Your Growing Malaise Quizo Update

You ever have one of those stretches where everything lands in that grey, squishy space between right and wrong? Where things aren’t “oh my god this is awesome!” but they aren’t “oh my god this is terrible!” either, they’re just sort of “oh my… uh… yeah… so, that happened.” I’m sure we’ve all been there a time or two, had periods where everything is just comfortably mediocre, where our life events are like buying a new shirt and then getting home and realizing it’s half a size too big and taking the tags off and wearing it anyway. On the great sine wave of life we’ve all had times like these, those times between the highs and lows where things just hover around zero for a while. And for the most part we shrug these things off because, hey, that’s life. You take the good, you take the bad.

That is, if you’re most people.

You ever have one of those stretches where everything is mediocrity and squishy greyness and you overreact to it so outrageously, so vehemently, that you actually cause dangerous spikes in OTHER people’s blood pressure?

Let’s take a look back at this past weekend, shall we?

Friday – “this is a criminal waste of valuable resources.”

I normally play poker on Friday nights. This is a good thing. I legitimately enjoy the company of the people I play poker with, and it forces me to interact socially with other humans, which, I’m not going to lie to you, is something that given the choice I would probably opt out of in general. This past Friday I did not play poker for two reasons. The first was that it was raining.

Now, before we get carried away here, let me invoke the words of the great John Sullivan concerning rain: “it’s just rain, I’m not gonna melt.” No, my mortal fear of driving at night in the rain comes from long, long ago, back in the ancient mists of forgotten time when I, for a fleeting moment, was a student at Lehigh University. For some reason I was at a book signing at a Borders on Lancaster Pike and I had to drive back to Bethlehem in my old car – dubbed The Millenium Falcon by my friends not just because we were giant nerds but because as my then-roommate put it, “it’s big, it’s fast, and it breaks down at the worst possible times” - in the middle of the night on an unlit highway in a furious rainstorm and the only tape in the car was a collection of JG Thirlwell remixes of “The Downward Spiral.”

Suffice it to say, folks, that this is what we in the theatre call “EXCEEDINGLY BAD.” I got back to my dorm quite literally shaking with fright and nerves, and ever since the idea of driving at night in the rain has caused a fear reaction in me similar to what gazelles must feel when they hear that first lion’s roar out on the savannah.

Now I HAVE driven under these conditions – just not happily – but the weather was only half of why I didn’t go out. The other half of why I didn’t play poker on Friday night was because the expansion pack for World of Warcraft had come out the night before and I, in a remarkable combination of self-aggrandizement and stupidity, decided that the confluence of release date and weather was God’s way of telling me to stay home and play WoW on Friday night. So I did. Until about midnight, when I suddenly stopped playing, looked at my monitor, and said, “what the fuck am I doing?” This began a brutal series of self-recrimination wherein I spent a solid ten minutes chastising myself with thoughts like, “what the hell is wrong with me, I should have gone to the poker game, this is dumb, I don’t even like this game that much anymore, I’m certainly not very GOOD at it, there are a billion other things I could be doing with my time, I hate the world,” etc etc. Eventually I calmed myself down by firing up FIFA 09 on my 360, dialing the difficulty all the way down to the easiest level, and pounding on some Korean team with Chelsea (final score 14-1). I’ve said many times that you can play World of Warcraft or you can play video games, and I think I may have finally chosen the latter.

Saturday – “I guess Tosca isn’t for everyone.”

After some comical shenanigans involving birthday parties, air fresheners, and his fluid concept of time, Nick and I made it up to see Quantum of Solace on Saturday night.

Yeah.

Let me just state in my typical hyperbolic fashion that the only thing worse than a bad movie is an okay movie that could have been great. And don’t misunderstand me – Quantum of Solace could have been great. It could have been really great. In fact, the way to have made it great is so simple I can hardly believe no one did it. All you needed to do was have someone walk up to Paul Haggis, who co-wrote the screenplay, and say, “look, Paul, we know you’re hot stuff now. You’ve got the Oscars and the money and whatnot and that’s great for you. It really is. We couldn’t be more proud. Fantastic. But, Paul, we’ve got to be honest with you, if you come anywhere near another James Bond script again we’re going to break every one of your fingers one by one with a ball peen hammer. I hate to put it that way but that’s really how we feel about it. Nothing personal, of course. We love your work. Love it. We’re big fans. Now if you could do us a huge favor and just fuck off and write another script about race relations or euthanasia or whatever social issue you just discovered this fucking week actually exists and leave the James Bond stuff to those of us who know what we’re doing, yeah, that would be just fantastic. Yes, fuck off, thanks. That’s a good lad.”

