The rundown, in case you aren’t hip to the international wire:

• Page Six.
• The Netherlands. This one has my favorite headline: “Anne Heche boos om schizofrenie-show.”
• Check out the splash page of People.com. Yep. That’s us. Second favorite headline: “Call Me Angry.” In the print version, you can find us on page 20.
• The IMDB Celebrity page.
• Asia.
• The Arizona Republic.
• The Kansas City Star.
• Hungary.
• The Loop here is the best-written one so far, even though it’s the one furthest from the truth.
• The Dallas Voice is also stretching things a bit.
• Filth2go.com is what started all of this. This is the archived cache.
• The CitySearch review has dropped off the face of the Internet, it seems.
• The LA Weekly review.
• The LA Times review.
• The Backstage West review.
• Canada.
• And finally, Brazil. Click here for my favorite translation ever.

Despite what you may read in some of the papers, I did not extend the show. Not that it wasn’t fun every single night out there, but I didn’t have the financial means to extend the show, and I’d rather go out with a bang than beat this gossip horse to the ground. Gossip horse? What is wrong with me? Oh, no. I’ve spent too much time reading her words. She’s killing my writing.

Isn’t that her sweet revenge.

April Winchell was funny as hell, and I got to gush in front of her about how much I love her dad, Paul Winchell. I once dedicated a play I wrote many years ago to Paul Winchell because he’s the voice of Tigger and I love Tigger very much.

So April Winchell has some fans. Fans that like the Internet. If any of you ever thought you were being way too much of a pamie.com fan, fear not. You have nothing on the April Winchell fanbase. For one, as far as I know, you do not have a mullet. And if you have one, probably you take it off and put it back on the wig shelf until Halloween, right? These people were mullet-y.

And the ones that weren’t, well, they were internet-y. And by that I mean both nights April guested, when I stood onstage to sing my song, I saw someone in the audience bootlegging the show.

Like we’re Radiohead or something. Bootlegging Call Us Crazy: The Anne Heche Monologues. Hey, if you find it on Limewire or whatever, let me know.

There’s a sound an audience makes that you never want to hear as a director. Well, I guess you’d want to hear this sound if you were directing a magic act, or the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow or Steve-O or whatever, but there’s this sound that goes from applause to this whoosh of horror. A sound that goes: “WRRAAAAAHHHH!!!???”

Friday night as I exited the stage after curtain call, I heard that sound. And the first thought that ran through my mind was, “We’ve killed Scott Thompson.”

I ran back onstage, praying I wasn’t about to see Anne Heche holding a smoking gun, one of my comedy idols bleeding all over his 20-point font copy of Call Me Crazy (You can buy it used for three bucks. I highly recommend it for evenings of spoken word hilarity.).

Scott Thompson had fallen. He was on the ground, between the legs of one of my actresses.

Next thought: “One of my actresses has killed Scott Thompson.”

He had picked her up in a moment of happy curtain calling. He spun her, and took a step forward, forgetting that the stage had levels. He was still holding her in his arms as he began to tumble forward. She said all she heard was him yell calmly in her ear, “We’re falling.”

She’s fine. He suffered a pretty nasty bump on his hand, but he’s fine. It’s amazing nobody cracked open a skull, as my mom would say.

But everybody’s okay. And the show has closed. And today, it’s quite a bit quieter around here.

I don’t think I can convey the feeling that happened right between our two shows on Friday night. But one show ended around nine-thirty, and the next one was to begin at ten. We were sold-out both shows, and the 8pm show was packed. People were sitting on the ground, leaning against walls — there were so many people. Then the show let out and April’s fans began crowding the stage. Kristin Chenoweth was there. I walk outside the theatre, and there are two lines outside the building, one to the left and one to the right. One is for ticket holders and one is for people who want tickets. I couldn’t see the end of either line. Then in front of me are all the people who just got out of the 8pm show, people who wanted to say hello or talk about how much they liked it. But I’m still in makeup and costume and I’ve got to show Scott Thompson where he’s going to be for the opening, closing and his monologue. There were so many people there, and the lights were blinking and bright and it was chaotic and exciting and everybody was so happy. One of my friends leaned in, pointed at everything around us and said, “Look what you did!”

It was, to put it bluntly, pretty fucking awesome.

And now it’s over, and we’re moving on, and maybe we’ll remount it again sometime later. We enjoy doing that show so much. All of the guests have commented that they can’t believe there aren’t backstage divas. They can’t believe we’re all so nice. But we really do just enjoy each other and encourage each other. Every night someone’s waiting to high-five you after your monologue. I’m really going to miss seeing those women all the time. I’m sure we’ll find another reason to all be together. But that show was incredibly special to me.

International Superstars!

And now, to reward all of you who sat through show story after show story as the Anne Heche Monologues took over my life, I offer you one more story from Allison’s wedding. It involves Anna Beth. Since the two of them are apparently never updating again, it’s up to me to keep the stories going. There’s a Joy Luck Club/Ya-Ya Sisterhood joke in there somewhere, but I’ll just let you write it for yourself. I’m supposed to be taking it easy today.

We were at the rehearsal dinner, where Chris and Allison put all the “non-family friends” from Texas and Los Angeles. You might also just go ahead and call it “The Kids table.”

We were feeling pretty exhausted from all the drinking and partying. Someone mentioned needing a Red Bull. Anna Beth perked up. Vince, her husband, laughed.

[scripty]
VINCE
What’s wrong?

ANNA BETH
They said Red Bull. Is there Red Bull here?

PAMIE
Just iced tea, I think.

ANNA BETH
Well, I could use an Iced Tea and Red Bull. “A Southern Slammah.”

VINCE
You’d drink anything with Red Bull in it.

ANNA BETH
I would. Red Bull makes it better.

VINCE
Any shot at all. The bartender could be all, “This is called a dirty ashtray.”

ANNA BETH
It got Red Bull? I’m drinking it.

VINCE
“Dirty Ashtray.” What you do is you get a shot glass, some Red Bull, vodka, a cigarette butt, a piece of chewed-up gum and one unlit match.

PAMIE
Then you light the shot.

VINCE
Make a wish, blow it out and shoot it.

ANNA BETH
Sign me up!

PAMIE
You take a shot glass, you get Red Bull and Potato Vodka, and then you put ketchup and salt around the rim. It’s called a “Tater Tot.”

ANNA BETH
Now that I’d drink.

VINCE
Soy sauce, motor oil, Red Bull and Rum.

PAMIE
What’s that called?

VINCE
“The Emergency Room.”

ALLISON
Who’s going to the emergency room? What’s wrong? Did someone get sick? Is everything okay? What’d you do, Pam?

VINCE
We’re just making up drinks for Anna Beth.

ALLISON
Well, as long as they’ve got Red Bull in them, she’ll drink them.
[/scripty]

I also spent this weekend with my friend Dan, who flew in from New York to see the show. After the month of New York friends, I’m itching to take a trip to the other side of the country. But I think they’ll understand if I wait until they aren’t buried in all that white stuff. I’d hate to lose my tan.

I only have one thing to say about last night’s Grammy ceremony. Why the hell didn’t anybody stop Nelly from setting the walls of the building on fire while he sang about it getting hot in herre? I mean, seriously.

By the way, if anybody finds a bag of money in the street somewhere, I sure could use it. There’s nothing broker than a girl doing theatre in Los Angeles.

[db]

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