Umm... yeah.

When I picked which play series I would subscribe to, I knew how things would schedule out. I just didn't anticipate the side effects. The Sunday afternoon series was the one that would be the most out of the way of anything else I do. However, this means on the days I go watch a play, I do two hours of improv first. This might not be the best thing to do before going to watch other people acting on a stage. Either that, or I'm consistently watching plays that would be much more fun do than to watch. Blackbird by David Harrower has not proved to be an exception.

Let's start with the trivial first: The whole thing takes place in a break room. Apparently, in the universe this production takes place in, break rooms do not have tables. People apparently do not need them to eat lunch. Or any more than two chairs. Part of this is that this production is not in a particularly large space. They wouldn't have been pull off the physicality they'd wanted to had there been a table and any more than two chairs. Like I said, this is trivial.

I found myself far more impressed by the virtuoso performances by the two actors and the intricately crafted text than taken in by the actual story. Marianna Bassman and Bates Wilder certainly pull off two magnificent performances. The text, full of half sentences and inchoate expressions, is tough to execute, and they do it marvelously. Harrower asks the actors to replicate the stammering, stuttering speech of two people unused to expressing full bore how they feel and both actors come through with stunning realism.

I didn't get any more than intellectually involved with the play itself though. Yes, it's a hell of a piece of writing. However, I found myself thinking, "Yes, it has to go this way or he loses audience sympathy", or "Yes, that's definitely the more interesting choice" a lot. Unfortunately, for the first 10 minutes or so, I was also thinking, "Why doesn't he leave if he wants to leave so badly?"

(Also, as I learned during the audience talkback, the audience was not able to accept what I think is the most interesting choice about the characters on stage. I know I'm being vague. However, I think the play derives some of its power by unleashing a critical piece of information about 10 minutes in. I'm sure reviews spoil it all the time, but I figure if I don't have to, I won't.)

In a sign of how engaged (or not engaged) I was with the play, when the actors dumped the contents of the garbage can onto the stage, my thought at the moment (honest!) was that if this were a genre story, the contents of the garbage can would inclue to us valuable information about the world. That is, by listing what they throw away, we would learn a lot about the culture, technology level, and values of the world of the story.

Anyway, I came away thinking that it would be an interesting challenge to prepare those roles. (It's hard to imagine I will ever see them performed better than I have here. Cheers to the cast and the director, David Gammons.) Except for one crucial moment at the end though, nothing in the play transcended a "by the numbers", although exquisitely crafted, feel for me. The play seems to derive most of its power from the crucial bit of information.

I might have had a different opinion if I hadn't spent two hours beforehand identifying critical elements of character relationships and playing the games we find within scenes. This is to wonder if two hours of acting exercises is really a good idea before going to the theater as an audience member.

Speaking of this, I have just checked and there is a Harold III class. Since I enjoyed Harold I and Harold II, I will almost surely take Harold III. Likewise, they're auditioning for new Harold team members. The auditions are open only to people with previous Harold experience or training. What you do at the audition, of course, is perform a Harold. They've only allocated enough time for about 4 Harolds. I don't think they're expecting many people to audition. Scarily, I qualify. The audition will be a good experience to have under my belt. Should the bizarre and highly improbable happen, I'm prepared to join a Harold team.

(Also, if I turn out to go to the West Coast for 6 weeks this summer, I won't be able to take an improv class during the summer quarter. So, I'd like to get Harold III out of the way. I seriously doubt there will be a Harold IV. I think by that point the only way you're going to assimilate more technique and do better Harolds is to get on a Harold team and perform lots of them.)

As a side note, I've been trying to take their Musical Improv class for about as long as I've been taking improv classes. I've always had one time conflict or another. This upcoming quarter is no exception. *sigh*

I'm always amazed how well run Boskone is. This isn't to say that they nail everything perfect on the first try. They'd left a map out of the program. However, after they realized no one knew where to go, maps magically popped up all over the place. Once they realized that people had problems hearing in the larger rooms, they managed to get a couple of them miked for the rest of the con. It's not a surprise that the gripe session was mostly positive.

(I never had any problems hearing despite the lack of amplification. This makes me not credible to relate this gripe session incident. This large, solid guy with thick white hair was extremely insistent that everyone be miked in every room at all times, otherwise it was impossible to hear anything. What I found interesting is that he spoke with a loud, flat, steamroller like delivery. The way he spoke, not only would he have been heard in even the largest room, but it would have been hard to get in a word edgewise. However, if the way he spoke is his standard for what it means to be audible, no wonder he wants everyone miked.

I'm not as sympathetic as I should be. My hearing is relatively decent. I've had years of training in vocal projection. And, honestly, I'd rather everyone stay quiet so that we can hear rather than have the panelists drown everyone else out. Now, I know it's not nearly that simple. For one, simply telling someone with normal hearing that they ought to be able to hear just fine is simply not helpful. Being on a panel does not automatically confer you with a loud voice or the ability to project. The stamina to maintain a healthy, supported, projected sound for an entire con is hard to come by. Heaven help you if you, like I was during this con, are sick.