How do you go from such a tight, well-written, perfectly-constructed film like Casino Royale to the messy, spineless, occasional-flashes-of-brilliance-but-otherwise-incoherent Quantum of Solace? You hire Paul Haggis to do a rewrite. God, I hate that guy. I hate him so much. This isn’t a case like Die Another Day, which was just absolute garbage from beginning to end, this movie actually had a couple REALLY excellent bits in it. Daniel Craig and Judi Dench continue to be utterly fantastic – I would watch a 2-hour movie of just M and Bond talking about, like, life issues and stuff – and there are moments where the film transcends the typical Bond-movie glop that Haggis tries to drag it back into which keep it just barely in “real movie” territory. Because, let’s face it, even the best of the old Bond movies – and this is coming from someone RAISED on them – are really fucking stupid, and I’ll take an okay “real movie” with James Bond in it over a great “Bond movie” any day.

You know your movie has problems if Nick – who, though he is like a brother to me as much as anyone who I am not actually related to and who I would probably kill if offered enough money to do so and thus is really more like a half-brother or a distant cousin or something, has zero artistic or aesthetic sense whatsoever – asks after seeing it “why was that scene in the movie?” When people who have no knowledge of screenwriting WHATSOEVER can identify structural flaws in your screenplay that is when it is time to get a new writer.

Daniel Craig is still awesome, though.

Sunday – “Mike, this is a case of the terrible versus the pathetic.”

In a similar vein to the conclusion of my thoughts on Quantum of Solace, when my FATHER is summing up his thoughts on the Eagles game with an impression of the Comic Book Guy – “Worst. Football Game. EVER.” – your football team has SERIOUS FUCKING PROBLEMS. You can’t beat the Bengals in SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES of football? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? THE FUCKING BENGALS?

As an unabashed Donovan McNabb fan I will be the first to admit that he had what was probably his worst game since his rookie year yesterday. But, hey, here’s a thought – if D-Mac is having a bad day maybe we could, I don’t know, what’s the word for it, oh yes, RUN THE FOOTBALL! YOU HAVE BRIAN WESTBROOK! GIVE HIM THE FUCKING BALL!

The Eagles ran the ball 18 times yesterday. They threw it 58 times. You cannot play football this way. I don’t care if you have the worst running back in the NFL let alone the best whose talent is being wasted by that pass-happy fuck with the headset, you CANNOT BE A SUCCESSFUL TEAM PLAYING FOOTBALL LIKE THIS.

Merrill said it best, I think, when he opined about halfway through overtime, “if there was ever a game which neither team deserved to win, this is it.” If you are the Eagles and not only can you not beat a bunch of meatsacks like the Bengals but you actually come a hairsbreadth from LOSING to them a couple times, things have to change. That is it. The Eagles should have blown this team out by 30 points. Instead they tie, and only because Shayne Graham was the first kicker to miss a field goal against the Eagles in something like 800 years. You almost lost to the BENGALS.

Andy Reid has to go.

Monday – “Is it safe?”

I got word from Oprah’s yesterday on their choice of speed round topic and I have deemed it perfectly acceptable. Actually I think it’s kinda neat. I look forward to what I can do with it. So make sure to put a stop to them tonight, because though they get to pick a speed round after winning three times in a row, if they pull back-to-back three-peats everyone will have to address Palestra Jon as “El Jefe.” And no one wants that.

JLK

Your Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg Quizo Update

The walk from the building I work in to the building where I get lunch
is maybe 400 feet. I was one of the lucky ones who survived; the
walkway between the two structures was littered with the
rapidly-decomposing bodies of those who perished during the crossing,
victims of heat so intense that if one listens closely one can hear
even the trees wailing in their death throes.

It is too fucking hot, people.

I stumbled in the door when I got here to the cafeteria, exhausted,
drenched in sweat, alternatively renouncing the God who created both
weather and the humans who would so colossaly fuck it up and praying
to the same God to reach down with his merciful hands and snuff out my
life.

After all, when I finish lunch I'm going to have to walk back.

