Tonight I got the chance to go see RiffTrax Live at the Quality 16 Movie Theatre in Ann Arbor. (It was playing tonight at about 430 theatres across the country!)
RiffTrax, if you’re unfamiliar, can be found here. It’s the creation of the guys who did Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – MST3K in geek language (I Grok Spock) – and it’s hilarious!
Tonight they did a LIVE broadcast from a theatre in Nashville, of the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space, and it was a ridiculous amount of fun.
It’s sort of like sitting in a room with a bunch of friends, and watching movies so bad that you have FAR more fun making up your own dialogue, snarky remarks and commentary through the whole movie…

SO MUCH FUN!

I got to rehearse a staged reading of a new play, too, with good actors and a good playwright in the room. ALWAYS a good way to spend a few hours!

AND my diet must be working a little, because I heard from several folks today “Hey! You’re looking skinny!” – so, that’s nice! 🙂

Also, today’s an interesting anniversary for me – it’s been 5 years today that my full-time job at the Purple Rose Theatre Company ended, and I entered a whole new world of freelance directing and founding/running a professional theatre!

It’s funny – 4 years ago, on the one year anniversary, I posted this journal entry, which was about that extremely transitional year of my life. This year, I don’t have the urge to post anything as introspective, lengthy or profound.

Maybe that’s because it was only a couple of days ago that I posted THIS entry about the end of our third season at the Williamston Theatre, and that was as introspective and profound as I feel like getting right now… or maybe it’s just because right now I don’t have anything profound to say about it. It’s been 5 of the best years of my life, plain and simple. Sure, my time at the Purple Rose was great – a learning, growing, productive time in all sorts of ways – lots of lessons, both professional and personal, were learned. But at the same time, the last 5 years have been absolutely wonderful. Maybe that’s just natural, I mean my kids are growing up and that brings a whole new level of challenges and joys. Jeanne and I are 5 years further in our marriage and I couldn’t be happier. Freelance directing has been an incredibly fulfilling and freeing thing, and being Artistic Director at Williamston Theatre has… well, been life changing in all the good ways. (It’s funny – I just read those two journal entries back to back… what an interesting juxtaposition of place and perspective.)

So, another anniversary of sorts. Many anniversaries, I think, make you look back at the past.

This one, today, makes me more excited about what lays ahead!

Or is it “lies ahead”? “Lay ahead”?

Eh, either way, it’s what comes next… and I’m looking forward to it.

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
– Charles F. Kettering (1876 – 1958)