Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Take these children my lord, to thy embrace, and show them grace...

So weddings make me cry. Well, mostly on the inside, but *damn* did I go through an intense emotional rollercoaster between roughly 4pm Friday and 11pm Saturday. (I left the Saturday wedding fairly early due to exhaustion from the Friday wedding and it being in Barrington)

But yeah, wow, the brides and grooms were all very dear people to me, actually since Saturday was a double wedding, one hundred percent of the brides and two thirds of the grooms were very dear to me. And I'm sure that last groom is a perfectly great bloke. But wow, yeah, what can I say? I saw old friends, made new ones (severely alienated at least one, but that's because I'm me) danced with girls, including a bride or two, played with some small children, saw some young adults I had previously known as (relatively) small children, drank some wine, sang some songs at the top of my lungs (and my do my lungs have a high up top) performed situps on a dance floor, and laughed a lot.

I lead a pretty groovy life once and a while.

Important news about Rory related activities this summer:

One, though they rejected the play I wrote this year, the Dark and Scary people have cast me to act in one of their Dark and Scary plays this June 10. Don't know which one, won't know til the morning of the performance. All I know is that all six short plays being presented are guaranteed to be better than the one I wrote. It will be performed at UIC.

Oh, and a new Chicago 'zine called Worse Than Pulp has apparently come out. They published a poem I wrote. It's supposed to be available at the following locations:

Lakeview: Unabridged Books 3251 N Broadway

Wicker Park: Quimby's Books 1854 W. North

Wrigleyville: Pick Me Up Cafe 3408 N. Clark

Again, don't really know much about the enterprise, I just answered an ad.

Email me if you want to know more, or more likely, I'll email you.

Posted by Rory @ 05:34 PM CST [Link]

Saturday, May 27, 2006

ah so much to write about...

But I probably won't. Am awash in weddings and such, slightly hung over from last night's beautiful events but...must...get out of bed...for another wedding...gah.

In the words of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral: Fuck!

Posted by Rory @ 10:27 AM CST [Link]

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

the weeping and the cursing

How dare they?

How DARE they?

How dare THEY?

The...impudence...the theatre company that produced my dark and scary short play festival last year has apparently rejected my current dark and scary short play. They haven't explicitly told me, but they're holding auditions this week. I assume they would have told the writers prior to that point...

Who do they think they are? Really? I put them on the map! They'll never eat bagels in this town again, I'll tell you that. Thou would dare to spurn me?

I think I might audition to act for them anyway though. They should know they're on thin ice with me. And no one wants to be there.

Posted by Rory @ 11:02 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

blackout

So my new job has a zero tolerance policy on personal Internet usage. This is a policy that I actually understand, I just don't understand why all of their computers are wired to the Internet. Because fast talking venture capitalists told them how useful it would be back in the mid-90's.

This does make blogging fairly difficult, also means that I'm out of email contact all day. It is kind of nice to come home every night and have lots of email at once.

It also means I'm several hours behind on the events of the day, which is always angrifying.

So Paul McCartney's getting divorced huh? That's sad. I like him. A lot.

I wonder if anyone's made a joke containing some variation or other on "Will you still need me when I'm sixty four?" "No."

I'm not condoning making such a joke. I'm just wondering.

An old colleague of mine, Jacob Kennedy, recently noted that my website seems to be the only left leaning blog in the world not to have commented on Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner a couple of weeks ago, in which he verbally assasinated the President of the United States and the American news media while the former and representatives of the latter were sitting not ten feet from him.

Indeed, I should have commented on what I thought of that performance, so I will now rectify that:

It was awesome.

This is one of the quirkier conversations I've had in a while, in a bar I was in last night:

ACQUAINTANCE: Why are you carrying a book with you?

ME: What?

ACQUAINTANCE: Is it a conversation piece? Like "I'm reading a book. I'm so above you"?

ME: (Blinking) ...Yes, that's exactly it.

Posted by Rory @ 10:58 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, May 14, 2006

also...

Also irritating, four digit comment spam. Come on, guys! My site isn't that popular!

Posted by Rory @ 05:56 PM CST [Link]

on the other hand...