JLK

Your Wildly Vacillating Quizo Update

I have railed against the weather numerous times in this space - previous instances of summer cold or winter heat or snow in April or whatever - and despite the fact that it is dark, cold, and raining in mid-August, the weather specifically is not what I'm shaking my fist at today. No, the problem is that for the last weekend life in general has taken this strange sort of erratic turn and, well, I tend to think my life was interesting enough beforehand.

One of the underlying causes of all of this is that the constant stress of obsessing about the horror show that my job has become is beginning to cause noticeable cracks in my psyche. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that it was pretty well cracked to begin with.

Things started well enough on Thursday night when I went to a book signing by William Gibson at the library. This was quite the big deal for me, bringing to 40% my completion rate for Meeting My Top Five Literary Idols - which is close to as impressive as it's going to get when one considers that meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Shakespeare would require, respectively, some serious necromancy and some really, REALLY serious necromancy, and the fact David Mamet scares the shit out of me. (For the record, the other 20% that I successfully met was Neil Gaiman.)

The reading/signing thing was cool - he has aged an awful lot recently, but he's still sharp and funny, and when he signed my books he commented happily on how well-traveled my copy of Neuromancer was.

Then on the way home from the signing my car blew up.

This is only slightly an exaggeration. My car overheated fairly dramatically - the temperature gauge swinging back and forth over the redline, steam occasionally, but not constantly, billowing out from under the hood - and the next morning when I went to open the hood (it being too dark to see the engine at the time being, you know, night and all) there was coolant fluid pretty much everywhere, so it's a safe bet that SOMETHING with coolant in it, a hose of some sort I'm guessing, failed rather catastrophically while I was driving to the comic shop from the signing. I figure I was lucky to limp the car home. After consulting my finances and my personal feelings on the matter I determined that I am sick and fucking tired of spending money keeping this goddamn 16-year-old whoring sonofabitch car running. So, after my show is over I will be out and about on the market for a car.

Show, you say? Why yes! A show. Perhaps you've heard I produce shows. It's called Dealer's Choice. It is by Patrick Marber and it will be playing in the Restaurant at the pub opening on September 18. Originally we were going to be part of the Philly Fringe, but that is a gigantic pain in the ass to say the least, so we're not. Someone in my ridiculously talented cast - and here I do not exaggerate even the slightest little bit, this bunch is the most talented single group of actors I think I've ever seen in a show in this city, I don't know how in the HELL they're working for me - came up with the idea of calling our show the headliner of the "Philadelphia Binge Festival," and I liked it so much I decided to steal it. Tickets for the show are a scant $10, and if you get there early enough you also get to have dinner. So it's like going out for dinner and a show, only you're going to one place. Ask me for details. Website is up and ticket sales begin shortly.

Everyone remember the Medea references? Oh, that was nothing. Prepare to be besieged.

Anyway, a rental car later, me and some of my boys (and their moms and sisters, which was a little odd) were on our way to the Meadowlands on Saturday night to see the Los Angeles David Beckhams (nee Galaxy) play the New York Red Bulls. I wasn't sure what to expect from the experience necessarily, but two tailgates (totalling some 7 hours, both before and after the game), being pressganged into cooking for more than a hundred people at said tailgates, 66,000 fans in the stadium, spending the game next to several hundred Red Bulls supporters who can be charitably described as "completely insane" and NINE FUCKING GOALS! was certainly not it.

Sunday morning saw a big-time shock in the Manchester derby, and then something less of a shock as Chelsea and Liverpool played another spiteful, mean-spirited game that ended, mercifully, in a 1-1 draw, though I'm still convinced Chelsea left 2 points on the table there and could have won. The combination of the beginnings of cold and rain, the knowledge that I'd have to go to work 18 hours after, and the fact that we didn't beat the filthy Scouse put me in quite the pissy mood. Until I got home, at least, where after weeks of prodding I finally convinced my father to watch Hot Fuzz which - as I predicted - he loved, thus once again proving the age-old axiom "I am always right."

Then, just before bed, I pulled out my new William Gibson book to read before sleeping, and I noticed that one of my Top Five Literary Idols apparently inscribed all of my books "To Joan."

I don't even smoke anymore, but there aren't enough cigarettes in the goddamn world for this.

JLK

Your Share and Share Alike Quizo Update

I woke up this morning and peeked out my blinds to see how hard it was still raining, as the night before I had been seriously worried that I could drown walking from my house to my car. Five inches of rain in the last day and no end in sight. FIVE INCHES OF RAIN! That's the equivalent of, like, twenty-five feet of snow. Or two feet, I can't be bothered to figure out how much it actually is.

