Author: Shawn

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Mind Over Matt, post-production party

I’m not sure if that’s the proper title for tonight’s party, but I thought the alliteration sounded cool, so I ran with it. Anyway, it’s now two weeks since we wrapped, so most of us got together to watch ourselves on DVD. (Unfortunately, two people couldn’t make it because they’ve got “higher priorities” like “family”… lame excuses, if you ask me.)

We met up at someone’s apartment in Minneapolis, ate, drank, played games and watched the first Sunday’s performance from start to finish. Minus the breaks between scenes and the intermissions, of course. No one needed 15 minutes to grab food or use the bathroom. Well, sorta didn’t need it for the bathroom—it was out of commission for a while when the toilet got plugged up and there was no plunger in the apartment. Incidentally, if you ever need to borrow a plunger from a neighbor, don’t be surprised if they tell you you don’t need to bring it back.

Turns out that the performance went really well, everyone nailed their lines and they looked good doing it. Okay, I think we looked good doing it. It was a shame that we didn’t have a bigger audience that afternoon, but as the director pointed out when giving her introductory speech, people had to do a lot of shoveling before coming to the show.

The only regret I have about the party? Sure, there’s the sad “I don’t know if or when I’ll see any of these people again with whom I’ve had so much fun” stuff, but during the course of the play, Matt mentions having Cheetos and Sprite in his kitchen. Tonight? No Cheetos or Sprite. I felt so dirty…

So that’s it. We’re wrapped, no more stories about the future of the play. There are a handful of stories I’ve yet to tell due to a lack of blog entries for the last three or four months, but I’ve got until the last day of the year to write stuff—I should be able to fill in one or two blanks during that time. Whether I’ll be able to fill the void that came about due to the lack of Cheetos and Sprite tonight… maybe it’s not that bad and I just need to straighten out my priorities. Maybe all I need to do is spend some time with my “family.”

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“I can’t believe that actually happened.”

A friend of mine, Jason Schumacher, made a movie called “The Telephone Game” that played in a film festival this weekend. The premise of the movie isn’t that awe-inspiring—a bad play from auditions to performance that goes horribly awry in a multitude of ways—but how it was created was pretty impressive: there was no script, just three pages of notes. Aside from a song and a few lines of dialogue, almost all of it was improvised.

Because this was a film festival, there were ballots at the door of the auditorium so people could grab one and vote for “Best Movie”, “Best Cinematography”, etc. Sure, it might have been the only movie I saw, but I was so impressed with The Telephone Game that it got my vote in every category. Including “Best Documentary.”

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Who doesn’t like icy intersections?

We got about 6″ of snow yesterday, which isn’t a big deal for Minnesota. Assuming that it’s not the first snow of the year, of course. I don’t know how the mind-wipe occurs, but it happens every year when even one inch of white stuff falls from from the sky (and I’m not talking coke that someone flushed down an airplane’s toilet to avoid getting busted by the cops). People forget how to drive in snowy weather and the late news reports 300 spin-outs and an eight-hour drive to make a 10-mile trip home from work.

But that’s here and now. My mom told me horror stories about when she lived in Pennsylvania for a while about 40 years ago, so I’m hoping people have outgrown the practice. (They probably haven’t, but hope springs eternal.) If there was ever any snow on the ground back then, a lot of people had no idea how to handle it. 300 spin-outs at the end of the day would be a happy surprise. What scared her the most, though, was when they were driving on city streets.

If you’ve done a good job teaching your kids to drive in snow, they’ll know to accelerate slowly until the car starts moving. Some of Mom’s friends back there used a different method: gun it until the tires melt the snow, hit the pavement and move you forward. It’s an interesting technique that might work once or twice, but there’s one teensy-weensy problem. Melted snow refreezes. That might not mean much once you’re gone, but I imagine the drivers behind you who can’t stop on the ice, slide through the red light and then into another car sure appreciate it.

So that’s my advice for the day. Take it easy, drive slow and don’t gun it to try to move faster. Even if you need to flush some coke down a toilet to avoid getting busted by the cops.

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Scab half-life = 5 days

Something I neglected to mention about injuries sustained during Mind Over Matt was that I skinned up my knee a little bit when rolling off the couch, a maneuver which isn’t really conducive to keeping your balance and staying upright. That in itself isn’t a big deal, though if the director had let me wear shorts like I had originally planned during that scene, it would have been significantly messier.

The reason that came to mind was because I finally picked off the scab yesterday. Yeah, I know, it’s a bad habit, but it’s just so tempting to take off the edges, then get a little further in until you pull the whole thing off and expose an artery. Good times. But I waited for a week and a half before giving into the temptation, so it had more time to heal—I’m giving myself a little bit of credit for that.

I had another bad habit when I was younger that I managed to stop doing over time: tearing off my fingernails. When they would start to get long, I wouldn’t pull out a nail clipper, I’d just make a little divot in the side and then tug it across until all of that extra length was gone. But then sometimes I’d tear at it, get a little further in until I’d pull the whole thing off and expose an artery. Not so good times.

Okay, it never got that bad, but sometimes it would get down far enough to hurt and start bleeding. Not enough to scab up, mind you, so no fun for either bad habit. Eventually, that bleeding was enough motivation for me to stop. Now I just let my nails grow until they turn into giant claws like Florence Griffith Joyner’s. (Pretty hot, huh?)

As it turns out, a few other people in the play have a bad habit: biting their fingernails. And I’m not talking just nibbling at them once in a while—I’m talking like water dripping on a rock to the point where it erodes the ends of their front teeth. Not wanting to do it, putting Tabasco or other stuff on the nails to make them taste bad… nothing has worked. Wanna know what I recommended to them?

Well, you’ve read this far, so I might as well tell you. I recommended using those big plastic nail savers that you put on your fingers after applying nail polish. Sure, you might have to file the ends down to points so you can push the buttons on a phone or type on a keyboard, but if it helps break the habit, wouldn’t that be worth the occasional puncture wound if you absentmindedly poke at a scab that had been there for a week or two? Unless you stab it until the whole thing comes off and you expose an artery, of course.

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Stuntmen are for sissies.

I know, it’s been about a week and a half since Mind Over Matt closed shop and I never reported anything about how things went from the second weekend of performances. Truth is, it all ran pretty well. I had a few word gaffes on Friday (much like the previous week), but aside from that, no harms or fouls. On second thought, scratch that: I suffered several harms that were caused by yours truly. Continue reading “Stuntmen are for sissies.”

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Crank up the tunes!

At the top of the right-hand column, there are now two pages listed: “About Me” and “Blog Playlist”. If you go to the latter screen, you can use it there or get a popout window that’ll play a bunch of songs I picked out on playlist.com for your (and my) listening enjoyment.

There are a few songs from bands/singers that I’d want to change, but the playlist has limited access to tunes on the Interwebs. Not only that, but I’ll probably have to go through here and check the list every couple weeks—you never know when the source of a song might get eliminated, in which case I’ll have to find another web address or another song altogether.

Regardless, consider this an act of love on my part. Or boredom. Either way, I hope your ears appreciate the time and effort it took.