Chaos Attraction

Charlotte's Web Meet N' Greet

2020-10-07, 7:43 p.m.

Forgot to mention that the air went back to moderate yesterday, so I was out for about an hour in it. Enjoy it while it lasts there. Went out on breaks yesterday and today.

Dreamed that Jimmy Kimmel was hosting some event at Universal Studios and they weren't doing social distancing.

Cases are going up in my town among young adults. Of course. Not horribly, but I don't think we're leaving the red zone to go down to orange...maybe back to purple, but that would figure.

Work: was generally fine, but I had a plan to progress along on the seasonal big project and then found out from another department "oh, we're not done AT ALL and we won't be done for days! Can you wait until next week?" cries FFS. My boss was all "How did this happen?" and hell if I know but I'm sure it's my fault somehow. I

Had lunch with Eva again and it was lovely. Mostly discussing the joys of being ADHD (she's confirmed, I have never tried to get this confirmed since I don't want to get officially diagnosed with anything, especially when "Swallow these pills" is a requirement once you are and in my experience, nobody listens to me on that one). She said that the pills only last four hours and don't have side effects, which is about as good as it can get, it sounds like. Anyway, that was fun!

Mom ordered Jackie and I Harry Potter Lego advent calendars (as well as someone else got one) yesterday and surprise, they showed up today. Jackie texted me freaking that someone sent her a bomb or something. Nope.


After work was rehearsal! Well, more like meet n' greet and game time, since scripts arrived in the mail today. Mine was autographed by the company directors: "Welcome to the Neon Spark's inaugural production! We are thrilled to have you! See you in rehearsal." Awwwww. Anyway, the first half hour was optional game time, so I went to that.

Sean greeted us all with “Hello, my barnyard lunatics," which is perfect and appropriate and if I was ever on some theater sports team, that would be an excellent name for such. At least needs to go on a T-shirt. We played 2 Truths And A Lie.

Quotes and notes from this: “Hippos seem like the obvious choice....There are more hippo deaths than any other deaths in the world.” -Sean Lena’s fish is 16 year old paracyclid.

Kallie on having eaten deodorant (as a baby): “I’m going to have to explain the deodorant one so no one thinks I’m on My Strange Addictions or anything…” Sean: "If you haven't said I am 12 years old and this is the day I'm going to eat deodorant, you haven't lived."

Paige: "I hit someone in the face with a Hobbit book. I didn't mean to. Yeah, he hated me after that."

Ben claims that he can breathe underwater for a minute and a half (I missed the explanation of this). Sean voted that this was a lie "unless you show me your fish gills." Supposedly it was not, which lead to Sean saying, "Hey, can you take your laptop into a fish tank?"

"I didn't break my nose, a set piece broke my nose." -Kearsten, co-theater director

Brennon (who's 8, I think)'s two truths and a lie: "I die. I play a lot of games. I eat pizza."

I said that I've performed in Renaissance faires, I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue, and I once met a guy who said he filmed Bigfoot. Everyone guessed a, everyone was wrong! Heh heh heh.

Then we had to crumple up some paper and then throw it at each other through the screen (as it were). Works very well for that particular ttheater game, though Sean trying to do two balls didn't really work so well.

After that, the larger meet n' greet started and we played the "Who's done (whatever)" and to turn their camera off and on for answering that.

Things I found out:

* Karen (playing Aunt Edith, used to run a local company called "The Rainbow Company" that Mac and Kearsten, founders of Neon Spark, were in) said that they came out to Rhode Island to visit family, took Covid tests and...she came out positive so that hasn't been happening. She says she's asymptomatic and halfway through quarantine (er....isolation, I guess). Her husband will be playing Uncle Homer, but he's off on a fishing trip right now. They met in a Rainbow Company show.

* This IS the first Neon Spark show, which is adorable.