I could not tell how hard it was raining, however, because my window was covered in some kind of opaque white substance. "Now," I said, "that can't be snow, because it's April 16th, and for me to be unable to see out my window on April 16th because it is covered in snow is just insane."

I instead chose to believe that, somehow, my window had been covered in white paint by some malicious third party. Possibly leprechauns. The fact that my window is some 25 feet or so above the ground was merely a logical inconvenience, and I went about getting ready for work convinced that gold-hoarding pituitary dwarfs from County Cork had painted over my windows, as the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

Then I stepped outside to go to work to find that not only was it, in fact, snowing, but it was snowing sideways.

Snowing. Fucking. SIDEWAYS. On April 16th.

I just stood on the front step, sighed, and said, "it's going to be one of those days."

And, lo, it is. I had almost an entire hour to myself in the office this morning before the thrice-damned woman who also sits in this room arrived and showed me that a day when I wake up to sideways snow actually CAN get worse.

Let me explain something to you.

I like my job. I really like my job. Those who know me well realize what a freakish statement this is, but it's true. Aside from the occasional grunt work - like back in February or so when I spent two weeks looking up zip codes, which is as much fun as it sounds - my job is challenging and interesting. The people, for the most part, are very nice.

But I swear to god I'm going to kill this fucking woman.

I know more about this woman's personal life than I knew about the personal lives of most of the women I've DATED, since even when we were dating I didn't spend forty hours a goddamned week listening to them talk - talk very loudly, for hours at a stretch - about their personal lives. I know where she lives. I know what her husband does for a living. I know what her EX-husband did for a living. I know where her children went to college. I know where they work. I know what kind of car her husband drives. I don't want to know these things. I know them anyway.

This knowledge, mind you, comes JUST from when she talks on the phone. This activity takes up, I dunno, maybe 3-4 hours a day. The other 4-5 hours are spent talking to the never ending stream of people who are constantly in and out of this room to talk to this woman. As close as I can figure, approximately 3% of these visits are work-related. The rest are just her talking about meaningless nonsense to other people - sometimes as many as FOUR other people at one time - about, I dunno, whatever stupid shit is rattling around in the sorry excuse for a birdcage this woman calls a brain.

Not to mention that she has what might be charitably considered the most annoying speech pattern in the history of sentient lifeforms. Imagine listening to, say, Fran Drescher doing an impression of Kelly from The Office reading the Declaration of Independence while jabbing icepicks into your eyeballs every time the word "for" or "he" comes up. It's like that. When ending a conversation or when someone leaves the office she says bye-ee. Two syllables. "Bye" and "ee." I hear the word bye-ee about 40 times a day. At one point, when someone came in here to tell a story about their newborn son, she said the word "awww" fourteen times in sixty seconds. I counted. FOURTEEN TIMES IN ONE MINUTE. I am not making this up. This is the background noise of my day.

At least it was. Initially I listened to my iPod while working because it helped me concentrate while I was trying to do extremely detailed systems administration. Now I just blast whatever I've got - at this moment it's the soundtrack to The Matrix Revolutions - at the highest volume possible to drown out the incessant noise in this room. Because, you know, programming a massive database that has to accurately track every penny that comes into this place lest the IRS seize the hospital's assets, I wouldn't want to work WITHOUT FUCKING DISTRACTIONS while doing that, would I?

I look outside and it's still snowing, though at least right now it appears to be coming straight down.

Anyone still wonder why I'm bitchy?

JLK

Your More Than Likely Quizo Update

I remembered this weekend something I read once about quantum mechanics, how when the first scientists started studying it and they tried to get exact values of things all their equations pumped out garbage (the one guy who kept getting 1=100 I found particularly amusing). They learned that at a quantum level everything operates on probability, that you can only determine the ODDS that something will or won't happen.

The structure of the universe is based on a probability distribution. That doesn't give me a whole lot of hope for, you know, anything, since as the theme song to Casino Royale (which I've watched approximately 14 times in the last week) teaches us: "the odds will betray you."

