Noises Off, Actors On

This weekend turned out to be quite the theater weekend for little old me.  On Friday, my good friend, The Great Ecclestone, invited me to join him at The Milwaukee Rep’s opening night of Noises Off.

If you’re looking for a fun and easy-going show that will fill your evening with enjoyment, take your mind away from your problems and leave you giggling, Noises Off  isn’t a bad way to spend your time.  If you know an actor, take one with you.

Noises Off is a British farce written in the early 1980s.  It’s about a touring theater crew and their adventures.  Or a bit more accurately, a small, low-budget touring crew and their mishaps.  Scene one sees them doing their final rehearsal midnight before opening night.  Scene two gives us a backstage view to happenings mid-way through the tour, and scene three gives us an audience’s perspective of the end of their tour and their sanity.

It was cute.  I’ll start there.  It was very cute.  One character, Brooke, played by Kellley Faulkner, has the most adorable bustier set and purple shoes. 

It was also quite funny though I got the impression that is much, much funnier if you’re actually in the theater.  Sitting between two actors, I found myself glancing back and forth between them wondering why they were laughing at many instances.  And some of the intended humor – like when a character is seeing walking across a back platform across many doors that are supposed to go to different rooms – just wasn’t funny to me.  Also, the cast of the production, backstage, warming up to go on by flinging their limbs all over the place, also not funny to non-theater folks.  It reminded me of that Big Bang episode where Penny tries to teach Sheldon to act.  But I suppose it’s good that actors can laugh at themselves, even if no one else is laughing with them.

The cast is phenomenal.  My favorite was Lloyd, played by Joe Dempsey.  He had two very distinct UK accents, one for when he was in his character-character and for his actor-character.  That was delightful.  I was especially impressed with the actors’ ability to make carefully scripted and rehearsed bits look like improv.

Costuming – I already mentioned those fabulous shoes, and set were well done.  I actually found myself forgetting that the same set had simply rotated around.  And I wasn’t distracted by the costuming – aside from wanting those shoes – like I have been in other productions.

Noises Off is running at the Rep until December 22nd in the Quadracci Powerhouse theater.  Tickets and more information here.

Adventures from Home: Game Night

One of the best things about the Schultz house – and all my Wisconsin friends can attest to this – is game night.  Game night isn’t a particular night; it’s any night when we happen to play games.  Board games, card games, even Twister.

During my last trip this past June, one of the first things we did was have a game night.  And lucky for us, well lucky for him too, The Great Ecclestone joined us.  Game night is fun when it’s just part of the family; it’s super fun when friends are involved. 

The Great Ecclestone walked into the house as Daddy was yelling from the family room to someone in some other room and Katrina was stomping down the hallway muttering loudly to no one in particular while Mommy yelled back to one of them from the computer room.  The Great Ecclestone smiled, “nothing’s changed around here.”  He was right, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Game 1

We decide to spare The Great Ecclestone’s ears, especially since he’s a professional singer, and opted for board games over Beatles Rock Band.  First on the list, a new game that the family got for Christmas last year.  I spent Christmas in California so I hadn’t played this game yet, but Mommy and Munchkinhead had. 

“Last Word” is a boisterous game that involves quick thinking and shouting over your neighbor in order to be the last person to give a correct answer before the timer goes off.  Correct answers are words that start with the letter given on one card and fall in the category given on the other card.

I thought I had a pretty good “m” word for “things found on the internet” when I said “mommy.”  (She likes to play a lot of Farmville and Café World.)  But, I was really impressed when Munchkinhead tried to answer “Mozilla.”  I say tried because she couldn’t quite pronounce the word and had trouble spitting it out.  (Bay Area and internet-y friends, remember we’re playing this game far from the tech-focused coasts, where most people probably don’t even know what Firefox is, let alone Mozilla.)  I think we gave it to her anyway just because it was so brilliant an answer.

I have no idea who won, which means it probably wasn’t me.  But,  I do remember we had a ton of fun playing that game.

Games 2 & 3

As the night wore on and the Amarula began to run low, the standards started to come out.  Someone wound up with a giraffe on their head, sitting positions were exchanged for lounging and out came the household classics, “20 Questions” with Reifenberg Rules (the rules in the box aren’t as much fun) and “Whoonu”, the game from Cranium where you try to select the things you think your friends will like most. 

