The ship has officially sunk, y'all, and I'm not referring to Titanic. That turned out to be a very apt metaphor right there, didn't it.

Review of the actual musical before I get into the rest of it: it's...mildly interesting, I suppose. First act is everyone going on about how awesome the ship is, the various bigwigs mildly hounding the captain to go faster, the captain being "This is my last voyage" (FORESHADOWING). There are rich people on board who don't do much, but the fancy dresses are really nice. I note that Don just seems to go back and forth on which rich guy he's playing-I think it was both Guggenheim and Astor? so it's kind of funny when he's either with the pregnant 19-year-old or suddenly telling his other wife and daughter he'll pick them up tomorrow. Like, other than the women he's with, you can't tell the difference on which rich guy?

The main plots, if any, are (a) The couple who are clearly already schtupping and plan to elope once they reach their destination, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, (b) the lady who desperately wants to mingle with the rich people and her husband's all "oh, get over it, you're literally second class," she seems to be the most interesting personality in this (I note that she's all "Let's make sure we get in the same lifeboat with the Astors!") (c) there are three girls named Kate, one of whom is pregnant by some married guy and is looking for a guy to marry her. She manages to find one on board after a few days and proposes to him and he says yes--but will he survive? (Actually yeah, I think he did since he said he had rowing skills and they put him on a boat.) (d) The...stoker...guy? Whoever shovels the coal? Anyway, he wants to propose and talks the communications guy into sending a free proposal to his girlfriend.

As you may have guessed, a lot of these guys die bachelors.

I kinda feel like saying, "The guy who stokes the coal gets a long operatic solo about coal stoking" kind of sums up what you are getting with this musical?

There is one dance number in which the starfucker lady sneaks in and joins the routine, badly. I was all "is that deliberate or is she just that bad?" for most of it, but concluded that it must take some skill to be totally off from other people instead of easily following along with everyone else like I've always been trained to do.

I give Steve/whatever production people props for the following: (a) I don't know how they did it, but they basically set off an earthquake in the building at the end of Act 1 when the boat hits the iceberg. Like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. Like whatever else is located in this building, it's probably a good thing that those businesses close at night. (b) Here's how the stage thing worked: they have a raised panel on the stage and they start slowly raising it up a bit, and then more as it goes on. Around the end, the architect guy (and only him) is on the ground, diagonally, scribbling on his plans until they, you know, roll away, and then you actually see the stage raising on the left side (only) instead of it getting higher in between scenes/behind the curtain, and it goes almost up to the top of the stage, and eventually the guy just...rolls down the stage. Oy. I felt very nervous for the actor doing that every night. Must be terrifying.

I note that at the start of act 2, the employees are trying to talk all the rich people into wearing life vests (represented here by like, long sandbags for some reason? Is that what they had as life vests in 1912?) and almost all of them keep pouting and throwing them off and generally acting like the precursor to anti-vaxxers in 2021 and I was thoroughly disgusted. Then a cart dramatically rolls by everyone and they all just stop to watch it....and then put the life vests on. (Though people are still chucking them off later. I guess if you're gonna drown anyway they were all, why bother?)

It's a little confusing at the end--presumably a thousand people have died offscreen and the remaining cast--mostly ladies--are in their Carpathia blankets and then suddenly the dead people are walking among them waving their hands and smiling. (I note that Andi in particular seems to be treating her dead fiance like a ghost or something?)

Scott called it "staid" and yeah, wouldn't argue that point. Not sorry I wasn't in that one, I am fine with that. Mildly interesting to watch, overall.

As for the rest of it: he got there before I did and was talking to (actress) Jean, who was behind the food booth, and there was chatting going on there for awhile. I looked at the various photos of people in the show (about 25) and was all "hm, I know 11 of them and I'm going to meet another two tomorrow." Went in and I did go talk to Kyle doing the lights, he seems to be doing fine.

