14 December
What a day! What a day day day!
A day of accomplishments. First and most importantly, I slept until 10.30a, which was a glorious accomplishment, not having had anything like enough sleep all damn week.
Then I went out to Nik's to record those songs.
What songs? Well, last year, last October or (my God, could it really have been July?) my Randy Newman Discussion Group on the Internet decided to make a cd of covers for ourselves.
Now, I sing, but play no instruments, so it took me, um...a year for me to find someone to play for me, and that was Nik. So I gave him the music and he worked on the songs, and five months later, yesterday, I took my boombox to his apartment to record our dulcet tones for posterity.
We decided to do a sound check to see how close the boombox needed to be to the piano and how close I needed to be, so we played and sang a few bars, then played the tape back and...
Nothing.
It didn't record! That stupid boombox had no mic, and no place to plug one in, either, the record button is only there for recording cds, I guess.
"What are we going to do?" I asked.
"There's a Radio Shack just around the corner, let's go buy a mic!"
So we did that thing, (avoiding the $60 mics in plain sight, and finding a $10 mic hidden in a dark corner), brought it home, plugged it into his stereo, and spent at least an hour trying to place it properly!
The first time we tried it, the piano sounded like it was at the bottom of a coal mine, very tinny and far away, and the vocals were blasting. We ended up, after much trial and error, (at one point I said "Okay, I'll hang by my heels out the window and you stick the microphone up your ass, maybe then the balance would be right!"), with the piano open, the mic taped inside the piano, and me leaning down to the microphone. I wasn't exactly standing on my head inside the piano, but it was close!
Then we had to start making major mistake after major mistake (did I mention that the song we were doing was Bad News From Home? Well, it was.) Nik kept screwing up at the same couple of places, and I kept screwing up at the same couple of places, and it suddenly crossed my mind why the hell people usually record one person at a time!
But, finally, we got it right. He made a couple little bobbles and I sang one line not in quite the way I would have liked, and my God the tape hiss, but the emotion was there. The song felt right.
But we didn't have time for the second song, Feels Like Home, and besides, the sheet music for that song bites. Hard. The right hand is the melody line, not accompaniment, so if I don't sing along just right (and I don't--I play with the melody), it sounds like shite.
So, one song down, one song not. I'll try to do something with the other song without Nik, maybe in California, but no matter what, this one song is down, and it's good.
And only a mere 17 months after the idea was first proposed!
Stand back, I'm a whirlwind!
Then I went back to town to do the Xmas show.
In one of my scenes I bring on a load of groceries, and though I had a box, I didn't want it to be empty, so I just decided to go to the grocery store! I bought boxy things, like dry cat food and rice and stuff like that, stuff that I needed anyway, and begged for paper bags from the checkout girl, who had to get some from one of the other checkout girls. I don't now if she thought I was some sort of environmental freak or what.
"I'm sorry, but I really need paper bags!"
Then I went to the theatre and we did the 7p show,and we, meaning Cynthia and I, kicked out the jams!! I swear, we had to stop for laughs after every single line! The audience was dying! It was a wonderful feeling.
Afterwards I saw Tracing and my high school friend Scott who happened to be in town, but I missed a reader who had told me he was coming. Reader boy, write and tell me if you made it!
Then was the 9p show, which was really good, but not like the 7p. Had they happened in the opposite order I wouldn't have been disappointed at all, but they were just laughing, not laughing hysterically so I wasn't as happy.
A couple of funny things happened, though. As I entered with my huge box of groceries, I realized that the flats had been moved, and I couldn't get through the door! I didn't much want to do the whole show from off-stage, so I dropped the box on the floor and kicked it through the doorway.
Cynthia's next line was "Put those groceries down before you drop them!" so she just added an "again" at the end, and no-one even knew that it was a mistake!
The other mistake was when Richard, the narrator, had to name out the five dogs that I had run over ("There was Trixie the terrier, Lulabelle with the long whiskers...") and he had forgotten one of the names, so he just started to laugh while Cynthia and I were sort of frozen onstage, biting the inside of our cheeks.
I was thinking "Jesus, Richard, just name five dogs, that's all you've gotta do! Spot! Rover! Anything!!"
Afterwards, Nik and I (he had come to the 9p) went to the Christmas party, which was loud and noisy and smokey and everyone kept telling me how wonderful I was.
It's was a very full day!!
Today's horoscope:
Vivacious and versatile, you make people laugh and enjoy learning. You touch the child within the people around you.
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Last Updated Mon 14 December 09:45:09 1998