It’s amazing how much you can learn about people you’ve known all your life, or all their life as the case may be.  For example, I had no idea that mommy likes sailboats.  I put the card in the envelope to get it out of circulation and because I had nothing better, and then bam, she rates it super high.  She loves sailboats.  Who knew!?

The Perfect Present

I think it is ok to use the proper word as Mommy would likely not find it vampire-worthy, in this instance: The Gates of Hell. To Dante, a reason to abandon all hope. To that poor armless, legless boy in the ICP song, something he never saw coming. To art fans, it is magnificence and beauty. And to me, to me it is a great story.

The Search

“I called Tokyo and Paris, neither of them have one.”

“Darn, and I called Philadelphia, and they didn’t have one either.”

“You, know it’s possible there just isn’t one made.”

My friend, Ant, was attempting to help me find the perfect birthday present for another friend, Mr. Maintenance Man.  I knew exactly what I wanted to get him, but it was starting to seem that the perfect present literally didn’t exist.  A poster.  It seemed simple enough.  A poster of his favorite piece of artwork, Rodin’s Gates of Hell.

The birthday boy and my goat, which I named after him (for reason).

Ant and I had started by searching online stores.  Though not as ubiquitous eight years ago as they are today, there was still a pretty decent selection of stores.  But try as we might, we couldn’t find anything.  So we started calling the Rodin museums around the world and inquiring about their gift shops.  Nothing.

The Plan

Then. An idea.  It was 2am, or some other ridiculous time of night when only drunks and college students are awake.  The Rodin museum in Philadelphia, the only one on this side of the planet, has a Gates of Hell, outside, in front of the building.  A road trip!  Yes, that’s it, a road trip!  I’ll just go there and take a picture myself and get it turned into a poster.

But work, shoot, I have work, and I can’t miss that.  A weekend!  I can go on a weekend.  Where is Philadelphia?  Ouch, that far?!  I can’t drive there and back, and get to the museum while it’s open in a weekend….  I know, an airplane!  I’ll fly there and back in a weekend.  How much are flights?  Oh, that sucks.  Hmmm……

And then, the most brilliant idea ever: Greyhound.

Oh, and I’ll need company.

It just so happened that my very good, and practically life-long, friend, The Great Ecclestone was on AIM.

Hey, wanna go to Philly?  On a Greyhound?  To take a picture of a statue?

What?  Ok.

Alright, so the conversation was a little longer and convincing him might have taken a bit more work, but soon we were set.

The Trip

Early on Saturday morning ,we stood at the Milwaukee bus station.  I had never been in a bus station before and had no idea what to expect.   People and luggage were everywhere.  Buses rolled in an out, trails of fumes behind them.  The Great Ecclestone and I looked at the stack of tickets in our hands.  One ticket for every bus we would board on our 24-hour trip eastward.  The strip of tickets reached almost to the floor.

The Great Ecclestone and our Greyhound tickets.

Many filthy bus terminals and bathrooms fit for a lead-in to CSI later, we arrived at our destination.   Backs sore, feet and legs cramping, groggy and damp with sweat, we disembarked from our last bus into the hot Philadelphia summer sun.  Sunday morning, welcome.

The Rodin museum was only about a mile or so from the bus station and would be opening in a short while.  Time for some breakfast, and a change of clothes.

My SLR camera and about a dozen rolls of film jostled in my bag as we approached the large iron gate at the foot of the museum’s walkway.  No tripod, not allowed in the museum.  And there it was, shining brightly in the sun, towering far above me, immense yet exquisite in detail.  The Gates of Hell.  I began to take my pictures.

All day I stayed at that museum.  All day, taking pictures of The Gates of Hell and of the art work inside.  The Great Ecclestone accompanied me through the small museum and then headed off to the large art museum down the street.  Perhaps he even ran up the steps like Rocky.  I don’t know, I had a job to do and shadows to beat as the sun came over the roof of the museum  and illuminated bits and pieces of the giant brass sculpture.

Rodin sculptures: The Shade.

When I had finally finished my pictures, and my film, I met up with The Great Ecclestone again and we went to see the Liberty Bell.  We had to.   I mean, you can’t go all the way to Philadelphia for the first time in your life and not see the Liberty Bell!  It’s a bell.  With a crack.

