Life in Ted Turnerland....

So I'm back in Atlanta--and this time I'm actually IN Atlanta. We drove back up here after our show today in beautiful Albany, GA. And let me tell you, I was so happy to see the venue there. It was a THEATRE gentle readers, a real live theatre! With a crew--a crew of people who had already made it through puberty. And these guys knew what the hell they were doing. Our setup, which had been taking almost 90 minutes to two hours, we got down to just over an hour or so. That gave us the ability to sit and relax, drink a cup of coffee, breathe a sigh of relief before getting ready for the performance. You know, behave like real actors! And these guys were the kind of stagehands you just want to hang out with, if for no other reason than they all sounded like they had been Kentucky Fried. I heard earlier today a phrase that may just have become my new favorite southern expression. Now, those of you who have known me for a good amount of time know how long I have held on to my previous favorite expression, which is of course, "We certainly did go around our elbows to get to our thumbs, didn't we?" I have long heralded that as the ultimate expression of cornpone linguistics. Well, it has been replaced, and I think that there can be little argument over its aptness. One of the stagehands was talking to another about having watched "Talladega Nights" the night before. When asked how it was, he said, and I quote: "I tell ya, that movie turned my tickle box upside down." That's INCREDIBLE! Especially when you consider that it really makes no sense whatsoever! I mean, putting aside the question of what the hell a tickle box actually is, how does turning it upside down make any impact? I mean, turning your tickle switch I can see, but turning the tickle box upside down? That is what makes it so simplistically beautiful. And I know you may not believe such a sentence was uttered, but please, do you really think someone could make something like that UP? I mean, please, even Tennessee Williams would look at that and say, "Nobody would believe something that patently hickish!"

So we started the day with me in an absolutely ecstatic mood, for when you hear something like that you can't help but smile. I am convinced that is where most Southerners get their charm--from their amazingly meaningless yet endearing sayings. So I am going through the preshow stuff with a smile on my face, and the show itself merely keeps that going. Thanks to the crew, scene changes are less stressful and faster, and the whole show finally feels like it has a rhythm. It also helped that we had a nice sized group today, and they were responsive. Not as much as our last private performance (They didn't clap between the first two stories, but I think they didn't realize they could)  but they definitely got into it and they supplied us with a lot of energy. I actually felt good about Tell Tale for the first time. It's amazing what can happen when you're not constantly worried about all the technical shit. Anyway, the show ran very smoothly, with hardly any problems, save for the fact that the doors for Frog have been broken for the last two weeks because Levitt keeps forgetting to get stuff to fix it. She finally got it this weekend, so I'm hoping we don't have to worry about one of them falling off from here on out.  But other than that the show went damn near perfect, which scares me, because if we peak now, god only knows what will go wrong down the road. But we all got through the load-out with a good mood and the drive to Atlanta was uneventful, which is always good.

Schneider, Flo, Bob, and I went out once we got here to find a place to eat (well, they did. I had already eaten cheaply, so I was after coffee and nothing else) and to take a tour of a few of the neighborhoods in Atlanta--Buckhead and Virginia Highlands specifically. Bob is from Atlanta, so he drove us around, and we ended up in a little place called George's, which had amazing onion rings (I tried one) and something called a sloppy dog (an open faced hot dog covered with chili, cheese and onions--that I did not try) I may have to find an excuse to come back to Atlanta just to try one. It was very enjoyable, with a lovely waitress who was quite possibly the most polite server I've ever encountered. Which is why she ended up with a $2 tip on a $2.25 cup of coffee. What can I say? I like to tip like I have money sometimes. And anybody who is willing to handle our group and stay polite deserves some special consideration.. So there. We have a show tomorrow, then off to Birmingham, AL. If the shows continue in the same vein they've started in, then I have to say, I believe my tickle box may be upside down for a long time to come.....