That's a different argument than declaring in loud, flat, steamroller tones that there must be amplification or else all will be lost. And frankly, most of the rooms were so small, that only the quietest of voices or those who are genuinely hard of hearing would have needed help.

That said, I suspect, next year, they will amplify the three largest rooms. I think that's the right thing to do, if they tune the rooms properly. Louder is not clearer. People say "louder", or "I can't hear you." Many times, what would be more helpful to say is "clearer", or "I can't understand you.")

I didn't gripe at the gripe session. I usually attend just to see what everyone else is complaining about. In any case, my only real problem was having to choose between panels. In retrospect, I suppose the only one I really regret not going to is the one on gays, lesbians and bisexuals in SF. However, it struck me that either the panel would be so narrow that it couldn't fill an hour, or so overly broad that the entire convention wouldn't have been enough time to talk about it at an interesting level. Based on the feedback at the gripe session, it was likely the latter. Hopefully, this will encourage a series of more specific panels from the glbt perspective.

My throat was kind of scratchy on Wednesday. Going to work on Thursday turned out to be a really bad idea. I ended up leaving work early and sleeping most of the day. Most of the weekend, I oscillated between "I'm not sick. I feel absolutely fine" and "I really ought to be asleep because interesting things are happening my body temperature." This left me in a very weird (yes, even for me) mood this weekend. I'll just apologize now to everyone I've alienated. I don't do the social thing intuitively. However, I'm much better at it when I'm not constantly on the verge of sleep.

[It occurs to me now that had Boskone been somewhere else, I would have had a hotel room. This would have made the constantly wanting to go to sleep thing much less problematic than it was. Like I said, one of these days, I need to go a con that's not a reasonable commute from home. Ideally though, I'd be healthy for it. If I don't get into Clarion, I'm seriously thinking about 4th Street. However, I'd rather get into Clarion. Theoretically, I could do both. Practically, I don't get that much time off in one year.]

BTW, the revelation for today is "I can breathe!" (This is good because 2 hours of improv would have been horrific if I couldn't.) I figure I've gotten past the worst of whatever it is I got.

Speaking of improv, part of Boskone's Saturday night show was this improv thing they did. I can understand why they went there. Putting together the Saturday night show is a huge effort for which there isn't enough time. Then you have to put it in a stage that really was not intended for any sort of play. What I've learned over the past 1.5 years though is that good improv is really hard. Everyone else was laughing and I'm glad they were enjoying themselves. However, I spent a lot of time thinking, "Why do the characters care enough to have this conversation?", "What's different about this night from all the other nights?", "Why aren't they adding specific, concrete, detailed information into the scene?"

[Having said that, I should add that Jen Pelland came in to her improv with a developed character and managed to draw her scene partner into a scene that actually went somewhere. Her scenes worked the best for me. It's not that everyone else did a bad job. It's that I sat there imagining what could have been happening on that stage, and that was so much better. It would have been cool if they'd actually been improvising a piece of high fantasy. However, this might be a case of "this cherry pie is an awful meatloaf."]

The Jo Walton play they also did that night was full of beautiful language. Given that it was semi-staged, it would have been better if they were off-book. However, given all that language, there was no way they had the time and energy to devote to memorizing all of that Shakespearean style text. Likewise, with more rehearsal time, they might have been able to, for example, answer the question, "Why are these two people talking to each other?" I suspect, though, that they had all the rehearsal time that they could eek out. I think it went about as well as anyone could have hoped for it to go off. Certainly, if I had been responsible for this, I would have been thrilled at how the performance had gone.

[Of course, my impression might have been different if I weren't trying so hard to stay awake. I'm pretty sure I went off to another planet during a few of the monologue. None of that has anything to do with Jo Walton or the able cast doing the best they could. I mean, they didn't infect me with disease... or did they?]

Anyway, Boskone was as fun as possible under the circumstance. If I get into Clarion [West], this does it for me in terms of con going until next year. (No, Clarion [West] is not a 6 week long con. Down that path lies madness.) If I don't get into Clarion [West], I'm thinking 4th Street, and ReaderCon. It's probably too late to think about WorldCon. As I've said before though, I'd rather get into Clarion [West].

The Clarion application FAQ suggests that while waiting for a verdict, you think positive thoughts and read works written by the Clarion instructors. That makes a lot of sense. Knowing the styles of those who crit my work has helped me put their crits in perspective. It's a great way to work out where they're coming from. Since I'm applying to both Clarion and Clarion West, I, in theory, have my work cut out for me. However, I'm skipping anyone whose work I already know. (e.g., part of me wants to plow through the authors I haven't read yet as quickly as possible so that I can get back to reading Elizabeth Bear.) Also, I'm pretty sure I've read a book David Hartwell has edited.

