Tablesaw!

So, I'm now seven questions away from a full game. Right now, I have 22 categories (though one is still one question short), so when I fill in two more, I'll have channels 2-13 for two rounds.

I've decided that the rounds are going to progress like this.

• Round 1: Normal
  
• Snack Break: Dump candy on players.
  
• Round 2: Double points. One "Off the Air" channel will be hidden among the categories (probably under "Reruns"). Picking it will eliminate the lowest-scoring player.
  
• Off the Air: At the end of round 2, the lowest player gets bumped.
  
• Think Real Fast: The expanded version of "Bob Denver, John Denver, or City of Denver." 10 pts per question.
  
• Off the Air: The two players with the lowest scores get bumped.
  
• Beat the Bishop: I put on a bishop's hat and do a lap around the hotel while the remaining contestants answer the TGIF question with as many shows as they can write. 15 pts per answer.
  
• Finale: Winner is the player with the highest score.

I've decided I'm going to use index cards with numbers on one side and channel names on the other. I'll turn them over when the category is chosen, and remove them when the channel is exhausted.

Tonight, I finish recording skits, which leaves me free to make sure everything's on my iPod tomorrow morning.

Below the cut are the new categories: Tales of the Extraordinary, The 900 Club, The Japan Channel, Brady Economics, and The Slash Channel.

( These are the sexy questions. )

The NPL is a puzzle organization, so outside of the main program of games and puzzles, there's a lot of unofficial game-playing and puzzle solving. Trivia games are pretty popular; tmcay has written several fantastic and original ones. But for most of the rest of the peons, the standard is to prepare a set of Jeopardy questions.

I'd been thinking about doing something along these lines for a while, then two years ago, during the convention in San Antonio, two members did a Jeopardy variant called Texas Jeopardy. Because everything is bigger in Texas, each category had an extra question, and each round had an extra category. There were also bonus Daily Doubles and I think there were multiple rounds of Final Jeopardy. It was very wacky and a lot of fun.

And it got me thinking about the game show I really wanted to play at Con. An old one that people haven't talked about in a while. Last year, I didn't go to the convention, so this year, I need to make it happen:

Remote Control

Remote Control was a game show that ran on MTV for three years at the end of the '80s. It was focused on pop culture and TV trivia from the '60s and '70s. It had a bizarre sense of humor and a high degree of zaniness. YouTube is pretty light on episodes, but there's a mostly full one in two parts



It also launched the careers of Denis Leary, Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn, and Kari Wuhrer, who would present trivia questions phrased as skits. You can see many, many of these skits at this site.

It seems like it'll be a lot of fun to run and write, and it'll force me to do more wacky fun, which is a mode I've lost touch with.

Things I need to decide:

• What's the time range? The original show focused on the sixties and seventies, with a heavy emphasis on shows that got a lot of reruns. Twenty years later, I need to decide whether to keep it aimed at the same TV timeframe, update to a similar retro period (i.e., nothing from the new millenium) or leave the whole thing open to current TV. I'm leaning toward the middle option (before 2000), except that it'll cut off most of the reality TV explosion.
  
• How many categories? The original show had nine "channels." I'm going to want to expand that, but I don't know by how much yet.
  
• How many skits? When I know how many categories I have, how many of them can/should be skits? This'll depend a lot on how much help you guys can give me.
  
• How do I do eliminations? Getting yanked "off the air" was a key portion of the original show. But in a con game, it's more problematic. For one thing, there'll probably be six players, instead of three. For another, they're all going to want to play,
  
• How do I end the game? Different incarnations of the game featured two different lightning rounds and a bonus round. I'll need to figure out what combination to use.
  
• Should I throw food at the players?

Things I need help on:

• Remembering categories. I'll put up the list of what I remember and have researched soon, but if you have your own memories of the game, it'll be helpful.
  
• Recording skits. I'm going to be running a bunch of stuff off of my iPod with a nice set of speakers. (It'd be great to do with a laptop, but sadly I don't have one.) So I'm looking for people who can record skit-like trivia questions into MP3s so that I can play them. New characters are particularly welcome.

I'll probably start seriously working on questions tonight. As I come up with things, I'll post them here.

So, one of my coworkers just tried to send out an e-mail. The settings for Outlook causes a spell-checker to run when a message is sent. This time, a misspelling of the word "inconvenience" was flagged. However, the coworker accidentally accepted the first suggestion, and the e-mail was sent before she could change it.