Take for instance, the following situation from Saturday morning, once again guest-starring my father:

After waking up two hours before I planned to (highly unlikely) and spending the better part of an hour trying to dig my car out of several inches of solid ice and then still being unable to go anyplace (also unlikely) my dad comes out and along with two neighbors (me interacting with my neighbors in any way: incredibly unlikely) push me out of my parking space so I can get to the bar and watch Chelsea thump Sheffield United 3-0 (very likely) all by myself (unlikely).

I go around the block to find my father standing next to his car. He can't get out of his space, doesn't have time to dig out, and needs me to drive him to work. No problem. I still have time what with me getting up so freakishly early on a Saturday.

So after dropping him off I'm taking the Boulevard to the pub instead of 95. As I'm on the Route 1 bridge making the merge onto the Schuylkill a truck turns off onto 76 westbound. As this happens, a piece of ice about the size of a bread plate flies off the top of the truck towards my car.

Now at the exact moment this is happening I am using the handy windshield-spray-thing - again, my knowledge of cars does not extend to the actual name of this device - to clear some gunk of the windshield.

The ice flies in an arc towards my car and strikes EXACTLY ON THE JOINT of my windshield wiper arm where the blade connects to the arm as it is in mid-wipe and my driver's side windshield wiper blade splits in half lengthwise and flies off of the front of my car in two different directions.

My response to this event was to say:

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST AAAGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!"

As at that precise instant I was certain I was more than likely about to die, since with no visibilty and my car apparently under attack from ice artillery I could quite easily have driven myself off the bridge.

Let's line up all the pieces here (the "probability cloud" as the physicists say): me - truck - my location - truck's location - my velocity - truck's velocity - position of windshield wiper - velocity of windshield wiper - original resting location of ice - escape velocity of ice from top of truck - windspeed, gravity, and air resistance affecting trajectory of ice towards car.

For those things to all come together at once to destroy one of my windshield wipers - and incidentally, mean I had to travel the length of 76 from Route 1 to 676 leaning over to look out the passenger side of the window since, with the plowed snow, there was no place to pull over - well suffice it to say that the odds against that are mathematically disharmonious.

Afterwards my dad said "you're lucky you're not dead," and I'm like "yeah, being lucky, that's my problem."

Also speaking of odds, if you watched Galactica last night - and shame on you if you didn't - it is clear that some of the people we know and love are going to be revealed as Cylons next week, which is something I'm not sure how I feel about. For what it's worth, my take is:

More than likely a robot (5-3 odds): Sam, Torii

Less than more than likely a robot (6-1): Gaeta, Dualla, Starbuck [choke][sob]

Not remotely more than likely a robot, aka almost certainly not a robot (12-1): Helo

If he's a robot there'd better be a damn good explanation for it (20-1): Saul MF Tigh

I will be taking bets tonight. Get in on the Cylon Pool while the action is hot.

Then, this morning, on the way to work traffic on Cottman Avenue was backed up (and I mean way the hell backed up) in this one spot where it never is. I finally get there and learn that the cause of the problem - I am not making this up - is these two old people just standing in the middle of the street. A man and a woman, easily 80-something if they're a day, standing square in the right lane on Cottman Avenue.

What are the odds against THAT?

JLK

Your Back To Earth Quizo Update

It's a good-news-bad-news kind of day.

The good news is that my back doesn't hurt anymore and hasn't for a couple days. The bad news is that this means I don't really have an excuse to consume dangerous quantities of painkillers any more and thus have to live on this lousy planet with everyone else. I couldn't even pull a Brett Favre and get hooked on them and claim that's why I throw so many interceptions. I do kinda miss the purple clouds, though.

The good news is that Chelsea won the Carling Cup yesterday, defeating Arsenal 2-1 and winning us our first silverware of the season. The bad news is that Chelsea and England captain John Terry got kicked in the face and was knocked out for a little while, but he seems to be okay.

The good news is that the Oscars were last night and Martin Scorcese finally came up big. The bad news is that I was supposed to go to an Oscar party down the shore last night and the FUCKING SNOW prevented me from doing so.

Remember that bit a couple weeks ago, from that one psychotic e-mail that went out because Dr. Chill complained that I hate everything, where I talk about how wonderful snow is? Yeah, that was a lie. I hate it. I HATE IT. I hate it more than anything. MORE THAN ANYTHING, do you hear me? It drives me insane. Then last night I'm trying to get ready for this thing - which was black tie, further pissing me off, because goddamn I look good in formal wear, as those of us who were here on Barrymore night are aware - trying to divine from the weather forecasts whether it's safe to drive to Somers Point. Or, more accurately, whether it's safe to drive BACK from Somers Point at 1AM.