Anyway, so far I've finished three. I'm wondering what it is about the business that lead to all of these multi-volume stories. (This is especially frustrating since I can't get back to any of them until I finish off my Box Of Novels By Clarion [West] Instructors.)

Tithe by Holly Black. Beautifully written. I love her use of language. The "helps with the exposition" bits about the Seelie and Unseelie Courts were a bit slow for me. However, if you don't already know what they are, you'd be horribly lost, and those bits were well motivated. I probably would have liked this book so much more if I were in the book's target audience. As engagingly written and fast paced as it is, I probably will not read the other books in the series. I'm glad I gave Tithe to my nieces, but it's not for me.

One thing that I'm come to appreciate more and more is that while it's the first book of a series, the book definitely has An Ending. Our heroine has resolved her problem and we have reached a point of stability, even if we know that it's only temporary.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. (Yes, I haven't read him until now. Embarrassing, I know...) If I ever write anything that even approaches the perfection that is "Falling into History", the novella at the center of the novel, I will be pleased beyond anything I can imagine. Not every section of Red Mars was as perfect as "Falling into History". That's about the most damnable thing I can say about it. Considering that its the first book of a trilogy, he even manages an ending of sorts. At some point, I may go back to the Mars series. For now, I have a bunch of Clarion instructors to go.

A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park. I really like this book. On the surface, it's an "adolescent girl goes to fantasy world where she's a princess" story. However, he's really thought out issues that sometimes gets hand waved aside. I love the manner of presentation, with the multiple points of view and the story hopscotching around. This is something you can really sink your teeth into. The world and its problems are so deep and detailed, I can understand why it takes four books to get through.

The pace is a little slow for my tastes though. That's very much me and not him. I really want something to pop in every paragraph, and very few novels are written like that. (I suspect it's one of the reasons why I'll read anything Elizabeth Bear writes.) Also, the book doesn't so much end as much as it stops. The last chapter is tense, exciting and thrilling. It's everything I've been waiting the entire book for. (And the book does a good job of sustaining my interesting until I hit this point.) However, the pay off, unsurprisingly, is a Complication that I won't see how he resolves about until I finish the Box Of Books By Clarion [West] Instructors. (Hopefully, I'll still remember all of the plot threads he's left hanging so I won't have to read this book again to read the next one. But I'm wondering if I have the stamina to get through all four books.)

Now, I'm onto Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler. I'm pretty sure this it isn't part of a series. (Technically, I can skip her. However, I don't think having read only one short story really counts. Also, it'll be the first book I've read in months that's not genre. Right now, I'm so ready for Not Genre. This is to say, if 19th Century San Francisco actually turns out to be a virtual reality simulation in the 37th Century, I so don't want to know. Let me be surprised. Likewise, if this is really the first volume of a 47 book series, I so don't want to know. Really. Let me be surprised.)

BTW, anyone who's keeping track will notice that I've been tilted towards Clarion instructors, as opposed to Clarion West instructors, so far. Part of that was accidental. Part of that is, until now, I hadn't read anything by any of this year's Clarion instructors. I've read works by half of this year's Clarion West instructors. i.e., I've finally evened things out.

So far, it's been a fascinating experience. Even though I still have a backlog of books to get through, I'm thinking about reading books by the current year's Clarion [West] instructors every year. Yes, this unavoidably biasses me towards living writers. (A big chunk of my backlog are from writers who, unfortunately, will not be writing any more books.) But it also forces me to push some books up to the top of the pile. Holly Black was already in my backlog. Kim Stanley Robinson and Paul Park were authors that I wanted to get to Some Day. However, I'm glad that I read them now.

Found a better way of transcoding from PAL to NTSC. (Yes, I realize that this is the 21st Century and if I just want to watch the video, I don't need to do that. We have these things called computers now. However... oh, long story and it's really not that interesting.) Better quality conversion. Hopefully, the markers I set in the PAL source will transfer into the NTSC result. (I'm in the middle of a test conversion.)

However, the time estimate I'm getting right now is that a minute of video will take about an hour to convert. I have just under 3 hours of video. That's *gulp* about 7.5 days...

Reference previous entry about how I need a beefier computer if I ever do this again. Well, I don't think I'm doing this again, but of course, that's what I thought last time. I mean, I have the tool chain in place and half the time, I click a button and it does stuff, for days, without me.

(Actually, I have archival video on VHS tapes that I ought to convert into the archival medium of the moment. However, they are all already in NTSC. Unfortunately, noise reduction is computationally intensive, and I really could use better software... *sigh*)

I sent my Clarion and Clarion West applications out today. Nothing more to do on that front besides wait. Actually, they suggest that you think positively and read the instructors' works. If I skip the instructors I already have read and loved, this is doable by June. They're all people whose work I should know so I'm going to read all of them whether I get into a workshop or not. (Right now, I'm in the midst of Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania. However, a F&SF just showed up so I want to finish that up first.)