Dusk began to settle over the city.  We grabbed some Chinese food for dinner and headed back to the bus station for our long ride back.  Our day in Philly was over.

The Liberty Bell.

Getting Back

After the ordeal of getting out to Philadelphia, we thought we had a pretty good idea of what to expect on our twenty-four hour ride back.  Boy we were wrong.  24 hours later, when we were supposed to be back in Milwaukee, when I was supposed to be on my way to work, where were we?  Stuck in a bus station, in Gary, Indiana.

Never been to Gary, Indiana?  Good.  Keep it that way.  Let me give you some perspective, some places where it might be worse to be stuck.  ….  Places where it might be better to be stuck.  A bus station in Chicago, a bus station in Lusaka, a bus station in Oakland, a luggage locker in a bus station in Oakland.  You get the idea.

Five hours.  Five hours until the next bus.  Our bus to Gary had gotten stuck in construction traffic on the highway and we had missed our connecting bus from Gary to Chicago.  Five hours.  Needless to say, I had to call into work stranded-in-Gary.

We did eventually make it home.  And the present, the present turned out spectacular.  He loved it, and the Philadelphia Chinatown fortune cookie.

The photo that became the poster: Rodin’s Gates of Hell.

*Note: the white edge is from a crooked scan and was not on the poster.

Walking in Memphis

Another great weekend!  Yesterday I drove out to Memphis to see the Great Ecclestone.  No performance this time; he was there for mega-mini auditions.  I think he gets less time than they give people on American Idol.  But these auditions are super important and give him a lot of work.

We went out for dinner and then did the famous Beale Street.  It reminded me a bit of The Strip in the Dells.  I liked it a lot.  Just a couple blocks of random shops and various eating and drinking establishments with live music and windows selling beer to passer-bys on the street.  The weather was gorgeous, so it was a good night for just walking (and later driving, on accident) around the city.

I also got a lot of homework done on the trip, nearly all my readings for the week.  Now, before you get your undies in a bunch, I wasn't holding my homework on the steering wheel to read while driving or anything like that.  Stephen Hawking's twin was reading to me.  I love Adobe's read-out-loud feature!  Just plugged in my laptop to my cigarette lighter and the tape adapter into the laptop's headphone's jack.  Perfect :)

Friday night was also great fun.  First, there was moot court competition at school.  I went to root for one of my friends.  Her team won!  Yay, BLSA members win moot court two years in a row. :)

After the competition, I headed out of town a bit to play games with some friends I haven't gotten to see much for awhile.  That was great fun.  One friend was in from DC with her family, so I  finally got to meet her adorable 1 year old.  My other friends killed me at Whoonu - they tied 19 points above me.  But, that makes sense; after all, they're engaged.  (Yes, to each other.)

A Doctor, an Engineer and a Vampire Walk into a Metallica Concert...

It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it was a great night!
(And by "vampire" I mean Munchkinhead, not me!  I'm still just a law student.)

The History

Orgfish and I have been going to Metallica concerts together since we were sophomores in high school.  It seems each time we go, we add someone new.  So we assembled our usual group: Orgfish, me, Alfred, Munchkinhead and Dr. Beaker and added in The Great Ecclestone (and Foo Foo).  6 people, from 6 states, 1 city, 1 amazing band.

Metallica is probably the only show all three of us, my sisters and I, would agree to go see, except maybe for Sesame Street Live.  It's not that we don't have some other musical tastes in common, but those bands don't really tour anymore.  Metallica also has the unique characteristic of being highly loved by each of us.

The Show

The show opened with Call of Ktulu, which is actually one of my favs, and a lot of  special lighting effects.  I was quite relieved when the lazer light show ended and some spot lights came up on stage.  The lazer lights sort of pissed me off, especially when they brought them back at the beginning of Fight Fire with Fire.  The special effects were taking away from Kirk's guitar solo.  A band as good as Metallica does not need fancy light shows and pyrotechnics.

