by john | Aug 6, 2009 | Fiction
It was some time after anything that could be considered early morning, so the boys decided to forego breakfast, rummaging through the economy-size cooler in the lower levels of the houseboat to find a pack of brats to grill up. John Roy manned the grill, Joe Don being barred from anything having to do with fire after the unfortunate fart-lighting incident that cost John Roy his favorite sofa a couple years ago. The brats were nearing the perfect mix of plump and sizzly when Joe Don called down from the roof of the houseboat.
“Hey! Car comin’!”
“I can see that from here, dumbass. Can you tell who it is yet?”
“No. Car’s all I can see.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna be nothin’ good.” Nobody John Roy was interested in talking to drove a car. Unless you count a hearse, and with all the jackin’ up Elvis had done to his hearse, it was more Gravedigger than anything a real-life undertaker would be driving, so it most likely didn’t count. John Roy’s suspicions were furthered when the Mercedes S-Class sedan pulled up in front of the houseboat in a cloud of red Georgia dust.
The door opened and a shapely leg extended, followed by the rest of an equally shapely woman in her late thirties. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she wore rimless glasses that gave John Roy a few unfortunate Sarah Palin fantasies and he tried to still the stirrings in his cutoff shorts as he wiped bratwurst grease on his apron as he approached the woman.
“Hey there. Somethin’ I can help you with?” John Roy extended his hand, but the woman just looked at it hanging there like a hopeful trout, and after a minute he put it in the pocket of his shorts.
“Are you John Smith?” the woman asked, looking at an envelope in her hands.
“Yes ma’am. John Roy Smith IV, at your service.” He sketched a rough bow, punctuated with a flourish of his grillin’ fork that came within an eyetooth of puncturing the woman’s impressive bosom. She jumped back and uttered a little squeal, startling John Roy, who lost his balance mid-bow and had to correct a little to keep from sprawling in the dirt.
“Ahem, yes. Mr. Smith, my name is Cynthia Johnson-Martin and I am an associate with Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent from Memphis.”
“Woooo, Memphis. That’s a long way away. You must be tired from all that travelling. Why don’t you come on over here and set a spell. Joe Don! Throw me a beer for the lady.” He yelled over his shoulder. Joe Don tossed a PBR in a perfect spiral to land in John Roy’s outstretched palm.
“Hey, asshole! This here’s a lady! She needs a glass, too!” Joe Don followed the beer with a vintage Burger King Star Wars glass featuring Princess Leia in her slave girl costume. John Roy had a complete set of eight of these glasses. But only the ones with Leia on them, because in his words, all the rest of them Star Wars dudes were homos. Except R2D2, he was kinda cool. John Roy poured the beer into the glass and tossed the empty up onto the deck of the boat as he steered the woman into one of his webbed lawn chairs.
“There, that’s better. Now, what can I do for you? You wanna brat? They’re almost done.” John Roy was at his most solicitous, somewhat concerned that this woman was here to serve him with divorce papers from the temperamental Erlene. He didn’t remember marrying Erlene, exactly, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ended up in court over something he couldn’t remember doing.
“No thank you, Mr. Smith. Now, as I mentioned, I am with the firm of Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent in Memphis. I am here to inform you that you have been named a beneficiary in the estate of your grandfather, John Roy Smith, Jr. Our firm had handled Mr. Smith’s affairs for some time now, and with his passing last month we are now dealing with the final dispensation of his assets.”
“Wow. Well, I sure do hate that you came all the way out here for nothin’, but my Grandaddy died before I was born, so I’m afraid I ain’t the John Roy Smith IV you’re looking for. Too bad, I coulda used some beneficiary-in’. As you can see, we done seen better days ‘round here.”
The woman took a long look around the dry lakebed, the houseboat, the fraying lawn chairs and the grill with its feet mired in what once was the bottom of a lake, and couldn’t help but agree.
by john | Aug 5, 2009 | Theatre
…and never let go.”
That’s a quote from the play I’m directing, Moonlight and Magnolias. The play is about the five days in 1939 when filming was halted on Gone with the Wind, a new director was hired, and an entire new screeenplay was created. By a writer who’d never read the book. Talk about a gig! The play all takes place in produced David Selznick’s office, with Selznick and director Victor Fleming acting out scenes from the book as screenwriter Ben Hecht turns it into a script. It’s a pretty funny show, especially if you’re really familiar with GWTW.
Which I’m not. I, like the play’s Ben Hecht (not sure if this was the case with the real Ben Hecht or if it’s dramatic license on the part of Playwright Ron Hutchinson), have never read the book. I have seen the movie. Once. On a re-release ten years ago for the 60th anniversary of the film I took Suzy to go see it. It was pretty good, I thought. Like the characters in the play, I kinda thought Scarlett was a slut and Ashley was a bit of a fag, but overall I liked the flick.
So why exactly did I pick this play to come out of theatrical semi-retirement? I’m not sure, except that the president of the community theatre’s board is a friend of mine, the space is small enough not to need much set, which is the kind of show I work well with, and I was a little bored. So I submitted my name as a potential director, and then right before they offered me the gig, I tried to back out. Then I found out they were about to offer me the gig, so I did what any money-grubbing whore would do, I asked “What does it pay?” So since it will pay me slightly more than I’ll spend on gas driving to and from rehearsals 45 minutes away, I took the gig. Then I read the play. And I liked it, which is a good thing, since I’m stuck with it for the next couple of months.