The message was sent out with the final sentence:

Thank you and I apologize in advance if this causes you any incontinence.

"All Facilities Charges anal Bonded Fees . . ."

It wasn't until an hour or so ago that I started to wind down from the altercation. Back at work, back in normal life, back reading a list of patent applications for typographical errors, I felt like the breath had finally been let out.

Although I've firmly and clearly extricated myself from the situation, the situation is not resolved, and my body and mind reflect it. I'm still spending the energy to stand my ground. More than that, I'm still trying to provide the cast and company with a model of strength and resolve that they seem to be fumbling for. My friend hasn't been able to sleep for two days. Another cast member has burst into tears on two separate occasions since Sunday's performance. One producer, who wasn't present on Sunday, is having to hold himself back from going to punch the Whackedor in the face. (Note the difference: this produce is able to show restraint even though he really wishes he didn't have to.)

I'm not pushing too hard, because I feel that there's too much personal bias on my part, but I'm trying to get them to do the right thing. In a normal theater setting, where the producers weren't cast members and the director wasn't in the lobby handing out programs, it would have been my call as the stage manager. In that world, the Whackedor would have gotten thrown out after five minutes, and the show would have gone on, probably with an address to the audience ambiguously explaining the last-minute change. I probably would have ended up on stage with a book in my hand.

Today, after the second production meeting where no decision was made, I brought my friend over because I was worried about her. She's been very affected by this on far more levels than I have. I love the company (and I should clarify that the Whackedor is not a member of the company, merely an actor hired to be in their show), and I'm always glad to help them out, but I have no problems walking away from a job under these circumstances. (And it is a job; Rwth and I are getting paid. It's not much, but it's more than the actors are getting, since they're mostly doing it for recognition and resume building.) For her, it's different. She's a founding member of the company, she's been handling finances for the past two years.

My friend feels she can't do the show with the Whackedor. Not only has she been deeply affected by somebody threatening someone she's known almost as family for over a decade, she's was also verbally abused by the Whackedor while she tried (somewhat inexpertly) to talk him down. She told the company that she was considering stepping down and was told that her understudy wouldn't be able to replace her. Apparently, she was horrible during understudy rehearsals, but since there was not going to be any planned night that my friend took off, they figured everything would be fine. So for the past three weeks, my friend (and I, for that matter) believed she had an understudy when, in fact, she didn't.

There's just a paralysis afflicting the group that's keeping decisions from being made. I think that many believe that the "easiest" thing to do would be for everyone (including me) to come back on Thursday and just deal for the next six performances. But that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen because I'd leave first. It's not going to happen because Rwth may leave too. It's not going to happen because my friend can't make eye contact with the Whackedor. It's not going to happen because my friends' husband who's been helping with concessions wants to get some friends and a few baseball bats and go after the Whackedor for threatening his beloved. And yet this seems "easier" than rehearsing a new understudy for anyone.

And it's Wednesday, and a final decision still hasn't been reached. These people seem to have no concept of time. It's certainly not going to be easy to rehearse an understudy if you don't make a decision until less than twenty-four hours till the next show.

I'd just like them to start acting like producers, realize that there's nobody who'll make this decision for them, and tell everyone what they're going to do. I'd like to know whether or not I'm going to be able to sleep in on Thursday. More importantly, I'd like to be able to prepare if I'm going back. There're going to be a lot of people looking for me to set a tone if I come back, and if I'm going to rise to the occasion, I'll need some preparation.

Just pass the soap so I can wash my hands of it, already.

As I mentioned earlier, I was assaulted by one of the actors in the show I am (or possibly was) stage managing. Here's what happened . . .

When the producers rented this space, they agreed to a few very absurd provisions. The most annoying involves where we store our props and set dressing. When we are running the show, we have to keep our stuff backstage right, but when we're not, we have to keep it backstage left. So when we do the last show of the week, we have to move all of their stuff out of the way, so that we can move our stuff into its new home, then put their stuff back where our stuff used to be. All of which is lots of fun because, since the actors are generally out front networking (read "drinking wine and chatting with friends"), it's Rwth (my co-stage manager) and I who have to do most of the moving.