On the off chance that someone I don't know actually stumbles by this blog:

Viable Paradise opened for applications yesterday. It's a one week writing workshop held every fall on Martha's Vineyard. It's a terrific, albeit highly concentrated, experience. You get Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Steven Gould, James Macdonald, Laura Mixon, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and John Scalzi all at once. I learned a lot from it the year I went. Actually, I'm still learning from it even though I went over two years ago now. Absolutely worth it.

[Ok, the subject line would be less pretentious if I'd sold anything. Take it ironically.]

Due to a combination a slight change in my employer's vacation policy, and an accounting error that needs to rectified, I found my myself on vacation from December 19th to January 2nd. (i.e., I go back to work on the 5th.) Basically, my employer thoughtfully deducted a few days from my vacation time before I'd actually taken them. (Note: real life is actually a bit more complicated than this. They actually had good reason to think that they should deduct those days. There was a slight mix up in the virtual paperwork.) In any case, I'm adding them to the days I get off at the end of December anyway. The net effect is that I haven't had this much time off all at once since college.

Now, this isn't exactly a hardship. This is 2+ weeks paid time off, plus I still have a job. The last time I had this much paid time off, it was because I was being laid off. Go job!

I'd worked out how to appease the gods of HR. Everything should be happy, and everything is, mostly. As soon as I make things right with HR, I discover that I had a task I was supposed to finish by last Friday. This, of course, now meant by last Thursday. After much, suddenly frantic typing, I may have done this. The last thing I did at work on Thursday was submit by changes for regression and commit to the database. I haven't actually checked to see if they got in. I figure I can do this next year.

Simultaneous with this is my choir's Christmas concerts. They were Saturday and Sunday. Why, yes, we had major snow storms on Friday and Sunday. These are the concerts that actually make money. Barring major catastrophe, they were going on. However, we did cancel rehearsal on Friday. This was probably a good thing. I had Friday night and Saturday to shovel snow. However, I don't think things were actually worse on Sunday when we had to go in.

We ended up having an extended rehearsal Saturday before the concert, instead. Did I mention that the soprano soloist hadn't had a chance to work with the orchestra yet? How about that due to crossed wires, she didn't know that we had an earlier call to compensate for the missed rehearsal?

Fortunately, our choir, for whatever reason, has incredibly early calls. We normally show up 1.5 hours before the concert. For Saturday, we showed up 3 hours ahead. We were essentially done and out of the way by the time the soprano soloist showed up. She got along fabulously with the orchestra and totally rocked. I find this devastatingly impressive given that the total rehearsal time she had with the orchestra could be measured in minutes.

So far so good. Where I live, the snow wasn't even that bad on Friday. I spent much of the day waiting for it to snow so that I could clear the drive way. It didn't really get heavy until it started getting dark. My upstairs neighbor and I cleared out the driveway Friday night, then again Saturday morning. We could both drive somewhere if we needed to. (I didn't need to since everywhere I needed to go so far was T accessible. I made a point of running my errands Thursday night after work.)

This takes us to Sunday. Since this was an afternoon concert, it, of course, starts snowing right away. Those that drove later told me that visibility was awful and the roads were really slippery. I walked to the T stop from my house. This is normally a 10 minute work. That no one had plowed the parking lot I cut across slowed me, but no big deal. The red line was fine. The guy sitting next to me was using a sleek, thin e-reader, so I figured it wasn't a Kindle. It would have been blatantly out of character for me to have just asked him. I think it was a Sony though. Either way, as I was reading Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, I could see his e-reader screen flashing out of the corner of my eye. Note to self: using an e-reader may slowly drive me mad. Consider waiting for e-ink technology to develop a faster refresh rate.

To get to the concert, I need to transfer from the red line to the green line. There are actually 4 different green lines: B, C, D, E. I needed B. I run into several other choir members. One of them has been waiting twenty minutes for a B train. Not good. As I wait, several Cs and Es pass me. Eventually, I see a B going in the other direction. It has to hit the end of the line, turn around and come our way. That's the way things work. And, eventually, one does. (Not sure if it's that one.) I make the call just in time.

The concert itself was surprisingly anti-climactic. Everything more or less happens as it's supposed to. Ok, we were desperately understaffed because not everyone could make it in due to the weather. There was some last minute rearranging of where we stand. This had the nice side effect of moving me from where I couldn't see the choir director to where I could. We ended up starting the concert a little late because we were getting waves of audience timed precisely with every T train that passed by. Soprano soloist was lovely again. The orchestra was superb. I never know how the choir does. I'd decided to shift to singing the tenor line, so I spent much of the concert concentrating on vocal technique. (I can get away with a lot when I'm singing bass because I skip the notes that fall below my voice and everything else is below my passaggio. Obviously, this is not the case with the tenor. One of the reasons I moved to tenor is so that I pay more attention in choir. Now, I'm considering going back to taking voice lessons.)