When the helicopter intro to One started in fairly early on in the set, Orgfish and I looked at each other in amazement.  At every concert we have attended, One has always been in the encore.  "What on earth were they going to play for the encore?"  Well, when the encore started, it was an even bigger surprise.  I had just turned to Munchkinhead and said, "they'll never play my favorite song (Loverman) at a concert," because it's off of Garage, Inc.  And right as I'm saying this, the band busts out with Die, Die My Darling!  And then they follow it up with Stone Cold Crazy!  I had always figured they'd never do cover songs at a concert.  Welp, I was wrong!  (For those of you that don't know, those songs are also off of Garage, Inc.   They are covers of The Misfits and Queen, respectively.)

The concert was part of the World Magnetic tour, the title coming from their newest release, Death Magnetic.  As appropriate, they played a lot of songs off the new album.  It was clear the audience wasn't really familiar with these new tracks yet, but it was also clear that we were all willing to get to know them.  This was a lot different than the last concert our big group went to together, where the new album was St. Anger.  I don't recall them playing too many songs off that album at the Summer Sanitarium show, but I do remember Orgfish and I both agreed the songs sounded much better live than on the album.  (For that concert Dr. Beaker, Alfred, a very young Munchkinhead and I loaded into the teen mobile and drove to Ohio where we met Orgfish and her friends Happy, PH and Not-Death (I don't remember his name, but I know it wasn't Death.  My favorite part of the trip was Munchkinhead walking around going "plan-e-tarium" to try to get us to go to the planetarium.)

The Snow

It started snowing during the show, and for some reason the parking garage was closed unless you had a special pass so everyone was parked in lots outside.  Our big group quickly set to work with ice scraper, drivers license, gloves and whatever else we could find to clean off Mommy's mini-van.  It didn't take long, but it take long to get out of the lot.  (Longer than it took to drive home.)  We were about to go lend our ice scraping assistance to another driver who was scraping his car with what Alfred thought was a Twister box.  (It turned out to be a pizza box; a little more reasonable to have in your back seat.)  But, someone with an ice scraper appeared out of nowhere.  Alfred did help clear off the windshield of the guys next to us, since there were only two of them and so many of us.

(I just had to include this pic even though Alfred's not in it.  You can see FooFoo's shirt, and there's something particularly eerie about Orgfish's eye peering over my shoulder, not to mention The Great Ecclestone's theatrical smile.)

It was a wonderful night with wonderful people and wonderful music.   The performance was great, the frozen custard delicious (you know we went to Leon's first!) and the company great fun.  I can't wait for the next tour!

SPECIAL! SPECIAL!

Announced today, Metallica will be inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame!  The day before my birthday! [(Anybody want to get me a really nice birthday present? ;)  ]
Photo credits: Dr. Beaker

Where Playing is a Full-Time Job

"Ooo.  I like the way that [debauchery] sounds.  Even though I know it means three hours of sober, fully-clothed board games and literacy quips." - The Great Ecclestone via text message.

And so, game night begins.

 

Last night was game night at Mommy's house.  She even took off work today so she could stay up late and play with us.  And we did, stay up late and play.  Games from 7pm til 2am.  Splendid!

(The kitchen, ready for game night.)

Actually, those of us who live here started early in the day with one of our favorites, "Listen to the Water."

Here's the water rolling down the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some ducks by the waterside.  (Quack, Quack)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later in the evening Mommy joined in the fun.  We began with 10 Days in Africa.  (The Great Ecclestone showed up in the middle of the game.)  Munchkinhead won most of the rounds.  I think on one trip, she walked through Sudan about four times.

(The Great Ecclestone near the cheese and cookies while Mommy plans her trip.)

Next, we moved back into the living room for a little gymnastic fun.  The Great Ecclestone took home the most Twister trophies.  Mommy got mad the first round, because Munchkinhead got out before her.  (Alfred, Mommy and The Great Ecclestone on the mat.)

After Alfred popped her hip, Munchkinhead fell on me and Mommy hurt something, we decided to return to the slightly more serene kitchen for a good rousing game of Times to Remember.  It's a match-the-year-to-the-event type game.  Hard enough, made even more so by the fact that the game itself is almost 20 years old.  Well, we managed at least to get fairly even teams by putting me, Alfred and the Great Ecclestone against Mommy and Munchkinhead.  The aggregate ages of the teams were only about 3 years apart.  We won!  Partly because I randomly guessed that Reggie Jackson did some sports thing in 1977 and was spot on. Hee hee.