All the websites and TV stations were being relatively noncommittal and I was about to take the plunge when the thing on weather.com changed from "light snow, with a possibility of sleet and a secondary possibility of some icing" to "DON'T DRIVE TONIGHT IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE ZOMG WEATHER DEEEEAAAAAAAAATH!!!!!!shift1"

So much for that idea.

Did anyone catch that one commercial during the show last night, where Diane Sawyer is doing an interview with Bob Woodruff? He's that reporter who got bombed in Iraq and needed massive brain surgery and whatnot. I certainly have nothing against him, but during the commercial they quote this one bit where Sawyer asks him incredulously - Diane Sawyer, curse her black soul, is always incredulous about something - says "so you have no fear of death anymore?"

At this point I said out loud to the TV, "you know what, if I took a fucking RPG to the dome and lived to tell about it I probably wouldn't be scared of a whole hell of a lot anymore either. I'd be like, skydiving? You got it. What? No. Parachutes are for pansies."

Then I peeked outside and saw that the entire world had been encased in snow and ice and STILL wished I'd gone to the Oscar party. Goddamn snow.

The good news, though, is that my recent back injury, while comparatively healed, gives me total immunity from shoveling, since that's how I did myself last time. The bad news...

Well, I guess there isn't any bad news on that one.

JLK

Your "I'm Melting! I'm Melting!" Quizo Update

A WHOLE lot of things to get to this week, so let's get started.

Thing the first: let me quote, for a moment, the comic genius of Leonardo Leonardo from the abortive Clerks cartoon series when he told the Prime Minister of Canada: "NO! It's not evil spirits, it's just RAIN." Our attendance last week can only be described as piss-poor, which I must assume can be attributed to the fact that we had some weather. Trust me, folks, it won't hurt you. You can come to Quizo in the rain. No ill will befall you. Unless, of course, you are some manner of international superspy a la James Bond, in which case Dr. Chill may take offense and would attempt to befall some ill upon you. That strikes me as unlikely, however.

Thing the second: speaking of James Bond, I saw Casino Royale this past weekend. It is outstanding. I highly recommend it. I don't recommend it as much as Superman Returns, but still rather highly. Daniel Craig proves that ugly is the new not-ugly, and for the first time in the 21-movie series Bond points out the fact that martinis (vodka martinis especially) pretty much taste like lighter fluid no matter how you make them. And not the good tasting lighter fluid either, the really disgusting kind that kinda tastes like a martini. Note well that there will be... perhaps not a preponderance, but slightly less than a preponderance of Bond questions this week, because I really like James Bond movies and I really REALLY liked Casino Royale.

Thing the third: Thanks to Democrats finally getting their act together and winning control of the House and Senate two weeks ago, my theatre company's plans to produce Sam Shepard's "The God of Hell" - a play about the importance of Democrats getting their act together and winning control of the House and Senate - have had to be altered somewhat by the fact that we were in possession of a play written 18 months ago that is now dated and irrelevant. Instead we are now producing Euripides' "Medea," which (as near as I can figure after extensive research) has never been performed in Philadelphia. (Opening 8PM January 11 at Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom, tickets $20) So I essentially have the Philly premiere of a play written 2500 years ago. The theatre is a cool business sometimes.

Thing the fourth: We put up our audition notice this weekend, and now the inbox for my theatre company has been flooded with headshots and resumes. Medea (opening 8PM January 11 at Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom, tickets $20) is a 20-something woman, so I have spent all morning going over pictures of gorgeous actresses, deciding which ones I want to consider spending the next ten weeks with. The theatre is a cool business sometimes.

Thing the fifth: Someone needs to inform the Eagles that the NFL season is, in fact, 16 games long, and not 10. This will be the second year in a row where thanks to injuries the latter half of the season is essentially useless, which if nothing else makes scheduling rehearsals on Sunday afternoons in December and August a lot easier for me. We had a serious problem with our first show when we had performances on nights when the Eagles were in playoff games. As it was last year, this does not look to be a problem this time around (Medea, opening 8PM January 11 at Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom, tickets $20). Come on, lottery pick! Oh, wait, wrong league.

Thing the sixth: My birthday is next week. Next Thursday, to be precise. My last birthday in my 20s. Just letting you know.

See everyone tonight.

JLK