After the concert, I go back out into the wind and snow to wait for the T to take me home. And I wait, and wait, and wait. Finally, a train comes going the other direction. The contact where it draws electricity from the overhead power lines arcs, literally lighting up the sky with each spark. No good. As we see that light recede down the line, another set of flashes come towards us. We get on, move about 50 feet, then stop. It can't get enough power to move all of us. After a few minutes, we evacuate the train. The lot of us stand back out in the cold and snow. By now, my feet are soaked and they burn in that way you know is really extremely cold, but they don't feel that way.

We discuss among ourselves what we should do. Some people run off for taxis. Others consider walking to the first underground stop. Since I have no idea of the local geography, I wait for the next train. It lets us on without paying a fare. We trudge underground. (We were stuck behind the train we had to evacuate for a while.)

The rest of the trip was uneventful. I spend my time on the red line reading A Princess of Roumania and figuring out what I needed to do. Basically, given all the now that had fallen between noon (when I had to leave for the concert) and when I got home (which turned out to be ~7pm), I seriously hoped that my upstairs neighbors had done some shoveling. i.e., all I needed to do was some clean up. Get rid of whatever the street plows had plowed into our driveway.

Last year was awful. One set of their elderly parents was around to take care of their new born son. They normally live in Wisconsin so that they know that you can't keep the snow from piling up too high, especially in the midst of a snow storm. They kept coming out to shovel and would not go back into the house when I told them I'd take care of it. There's no nice way getting them back into the house if they insist on stay out in the cold. (Also, I feel guilty about this, but they were really helpful. We have kind of a long driveway. It holds six cars uncomfortably. We've never actually done this though.)

Anyway, elderly parents are back in Wisconsin. Upstairs neighbors apparently decided they'd wait until the storm was over before doing any shoveling. Then, they apparently decided that it was too dark to shovel and would wait until the morning. The problem with this theory is that was it extremely cold last night and the snow was already re-freezing. As crunchy as the snow was last night, it would likely be ice by morning.

Seeing the driveway utterly unshoveled, and the end of the driveway packed with several feet hard snow plowed in by the street plows was disspiriting. However, it'd be worse in the morning. I got out of my wet shoes and socks, changed out of my tux into several thin layers, put on my hiking socks and my light hikers, put on my jacket then plugged myself into my iPod.

The dense pack of street plowed snow actually moved fairly quickly, just under 30 minutes. I know this because I was listening to a podcast of the story "The Crumbs of Midnight." Fun story. Not as clever as it should be. The reader decided to read the whole thing in a stage whisper. There was no volume I could set the iPod such that I could hear it clearly above the sounds of shoveling. I spent half an hour thinking, "Phonate! Phonate, damn you! Phonate!"

I'd long mentally divided our driveway into four sections. Where the snow goes is different for each section. I'd do one section, go inside and have a bit of dinner, then come back out for the next section. Repeat until I'd finished the driveway. The whole process was actually quite relaxing. I mean, it wouldn't have taken until 10:40pm if I'd just done it all the way through, but this was a much better time. (However, this also points out why you want to shovel through the storm. Shoveling is much easier if all you have to do is push the snow where you want to it go. If you actually have to pick it up, that's harder. If the snow is now the hard, dense, icy stuff rather than the soft, powdery fluffy stuff, that's harder yet.)

I'd roasted a chicken Thursday night figuring that between two snow storms and two choir concerts I wouldn't actually have time to cook. Plus, I got some ridiculously expensive premium ice cream, figuring that I'd deserve it at some point this weekend. I'm lactose intolerant. Yes, there are pills and I take them, especially if I'm eating ice cream. However, I don't have ice cream very often. This has the unfortunate side effect of turning it into some sort of rare, exotic treat. In any case, it's just not worth it to have cheap, over-aerated ice cream, so I don't. If I don't have it often, it might as well be the really good stuff. I'd never tried this brand before. Unfortunately, it's really good. Very creamy. Wonderful mouth feel. Not too sweet. Just enough nuts, caramel and sea salt to balance off the cream. (The sad part of lactose intolerant is that I like dairy products. I just can't have them too much.)

Dinner then was a no thought affair of cold roasted chicken, some bagels I'd bought on sale Thursday with the chicken, and some microwave nuked frozen vegetables. I ate them in stages through the night. I didn't let myself have the ice cream until I was done with the driveway. (I'm not a total idiot...)

I'm a little surprised how well the advanced planning paid off. I'd even remember to bring a protein bar with me to the concert. I ate it on the trip home so I wasn't starving for the first section of the driveway. (Otherwise, I'd last eaten around 10am.) If something goes horribly wrong in the next week or so, I won't be surprised. (Note: I don't actually want anything to go horrible wrong, thank you.)

