A Good Spell

It's been a while. The good news is: I ain't dead yet.

Well, assuming that that's the sort of thing that you consider good news. Some parties, they may not be so happy about it. However, I try not to go to those sorts of parties.

It's been an interesting month, and I've had a lot of ideas for entries here that I've no doubt forgotten, or will be incapable of remembering when I wish. Such is life when you're in the theatre. Whatever you're working on tends to consume your mind & energy, which is as it should be. Do you really want to go to a production of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters when the lead actresses are actually thinking about a wild lesbian threesome together? Well, actually, a good number of you might find that very interesting indeed, but when I buy a ticket to that play, I wanna see some pointless Russian angst.

But, I digress.

What was my point?

Oh yes: That I'm too tired at the moment to have a point, but that I will shortly. Meanwhile, I'm trying to think up horrible things to send to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and I'm having a bit of a time with it. For those of you who are B-W virgins, the idea is to write THE worst opening sentence for a story that you can possibly think up. That's not as easy as you think. Here's the contest namesake's original sentence, which will begin with familiar words:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

That's a hell of an act to try to follow.

I sent in a pretty ghastly sentence last night, but my intention is to win this year, so I'm going to have to get more rancid than that. A friend of mine won in 2003, and I'm just not going to take it lying down. Not because she lords it over me; it's just that I aim to prove that I can be at least as wretched as she can.

Meanwhile, my wife just walked in with black raspberry-flavored almonds and a dragon. Soon, we'll have company. It's funny just how often those three things happen together.