So we had auditions this week, and for my 4-person play we had a marginal turn-out. 7 actors. 5 men, two women. The play requires 3 men and 1 woman. Fortunately there were six castable actors that showed up, so I picked four and away we go. One of the first assignments will be for the cast (and director) to read the book. At some point there will be a movie-watching party at my house, and then I suppose we’ll make a play happen at some point. It’s interesting: I really thought I was done with theatre. Again. But I’m not. Again. I don’t have any intent to do the level of productions I did at Off-Tryon, when I was doing 10-12 shows every year. And I will probably move back into happy semi-retirement after October. But I guess I’m not ever going to be done with it, no matter how much of a pain in the ass theatre people can be.
This looks to be a good ensemble, though. My Selznick and I have worked together a bunch, and the lone chick in the cast and I have known each other for several years, plus my friend that dragged me into the show is my stage manager, so I only have a couple of guys to get to know. And it’ll be fun doing something for a change that’s not in iambic pentameter, which is all I’ve done for the past couple of years. And I have a lighting gig coming up in September, I’m once again designing the season opener for Theatre Charlotte, the local community theatre. After they lost the rights to Annie, Ron, the Executive Director and director for the show, settled on Seussical and called me up to see if I’d do the show. I figured WTF? why not, so I’m calling in favors from all over the lighting industry to make a hellaciously bright and colorful Seuss-world this fall. So that oughta pay for my December trip to Vegas.
In other news, I think my time at PokerNews is likely at an end. There’s been a change in leadership, and that has actually very little to do with my departure. I think Matt Parvis will do an excellent job helming the ship there, but as I’ve been doing that gig for the past two years solid, I’m no longer nearly as into the whole poker scene as I once was. And they need someone who eats, drinks and breathes poker. I’m just not that guy anymore, and with the theatre stuff going this fall, and my own writing stuff happening, I just don’t think I can give them the time and focus they need. I’ll still fill in every once in a while when they run short, but the days of me churning out 20-30 recaps in a month are probably done for the most part. It’s been a fun ride and I’ll miss the money, but I think Matt will do a great job over there and wish them nothing but the best. I had it in my head for a while that I was probably done with that gig after the WSOP, so it’s time. It was a good run, but after a few hundred articles I might be tired of talking about some donkey four-flushing another donkey to crack aces with jacks. I’ll miss the money, though. So I’ll have to sell a few books to make up for the revenue.
by john | Aug 4, 2009 | Theatre, Writing
This was in my inbox when I returned from auditions tonight –
Shipped on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 via FedEx Ground Home Delivery
All items in your order have been shipped.
In This Shipment
===========================
100 of Returning the Favor and other slices of life by John G. Hartness (Printed)
Shipped To:
3512 Winterfield Pl.
Charlotte, NC 28205
So by the end of the week (hopefully) I’ll have a pile of copies of Returning the Favor in hand and ready to ship out to those of you who have (or will) purchase the analog version. So far I have sold more digital copies than analog editions, but I expect that to change shortly.So if you want your autographed copy, click on the button the right of the screen and make it happen!
I’ve been really impressed with the service I’ve gotten from Lulu throughout this process. It’s not like they’re doing much for me, I’m laying everything out and making sure it’s ready, but for a straight-up print house, they do good work. And they dealt with the ISBN paperwork for me quickly and easily, so I didn’t have to learn how to do one more thing in the process. I think everybody’s favorite not really ex-stripper (really favorite, not really ex-stripper) is looking at using them for her book as well, so you’ve got that to look forward to.
So yeah, I might have mentioned coming home from auditions. Funny thing, that. So a few months ago, I got a message on Facebook from a director buddy of mine. Seems a local theatre had issues with the rights to their season-opener. Issues like a national tour pulling all the rights nationwide or something silly like that. So they were no longer doing Annie and had switched to Seussical the Musical. Since I’m widely considered somewhat misanthropic and a bad influence on children (all true) my name had been quickly dismissed in discussions of designers for Annie. But when Seussical came about, someone might have thought that I had some experience with bright colors and hallucinogenic substances (also all true). So my buddy asked me if I had really retired from theatre.
My response was a cautious “kinda. Why?” And he mentioned Seussical, and I mentioned that some things might be up in the air with my employment status at PokerNews and I might be interested in the money, and we cut a deal. And along about the same time I had signed on to direct Moonlight and Magnolias for another community theatre in a nearby town. The schedules overlapped a little, but I juggled things around to make them work, and one of the things I juggled was scheduling M&M auditions early. Like tonight early.
Just one problem – nobody showed up. We had four people last night, which almost works out because it’s a four-person show. Except the genders of the auditionees was perfectly balanced, and the genders of the characters are 3:1. So we had one to many vajayjays at auditions last night. And since the characters are real people (the play is about the moment in cinematic history when David Selznick stopped shooting Gone with the Wind, fired the director, shitcanned the screenplay and re-wrote the whole friggin’ thing in five days) I can’t do what I would usually do, which is cast the show gender-blind.
There’s a lot to be said for doing plays where the writer has been dead for a few centuries. Just sayin’.
But basically here’s the deal – I’m directing again, and for the first time in several years I’m directing a show with a living playwright and with language that’s not iambic pentameter. I’m designing again, and was a little bit of a diva and demanded sufficient programming time to make the show look the best that I can. And I’ve got a shitload of books of poetry en route to my domicile, so buy them quick before Suzy kicks my ass for cluttering up the den. Yes, she’s leaning on my shoulder while I’m typing this :). Love you, honey.
