Welcome home, see you later!

Dallas was great as usual. Our friend Elaine had just finished choreographing "Swing! The Musical" for Plano repertory theatre, so after the workshop on Saturday, we went to check it out. Elaine's friend Mark gave us a ride from Dallas to Plano. He's a sound designer and musician and was the front man for the experimental jazz/hip hop group MC 900 ft Jesus. Funny guy. Cool guy. It wasn't until we were on our way to the airport with Elaine on Monday that I realized he wrote Killer Inside Me, which was my favorite song on the radio for awhile.

Back to the show...
Swing! The musical, as a show, sucks ass. It's the worst kind of theatrical attempt to cash in on a fad that you have ever seen. No plot, no direction, no nothing. The show has no idea what it is. It's a period piece one minute and a poorly executed, funk inspired, contemporary show the next. It's as if nobody who wrote or produced this show actually knew anything about swing to begin with. The guiding philosophy seems to have been "put them in sparkly costumes and nobody will know the difference." ARGH! I fucking hate broadway. So, basically, Elaine was handed this sow's ass of a show and told to make a silk purse out of it. Which, not surprisingly, she did. Because she's awesome. There were a ton of dance numbers in a lot of different styles and she did an amazing job with all of them. Unfortunately, having great choreography in a show this bad is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The end result is still inevitable. But, as I said, great job Elaine!

The workshop we taught went well, I thought. Saturday was a little shaky but I think we brought everything together on Sunday. They say they want us for next year, so we must have done something right. We also had some great food while we were there. There is a Hari Krishna restaurant that is attatched to a temple that has an incredible vegetarian buffett for seven bucks. We went there twice. Next time you're in Dallas, check it out. Can't remember the name, but I'm sure it's the only Hari Krishna restaurant in Dallas. We also stopped by "Wild about Harry's" for some frozen custard on Friday. No matter what we do in Dallas, Harry's is always on the agenda. You have not tasted anything like this. Ever. I guarantee it. I am extremely partial to the coconut, but you really can't lose with any of the flavors.

Got back on Monday and rushed off to my second Improv rehearsal. We were only missing one person this time and the whole thing went pretty well. We worked a lot on openings and two person scenes. Also did some tag outs, which were less successful. All good though. We're really just getting to know each other and it takes awhile to even begin getting any kind of "group mind" thing going. I'm sure we'll get there. Lots of very talented folks in this group.

Also on Monday, the air conditioner man fixed our AC. "Thank you air conditioner man!" And it's a good thing that he got here when he did 'cause it's fucking 96 degrees in the shade this week and I would have killed somebody by now without some kind of artificial refrigeration to keep my homicidal tendencies at bay.

Tomorrow we leave for Vermont and the blog-a-log-a-ding-dong goes on hiatus again for another week.

Cheers.