In the category of things that only happen to me, while carrying huge quantities of stuff around, as I often am, I managed to spill large quantities of take out mostaciolli on my cherished copy of American Gods, signed by His Grace, Neil Gaiman himself. Supremely irritating.

Posted by Rory @ 05:43 PM CST [Link]

back in action?

I've gotten a bit of writing done lately, which is nice. I've been frustrated by the fact that my latest full length work, "The Minx", whcih was written to be put on cheaply and efficiently in my apartment, and was also written for a specific actor is on hold because that actor wants to take a break from theatre. Everything else I want to self produce, like "Activision" won't happen until I magically acquire lots and lots of money.

Happilly, however, there are two short play festivals going on in the near future that I'm submitting scripts too. One is the Darknight Gallery, the Dark and Scary play people, whom I wrote for last year, the other is for Keyhole Theatre, which produced the version of Hamlet I acted in a few months before that. If by some miracle both get produced, I'll be thrilled, two short scripts being produced in one summer would seriously rock. That sort of thing happened on a regular basis in college, but it's not that standards for that kind of thrill have gone down, they've gone up. Because I'm in the Chicago league now. The Dark and Scary play I wrote isn't quite as brutal as the last one (Yeesh, I had trouble sitting through that myself) but it still has some good old fashioned scary monsters and super creeps.

The one I just finished for Keyhole is, speaking of college, a reworked version of an old sketch bit I first did back in Champaign, called "The New Models", originally starring Twinters and myself. (Don't go spoiling the best joke in there, Twinters) It's considerably different from the original though, much longer and more serious. The bit was always something of a rebellion against the "ten minute play" concept so when Keyhole suggested I submit something along those lines I thought of it, read it again, and was paradoxically rather pleased to discover I didn't like it very much, meaning there was lots of room to develop and expand it. Which I have done, and I think it's pretty good. So fingers are crossed for my hopeful return to the stage.

Posted by Rory @ 03:39 PM CST [Link]

Saturday, May 13, 2006

conspirators and traitors!

How is it that Barack was on Conan O'Brien last night and I was not informed? Or should I say, "reminded". I knew he was going to be on at some point, but I consider it the responsibility of the Chicago Tribune or someone to remind me which night! I was home late last night, and I contemplated watching Conan, but thought, "Hey, I'll watch it when Barack is on." Grr...

Posted by Rory @ 11:52 AM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

shadows have offended

Do you know the term "midget" is considered offensive?

That's retarded.

Posted by Rory @ 10:39 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

in this space

I should do something with this space, don't know what really.

I came home from my new job that's not exactly telemarketing but kind of feels like it this evening and fell asleep for two hours. I don't want to live. I'm sorry, I mean I don't want to be awake, there's a difference.

Having a job is supposed to make you feel productive and increase your self esteem, for an artistic type I think it does the opposite, it saps you of your self esteem almost entirely, and it makes you feel lazy and worthless. Tra la la.

In conclusion, I just read about a children's animated film version of Romeo and Juliet that was recently produced in England. It's called "Romeo and Juliet: Sealed With a Kiss".

Romeo and Juliet are seals in the movie. I kind of want to see that done on stage.

Posted by Rory @ 11:50 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, May 7, 2006

I'm very funny

People often tell me I'm funny but I don't think they're actually aware of exactly how funny I am.

I'm *seriously* funny. For a period around the Turn of the Millennium, my high school friends and I got really into Balderdash, a board game where you make up your own definitions to words and other players try to guess which definition is correct. Predictably my friends didn't care so much about doing that as making up really funny definitions for words, such as "Fritz's Mom".

Anyway, last night I discovered "Beyond Balderdash", in which you get to make up not only definitions of words, but plots of movies, historical events that happened on certain dates, what initials stand for.

Tom Schorsch and assorted Tom Schorsch friends played it with me. They're all really funny too, but the point of the story is not about them but rather me and how I am funny. How funny they are is largely irrelevant to that point.

Anyway, I learned a lot of things, like how on September 26, 1957, Vice President Richard M. Nixon shot a man in the face. Also NFPI stands for "National Frozen Pizza Institute". One of those is true.

Posted by Rory @ 11:39 AM CST [Link]