Philly or Bust!

I'm not one of those writers who can talk about their process (or spell the word 'process' without checking the dictionary to see how many c's are in it), so I'll just share a funny anecdote from last year that I never told anybody:

I completely forgot that I had agreed to do this last year, which, for those who know me well, shouldn't come as any surprise since I have the memory of a goldfish that was just swallowed by a shark (Why is it so dark in here...? Oh, that's right...), so I made plans to go to Philadelphia for the weekend. I got my bus ticket and booked a hotel room and was planning out my trip when I suddenly remembered (or probably more accurately received an e-mail reminder from Christine) that I had to stay up all night writing a play. So I cancelled all my plans and begrudgingly went to the theater to find out what "The Man" wanted me to write about ("The Man" being Blake... and Christine).

Now, I'm also not one of those writers who likes to drink the devil's semen (or coffee, as it is commonly referred to as) so I prepared myself a big bowl of cereal and a six pack of Corona and said, "Screw thinking! I'm just going to write the first thing that comes out of my head and hope my actors can read it!" the whole time thinking about how I should be looking at a bell with a giant crack in it. "Ha! 'Crack...' like a butt. That's funny. Maybe I can work that into my show?" (And in case you're wondering, no, the crack joke didn't make it into the show. It was replaced with the much funnier 'poop' joke) That pretty much sums up my entire creative process right there.

So the next morning I gave my script to the director and tried to pretend that I knew what I had written. Then I called all my friends and said, "Hey, I forgot to tell you about this thing I'm doing tonight and if you don't come I'm not going to be your friend anymore," to which they replied, "Aren't you supposed to be in Philadelphia?" Jerks...

Then came the performance and my show was the last one to go up. All the other shows were clever and funny and it was sort of intimidating to see the plethora (Ha! 'Plethora...' that sounds like something that comes out of a vagina after it gives birth. Maybe...) of creative people who were involved in this project and all the time and care they put into it. I couldn't believe that these shows all came together in such a short amount of time. I could toil endlessly on a script and it would never be anywhere near as good as what everybody else presented at the show. Needless to say I was dreading seeing my half-assed script played out on stage and felt so sorry for giving my director and actors nothing to work with. Fortunately, like everyone else I had already seen that evening, they had what we in the biz call "talent," and they turned the notes I had scribbled out in between drunken matches of Super Smash Bros. into something that was actually watchable, and even, dare I say, entertaining.

So suddenly missing out on Philadelphia and trying to resurrect the remains of our founding fathers to become my legion of mindless undead ghost assassins (I did mention that was why I was going to Philly, right?) didn't bother me so much. In the end, this was a far more rewarding experience (because after everybody left I found buried treasure under the Roy Arias stage).

Wow! That was longer than I expected. But before I go, I just want to say that I can't wait to see you all on the 21st for what I imagine will be an even better event than last year! ... What? It's on the 28th? Fuck! I was going to go to the Alamo that weekend!