At some point, I ran out of podcasts and I started listening to the complete works of Mozart. This is not an exaggeration. Amazon was offering the complete works of Mozart for $70 a few weeks ago. I now have most of them ripped into AAC and onto my iPod. (I still have to rip all of the operas.) I've been slowly working my way through listening to all of them. It's a good feeling to know, BTW, that while there is a high floor on quality, not everything Mozart wrote was a sublime, mind-blowing, transcendent experience. If he's allowed to write music that, while highly skilled, sounds like much of the rest of the Classical period, I figure I'm allowed to suck. Also, the complete works of Mozart times out to 170 CDs. Imagine if he'd lived past 35. Yet another case where the pathway to greatness goes through prolificacy.

Anyway, I still need to get the snow off my car. I'm going to do this now because I need dish detergent. (Annoyingly, I do not live within convenient walking distance of a supermarket.) I'd also promised to help the load out from our Saturday concert. (We still have some risers there.) They haven't told me when to show up yet. That doesn't involve my car though. The concert was metro accessible. Other than that, I plan to spend my vacation reading A Princess of Roumania finishing one story, revising several others, putting together my Clarion and Clarion West applications, and doing some video processing for a friend of mine.

On that last point, to do it right, I need either the full score or piano-vocal score to Cosi Fan Tutte. At first, I thought about buying a copy. It's a classic, and worth studying anyway. However, my second thought was "It's in the public domain, it must be out on the web somewhere." Sure enough, if you google 'cosi', 'fan', 'tutte', and 'score', you get a link to the full score served by the Indiana University library. How did we ever manage in the 20th century?

Anyway, the weekend was actually pretty unremarkable. However, it was filled with low-level obstacles that when resolved naturally led to other low-level obstacles. Had this been an actual story, the obstacles probably would have gotten higher and higher. They would have all reinforced some central point. However, I've long said that I wouldn't want to be a character in one of my stories.

(BTW, lest it sound like I'm dumping on my upstairs neighbors, I want to point out that they're really wonderful neighbors. I like them a lot. Also, at some point during the night, the porch and sidewalk were mysteriously shoveled out. I guess they did this while I was taking a break between sections.)

Saturday afternoon: [Note: Shrek is still in previews. This could all change by the time it opens.]
Saw Shrek the musical, now in previews at the Broadway theater. When they get around to telling the wonderful love story at the core of Shrek, it's terrific. The developing relationship between Shrek and Donkey even works. (When I watched the movie, I honestly coul not figure out why Shrek didn't just flatten Donkey and do the rest of the movie without him.) Fiona's "I Want" song is wonderful. The traveling duet (in counterpoint) where Shrek and Donkey bond is cute. The "squabble duet" where Shrek and Fiona fall in love is transparent, but it works. The act one finale is absolutely stunning. Coming up with a decent stopping point near the middle when the source material wasn't structured that way at all is tricky. This creative team absolutely nails it. The song heightens his relationship with both Fiona and Donkey. It totally raises the takes. Shrek's character deepens. The stage picture is stunning. It's exactly what the show needs at that point.

Unfortunately, you have to wade through the rest of the musical to find these gems. The show is a tad scatter shot. It comes off looking desperate.

The musical clearly wants to be a parody of some sort, but it's inarticulate as to what sort. i.e., there are all of these parodies of other musicals, but they're tossed in with no reason or rhyme and to no effect. Some of the music parodies specific song genres, but I have no idea why they matched a given genre to a given song. However, the love story is played straight. Shrek follows the path of the conventional leading man exactly. The musical gives off serious "fairy tale where things go wildly off kilter" vibes. However, the fairy tale doesn't ever really go off kilter.

Much of the material they came up with to pad it out to a full evening looks like padding. For all the expert singing and dancing, I'm left to wonder why the song, and the lengthy dance sequence is there. That they've expertly musicalized the love story really points out the extraneous material.

They can't decide whether they want to hew to a particular period, or if they want lots of modern references. Personally, I think most of the modern reference come off as cheap jokes. It lends to that feeling of desperation to get laughs at all costs.

They try so hard to appeal to all possible audiences niches that I don't know if they appeal to any audience. e.g., we get a scene where Christopher Sieber gets to show off his not unimpressive chest. Now this (not to mention most of the musical theater parodies) is obviously not aimed at the little kids. It's obviously aimed at the moms and gay uncles who bring the little kids. However, the little kid sitting next to me shouted "Ew!" at that point. Also, Christopher Sieber plays Lord Farquaad. We're not supposed to think of him as sexy. However, I'm straining for a reason why he gets to sing his big song in a (fake) hot tub.

