Another "stay in bed till noon" (well, 11:30ish) day. I went to bed at 9:40 p.m. and slept for 10 hours and then just laid around. I eventually got up and still feel tired. I didn't get around to doing the dishes until around 4, that's the level of energy I had going on. I did, at least, rehearse "Stout Hearted Men (Ladies Version)" for Robin Hood tomorrow, so there's that. Good for me.

I heard from Shanna off and on today--she has 7 projects due within 48 hours. What the heck?!?! She has an...interesting...sense of time.... Was at about 5.5 last I heard from her tonight.

Today's Comic-Con:

* Full Time Creative Work On A Part Time Schedule. Networking is important! Lots of that!
"I'm Ron. That's most of it," was one guy's intro. (He's a scientist, so I assume he could get more interesting than this....) "At night, I write comic books" like "Kevin, Drunk Jedi."
* Writing For TV: From First Draft to Getting Staffed If the showrunner says "two spaces after a period," then by god, that's what you DO!
* Making A Living Being Creative. "They want it to be like a unicorn, but a girl next door!" "What does that MEAN?!" "I'm getting PTSD flashbacks from this." "We need to have a princess element."
* Wakanda Forever! The Psychology of Black Panther. About what you'd figure. A lot of "Wakanda Forevers!"

Supernatural Therapy: Fighting Internal Monsters like a Hunter IRL: Combination of therapists and actors from the show. "Even in COVID, I still try to act in my dining room." -Ruth Connell. One guy announced himself as "the most handsome face on the panel" and he just had to break it to y'all. I also like the lady who wants to turn PTSD into your own superhero-ness. "The odds look overwhelming, so we need to look for inspiration." "We are the hero in our own stories as well." This was actually very touching, even if I wasn't in the mood to take notes much.

Only a few left to go....

Tonight I watched a show called "Flirt Like An American" about a Russian professor moving to the US and attempting to date. I hadn't heard of him before, but I was looking on some website a few weeks ago and it sounded interesting, so what the hell. The above linked review covers the beginning of the show better than I can, as I feel like I missed a few crucial bits here and there in the storytelling? Maybe I was just still tired and brainfarting at the time, but I got it better as it went on.

I get the feeling that this crowd is regulars (and I am not) and it was hosted by a VERY ENTHUSIASTIC Russian lady named Margarita who was frankly, being too enthusiastic for my level of damn exhaustion going on--she wanted "beautiful faces" on camera, people to make up an alias based on their mood and favorite snack, and generally demanding interaction that I was in no mood to provide. "Yes, I need attention THAT MUCH." I was pretty much like "look, y'all are just lucky the computer was already on, I do not feel obligated to turn on the camera for random strangers for an hour."

Anyway, even though the overall perky and demand for audience attention was Getting On Mah Nerves, I did like her story, about figuring out how to reform the school bully by creating a "secret admirer" ("foreign exchange student") who writes to him and says that she likes him, but she wants a more gentle guy who will write her poetry. So he writes her poetry, he gets a lot nicer, then Margarita feels bad about the whole thing and says that "Monique" has to go back to France. However, Joey the bully says that "knowing her made me a better person" even though they never met, and everyone else is a lot happier. Margarita says to Joey that Monique said the same thing about him.

The lead performer was named Sufian, who says that "I was born thanks to turkeys" (see above link for the explanation) and said that he had the idea that if he got a turkey caller, it would announce to the universe that he was ready for love. I liked this idea, but he didn't really follow up on it. Instead, he went on to trying to date a lady named Joanna and trying to figure out American flirting from watching Friends. This leads him to ask Joanna if American women have seven erogenous zones and hey, let's discuss our lists of five celebrities we could have a free sex pass for...and he puts down Ruth Bader Ginsburg as one of his. Shockingly, Joanna is NOT into any of this and somehow, Sufian does not find love with her. Then his next story is about getting a woman interested in him, but she turns out to be married.

Then his final story...is about being a popular jock in Russia and his girlfriend Natasha is the most popular girl in school, but when a new hotness named Vlad arrives at school,, he becomes the most popular and Natasha dumps him for Vlad because that's all she cares about. Then Sufian says he got an anonymous letter from a girl saying she likes him, but she wants a sensitive guy and can he write her some poetry.... why, yes, that's "Rita's" story from the other perspective! Except this time the girl is a "Marisha" from Czech and she has to go back to her country... We're told that this is when "Rita" moved to the US but confessed the truth in a letter to him after she left. 27 years later, they're both in the US and he finally tracked her down on Facebook....

