Thoughts, Comments and Detritus of an Old Bear

 

 

 Four years ago my Mother had a serious stroke causing all sorts of difficulty in her day to day life.  She was admitted to one of the area's best nursing and rehabilitation centers.  They got her to the point where she was up and about, getting around on her walker like nobody's business.  Then, over this last summer, she fell and broke her hip.  Since then she's slowed down a lot, but gets around quite well in her wheelchair.  Over the last week she's had an infection and has been seriously out of it.  Tonight when the medications nurse took her her nightly meds she found her having problems breathing.  911 was called and they worked on her.  Unfortunately she passed away.  My Mother would have been 94 on December 27th.  There will be a memorial service later this month.

Thank you all for listening to me.  Hugs to all.
jack

 In case it didn't make it to your local news, the Dallas area had MAJOR storms last Tuesday morning leaving over 600,000 customers without power, including yours truly. From 6:15am Tuesday morning until just before 8pm last night, no electricity. I was down to my last 34% on my iPhone. Everything in the fridge and deep freeze was lost. But worst of all, no internet for all that time. I didn't realize how serious my addiction to the 'net is. Oh, but it was lovely to sleep with the A/C on last night and to sleep with my CPAP machine running.

It's started getting warm here in North Texas, so I activated the ice maker in the freezer.  I waited for it to cycle a couple of times and dumped it.  Then promptly forget about it.

Tonight I opened the freezer door to get something out for dinner and turned my kitchen floor into a skating rink.  Seems that the auto-shutoff, didn't.  The entire freezer was full of ice.

Needless to say, i just went ahead and emptied out the ice that didn't fall out and then mopped up the wet kitchen floor.

Now it's time for try number two for dinner.

Happy Birthday to susandennis !!  I hope it's a good one for you.

Two+ years ago my primary care physician started harassing me about not having an up to date colonoscopy.  But with all the Covid stuff going on, I was unwilling to take the risk.  Well now I've decided to go through with it.  I started fasting tonight, Tomorrow (Wednesday) will be day 1 of "cleaning", Thursday morning is day two and that afternoon is the procedure itself.  Fortunately I was able to get one of my theatre buddies to drive me to the hospital and back home.  She's an angel.  I guess more to come when I get the results.

As many of you know (or may not), I'm the lighting designer for a local community theatre group.  This group has *ALWAYS* produced high quality productions for the size of group that we are.  Until now...

There have always been "rules" about selecting directors for shows.  Occasionally these rules are broken by the board when an exceptional director comes forward, asking to direct a play.  In the case of the current production, the rules were set aside.  The lady has well founded experience not only in the local area, but in other parts of the country as well.  Her credits were, supposedly, verified and checked out.  Another rule that was kind of broken was that she was allowed to select all of her own cast without any input from the board or the producer (a board member who oversees the production in general).

I happened to be working in the theatre during one of her "rehearsals".  She certainly wasn't running a conventional rehearsal.  It was more of an acting class.  Several of the people in attendance weren't even associated with the production.  Later in the same week, the other lighting guy and I were working during the day, hanging lights, pulling cable, etc.  This strange little guy shows up.  I'd seen him at the rehearsal I was at.  His name is "Fred" (not really, I'm changing his name to be polite).  Turns out that he's one of her actors and the director "given" Fred permission to come work with us so he could learn some lighting skills.  This boy (turns out he's 36) was clueless and wasted more of our time than he helped out.

Fred gave me his email address, which was one of those firstname.lastname@wherever.com email addresses.  I started Googling him.  He's *WAY* shady.  And even more, that's not his real name.  If I thought the "Fred" name had a bad reputation, the real name was even scarier.  I printed out most of what I had found.  I handed it over to the producer who, as he was reading it, actually turned pale, leaned against a wall and muttered "Oh fuck us all".  He in turn showed my search results to both the director and passed it around to the board.

As I learned from a board member, during one of the "rehearsals", he wasn't paying attention, then he screwed up on what he wasn't paying attention to.  He decided to YELL at another actor to tell him that he wasn't doing his job.  The director comes up and Fred informs her that he wasn't talking to her and that she should just butt out.  At this point, the producer pulls Fred out of the building and reads him the riot act about his behavior.  He makes it clear that if it wasn't so close to opening night, that he wouldn't be allowed back in the building.

So we move forward to three nights before opening night for the show.  *MANY* of the cast are either still carrying their scores on stage or are being prompted by the director.  Two nights before opening, the director continues to change the blocking on-stage (where people are moving or standing).  The night before opening, she gives the entire cast and crew a night off to "rest up".  WTF!!  They need to be rehearsing, not resting.

Opening night, last night, there was a FULL HOUSE!!  Theatre was SOLD OUT!!  Such good news for the company.  *NOT*.

*SOMETHING*, I've not been able to learn what yet, twisted Fred's knickers... RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SHOW WHILE HE WAS ON-STAGE and he starts yelling and screaming about things that had nothing to do with the play.  He's physically dragged off stage and the audience was reimbursed for their tickets.  The remainder of this week's productions have been cancelled.  There are three more weekends of plays on the schedule.  The current plan is for the show's producer to come up with some explanation about Fred no longer being present and then to read his lines from the side of the stage.

As for Fred, he's now permanently banned from ever working with this group again.  The director was scheduled to direct another show in January, a world premier.  She won't be taking part in that production. 

And frankly, I think I'm really glad.