[Incidentally, this brings up a pet peeve I have about the Shrek story. If the idea is that appearance doesn't matter and that one should judge someone by appearance, then why is it ok for the good guys to make fun of Lord Farquaad's appearance, but not for the bad guys to dislike Shrek due to his? To me, a far stronger choice would have been to make Lord Farquaad the very physical embodiment of a Prince Charming. The point would be that just because he looks like the archetypal fairy tale hero doesn't mean that he is one.]

They have a wonderful story. All they needed to do was tell it.
[BTW, if there is a cast album, I will definitely buy it. The songs, even when they may be the wrong songs, are generally terrific.]

Saturday Night: The Encores! concert of On the Town. I enjoyed it. The presentation was a bit weird in that they had a large "dance area" behind the orchestra and a small "acting area" in front of the orchestra. It was a little awkward when they needed to transition back and forth between the two areas. Otherwise, the singing was fine. Tony Yazbek was especially wonderful as Gabey.

Sunday Morning: My Harold class. Yay, I made it through a complete Harold. Not without mishap but it's the first time my class has gotten through the entire Harold structure.

Sunday Afternoon: The Seafarer at SpeakEasy Stage. It's a wonderful production. The cast and direction are top notch. Everything is solidly professional. The actors make the most of their meaty roles. It's hard to imagine how the production could be better.

However, how many plays about impossibly eloquent drunk Irish men talking about their awful lives are there? It didn't take very long to figure out which type each character was. All the beats I'd expected happened when I'd expected them. The ending was exactly what I'd expected to be. (Ok, I missed one twist in how we get there that I should have been.) The ending image was utterly predictable (albeit also right for the play). I found it all obvious.

This isn't to say that the play isn't well written. It is. Each beat is fully realized. The language is beautiful. The craftsmanship is at a really high level. I'm just a bit sad that it felt like I'd seen it before when I knew next to nothing about the play going in.

All through out the weekend: My quest to read something by each of the Clarion and Clarion West authors continues. I'd finished Holly Black's Tithe a little while back. I made a lot of progress on Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars this weekend. So far, it's holding my interest. I'm also learning about how one can structure a novel. (I'm starting to get why novelists say that you never learn how to write a novel. You only learn how to write your current novel.)

I have witnesses. The coach of my Level V improv class was all gob-smacked because I like rehearsal much more than performance. When he questioned why I was taking the Harold Level I workshop if I didn't like performance, I pointed out that it didn't have a graduation show. I wouldn't actually have to do a Harold in front of an audience.

By now, you should be able to see the punchline coming. My Harold Level I instructor thinks it's BS (his word, but not abbreviated) that there's no graduation show. He's also the guy who schedules Harold Night. So, he's scheduled us for December 12th.

I actually think we'll do fine. I'm in with a fine bunch of improvisers. It was just a little unexpected.

Having said that, I've noticed that whenever I unintentionally tempt fate like this, fate tends to follow through. When I was working at Sun Microsystems, my project was bi-coastal. i.e., it was split between two sites separated by three time zones. (This was a big deal at the time. Now, the sun literally never set on the project I'd been working on.) Early on in that project, I noticed the design of a unit was wacky and verifying that it worked correctly was going to be tricky, if not impossible. I pointed this out to appropriate supervisors. I didn't make a major issue out of it because the team on the other coast owned the unit. They were all highly competent engineers. They were now aware of the problems and, wait for it, I wouldn't actually ever have to verify the design because the other team owned it.

Fast forward a few years. The unit was now the long pole on the schedule. The powers that be decided the way pull up it schedule was to move responsibility over to this coast. They also decided that I needed more responsibility. Guess who ended up owning the verification effort? Exactly. (As it turns out, architecture team #2 didn't do the trick either. We needed architecture team #3, but we kept my verification team. At the end, we were actually the first unit completed. The chip it was a part of met a fate not nearly as gentle...)

I have to wonder if tempting fate works if I do it deliberately, if I can make it work to my advantage. e.g., sort of a "Please, Br'er Fox, whatever you do, don't throw me into the briar patch" thing. Would fate be so easily fooled?

[BTW, I may still take Harold Level II...]

On one hand, President Obama. Wow. Racism isn't dead, but the country just saw past the idiocy and fear to elect the best qualified candidate. I'm not so much jubilant as much as I'm just plain relieved. I'd made up my mind months ago. I've merely been waiting to see if we, as a country, could actually do the right thing. And... (like everyone else as said) yes, we did.

On the other hand, Florida passed an amendment limiting marriage to be one man and one woman, and barring civil unions. So much for the canard that they don't want to take away our rights, they merely want to keep the term "marriage" for themselves. That's pretty bizarre to begin with, but their propositions, more often than not, disallow civil unions in the process.

Arkansas passed an initiative stating only married couples can adopt or be a foster parent. This, BTW, is why straight people ought to support gay rights. When the narrow-minded and fearful disenfranchise homosexuals, sometimes, they engage in friendly fire.

Arizona passed a proposition limiting marriage to be one man and one woman. This proposition doesn't actually do anything else. The version with the full-on hate failed in 2006.