And then Margarita revealed herself to be in Sufian's camera! So are they together romantically? It was not spelled out, but I assume so. At the end Sufian said all the stories were true except the last one, his version of hers. So there you go. I like the concept of him doing this show, but felt like it was a little weak. And am I to presume that he has found love with her, finally? Hmmmm.

Because I was bored and I saw the link about three minutes before starting, I watched another Pan Improv show at 8. First was a group called "Awkward Face," which is a legit improv name. They started out with a panel of weird people and took random suggestions from the chat such as "flat earth" and "lightning strikes" (me). And when they asked for questions, I said, "Was the earth round and then was it popped into being flat because of lightning?" This was dubbed "The most brilliant question of this entire show." (also, the only one.) He also said that I should be a panelist on the show. Hah! Later on they were doing a rain scene and the host guy said, "I said I don't believe in lightning, I don't believe in lightning, and it went away.... Maybe I am a good witch after all!"

Later on: "Maybe there will be a little skeeter in your skeeter parts." This one was some kind of Southern Gothic where everyone busted out hats and accents. I love that stuff. I liked how it became a whole show, like watching "You! The Musical" back in the day. Now they've wandered into Mormons, moonshine, and a mine. So, a better show overall, even if I was a bit distracted by texting Shanna (below). They are having auditions August 22 and 23. I may consider it....do they care these days if I"m not in Oakland, and (I have looked on their website before) are they still charging people a ton just to be in their theater? Because it was something like a few hundred bucks and that seemed scammy.

I didn't read too much of my email for the last two days, but Kelly sent me a copy of another play she did. She did a experimental play where they had ten playwrights and each one had to write a different part of the show. Kelly drew the last spot and had to wrap up the entire plot...and it was a horror theme, and she doesn't like horror....This was a thing we were talking about a while back and I said for that she actually had the good slot because she could engineer a happy ending.

I read the play and actually liked it! It's huge (nearly 100 pages, Kelly said she needed 20 to wrap it all up) and it's about mediums. George--who she said reminded me of me-- is a super enthusiastic, very odd girl who got taken to a (formerly fake!) medium named Daea as a kid and George has now become super attached to Daea and wants to join the business. Daea, for the record, is like Oda Mae Brown: used to be fake until George came along. Anyway, George starts assisting with people's possession issues, Daea's family comes by with some possession issues, it turns out that George's mom isn't as "basic AF" as George assumed, and it actually turned out to be great fun, if a wee bit confusing at times. (And also, unclear as to how the grosser stuff is gonna be staged. Even if it wasn't on Zoom, body part removal might be difficult.)

Kelly sent me the audition information--they want you to film a 2 minute monologue and send it in instead of reading the script, which seems a shame to me because that script is crying to be read. Before reading the play I read the descriptions and didn't think I fit the parts (a lot of people in their 50's/of color/gender ambiguity/takes place in New Orleans), but then she pointed out George (the lead) is a female, and George is a HOOT. I said I was amazed that her character stayed so consistent through all ten authors, because she's SO specific. I think she talks a bit like a manic Valley Girl for someone living in New Orleans. Affectionate, pushy-ish, diehard, ENTHUSIASTIC AF. She's great. So I already do have a monologue from drama class back in the day--the Tassie one---and I think that would fit George's energy. Shanna likes the role of the cat (though she hasn't read the play yet), though I dunno if she'd film a monologue or not since she said she dislikes them and well, she still has 6 projects to go! I volunteered to look for possible monologues for her, but who knows.

Anyway, I redid my theater resume to add all of my new online experience, and now I need to go rehearse Tassie again, prune it down to 2 minutes, and I need to figure out a Zoom version of it since the one I originally did was standing up and waving a scarf around like a crazy babushka and whatnot and I don't think that's gonna go these days. Okay, I just did that and filmed it on Zoom. Wheeeeee!!!! I sent it out to the ladies to view and if they find it fine, I'll send it and if not, I'll redo.

Upstairs karaoke party is going on again, Prince is playing, "Raspberry Beret." Followed by "In The Name Of Love." Then "Creep." Then "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Then "Get Lucky." Again, I wish I could go up and join her. Might be a little weird to sing along from below, though.

I'm checking in on the space flight right now and caught one of the guys floating a dinosaur in the air. Too cute!

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