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...Have Happy Endings

Okay...so I've been trying to embark on constructing my ideas for how a "Chess" script should be. I've been looking at the Concept, London and Broadway versions (all of which are very different) - I'm basically trying to create something that is closest to the Concept script but with some of the changes made here and there for the London production, the ones that made SENSE, and then I'm trying to keep the second act fleshed out so it doesn't just become a stunt, like in London. The Concept keeps Act II nice and storylike but the problem was the script was only half-finished for the Concept, so...that's where the Broadway material comes in...but luckily, simply by making the London script more like the Concept, it already fills in some of the gaps, but there are some good MOMENTS here and there in Broadway - fleshing out the dialogue, etc.

For instance, I'm putting in the "Where I Want to Be"/"You and I" combination that Svetlana sings a verse of in the Broadway version. Nicole always loved that, and I understand why - in London, Svet did sing a reprise of "Where I Want to Be", but the combination with "You and I" to finish it in Broadway added a really nice human touch and made her character more three-dimensional.

In London, at the "Endgame" sequence, there was a verse added for Florence to match Svetlana's "attack" verse, but I don't feel that's necessary - I realize Florence is like the closest thing to the main character, but I don't feel she needs to SING in "Endgame" other than her little snippet at the beginning - b/c I really think all Florence has to do for "Endgame" to be effective is BE there. The entire match embodies Anatoly keeping/losing her anyway. I think it's highly more appropriate just to have Svetlana sing the majority of the sequence with Anatoly. I really don't like the idea of Svet and Florence "sharing" the song. Florence's character is already PLENTY developed, and she and Anatoly share the most beautiful song in the entire show right after "Endgame" anyway ("You and I").

And I DON'T like the Finale that was used in BOTH the London and Broadway versions - Florence singing a reprise of Anatoly's "Anthem". I think that completely changes the mood of the ending, it makes Florence seem more crushed.

Honestly, I agree with Nicole - the show should end with the (amazing, lovely) coda of "You and I". It keeps the HEART of the story - the love story between Anatoly and Florence. It shows how despite everything, despite their hearts being broken and the dramas that came crashing down around them to destroy their life together, in the end, they still have no regrets - they would do it all over again even if they knew how it would end. I think that is the strongest aspect of the heart of the story - not the East-West politics, not Florence's past, not the "chess" symbolism of how people are pawns in the government's games...it's the relationship between Florence and Anatoly.

Anyway, I think this is the order of songs/musical sequences I would use - I know this won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't KNOW the show, but I'm posting it mostly so I can remind myself later:

Act I

1. Prologue: The Story of Chess
2. Merano / The American's Entrance
3. Commie Newspapers!
4. Press Conference
5. The Russian and Molokov
6. Where I Want to Be
7. The Arbiter's Song
8. Diplomats
9. Merchandisers Song
10. Chess Hymn
11. Chess - I
12. The Arbiter's Reprise
13. Quartet: A Model of Decorum
14. Fellow Eastern Europeans
15. The American and Florence / 1956
16. Nobody's Side
17. Der Kleine Franz
18. Mountain Duet
19. Who'd Ever Think It?
20. Chess - II
21. Florence Quits
22. The Russian Defects
23. Embassy Lament
24. The Train Station
25. Anthem

Act II

1. Bangkok - The Golden Ballet
2. One Night in Bangkok
3. Another Opponent
4. Heaven Help My Heart
5. The Soviet Machine
6. The Interview
7. Argument
8. I Know Him So Well
9. The Deal I - The Arbiter's View / You and I / Svetlana's Reprise
10. Someone Else's Story
11. The Deal II - The Vassy File / The American's Offers
12. Pity the Child
13. Talking Chess
14. Endgame
15. After the Match
16. You and I (full)
17. And in the End...
18. Finale: You and I (coda)

Tooth of Death

AAAAUUUGHHH!!!

Holy Virginia Hey, someone please kill me now - you'll be doing my tooth a favor, as my tooth seems to want me dead.

Yeah, at Chip's yesterday, I was eating Honey Bunches of Oats. Well, normally those are great. But not when you have a wisdom tooth that has broken and decayed enough so that now there's barely anything left except a nice little crater for food to get lodged in....RIGHT NEXT TO A NERVE.

Yes, I managed to shove a delicious honey-glazed oat cluster straight into said crater and it practically RAPED the exposed root and gave the nerve a FINE how-do-you-do, sending delightful shockwaves of Why-God type pain throughout my entire head.