To streamline this process, Rwth and I decided to rearrange part of the back stage before the show, so that we wouldn't have to stay out for so long dealing with the movement. In the process, we apparently blocked part of the backstage area used by two male actors as a dressing room. I learned this when one of the two, (I shall call him "the Whackedor") complained about our positioning of a large table with several props on it. It blocked off the sofa they liked to use to relax (not ours, part of the theater's rotating set pieces), and made it difficult for them to reach a mirror. I explained to them why we had moved it where we had: we were going to be doing a lot moving after the show, and we we usually can't count on the actors to help, so we were doing as much before hand as possible. He asked if we could put it somewhere else, and I said that next time, I would think about it, but for now it was best to leave things as they are.

I should note that during this conversation, I said something I immediately regretted. I can't recall what it was, but I remember thinking that my voice and word choice had made the statement slightly more acidic than it should have been. It wasn't anything horribly bad, I didn't see (then) any noticeable effects, and I couldn't see a way to immediately backtrack to it, so I just moved on. In fact, that was my tone toward the entire conversation. I didn't really care to much about it. Everyone had been given a later call, so we didn't have much time to care about it, and there were plenty of other things I was going to have to do.

Now, the Whackedor is cold. Always. When we moved into the theater, we kept the heat on. We soon realized, though, that the only person complaining of it being too cold was him. Eventually, the director, Rwth and I agreed that we'd keep the heater on before the show in most cases, but we would turn it off before we let the house in. Between the hot lights and the large crowd we often got, there was plenty of heat for everyone else, and keeping the heater on occasionally made it sweltering.

At about five or ten minutes to house open, Rwth came into the office next to the booth and told me that she turned the heater off. She wanted me to make sure I double checked it, because the Whackedor had recently been turning it back on after she turned it off. I told her that I was going into the booth and that I'd keep my eye on it from there. If anyone tried to turn it on again, I'd tell them not to.

At about three minutes to house open, I was surprised to see the Whackedor leaning over the heater. I had expected that he might have earlier, but now, we were minutes away from letting in the audience, and he was minutes away from leaving the theater to wait in the office anyway. The booth had no god mike, so I opened the window and asked, "Are you turning on the heater?"

"Yeah, I'm turning on the heater."

"Can you turn it back off? We're about to open up the house."

"No, I'm not going to do that."

"Whackedor, you can't turn the heater on right now, we're letting the audience in in a few minutes. Turn off the heater."

"Hey, fuck you. I'm freezing up here, and I'm turning the heater on. So just fuck off, all right?"

At this point, I got pissed. If he wasn't going to turn off the heater, I'd go down the and turn it off myself. If I had to stand there for the next three minutes before Rwth returned to take him to the waiting area, so be it. But the climate control of the house was my responsibility, I was the stage manager, and I do not going to back down.

I came into the theater and turned off the heater. Because the theater was small, the thermostat was located on the wall at about the line where the stage ended and the audience began. The stage was not raised, and so I was effectively on stage. The Whackedor turned to me and said, "What do you think you're doing." "I'm turning off the heater." Then the Whackedor begna to fully live up to the name I have here given him.

I can not remember the stream of invectives hurled at me. They weren't interesting at all, just verbal standins for the primal primate yell of anger that it was. There were several witty things that shot through my mind. The one I remember most clearly, in response to the Whackedor moving mere inches away from my face then screaming, "You'd better get out of my fucking face," was "I haven't moved an inch in the last sixty seconds please get out of my face." I didn't, partly because I knew it couldn't help, but mostly because I never got a chance to even say anything non snarky. After each harangue, I would start to say, calmly and quietly, "Whackedor, I am responsible for this theater." Each time, I managed to get as far as "resp." I said I don't back down, and I didn't. I wouldn't. I didn't feel the need to match his insane anger, but I didn't move an inch. Not when he started yelling at me. Not when he moved within an inch of my face, not when he threatened me.

In fact, I didn't move at all until he grabbed my shirt and shoved me backwards, still swearing at me.

There had been several actors on stage preparing for the show. I don't know specifically what they had been doing up to that point, but when the Whacked grabbed me, they immediately ran forward to hold him back. He didn't calm down. In fact, at this point, he began insulting the other cast members as well. As far as I can tell, he never calmed down. He claimed that I had disrespected him so much, between the backstage conversation and refusing to let him adjust the heater that he had no choice but to do what he did, what he was continuing to do. He threatened that if they tried to fire him, he'd refuse to go and that they'd need to call the police to haul him out.

