I'd say we had a good time filming the first half of All's Well That Ends Well, but this was probably the most problematic time of filming we've ever had. One person nobody knew except for one person signed up for a part and then never showed, but we managed to cover all the roles, as we had a last minute person join in, an and we had an understudy, and I volunteered to do all the Second Lord lines since they didn't overlap with my being Diana. I was wearing my short brown bob wig for the day, which can pass for a dude-ish hairdo if I have to. I put on a velvet hat and grabbed my black coat (which I am using as a "shawl" for Dropping Bombs, as we are supposed to both be wearing the same shawl at the end....good luck with that on Zoom, but oh well) and draped it over myself, which was fairly well hot, but I could yank it off to show my Diana costume, or at least that was the plan.

However, some things went wrong for a few reasons: (a) Claire forgot to turn on the recording and we realized that after doing Act 1, so we had to start it all over again, (b) which meant we didn't have time to do act 3 as intended because Lindsay had a thing going on later, so I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to do Diana today. And then (c) Zoom started to misbehave and at one point it kicked me out and I thought it had crashed for everyone. I tried logging back in, was stuck in the waiting room, assumed Claire was rebooting...and it turned out that no, everyone else was fine and I had my mike on and blabbed something in mid-scene. It's like I wandered in drunk :P I also missed a few lines that I had in act 1, scene 2, but hell, it's not like Second Lord does much until later in the play with the Parolles plot. The same thing happened to Rich later, but at least it didn't happen when he was in a scene and he didn't miss anything.

Quotes from behind the scenes and in the chat:

* "King, Duke, what's the difference, we all follow him because we have money." --me on lording
* 'I can widow."
"Impressive, having never been married, but I can appreciate your flexibility in this matter." -Carol and Claire as Carol volunteered to do double part duty.
* We debated how the heck to say "Rossillon" and "Parolles." Eventually I just asked Woflman, who was playing him, what he wanted us to go for. As in, "Hey, person playing the character, how do you want us to say it?" Garrett's suggestion: "Any time it comes up in a speech, I'm just going to say hey, you."
* "Parolles is so clearly That Friend Your Wife Really Hates." -me (Claire was all HA!).
* Rich, playing the clown, broke out his ukulele for the songs. The ladies swayed in line to it. Later, Rich said, "What silly instruments do I have around the house...."
* Rich stuck something to his forehead.
Me: "It's a guitar pick with Vincent Van Gogh's face on it?"
Rich: "Yes, because why not."

We usually take some kind of bathroom-y break in between acts, which led to the following conversation that I thankfully wrote down at the time:
* "This play is half dick jokes." -Colin
* "Half dick jokes: the William Shakespeare story." -Claire
* "People get all wrapped up in how Romeo and Juliet is so romantic, but most of it is terrible filthy jokes." -Claire
* (Wolfman returns from break:) "I came in from across the room and all I hear is dick jokes."
* "Shakespeare: 50% dick jokes." -Claire

This led into Claire saying that she was having a dream that we should do a clip show of the silly stuff we do while on Gallery View that is normally edited out of the show. To which I was all, "I totally agree," and then Claire was all "but then Rich would have to watch through all of that again," and I volunteered to do that. Then I said something like, "it's a shame we didn't record that," at which point Claire noticed that she hadn't recorded ANYTHING.... and during our next break, I made sure to recount this conversation again so we had it filmed for posterity. "And now I have recapped all the dick jokes for future reference."

Follow-up remarks to that:
* "Dick Jokes, The Musical and oh shit, we didn't record." -Wolfman
* "We are now recording ALL dick jokes and musical theater moments." -Claire
* Jessica was happy to redo act 1: "I am so excited to see it again. I didn't realize all the dick jokes...."
* Of course I provided website translation for all of the dick and prostitute translations.
* Titus Andronicus was brought up.
* Lindsay: "Penis. Penis penis penis."
* After the king says something about "King Pippen," I was all, "King Pippen, I assume, is another penis joke?"
* Me on the clown's lines: "Must be nice to have a job where you just make dirty jokes to your boss ALL DAY."
* Per Coleman's and my "Kicky-wicky? What the hell is THAT?!" previous conversation (this led to snickers and glances between the two of us during the show, she nearly fell out of her chair at one point), I made sure to share that "kicky-wicky = hooker, y'all."
* Jessica marveled at "HIS MANLY MARROW?!?"

