Recently

Hey.  It's been a few months.  What's new?

First off, we've already had two weekends full of performances of The Odd Couple at Biola's Theater 21.  It's been going really well.  We've had a few flubs, a few missed lines, a few technical errors, a few mis-heard lines, but overall it's been really fun, and I've felt good about it.  Here's the Chimes review (the actual article in the paper featured some great full-color pictures of all of us on-set).

The best accident so far happened the first Friday night with a sold-out crowd (featuring some high-up admin types from Biola!).  Randall's character, Murray, is encouraging the newly single Felix to go out and enjoy the benefits of bachelorhood.  One of his lines is, "If you want to go out to the Playboy club and hunt bunnies, what's stopping you?"  Unfortunately, that night the entire audience heard "hump bunnies"; Forrest and Tracy said they could tell the audience sucked in their breath in horror.  The good news is, we didn't lose them completely, and got good laughs for the rest of the show.

Another night, when our poker group was rushing back to their seats after hearing Felix coming out of the bathroom, someone accidentally knocked over a "beer" on the table.  Jonathan (as Roy), without missing a beat, immediately started sucking the beer out of the felt tablecloth.  It destroyed the audience.

We've got one weekend left of performances: tonight, Friday, and Saturday.  As always, it will be both good and sad to be done with it.  There were times during the early rehearsal period where I wasn't feeling it and wasn't having a good time, but as we got closer and closer to the actual shows everything started clicking and it got really good, and now every night is a blast.  But it will be nice to have my evenings back.

In other news, I've been playing softball for the Pirate Monkeys again.  As has happened our last couple of years, we're starved for players again most mornings, and have had to forfeit over half our games.  There's also a shortage of teams in the "A" league this year: three total.  So we're playing the same two teams over and over again.  The Dark Knights (Talbot guys and gals) are their usual selves, and we're usually competitive with them.  The other team is stacked with 14 players, many of which are former baseball players and have arms as big as my thighs.  One guy in particular hit at least three home-runs into the trees closest to the library on McNally field.  He would have hit the library if the trees hadn't been there.  It's a bit ridiculous.  It used to be a rarity to have balls hit over the fence.  Now it's rare when they stay on the field.

I've been playing OK.  My pitching is adequate, and my hitting is getting better.  Last Saturday I had several good hits, and several more pop-ups and doinkers.  I also got nailed on the other side of my right shin again by a grounder while pitching, having received a matching blow a few weeks earlier.  Also, during one of our games against the Dark Knights I was scrambling to 2nd base to tag a runner out, but kept fumbling with the ball on the ground.  By the time I got it, I was right in the runner's path and she cleaned my clock.  I took what I think was her thigh right in the face.  It hit my sunglasses into my nose and gave me a good cut which I didn't discover until after the game.  I took off my sunglasses and there was a ton of blood all down the side of my nose which had been hidden by my frames.

What else, what else...

Well, despite the lack of reviews, I've been watching a lot of movies through Netflix lately.  I need to do a big round up again.  I've seen several really good ones, too.  Not much in the theaters, though.