Snow again today--I keep hearing people say March is the snowiest month. I would like it to be spring now please--wet, frozen rain in my face, on my shoes, in my shoes. It's pretty, yeah, and now if we could just keep it from melting and making a mess of everything that would be great. I only focus on the negative cause I'm a cynical person--I love Minnesota and I should just shut my yap. Fargin snow!!!

I've been watching the new season of "The Sopranos" on HBO and I gotta say; I'm glad the family is back in town. Only one episode in and I'm already chomping at the bit for the next show, you'll get no spoilers outta me, but holy Hannah talk about your cliff-hangers.... Here's a perfect example of why I love this show; the first episode in 22 months of making the public wait for the rest of the story the first line of dialogue is: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

We, the viewing audience, just got smacked upside by the head by the shows creators. David Chase as much as said "I could do this forever. I could keep feeding you progressively more craptastic product for as long as I like. You would eat it up, you would gorge on it in point of fact, and I would have more money than God. I'm not going to--we are going out while we are at the top of our game--but I know I could do 'Tony goes to Cabo' and you sheeple would be there."

And he did it at the top of the first show back--after making us wait. I love it.

Before I get too far down today's tangential trail--let me point out a couple of additions to the ol' Blog. First, way down on the bottom of the page you will notice a button that links to my Flickr photo page check me out--I'm sharing photos. Now if you'll be so kind as to direct your attention to the link list to the right you will notice two recent additions.

The first, "Geeks in Residence," is maintained by my friend Kelly out in NYC--her and to a certain lesser extent her husband Patrick (I've noticed that he doesn’t post there as frequently) aside from being all-around cool people they were kind enough to show us about when the Lady K and I visited this past summer.

The second, "Letters To The Ether," is one of the online homes of Mr. Shawn Holster a friend and coworker of mine from my days at KVSC. (Actually come to think on it, Pat was my mentor and Co-Host of "Insomnia Heaven" as well. So in a weird six degrees of Kevin Bacon sort of way the two are related.) Shawn is an artist/writer/cool-cat from the Twin Cites metro area, aside from being one of the sharpest people I know he also is responsible for turning me on to the music of Ike Reilly. Check them out when you get a chance--both blogs are good reads.

And now on with the show:

Today, the ides of March, was the day I finally managed to finish holding auditions for the play I'm directing for the local High School. Of the whole process, this beginning bit has got to be the most tedious. Without ever having held a rehearsal or a Tech meeting I'm already a week behind schedule--gotta love it. It's not that I'm not excited, I am, but there is just this horrible Tantalus moment here at the front. I've chosen the show and committed to this production--I now have a cast and I desire nothing more than getting to work. Between now and May when the show goes up I will live and breathe these characters and situations to the point of saturation. Before that happens though, say from now till the show starts tooling around on its own power, I will be at beset by questions and fears about my choice of show and cast. Past experience has demonstrated that I have (if nothing else) a pretty decent sense of who goes with what role--still they say you're only as good as your last show so until this starts coming together I'll be biting my spiritual nails a bit.

The whole audition process is problematic in my experience, for the simple reason that it really doesn’t do THAT much to get the right actor in the right role. Granted we are talking about a High School play here so, in some sense, standing and talking at the same time is the main requirement. Still I take this stuff seriously and I'm looking at character matches, and who reads well, and who looks ready to carry what size role plus taking into consideration student seniority and who has been around the longest. Now the real work begins with all of the attendant schedule related nonsense--any bets on how long it will be till I hold a rehearsal with a full compliment of actors? Stay tuned...