Tickets call (570) 595-7456

Thomas Andrews in
TITANIC at Poconos Playhouse from August 20 - 31
Tickets call (570) 595-7456

There are plans beyond all that but I'm still working them out.

IMPORTANT - If you should for any strange reason elect to plan on attending one of my shows, let me know! Also, when you call or e-mail the box office, mentioning why you're coming to the show certainly doesn't hurt my feelings. It is a business, after all, and that kind of thing keeps me working!

I didn't plan to have all these consecutive gigs in PA, but it happens that way. Same thing happened in Indiana in 1999.

Okay, no continuation as promised, the topic I was going to expound upon... has ceased to amuse me. Take it AWAY!

Monday, bright and early, I will begin my trek to Pennsylvania. Plans are still forming for the extent of my time there, but I can't go into any more detail than that. I promise I'll post.

I've had a lovely, busy week enjoying friends and home in a very interesting and kind of detached way. There aren't many people I know around here, anymore, even one of the friends I spent time with was someone I knew from Illinois who was here working. Other than that, there has been miuch packing, unpacking, and repacking of things, much taking things to storage. There has been much movie watching - Mom and I watch movies a lot when I'm home, and I went out with friends a lot. "Phone Booth" is one of the best, bravest things I've seen from big Hollywood in a long time. And, of course, being a new proud papa of an XBox, there has been some time spent late at night playing Halo. And MechAssault. And Obi-Wan. And Superman. And... well, isn't that enough?

Thing is, something's in the offing and I'm not sure what it is. There's this feeling I have like I'm forgetting something - not so much that as that maybe even I'm trying not to remember something. Neither of those explanations are indeed the case, but that's the feeling. It's constant, and I want it to go away. Shoo.

I have spent three days driving, covering a little over 1200 miles (a short first day out), and not posting. I drove from Virginia to Kansas, and had a lot of time alone with my thoughts. Thus I have a few different things to write about, and if you hate one topic move on to the next. Really three posts in one - hey, I believe in VALUE, and for the same price of admission I'm giving you THREE thought provoking topics. Brace yourself, and don't touch that dial...

The topics are, arranged in no particular order:
1) I Drove All Night and the American societal need to co-opt cool
2) War and the Idiocy of Absolutely Everyone
3) Memory, or Why I Think Old People Sit On Porches

I DROVE ALL NIGHT AND THE SOCIETAL NEED TO CO-OPT COOL
I have had the same favorite song since 1992. It is "I Drove All Night," originally recorded by the man with only somewhat arguably the best voice in the history of rock music, Roy Orbison. Covered in an amazing homage of a remake by the underrated Cyndi Lauper... and let's just not mention "(Goonies R) Good Enough" in this conversation.

Recently purchased by a major car company, along with a popular songstress, for a commercial and release. Silly drum machines and uninspired, dull perhaps even synthesized guitar work. Totally a corporate watering down of an amazing, quintessential, and until now lesser-known wonder of popular music.
See, I'm not going where you think I'm going with this. I think Celine Dion is a hell of a singer. I think given the right producers and arrangers she's great. She should record entire albums of Jim Steinman. However, this was so obviously a thoughtless work for hire that it show nothing of her ability to make a song tell a story or go anywhere - the build of this song, that's the important thing. I won't go off on a musical tangent here too much, I'll just say do yourself a favor now, regardless of your opinion of the new version, find an mp3 or CD of Roy Orbision's or Cyndi Lauper's tracks of this number. Celine's version is okay, I think, but only on strength of material and the fact Celine has a really powerful sound and is faithful to the source vocally. On the other hand, another of my favorite songs - with even stronger source material - was recently covered by the Dixie Chicks. "Landslide" is in my mind an AMAZING song and I would've thought very, very hard to ruin. The passionless, corporate, rote version regurgitated by the Dixie Chicks had me believing that was the reason people were bulldozing and burning their CDs until someone told me the real reason. I still choose to believe it's musical karma. This song, too, has been well-covered - check out Tori Amos' live cover, easily available on mp3 shares. Another bad cover of a somewhat obscure song? Dire Strait's "Romeo and Juliet" covered by a group that is usually much better than this, the Indigo Girls. A quiet, pensive little unique piece of Mark Knopfler's brilliant guitar band music becomes a thoughtless mess of chordstrumming every-person-in-college-with-a-guitar dreck. These covers would be fine and dandy in their own worlds if it wasn't for the fact that, as was the case with the Indigo Girls version of "Romeo and Juliet", the awful cover becomes better knwn than the honest-to-god original song in some circles.
Sometimes it doesn't work, though, and people don't buy it, because the original is just too beloved. Anybody else hear that AWFUL cover of the classic Peter Gabriel "In Your Eyes" that came out a year or two ago? That went away fast. That was perhaps the second most awful popularly-released cover of a great song I've ever heard, next to "Landslide" as listed above.
Every musician has, I imagine, songs or artists they love and want to pay homage to through their music. However, when you reach a certain level of celebrity and you cover a lesser-known song like that, you're really looking at the original artist and co-opting their cool. Who'll question it? Not the bulk of music buyers, whose musical memory stretches back only probably half their lives, you know, to when they were seven, eight, or nine. Enough of this, next topic...