Well, Chip got me some anbesol finally...see it cooled off once, then suddenly another "shockwave" came out of nowhere...and then it kept acting up every now and then, so I said fucki it, I'm making my tooth DEAD for now. I could feel nearly that entire side of my mouth, from the anbesol, but it was worth it, believe me.

Well, this morning, I bend over to pick up my shoe, and I'm in that position for an extended amount of time because my shoe is buried under other stuff, and I'm searching for it - when suddenly, something about the pressure from that position gives my tooth another passionate embrace and sends me into more moans of ecstatic misery.

So I bought a whole bottle of Orajel this morning, and I'm caking the shit out of it, all over that fucking whore-tooth.

FUCK YOU, TOOTH!

I should probably see a dentist. Except I have no insurance. So I should see the Creighton dentist place, where I don't have to pay if I can't afford it.

On a lighter note, I like Vagrant Story. I'm getting a little more used to the style of game and the controls.

Also, I'm going to write a script someday called "Hook the Toikey" (turkey), in honor of a dream Chip had, that involved Barry White yelling at the kid who played Beaver, and Morgan Freeman as a checkout clerk.

Budgeting

Bills are crazy. Here, look at my monthly laundry list:

Car payment $392
Car insurance $135
Rent/util $200
Gas $160
Student loans $50
Groceries/expenses $100
Debt $300

Add 'em up, ya gets the total of $1337. You know how much take home pay I get a month? Approx. $1516.75. And that's IF there are no sick days or holidays for me, that month, since I'm still a temp.

So that basically leaves me less than $200 for going out (to movies or eating, etc.), any new stuff I want (books, movies, music, clothes) AND any emergency expenses.

Now ask yourself...could YOU truly spend less than $50 a week on yourself? Think about all the lunches you buy on lunch breaks (instead of packing a lunch), the books you buy, the clothes, the things here and there, and then your weekend activities...

See, this is like my mom - she was insane and caused most of our financial trouble when I lived there. She kept accusing me of using up all MY money and she "didn't understand" where "all my money" was going. And yet she would hit my dad up for like $20 here, $10 there...on an almost daily basis - HELLO!? Even spending just $20 a day is using up $600 a month - and she would spend it on junk! My dad would tell her to save it for gas money, and she'd go and put like $5 of gas in her tank, buy herself a SCRATCH TICKET ($3 right there) and a soda and some chips or something (another $3), and then spend the remaining money on other junk, possibly another scratch ticket or going camping by herself (with our dog) and paying the fee to stay there, when my dad told her just to stay home.

Now, this is ALSO if they're NOT garnishing my wages...which they will, eventually. It's just a matter of the legal paperwork finally catching up to me - they garnished my wages at Ameritas and they have "caught up" everything yet. They even tried reinstating the garnishment at Wells Fargo - which closed my account several months ago.

The garnishing takes exactly 25% of my pay (after taxes). So let's see, that's about $379. Well, there goes my debt payments. And I'll probably have to save on groceries as well by getting all the really, really cheap stuff each month to bring it down to $50 (it can be done, trust me, pot pies and ramen noodles are my heroes).

So if that happens, unless I have a better job that pays well by that time, I'll have to probably work overtime just to be able to pay other debts. The garnishment would last probably about 4 or 5 months, considering what's left of the balance.

Did I mention I added up all my other debts? Okay...NOT including the garnishment (it's what I owe UNL directly, like for unpaid housing, after my financial aid didn't disperse b/c I couldn't register b/c my status was locked due to $600 unpaid balance)...also NOT including my student loans (those are still above $4000)...

My total debt other than these items is somewhere slightly over $5000. Seriously, it's crazy:

-I still owe a hundred or so in unpaid medical stuff
-I owe $800 on that damn computer
-I owe Wells Fargo like $545
-I owe like $200 to Alltel for unpaid phone bill
-1st Financial claims I owe them like over $900 now, but I'm arguing that shit like there's no tomorrow (long story, but basically I paid them off long ago, and now this balance is all fees and overlimit charges b/c they quoted me the wrong pay off balance - I'm dead-fucking-serious, too, IT'S ALL FEES AND OVERLIMIT CHARGES, I HAVEN'T USED THE CARD IN YEARS)

-I owe Aspire Visa like $1000 (yay, thanks mom, yeah, let's activate this THIRD credit card since our family's having trouble this summer - once again the vast majority of it is FEES)
-I owe Progressive $180 I think, for old insurance that got cancelled
-I still owe $400-ish to Advanced Cash for when my accounts collapsed and I couldn't pay back my payday loan

God, is this list insane or what? And I know there's more, too, I just can't recall it all right now...

