Why the show sucks:

At first, it was only Vina, a bit part, who had to leave rehearsal a few weeks ago because she was throwing up. Then Blamo missed all of hell week and the entire opening weekend, but he was only Joey Biltmore, so nobody really cared. Then Shen twisted his ankle and broke two ligaments at the end of the first act and did the second act on a cane, but everyone figured he'd be fine in a week. Then we reached Wednesday, and discovered that Shen had swine flu. Ordinarily, his understudy would step in, but Ian is the funniest Big Jule ever seen this side of the Mississippi, and even though Joey, who actually is big, was understudying Big Jule, it just wouldn't be the same, so Spencer, who plays Nicely-Nicely, and knew most of the lines already, offered to step in. Now, Spencer isn't double-cast, but he has an understudy, so he would play Nicely-Nicely and the whole shindig should go nicely, but, see, Harry the Horse, one of the larger gambling bit parts, is double cast with Brandy Bottle Bates, but one of them got sick a few days ago, so Nicely's understudy got trained as Brandy-Bottle Bates, and Harry the Horse went on being Harry the Horse, but with the understudy promoted, they had to train someone else as BBB, and he royally messed up his line, calling Adelaide's jewelry "repulsive" rather than "vulgar," but to make matters worse, the other Harry the Horse got sick, and we're already down so many gamblers they decided to have the assistant assistant director do it, but he knows none of the lines, so he's reading out of the script, and to make matters worse, Emily caught swine from Shen, seeing as how their always nuzzling noses on stage, and her understudy knows most of the dialogue, which would normally be fine, cause Shen could cover it up, but since he's gone, and Spencer really only knows the dialogue for the scenes that Nicely-Nicely is in, the entire pre-Lament dialogue went entirely out of order. To top it all off, Kate wasn't there, so I don't know what will happen if Nick's sister ends up playing across from both him and Sam, because there's no way all of that kissing is going to go over well.

Italian Festival

Last night I went to the Italian Festival with (prepare for a slew of new nicknames) Nyx (who you know), Benny, Ryan, Johannes (like Gutenberg, who invented the printing press to make books *hint hint*), Cormac (you know that's what they should have called the other brother), Lysander, and Nick. We saw Cormac's brother, Cameron, as well. Anyways, I have a whole bunch of stories to share, so I will spread them over the coming days, just like I did with the SHP.

We spent a lot of time just standing around. The laws of inertia and magnetism appear to apply very strongly to them. The will remain at rest unless an outside force makes them move, and they have a mild magnetic attraction to Nyx, since she is the only person capable of making them move. They also had a tendency to split off into groups, with Lysander and Benny vanishing temporarily, which bugged Nyx to no end. And spending any protracted amount of time with Lysander really introduces me to the concept of wing-woman. But he's really not that bad, so I suppose I'll manage.

At one point last night, I was standing with Nyx and Cormac when I saw a familiar face approaching. I tried to remember who it was. A gym teacher, maybe? No, then Nyx would recognize him. As soon as Cormac gave a very friendly hello!, I realized it was our youth group advisor from last year.

"It took me like ten seconds to recognize you," I said.

"Really?" He started counting on his fingers.

Then, Cameron popped up behind him. "Hi!"

"Hey! How you been?" said the youth group advisor.

"Pretty good."

Nyx, who had wandered away, then came back with Benny.

"This is Benny," said Cormac.

"Hello."

"Hi," said Benny. "I want to call you Mark, for some reason."

"I like Mark. Mark works."

"Okay, then. Hi, Mark."

Cameron laughed. "His name is Chad."

I laughed too, since his name isn't actually Chad.

"Should I call you Chad?" said Benny.

"Chad's fine too. It's all good."

"Hmm. How about Chad Mark?"

"Now that is a great name."