Pre and midshow, we were talking about this show and the upcoming show. I will probably sum that all up as he has a lot of thoughts on the music/sound system here and how that isn't going terribly well and he couldn't hear any other instruments except for the piano, to which I was all "yeah, the keyboard's plugged in, I don't know if anything else has a mic down there but I suspect not" and how he bought the soundtrack to The Producers and was wondering how they were going to do the music to that if they don't have, say, a drummer.

Afterwards, Scott wanted to go talk to Sierra ("the one person I really know") and we did that, and met another future castmate (Alexis, I think?). Sierra said she did an online show in Sonoma and it went terribly because the director lost everything she filmed and then wanted it all done again at the last minute months later and then left her out of the show, to which, da fuck on that.

Then we were still talking about the music thing on the way out and he had me get into his car to listen to the soundtrack and what he was talking about on that whole thing.

Then he said it was time to get going and I looked at the clock and it was (of course, fucking) 11:11 and I took the hint and went for it, asking if he wanted to get into a romantic relationship. I said I don' know what issues you meant, if it was dairy allergy or secret serial killer, and he laughed at that one. But otherwise...no. He "suspected" I might be, but he's not interested. I guess he wasn't EVER interested--not that he said that much about it, I guess that's just what I think now, it was pretty much just no, and "you're a really great friend," and then he grabbed my hands again and I was thinking, why the fuck are you doing that? Like seriously, if you aren't interested in someone like that at all, why the hell was he doing more touching stuff with me than anyone else? I don't think I managed to get that out clearly though.

I said I was going to be "dialing it back" since I don't want to be confused and I don't want to make him uncomfortable being around someone he had to say no to. And got out of the car.

God, I really fucking screwed myself on this one, convincing him to be in this show. If I'd just kept my big mouth shut, he never would have gotten on the stick about doing it, and then I could have avoided him forevermore. Now I have to see him a lot until the end of January. Shoot me now. (I'm not going to drop out, but kinda want to? I mean, not really, but kinda?)

Sunday:

I canceled collage club for today--most people were canceling anyway and obviously I was not in the fucking mood.

My mother is terrible at comforting anybody. She's just really bad at it. Like "why don't you put on a fun happy playlist and go for a walk and cheer up?" I said "If Roger broke up with you out of the blue, would YOU want to do that?" "Yes," she said, and I was all, bullshit to that, you would not. And that's a far more viable relationship. I just flat out said she sucks at comforting. Like "do you wanna do a makeover" and bitching about how I wore flowers in my hair pre-pandemic (and really, what is wrong with that?) is not helpful. She just sucks.

I had rehearsal for the paranormal holiday show this afternoon. We did "Demon Turkey," in which I had to uh....figure out how to be a demon turkey. (Which is to say, my character gets possessed by one.) This entailed Kelly playing some demon turkey noises while I put on my turkey hat and pretended to peck, or whatever. Well, at least people find it funny. The other play was Shanna's unicorn math play and I have no idea what is going on with that really. What it boils down to is, kid unicorn wants to prove Santa's existence mathematically. I play the older sister who's an artist and not into that kind of thing, so the kid goes to a mentor and uh...I can't explain the rest. Kelly said we didn't really get it to Shanna, Shanna said she was trying to break it down easy, uh...I'll just leave it at that. Well, I can read lines at least.

Then I talked to Merry for most of two hours. Her husband is the same mostly-jerk as he ever is, but she's decided she's better off with him than without him. She told me about her job and I didn't understand a lick of it, but at least she's sheltered from other humans, if a contractor. We may try again next Sunday.

Rehearsal: he came in late, ended up on the opposite side of the room, I didn't have to deal with him, yay.

Anyway, did introductions, read the performer's contract, and then read the script. I get to play a secretary and a little old lady who gets pushed off a swing, I guess the rest is TBA, we shall see.

Obviously I am in a grumpy ass mood here.

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