Tablesaw!

Most nights, starting tomorrow, I'll be stage managing this:

(I am no longer stage managing Savage in Limbo.)


On January 13 through January 16, I'll be in New York City. Suggestions on travel destination would be appreciated.

On January 16 through January 20, I'll be in Boston, spending most of the weekend at MIT for the Mystery Hunt. Still, offers of things to do as a break are welcome.

Oh, and somewhere in there, I guess I'm gonna do some birthday stuff, too.

Wherein I make myself feel inferior to aussie_nyc. This is when I currently see myself going far afield of Los Angeles. All events are subject to change, as evidenced by the first entry.

• Labor Day Weekend: New York City. Canceled.
• Late October, early November: Washington, D.C. Watch cousin perform in Bounce and otherwise revisit my college days.
• January: Boston. Return for a second shot at the MIT Mystery Hunt.
• Spring: New York City. Attend the event I was originally going to attend on Labor Day.
• July 8-11: Boston. Going back to New England Puzzle Central for the NPL Convention.

And that's my schedule so far. I fear that there may be too much Boston in it, but this is unavoidable. I'm glad that at least one visit will not have me continually bitching about how cold it is.

ThuNYTX: 10:30. Got one of the theme entries without any crossings. Very clever. ThuLATX: 15. Got stuck on the NW corner.

The funeral is over, and perhaps, things can become something approaching normal again. I don't have high hopes that I'll be able to get my sleeping re-regulated by tomorrow for work, though. There's a lot of it that I really don't want to talk about, though. It was hard, since, more than sadness, I was feeling rage. It puts one into a more awkward position in large uncomfortable groups. When one is sad, then if one breaks down, there are tears, perhaps a swaying of legs, and people to support one. When one is angry, then if one cracks, blunt objects come into contact with things or persons from which the should be kept away.

Also, I heard from Will Shortz at the New York Times passing on my crossword puzzle. A while back, Paula Vogel visited UCSB, and I sat in on a miniclass she taught for the playwriting classes. (At the time, I wasn't yet enrolled in the classes.) Rather than delve into the minutiae of craft, she spent a great deal of time instructing us on How to Read Rejection Letters. She had several signs and tricks, the most memorable (and most useless on email) was to wet the paper of the letter (possibly by licking your thumb and smudging) to see if the signature was signed or Xeroxed. Anyway, it's a very helpful skill. Using it, I am heartened by Shortz's note: "The theme, I think, isn't really a New York Times sort of subject. Something entirely pop culture-related like this would probably be better suited for a publication with a younger audience, like Games magazine." How do I read this? that the quality is up to par (which was a bigger anxiety for me), but the subject matter makes it an inappropriate for the audience. Vogel was very big on this, understanding from a rejection letter when the editor (or artistic director) thinks your work is bad and when he or she thinks it's good or interesting or promising but can't select it for other reasons. I'll probably send this on to Games and Kappa (Games' parent) and start working on the next one.

Onward and upward.

( I've got a theory about magic. )

I've been thinking about this for a while, but I present it here, finally, as prelude and prologue to my thoughts on the Penn & Teller show, which I hope to write up tomorrow.

FriNYTX: 19:30. Pretty good, except for 23A.

In about fourteen and a half hours, I'm going to be flying (that's right, flying) to Vegas with wjukknibs for his horribly belated birthday gift. I'm not a huge fan of Vegas, but I've been brushing up on my gaming strategies, using my favorite site, The Wizard of Odds. I mean, come on; it's gambling strategies from an actuary! How can you go wrong?

I tried my darnedest to get good at Blackjack, but my efforts failed. I just don't grok how the odds work in that game, so I'm probably going to have to sever myself from Wjukknibs when he sits down at those tables. On the other hand, I've sharpened my memory of the games whose odds I do understand, Poker derivatives. Video Poker is my best game, I usually play Jacks or Better, though sometimes I sit down with Deuces Wild. This is where I can usually get the best odds in the house, for me. In addition, I've been practicing on a few table games, so as to be more social, Carribean Stud Poker, Let It Ride and Pai Gow Poker, the last of which is kind of confusing, but rather interesting, too. I don't have great illusions of coming home with a wad of bills, but it's likely that I'll be able to play for quite a while with very little loss.

What I'm looking forward to most, though, is going to see Penn and Teller on Monday night. They're a cool act, and I've wanted to see them live for a while. And it's very unlikely that they'll take any of my money.

Time to go home and pack. See you all on Tuesday morning!

Last night I went to see McSweeney's vs. They Might Be Giants at UCLA with my dad. Originally, it was going to be a family outing, since I, Father and Mother were all interested in the show (although it may be more accurate to say that I was "enthused" and my parents were "curious"). However, since Mother is currently in Switzerland smuggling watches tending to family business, it was just me and my dad. wjukknibs was called upon to be a last-minute replacement, but went AWOL before the show. Still no word as to what happened to him.