WAR AND THE IDIOCY OF ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE
All these things are possible for a person to simultaneously believe, without contradicition:
1) To be against war. I mean, really, who is FOR it?
2) That we should be happy that the war is going well and we're doing what we're doing.
3) That Saddam Hussein should have indeed been removed from power
4) That going to war in the first place, at this point, as we did, with the information and reasoning we the U.S. public were given, was wrong.
However, one thing I learn from watching more and more debate about the war, hearing people from both sides talk more about it than they should, is this:
Everyone on both sides of this issue, who speaks out publicly about it, is an idiot. Idiocy everywhere.
People on the no war side saddened, its so tragic, "this war is affecting us all," well, YEAH, it's a frickin' WAR, they DO that.
People on the pro war side screaming about how they were right all along and how dare anybody express dissent when our troops are over there fighting for our lives.
And, of course, people on both sides spending a hell of a lot of time bashing anyone who dares to be on the other side.
You know what? I have YET to hear ANYONE speak in opinion about this war with an informed, unbiased view. I listened to an awful lot of talk radio on the road, with views from both sides, and all the callers on either side of the issue were either un- or misinformed to the point of embarrassing ignorance. Of course, it's talk radio, so what do you expect, but seriously - this is bothersome. There is no grey area to most of these people. And people get so ANGRY and - on the liberal side, condescending; on the ocnservative side, self-righteous. See, I consider myself a liberal, but lately I just want to step away from all of it. No one seems to see both sides of this picture. Many people I talk to about it do, just no one who speaks in any public forum I've heard.
So, from now on, whenever anyone asks how I feel about the war, what will I say?
Shut up, that's how I feel. Just shut up.

Coming next post, because now I'm too tired:
MEMORY or WHY OLD PEOPLE SIT ON PORCHES

I've been riding a wave of pleasant (if that's possible) nostalgic melancholy since my getting to Richmond.

Now, keep in mind that simply coming back to Richmond - in 2001 - was probably a mistake. A career and personal misstep in a big way. Wasn't good for the relationship, was several giant steps backward in the job market (though that was acknowledged at the time), and generally wound up messing things up in a big way.

However, I had some great times here. Those are the memories that last, that gleam when the light of memory is on them. I'm a very sentimental person, especially when it comes to trivial things. I can't intentionally throw away any card Rachel has ever given me. Packing up the apartment here, I'm having to get rid of a lot of stuff - mainly stuff we accumulated in Richmond, some older stuff. I'll run across some little trinket that will trigger a memory of some trivial event that involved it, or the acquiring of it. Thing is, tht makes packing take SO MUCH LONGER than it should be. I should be done, but I have moments of "I want to enjoy my couch. It's my couch and I'll miss it." or "Wow. I haven't looked at this since _____ gave it to me, I should take a look."

Memory keys I've run across, and things I'll miss... many of which are long gone regardless...
I'm not leaving yet, but at this moment it's important to me to let those of you involved know that you meant/mean a lot to me, and I'll always smile remembering these times.

Putting up my original show, Martin & Olive, and working with the people who gave so much.
Visiting Ross in his shop every Wednesday.
Eating Mongolian barbeque at the Greywolf Grill with well, pretty everyone I knew here.
Driving around to shop and see movies on "geek-out" days with Matt and/or Chris.
Even though there are many negatives wrapped up in the circumstance, touring in Hamlet with a great group of people, doing damn good work most of the time.
My Christopher Walken-themed birthday party. You guys are the BEST.
"The Tempest" - the dressing room and "we're goin' to VIET-NAM! woohoo!"... that still kills me. That and Foster's interpretation of my "Patrick Stewart's one-man Back To The Future" idea.
Hawaiian shirt / driving hat / carry your broadsword day on the "Rumplestiltskin" tour.
Aerobie.
John Waldron, Jonathan Manning, Matt Jones, Matt Woods. Chris Booth. Stephen Seals. Larry Tobias.
Ross Aitken. James Denvil. Scott Wichmann. Katie Roecker. Robbie Winston. Drew Etheridge.
That's just the beginning of a list of great friends I met and worked with while around here, and would love to work with again.

Regardless of the bad things that may've ever come down at any point, I smile when I remember how much good there was.

I won't get into itemizing anything negrantive, because it's not worth my time.

Okay, I've been in Richmond for about four days ... anyone who reads this in the Richmond area I haven't already been in touch with please get in touch with me. I'm terribly, terribly bored with packing and etcetera... finishing up old apartment nonsense and all that rot.

Yawn.

Does it occur to anyone else that once we've deposed our Generalissimo... er, elected a new president, that our next president will have a lot of gift baskets to send?

We all think Bush is a fool, regardless of our stance on war. That's a warm fuzzy idea that all Americans can drink cocoa behind. So let's make sure this DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN.
Repeat after me, everyone under 40 in America:
-I will never again
-Think my vote doesn't matter
-I will always be sure to vote
-I will be sure to know what the hell is going on
-And will make educated choices about the issues dear to me
-I will kick the asses
-Of my friends who didn't vote
-In ANY election
-And complain about the result.
-I will participate in America
-So we still have one when we're old

Here's a fun April Fool's link.

And another, an oldie but a goodie.

Finally, Have you gotten your free cupholder yet? It's pretty cool, worth a lot, and yet free!