Oh well...I figured it out, and if I can keep paying at least $300 a month, I should have all this cleared up within about a year and a half.

AHHHH, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE AMERITRADE JOB THAT PAID LIKE $16-$17 AN HOUR!

I need a full-time job with benefits so that taking days off every now and then won't be another financial set-back, not to mention I need insurance so I can take CARE of myself!

You know, I haven't had a regular doctor, my entire life...seriously, the only person who ever took us to the doctor on a normal basis was our grandmother. My parents only took us if we were were seriously ill.

My last dentist appointment was almost 2 years ago now, I think.

I don't even REMEMBER my last physical check up (other than ugh, I'm sick, give me medication)....Seriously, I think it was when I was 13.

I still wonder if my back is screwed up. People told me in the past, looking closely at my back, that it arches more than theirs...and I never seem to feel comfortable sitting in chairs for very long. I don't know. I just know that in 5th grade when they told the kids to have the scoliosis testing, the nurse told me she detected the possibility of it in me and gave me a sheet of paper to show my parents - which they completely ignored. When I brought it up to my mom, she told me I was being dramatic because of how my grandma always freaked out about health issues, and that I was perfectly fine.

This is a really negative post, isn't it?

You know, I was looking over Nicole's online journal, in one entry (I'm not in it much, she says "Eric" a lot but she's mostly talking about Eric Kinsey from AZ) she did one of those personal survey things...and she lists me as her "most pessimistic friend".

Which doesn't surprise me - I used to be way more pessimistic than I am now. And I know this post is REALLY bitchy, but I mostly post this kinda stuff here, to get it out.

Ironically, though, I am a Pessimistic Dreamer, not a Pessimistic Realist.

Weird combination.

I feel bad for bitching about "Oklahoma!" to Eric. Everyone did a fine job - I just...Okay, he mentioned something to me about how my expectations are too high and I'd have a better time if I just let it go and enjoyed it. Well, there's a problem with that - I just don't really enjoy watching "community" theatre musicals. I REALIZE they're not supposed to be professional quality, truly. But when people tell me "Just have fun and enjoy it for what it is" that's the exact problem - I DON'T enjoy watching people sing and dance and act goofy.

The entire reason I enjoy musical theatre is for seeing how music and story can intertwine and create catharsis or wit. So when that element of it is lost, I'm BORED. I DON'T watch musicals just to hear the tunes and have fun watching people up on stage - that bores me - I'm really, really not trying to be snooty, I'm just saying...ok, let's give an example...

Suppose you enjoy going to parties because of the socializing aspect? There is food, music and games, but what you really love is getting to interact with your friends and the joy of developing relationships and rapport...

Now suppose everyone at the parties were cold or unwilling to interact - the party just becomes food, music and games. Which you can do elsewhere. So it loses what you actually found pleasurable about it.

That's like me with theatre. I don't go to shows to see the jokes, the singing and the costumes. I go to see the STORY, told in a way that it grips me, the way a movie or a novel does. When that element doesn't work out or is lost on me, I get bored. And there's a lot of community theatre around here that gets so into the music and the costumes and the "characterization" and the "jokes" etc., that they completely miss the boat on making the story gripping - by "gripping" I don't mean edge-of-your-seat, I just mean the story has a fluid and well-sculpted SHAPE to it.

I know everyone's just having a good time, and I want to, too, but the sad truth is that that simply is NOT the reason I enjoy theatre. I feel bad, b/c I know everyone's working so hard and performing their hearts out, but it still does nothing to entertain me. I'd rather be reading or watching a movie, or something. I can't help it - I get bored.

And a lot of the time, this is the fault of the directors for A) not doing their PRIMARY job, which is SHAPING THE STORY - there are so many directors who do not take CHARGE of their actors and think that it's their job simply to get the staging to look nice and to direct an overall "look" and "effect" to the show - wrong! Directors are supposed to SHAPE the story and help the actors shape the scenes, not just the physical movement - Actors ARE supposed to develop the characters and make choices, yes, but the problem is that actors, because they are not looking at the story as a whole (like the director does) cannot always see how a certain moment fits into the grand scheme and overall arc - the director has to say "No, this won't work here, because of this - we need to find a different choice."

Anyway, it's time for me to heat up my lunch.