The sad fact is that anti-gay propositions have passed way more often than they fail. Arizona in 2006 is the only failure I know of. We've yet to figure out how to see past the idiocy and fear when it comes to anything which might challenge our heteronormative assumptions. (This, BTW, is the reason why I was thrilled to see Massachusetts's anti-same sex marriage proposition not reach the ballot.)

However, Connecticut's anti-same sex marriage in disguise ballot measure failed. Apparently, the bigots in Connecticut didn't trust the voters to do what voters in every other state that has had an anti-same sex marrage ballot measure has done. Instead, they wanted to sidestep all democratic institutions entirely. Instead of disenfranchising just homosexuals, they wanted to disenfranchise everyone. This is a bizarre tactic for a group of people who typically insist on mob rule. In any case, good on Connecticut for voting it down. (I mean, is it possible to be more insulted by a ballot question? How did this even get on there?)

I'm still hoping that voters in California will ultimately vote down Proposition 8. And that Proposition 8 would not only fail, but fail decisively enough that they don't try it again. Proposition 8 is the first time that passing an anti-same sex marriage ballot measure actually renders already existing marriages illegal. I had hoped that would make a decisive difference. Voters would be faced with tangibly take away rights from they know and make the sane, compassionate choice. Apparently not.

Not all the results are in yet. I will be thrilled if even just 50% plus one vote went against Proposition 8. California tends to be a cultural harbinger. In this case though, there have been so many anti-same sex marriage measures before California, I was hoping that it would lead the charge towards equality and freedom, not get swallowed up in the rip tide.

Our choir's November concert is a set of music for double choir. Not everything is 8 part (one piece has sections for 6 parts), but close enough. This is usually good for me because the Bass 1 part tends to be written for baritones. It solves my "too high to sing bass, too low to sing tenor" problem.

However, for this concert, even the Bass 1 part lies very low in my voice, too low to sing comfortably. I'm regularly skipping phrases or taking them up an octave. As it turns out, all the voice parts are on the low side. e.g., on most pieces, any self-respecting baritone ought to be able to sing either tenor line. So, I asked the music director if I could change voice parts. Since, the tenor 1 part isn't actually any higher than the tenor 2 part, I offered to sing tenor 1. Out of a choir of 100 voices, we have 5 tenor 1s. You can guess what his reaction was.

All that would be fine except the Bach we're doing, if I'm honest with myself, probably has legitimately tenor writing. (Again, both tenor lines have approximately the same tessitura so it's not a matter of tenor 1 vs. tenor 2.) Actually, it's not so bad. I have a relatively usable high Ab/A. Whether I can stay up there for any reasonable amount of time is an open question. However, we only get to the high Ab/A at the top of runs. If I'm focused, relaxed, and paying attention to technique, this isn't something I can't do.

Or at least that's the theory. Our last rehearsal started with a couple hours of the Bach. This included running the tenors through several pages of our most florid runs, several times in a row. The music isn't technically difficult. I was, more or less, sight-reading it. (I glanced at it once on Saturday before Monday's rehearsal.) Unfortunately, I find it hard to be focused, relaxed, and paying attention to technique while I'm sightreading. I got vocally tired very quickly. (The music isn't hard. It's just tiring, especially if you're not a Real Tenor(tm).)

However, I got through with no vocal distress. The choir director had already taceted the next few pages for everyone, letting the soloists take over. I have about a minute to rest afterwards. I suspect the Real Tenors(tm) are being punished almost as hard as me. Also, when I know the high notes are coming, I can prepare for them. I just need to be a more focused, more engaged singer in choir than I have been. It's definitely right for me to be more focused and engaged.
(Still, it would have been much easier, albeit lazier, to sing Bass 1 and end up not singing at least a quarter of the time because I don't have those low notes.)

That's one. The other one is Clarion West. I noticed that they're now open for applications.

They encourage early applications. And why wouldn't they? If I were them, the last thing I'd want is several hundred stories to come in all during the month of February. One way they encourage is that you get a break on tuition if you apply before February. Another way is to say that they sometimes accept people early.

I'll definitely apply before February. However, right now, I'm seriously overthinking which story I should send in. I'm torn between two. Their suggestion of something "powerful" and "original" is well meaning, but I'm finding it paralyzing instead. Also, I'm going to give myself a month or so to see if I can write something even better.

Plus, I still need to write the personal essay. What helps is that I actually know why I want to go to Clarion [West] and what I want to get out of it. Like singing Tenor 1 this season though, I'm convinced that it's the right thing to do, but I still wonder why I think this is a good thing to do? (I love all of my VP buds, but a one week workshop pretty much killed me. I still feel this need to apologize to everyone I talked to the Wednesday of VP since I have no particular memory of that day. 6 weeks? *gulp*)

This is all premature, of course. I haven't even applied yet.