Eventually, the director, who had been out front covering for the missing box office attendant, entered the room. At this point, seeing someone higher in the hierarchy than either myself or the actor, I relaxed and let him take the steps necessary for the situation. I didn't try to explain my side of what happened. The Whackedor seemed to want to say much more, and it seemed that any case I might want to make was better made letting him rant and threaten everyone in the room. I did say, softly, to the director and to a personal friend of mine in the cast who was also a producer, that I refused to work with him. And that if he continued to be on the cast, I would quit.

They considered cancelling the show, something they were loath to do because it was full house and a benefit performance to boot. They considered spot-replacing the Whackedor, something I think most of them were frankly afraid to do. Ultimately, they decided to go on with the show, so I informed the director and producer that I was leaving. I believe the director took my place with Rwth in the booth.


So that's why I was shaken up yesterday. I'm still a bit shaken up, but it's getting better. Last night, I had a momentary flashback to the episode. I remembered the Whackedor screaming face in front of mine; I remembered the adrenaline; I remembered grounding myself and steeling my face. But I had to laugh when I realized what had happened. I was watching The Bernie Mac Show, and Bernie Mac's girlfriend had angrily called him a whiny baby. The flashback had been triggered by thinking about how insecure, whiny, and self-centered the Whackedor is.

Yeah, I think I'll be okay.

I got up early today to finally meet up with farmersdaughter. In the process I got lost on my way to a movie theater again. Last time, I never found the theater and my dad went home feeling rejected until I could make it up to him by seeing Matrix: Revolutions. Thankfully, things worked out a bit better this time. Though I was late, so had she been, so we missed each other only by a few minutes. When she arrived, she frantically asked the ticket seller if he'd seen a tall guy in a trenchcoat. Of course, he wouldn't have (unless he was looking carefully at the frustrated car driving psast and sompletely failing to see the marquee.) Taking a risk, she went into the theater and grabbed a seat. When I arrived a few minutes later and frantically asked the ticket seller for a ticket, though, he asked, "Are you meeting a girl her?" Remembering the movie fiasco with my dad only weeks before, I braced myself for "Yeah, she left and told me to call you a flake." Instead, he helped me by trying to remember which aisle she had gone down. Further, farmersdaughter was able to identify my tall silhouette and flag me over to her seat. Thus, we watched The Secret Lives of Dentists.

The movie was, strange. And neither of us saw the very beginning, so we're not sure how strange it was. I believe it was very strange. Indeed, I would go so far as to call it bizarre. But those first few minutes? Who knows. They could prove my interpretation wholly wrong.

After the movie, we headed to Canter's for a good 9:30 p.m. deli breakfast. There was also a great deal of conversation until I had to go to work. Nothing particularly noteworthy about the conversation, other than that it was fun and easy.

So, in summary, I had a great time, farmersdaughter is an interesting and amazing woman, and I hope we can do it again.

So, what made me sad today?

As I was cleaning up, I found a double word square that I had quickly written for Wendy.

Yes, I'm a geek.

These entries that involve Wendy are locked for two reasons. One is that there is at least one person on LJ who is obsessed with her and was able to cryptically deduce that I was seeing her. The other is that she doesn't want to hear about it on my journal (which she reads), and she has asked that I screen any such statements from her friends, many of whom I now read and now read me.

Anyway, I've had That Dog's Retreat from the Sun in my CD player for about a week, ever since pbmath mentioned it in a comment. Anyway, it's had a strong hold on me ever since, and I haven't been able to get it out of my stereo or my head. And it's not surprising, since the album's themes play upon my own current issues: infatuation, physical distance, miscommunication, emotional distance, and violins. It's also very upbeat and singable.

So, interested in getting inside my head? Here's some of what I'm thinking about, in lyric form:

( Retreat from the Tablesaw )

And that, until further notice is my soundtrack.

I was writing about my relationship with Wendy, was 80% of the way through, and the window disappeared. I don't know what happened.

I'm pissed. There's an emotional load on me from the relationship that I can't shake. She's really depressed right now, and I can't deal with it. I want to be friends, but I need some away time. I can't deal with every little thing.

Why doesn't she believe me when I say that she's dangerously depressed and needs help? Why can't she seal with this for a second without me.

This and more is what I'm channeling into Puzzle Pirates. Also why I'm not cleaning my pigsty of a room. wjukknibs, want to go out for breakfast this week? Please?