So yesterday when I picked up the laundry, there was a little note in the bag saying "Please iron pyjamas".

Ha ha ho. It is to laugh. I do not iron. I do not own an iron. I am very very bad at ironing. Also, I hate ironing. So I figured what I'd do would be to get up at 8.30a and wash the clothes this morning so there is less sitting around getting wrinkly, and use a very hot dryer with spray starch combination and see if that works.

It worked okay, not perfectly. I'll borrow the iron from the theatre for tonight's batch. They are expecting me to do some work for my money, apparently. I don't know what's up with that shit.

Yesterday was opening night of two evenings of one-acts, a 7p and a 9p show.

Big giant pain in the neck, double shows, particularly when the early show runs longer than expected and I don't get programmes in time and I don't have any help because I didn't bother to get myself an usher and there is all the audience in the world.

Which was great, actually! I made a big bunch of money, and since I'm about to be off for a week, making decent dosh before then is a necessity. Recently, our one-act evenings have been poorly attended, so it's a treat to have them go as they should.

For the 9p show I even had a million people come in the middle and had to go in between the shows to urge people to leave so that the new people could come in and sit. Shades of the French festival, coming soon, tick tock.

I sold quite a few wines, and all of the water that I had dragged in. I wish I would get it together to bring in a whole flat, but in order to do that, I need to remember to bring my suitcase home first, or the box office will be filled with my luggage.

Anyway, it's only a few days before we are out of this theatre for the summer, and I'll have enough crap to bring home on Sunday that I don't want there to be any extra if I can help it.

On the way home I ran out of books to read, so I finally read the play that Fran has been trying to get me to read for a month.

I hate reading plays, I don't know why, I used to love it, but for me a play is hearing it out loud, so unless I can read it aloud, I don't want to read it. But it was all I had, and I was pretty sure I was going to like it, since Fran loved it so much.

He was so funny, he kept checking in every day for awhile, and I'd have to shamefacedly admit that I had yet to crack it. Finally, he gave up asking, but I could still see him thinking about it.

At one point he said, "You read a hundred books a week! Would you read it if I told you not to read it under any circumstances? There's a great role for Mark!" But nothing worked but my running out of books to read while waiting for the bus.

And I loved it! It's called Holy Ghost by Romulus Linney, about a group of Pentecostal snake handlers and a man trying to get his wife back, and if's very funny and moving and never makes fun of the religion, and the lead is a man who is filled with rage for two acts, and that's Mark, by golly.

There are lots of great roles, one of which I totally want to play, except that I want to direct it, and there is live music (a piano onstage is always a problem, finding an actress to play one is even worse) lots of fake snakes that can't look stupid, and fifteen characters onstage all at once, and a fight, and I just love it!

I came home and told Fran, "I read it!" and it took him a minute to figure out what I was talking about, he had so much given up. But then his face brightened, and we both started talking at once. Many of our casting ideas are the same, some of his are flat out dreams (Le isn't going to appear in anything he doesn't direct), but I'll bet we can get a good cast for this.

Here's the best bit. I was looking at the picture credits in the back, to see where the play had been done before, and it said "Cubiculo, New York". The Cubiculo Theatre is where Love Creek was working out of when I joined it back in 1988. The first Love Creek shows I did were there, the first Love Creek shows Fran did were there. We'd be there still if it hadn't been condemned by the fire department for being a hazardous building.

So there's a reason that this play jumped into Fran's hand from the dollar bin in front of a bookstore. It's the circle of life, baby.

I've been reading Patrick's Stoplight Stories, which he recently returned to public view, and let me tell you, reading them all at once is quite a chilling experience.

I mean, I've read them before, and I loved them at the time, but reading one or two at a time is much different than all at once, because they are all so sad! And painful! And dreadful! Not the writing dreadful, but the things that happen in the stories.

Thank goodness for L. So far, L is the only one that didn't make me burst into tears. I'm reading these at work for heaven's sake, I need to have a little decorum, here!

Will someone please explain something to me?

I mean, I know I am no beauty queen, people seldom see me and swoon, but why is it that if a guy is going to hang around my podium at work and talk to me world without end, it's always the creepiest guy imaginable? And I don't even mean a regularly creepy guy, I mean the ne plus ultra of creepy guys.

C'mon fella, it's my job to be polite to you, don't take that as an invitation to stay and talk at me for 20 minutes until I pretend that I have to go to the bathroom just so you'll leave.

Today's horoscope:
Is friendship really all there is between you and that certain someone you've known for what seems like forever? If you're not sure, better straighten that out soon -- at least in your own mind -- before they ask.

One year ago today:
I think I am about to go wild on the libraries again, like I did in LA. And I also managed in LA not to lose a single book or have a single overdue charge. Let's see if I can manage that here at home as well.

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Last Updated Wed 18 May 14:18:09 2005