* Sean wants to break past the third wall, with camera tricks, face filters (I assume this is for the animals), virtual and practical effects, wants to involve all the senses (how?!). Virtual and physical props, maybe a digital background, maybe QR codes about spiders (!?). They want green screens (I am unclear if that means they send a bunch to everyone's house or what....?).

* Sean's first role was the Cowardly Lion for the Rainbow Company, and most recently he was playing Merlin in the Excalibur show 10 times a week before the shutdown, so now he has free times to do other things.

* The first week of shows (Nov 13-15) will be live action and then the last few airing Thanksgiving weekend will be prerecorded so you can watch it yourself with the family. They can't provide us with recordings due to licensing, but hey, they can't have control over what you might film in your own home.... The license is for password protected digital showing, so no live YouTube or private recordings.

* Jake was asked to show off his double jointed thumb and Sean wants to use it in the show...somehow.

We were broken off into different rooms for different staff groupings, so after having the actor's meeting, we threw more ball around. Then the adults were pulled into a special room for the sort of speech you can imagine about how not having inappropriate private contact with children online, not that that had occurred to me as a thing to do, mind you. We are never to contact kids individually, if we have say, Arable family time, it needs to be set up by the directors. And don't swear (I hope I don't accidentally...). "In quarantine I have especially let my sailor mouth come back because I haven't been around children." -Kearsten. There were some jokes about not mentioning your Only Fans account and "we don't need to know about your lighthouses, Karen!" We also had a brief random conversation about favorite muffins. People love cranberry orange and some are very fussy about eating the bottoms of muffins, which is news to me. The costume designer, Cheyenne, said to Thom (set design, I think?), "In some ways you have the palate of a 15 year old girl, Thom, that is what I love about you."


After rehearsal, I read Kelly's new rewrite of "Tailwind," the farting play. She has decided to make it all women because guys have all the advantages anyway, but turned the "straight man" parent into a Jesus freak. I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it certainly ups the conflict level between the two parents. On the other hand, it ruins the ending, which I really loved, because in the original the parents were more friendly towards each other and them bonding over the farting machine and laughing just doesn't work when you know one of them is a total prig. Sigh. So I dunno there, but I sent my thoughts.

Linda emailed to say that Robin Hood is up for private viewing only at the moment and she wants to throw a Zoom viewing party either this or next Sunday at 7. Woot!

I also messaged Scott (yup, two days in a row) because I need some supplies at some point that I would normally get at Joann's, but I am kind of in a snit at Joann's these days.* I felt kinda weird about it because I wanted to ask about stuff they don't normally sell and I vaguely think it smacks of treating him like my personal lackey or something to request stuff not normally in the inventory, but he seemed fine with it as long as they can get it from the vendor. At some point I am going to need more stuffed animal stuffing, as I'm down to about half a bag here and still want to make more animals, and I'm down to various random remnants of cross stitch fabric, and I now want a pair of blue safety eyes (see below). They have some safety eyes usually and stuffing, he said they normally don't carry cross stitch fabric and I said I wasn't sure since they normally have floss, but he seemed fine with adding that in.

* (a) You pretty much can't order shit online from them because you have to order it from a specific store, then the items sells out before they get around to it, then they just cancel your order and don't even bother to explain why. They pulled that on me a while back, I had problems trying to get safety eyes all over the Bay Area, and Loretta told me they did that to her too recently. (b) Am also kinda annoyed at company management's pandemic behavior. Even besides any fears about pandemic, going in, curbside, whatever, those two things are annoying me still.

I also saw this adorable dragon, and when I looked into its big blue eyes I thought, "Making that for Scott." Can't explain that one (other than apparently we talked about reading Marie Brennan dragon books at some point, according to my email), but that came to mind. And I guess supplants the vague "hm, I guess I could make him a John Wick and dog at some point, but I dunno how distinctive a Keanu Reeves doll would be, exactly" thoughts I had previously. I have no idea if gift giving is going to be A Thing this year or not--like I've said, I assume this year it's not--but I can have it on hand at....well, some point, I suppose, if needed. Also, no point in buying him books if he already has them somehow :P


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