Then the Great Ecclestone taught us a new game called "Celebrity."  It was pretty fun.  The Great Ecclestone and Alfred won the first game, despite the fact that The Great Ecclestone had never heard of Barnabas Collins.  Mommy, Munchkinhead and I killed them the next game though, even though Orgfish had arrived and joined their team.  Turns out The Great Ecclestone doesn't know Miley Cyrus either.  (Orgfish and I both put the Great Ecclestone in the pot; he does know himself.)  (Mommy thinking of her celebrities.) 

Finally the mail man arrived and we could really get going.  So we played, at my insistence, All About Town Milwaukee.  I really like this game, the others, not such fans.  Daddy got it for Christmas and even he won't play it because he says it's too hard.  Everyone was quite relieved when Orgfish won.  (Alfred, the mail man, Orgfish and part of Mommy playing the Milwaukee trivia game.)

The Milwaukee game turned out to be such cerebral torture that we had to follow it up with Whoonu.  This fabulous game of getting to know your friends is a favorite and comes out at every game night.  We finally had someone who liked the "Big Dogs" card!  Hooray for the mail man.  It's always a challenge when playing with someone you don't know or haven't really hung out with for several years.  Loads of fun.  Turns out Mommy knows best, she won.

Our last game of the evening, which, by this point, was actually the middle of the night, was Wise and Otherwise.  Another favorite game, often included in game nights.   We probably shouldn't have saved this one for last; it requires thinking.  By this point in the evening, the cheese plate was empty, a gallon of milk was gone, two bottles of wine were quite depleted and several animals had migrated into the kitchen from the jungle room.  Mommy won. 

(Mommy's Rhino watching the board and her giraffe getting into the M&Ms.)

Here's my favorite picture from game night.  That's me, The Great Ecclestone and Orgfish enjoying our drink of choice.  (Mommy actually cut us off and said no more milk, gave me wine instead).

These are my oldest and dearest friends (well, most of them).  I've know them since 6th and 5th grade, respectively.  (I don't have any friends from before that because we moved here just before 5th grade.)

 

After the milk was gone, we switched to another favorite.

 

And so game night ends.  Everybody happy, tired and with pains in their sides from laughing too hard (and eating too much).  The Great Ecclestone added at the end of the night:

"You know, things really haven't changed here in the last ten years."

Gobble Gobble

It wasn't me, but someone did get a turkey tonight.

We're back in the wonderful world of cheese, all three of us.  Monday night is the highly anticipated Metallica concert.  Alfred got in on Thursday; Munchkinhead and I arrived today.  This evening we went bowling with old friends: Smokey the Grrrr, his sidekick and The Great Ecclestone, actor extrodinare.  The turkey was all Ecclestone.

My high was only 126.  Definitely not my best.  My average was higher than that before I left Nashville, but I haven't bowled much since then.  (It's really expensive in Cali and Nigeria, and now, my bowling partner's moved away.  Come back Mr. Trizzle!)  However, I did have one really cool thing tonight.  I won ten dollars!  Orange head pin is special.  Get a strike, spin the wheel.  I got an orange head pin.  I got a strike.  I got to spin the wheel.  I got $10.  That was pretty good since nearly every other slot on the wheel is $1.  $50 is the highest, but if you get $50, you get to spin again, so you can win up to $100.

Oh, and randomly, I just happened to be wearing my lucky bowling shirt.  Light blue with dark blue bowling ball, "This is How I Roll," it says.

Swim Shoes

In case anyone was wondering, this is me in my swim outfit.   (For this swimsuit.)  Though on this particular day I chose to wear different earrings.  These have lil' baby phat cats and lots of bling! :)  And that gangsta next to me is the Great Matthew Ecclestone, actor extraordinaire.

CHS Geeks Reunite at Metallica Concert!

Great headline isn't it.  I didn't come up with it, that was all Nelson.  And while I think I'm offended, he may be right.

We have the valedictorian (now an engineer), a doctor, a paleontology grad student, a law student, a violinist/actor and then the little undergrad sophomore.  She doesn't quite fit in that description.  But we love her anyway.

From 6 states, to one city.  Our home town.  Why?  Why not.  (Ok, there are reasons, but I like that one better.)  It's months away, 4 and half of them, but I'm super excited.  It's gonna rock!

Of course it is, it's Metallica!!!!!