one upping the one person show

Oh, I’m sleepy.  It’s been a long week, but I’ve only been at work for three days.

We tech the show tonight.  This means for the first time ever people will see this show that aren’t Eric or the cats.  I’m a little nervous, but I’m sure Ray, Chuy and Matt will be a good crowd.  My hope is that if it really isn’t good one of them will come up to me and say, “Look, I really think you should just pretend that you came down with an illness or something and back out of this thing.  Really.  For your sake, for my sake… for everyone’s sake, really.”

But I’m sure that won’t happen.

Mostly because Chuy and Matt have been making this two one-person-show show a mock competition.

[scripty]
MATT
How long is your show running?

PAMIE
Oh, right around forty-three minutes without laughs.

MATT
Yeah?  Me too.  Actually, it’s running right at forty-four.

PAMIE
Oh?

CHUY
That’s without laughs.

MATT
Right, which adds another… oh, I don’t know… fifteen, twenty minutes or so.

CHUY
Easily.

PAMIE
Do you guys have a lot of tech stuff?

MATT
Do you?

PAMIE
No.  I didn’t know what the light plot was going to be, so I kept it simple.

MATT
Yeah.  We thought of that too, probably before you did, so we already made those adjustments.

PAMIE
Oh, that’s good.

MATT
Right.  So we’re winning.

PAMIE
Great.

CHUY
We’re gonna kick your ass.

PAMIE
Eric!  I need you to stand up and tell these two that we’re winning.

ERIC
The show?

PAMIE
Yeah, say some macho stuff or something.

ERIC
Dude.  The show rocks.

MATT
Yeah?  Ours rocks, too.

ERIC
Really?

CHUY
Really.

ERIC
I guess we’ll find out at the tech which one rocks.

MATT
I guess we will.

PAMIE
After school.  Three o’ clock.
[/scripty]

So, even if my show isn’t very good, they’ll probably pat me on the back and then run to the back of the theatre high-fiving each other and saying, “We totally ROCK!”

I’ve noticed a strange trend in the hate mail I receive from Squishy:  it’s almost always fueled by me saying I don’t like a particular actor’s film.   It also always comes months after I’ve written the entry, so just one day out of the blue I get something like, “HEY VINCENT GALLO HATER, U SUK!”  And then it goes into lengthy discussion on how I shouldn’t post all of my opinions as fact telling the world my stupid stories and making said person both bored and sick.

I don’t know what it is about celebrities that forces us to become so adamant about supporting them.  I know that whenever I hear someone make a mean statement about John Travolta or Johnny Depp my ears prick up a little.  Hell, Chuy, Jeff and I had an entire theatre piece debating film where at one point we both jumped on Jeff for claiming that Julia Roberts was the most important and gifted actress of our time.

I’ve gotten into terribly long arguments about film and the people in film.  I’ve gotten angry over the Independent Film movement to only cast women with lisps, dolphin voices, or any other speech impediment.  I’ve gotten angry over the way geek girls are portrayed.  But I would never send hate mail about some of the actors these people get so excited over.  I can understand if I  made some shocking statement like, “These are the only good actors in Hollywood ever, and right at the top of the list in big bold letters says “Billy Baldwin.”

But people seem to really freak out if you don’t like a movie they liked or don’t like an actor they respect… we don’t get this upset about world hunger.

Oh, that sounded like I was auditioning for Miss America, didn’t it?  “How can we tackle important issues like world hunger if we can’t all agree on which Star Wars film is the best?”

Speaking of celebrity, Bartenders is now online.  Christie, the girl who plays Betty, is a member of Monks.  If you wanna see me, watch the episode “Dating Politics.”  I play Angela, and I’m in the last part of the episode.  I’m in red.  As you watch me smoke a cigarette and drink a beer, try to keep in mind that it was seven in the morning on a Sunday, and I had eaten a banana moments before the shoot.  That’s a girl acting through nausea.

I am jittery.  I will be jittery until Friday night after the show.  So technically, until Saturday morning, I’m gonna be a nutcase.  I’ve never performed something I’ve written before.  I’ve always given it to other people.  Oh, sure, the occasional sketch here or there, but there was always someone else on stage with me.  Just me here. “Just Pam!”