Although we had thought the show was going to have a more literary slant, the McSweeney's portion of the show seemed to be more of an opening act for They Might Be Giants. Inspired by a recent collaboration between the band and the literary journal, the spoken word act featured readings by Sarah Vowell and Zadie Smith, liberally interspersed with apropos songs and instrumentation provided by TMBG. The high point, though, was Dave Eggers reading a hilarious one-and-one-half person short story called "Mrs. Gunderson" while the Johns did their best imitations of the Allan Parsons Project ("I am Allan Parsons! Come join me on my project!"), the Steve Miller Band and the Smiths on dying batteries. But each author read only one piece, and they all quickly ceded the stage to the Johns, who returned after intermission, just as I will return after I've driven home.

Buy a celebratory platter of foodstuffs for actors.
Go to friend's birthday party.
Finish taxes.
Clean the house well.
Write a game for the sequel to SpeedIF Jacket.
Find places to hide eggs.
Finish Egg hunt puzzles.
Get a sofa(?)
Write up lots of experiences for LJ.

Thank God the play is ending on Saturday.

It's possible I'll get a few extra hours of sleep. As part of the new deal between Rwth and myself, I may be able to skip tonight's show in exchange for covering for her a few nights. However, she's been feeling under the weather, so if she's still shaky, then I'll have to go over there, for a little while at least. Regardless, I'm hoping to get a bit more rested before I leave on Sunday.

SatNYTX: 38. Amazingly, both guesses appear to have been correct.

I mentioned the various problems with lighting that arose on Saturday. Well, Sunday went mostly okay, with some changes, and by Thursday, everything had been fixed. The instruments had been recircuited and the offending dimmers had returned to functioning.

Until about halfway through the second act, during the most cue-heavy scene in the entire show. WOOHOO! So, once again, I was forced to improvise madly, and only somewhat successfully. Then I risked electrocution by hot-patching the washes into new dimmers during the show so that I'd be able to light the next scene.

Why did I commit to an extension of this?

NYTX: 13:45. Fast. I got off to a great start thanks to 2D and 3D. LATX: 10:30. Error on the crossing of 6A&7D.

Stage managing The Dining Room has been going well. It's mostly routine at this point. Rwth and I can set up the set and props without any need for actor input and still have a half hour to cool our heels before we head to the booth.

Today was a big night. It was our first actual full house. (We've filled the house with reservations before, but ultimately had some no-shows. Today, there was not a seat left.) Also, we had our first celebrity. As we were getting set up, I walked into the lobby to steal some candy, because I had missed breakfast. As I did, I thought I caught a glimpse of one patron, who looked like something of a cross between Henry Kissinger and Ben Stein. A few seconds later, Rwth stopped me to tell me that Ben Stein was going to be in the audience, which explained my earlier vision. I guess he's put on a bit of weight; also, he was wearing a very Kissinger-esque hat and overcoat, from the rain. Also in attendance were my parents, who sat next to Mr. Stein.

As I mentioned earlier, the show is getting to be routine. Other than minor mistakes brought on by the eccentricities of our analogue light board, the only major problem was our CD player deciding to stop reading our pre-burned CDs during Act II. But there isn't much for Rwth and me to do in Act II, so I was able to find a replacement CD from my personal collection (which music is now the standard post-show music.

Tonight, everything was going swimmingly. In fact, I was able to put my head down and rest my eyes for a bit (a big help at the end of these long weeks). But then, at the beginning of the penultimate scene, as I slowly faded to a more somber lighting cue, the major instrument of the cue went out. OK, I thought, No problem. I'll just bring up some other lights for now to focus on the actors, and we can change the bulb later. So, I pulled up another set of instruments. Nothing. I tried another. Nothing.

I stood up so I could get a good look at the scene. It appeared that my three "washes" (lighting arrangements that lit the entire stage without emphasis on any particular focal point) had unexplainedly and simultaneously ceased functioning. There were a few other, more directed instruments that may or may not be working, and there was a set of instruments that I could use to illuminate the main part of the stage. Unfortunately, the actors in this scene move to a position on the stage where the only way to light them is to use the washes. So I resigned myself to letting them wallow in backlighting for a while until we can move to the next scene. I sent Rwth backstage to tell the actors for that scene not to leave center stage (they did anyhow), and made up a new cue for the final scene. Ah Theatre!

After the show, I briefly spoke with my parents, and then dedicated all of my time there before work (that's right, I'm still lobster-shifting it during the run) to trying to figure out what had happened. It appears that something shorted all of the circuits running along the pipe farthest from the stage, the same one that holds the washes. The other circuits seem to be fine, and the dimmers (the devices that allow me to smoothly change the intensity of each instrument) appear intact. Unfortunately, the house management usually isn't in on Sundays, and it's unlikely that we'll be able to get them over to the space in time to fix the problem before our matinee. We are trying to get in touch with our Lighting Designer who, though he's unlikely to fix the problem, will be able to help set cues to work around the missing instruments. However, he may be at work, which won't help us either. It might end up being just me manipulating the dimmer levels in a maddened frenzy of improvisation, in a manner only seen in silent movies of The Phantom of the Opera.

Anyway. Ben Stein seemed to enjoy it.