Relatively off-topic, I mentioned that I now own four witch hats because I found two of them this year under random non-Halloween circumstances and thus could play all the witches of Macbeth at once., and I presume it's some kind of sign that I found them when I did.
"Haberdashery augury. that was also not on my apocalypse bingo squares." -Claire.

(Yeah, seriously, I needed to look up "apocalypse bingo," because we should all be playing that, right?)

Then there was some snark about the king's unfortunate medical condition, a fistula (note that the litcharts site I linked to referred to it as an ulcer). DON'T LOOK IT UP. Even in the show someone says, "I would it not be notorious, indeed." It's right up there with "pilonidal cyst" on things not to look up.

This is Helena's speech about how she's going to offer to cure the king with (basically magic?) medicine or other, it goes like this:

"And hearing your high majesty is touch’d
With that malignant cause, wherein the honour
Of my dear father’s gift stands chief in power,
I come to tender it, and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness."

Me in the chat: "That last bit was fancy talk for "to cure the king's anus."
Jessica in chat: "Poor King...no doctor for his fistulas for 6 months... :("
Me: "Musta REALLY hurt."

And finally, some chat snark on Bertram, His Noble Turdiness:

From HELENA, a Gentlewoman to Everyone: 01:08 PM
Why, oh why, do I love such a douche?!?!
From COUNTESS OF ROSSILLON to Everyone: 01:12 PM
Eh, you fell for him when you were kids and never grew out of it. And, well, think of the other dudes who hang out at the Countess's palace . . .
From HELENA, a Gentlewoman to Everyone: 01:13 PM
I think I'd rather have Parolles. He doesn't seem to hate me.

I did not see today's Femme Fatale (oh well, sigh) since we had rehearsal during that time. We had a two hour block that we could all do, so today was Tech Week, more or less. I showed up in costume and Mike sent us all the backgrounds to download and try out. After much pain in the arse struggle with the lighting setup in my bedroom and the background wiggling about, I finally ended up getting it to work perfectly by literally positioning the light ON TOP OF, touching, my laptop. FINALLY. So it looked great.

We discussed the logistics of things: all decided to use a background of being on a cruise ship in Alaska for the first scene and to change backgrounds to a sunset during a brief blackout between scenes. We tried out using shawls, I tried out using Kleenex, posing and when to turn off my camera at the end, etc. We ran through it, it went great, so I tried recording it on the second round...and then Zoom booted me out partway through the second scene. DAMMIT. It did save the recording at least, so I just had us redo the second scene and well, it's recorded either way, even if it's not as nice as I intended, plus I flubbed one line and my computer beeped at the wrong time, grrrr. But at least I've got it somehow and that's what I was going for. Yay.

Rehearsal next week will be just Wednesday and Thursday. Presumably we're doing well enough to not need to freak out and cram anything, and Beth's really happy with how we're running the gamut of emotions and all that. So, yay.

After all the acting was done, it was time for my two week "drive the car so it doesn't die" excursion. It wasn't too dirty so I didn't need to wash it. I may have to get gas in the next month or two though. I was relieved to see that the streets were just the same as I saw two weeks ago, i.e. very few people on the streets (even less than last time, I think), a few bikers (though I saw a pack of SEVEN biking around and kinda freaked), same amount of cars. No masks. I saw one pairing of women doing a social distance walk. About the only things that have changed was I saw one BLM sign on the corner of my complex, they are offering "virtual visits" at my complex (WELL FINALLY), and the bus had signs on it saying FACE COVERINGS REQUIRED.

Signs I saw: one graffiti saying "One Love" and a sign that said "We Heart You Class of 2020."

I also paid bills: I'm still stumped that I am pretty dang sure I paid the phone bill last month and yet they seemed to be charging me double for it? But I can't do math for shit and especially not now, so I give up. At least most of the credit card is paid off. One of the bills was....$111. Sheesh.

I wasn't staggering around like a dumb drunk while outside this time, which is good, though I seemed to have developed a bit of a random limp at times when I haven't been walking much (which I hadn't done all day, and I "walked it off" around the apartment when I got home). However, the one notable thing was that my brain decided it wanted to try to convince me that everything was fine, and I had brief moments of wanting to feel like the world was normal again, like I could enjoy the outside. But if I relaxed and forgot, I'd get myself in trouble, and I can't do that. The only place I can relax and forget is in the great indoors where I don't have to be paranoid. And I can do acting, because that kept me happily distracted all day from things.

As for the evening, I spent it finishing off watching Batwoman because I have managed to clear out ALL of YouTube, somehow. Go figure.

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