Thespians

It's been a busy week. How many times have I said that? Too many times, methinks. But it's true. Practicing for the Christmas play and going to work have taken a big bite out of my weekend. (Sure, they only occupy Thursday nights and Fridays, but still.)

This week's practice for the Christmas play -- The Year Without a Santa Claus -- was particularly enlightening because Reid's mom was there. You know, Reid, the actor? Reid, the soon-to-be movie star? As you can probably guess, she was there to give us some pointers on our acting. (I couldn't guess that until she actually did.) Out of all the cast, only one of us has any real experience as a thespian -- although some of us have had our share of amateur performances. (Nick, Mark, and I star both in our self-produced Beowulf and in this play. Nick is also directing the play.)

One of Reid's mom's first bits of advice was related to singing. I'm singing in this play, and we have no microphones: a recipe for disaster? She basically told me and Mike, who do this really sappy number, to project our voices and not to be so nervous. It sounds obvious, but the way she said it helped. Of course, after the scene, when I was allowed to slink backstage, I was all nerves. Sure, I can sing with a guitar and a band. But singing onstage, along with a backing track, while acting, is another story. It's something I'll have to work on, but luckily, I don't have much to sing.

After our rehearsal, which wasn't of the entire play (it's been two months and we've never even rehearsed the last scene onstage), Reid's mom went over the notes she had taken and told us about the idea of developing our characters. The script, being rather lighthearted, is pretty threadbare, she said, and so we should each adopt a different persona to bring our respective characters to life. I guess it's sort of how actors "channel" various people as their inspiration for roles. (Example: Johnny Depp's Ed Wood = Ronald Reagan + Casey Kasem + the Tin Man.) As a group, we helped each other sort out the various personas that we would adopt in our performances. Somehow, I (Santa Claus) got saddled with the personality of Eeyore and Rodney Dangerfield. I wasn't sure how that would work at first, but I think I've got it: he's Eeyore when he's depressed, and he's Rodney Dangerfield when he's too agitated to be simply depressed.

So I'm going to have to spend this week carving out my character and developing his mannerisms. Maybe I should spend a day in character. I don't think I'd be able to make it without looking like a complete idiot, but Marlon Brando would be proud. Anyway, the least I could do is memorize my lines, which is something I haven't yet done over the past two months. Time is ticking, as they say (although clocks are really the things that do the ticking).

Last night I spent some time talking to Natasha on the phone, and it was wonderful. It's nice to hear her voice. I wish I could see her in person. Hopefully sometime.

Today, I didn't really do anything except program in vain (curse you, GM_xmlhttpRequest) and download Firefox 2. It came out earlier this week, but I was wary of downloading it for fear that my most used extensions wouldn't be supported. I went and checked to see which ones would be supported, and it turned out that most of them would be, so I went ahead with the download. (Firefox's "Check for Updates" feature was saying that there were no updates, so I had to download the new version myself.) It's not much different from 1.5.x, but the difference between 2.0 and 1.5 is 0.5. The main thing I've noticed (besides a few annoying things I've been trying to fix) is that spell checking is now included. That's pretty good. There must be some other features that are new... well, not really. Other than that, the only new features or improvements are those that have been covered by extensions in the past. But it's still good. It's supposed to be more stable than 1.5, which is fine by me. And since IE 7 was officially released just a few days before Firefox 2, it looks like the Browser Wars are back in full swing, and we've got ringside seats.

(Just as I was writing that, I got to experience another of Firefox's new features: restoring the browsing session after a crash. Thanks, Firefox!)

Apparently Jesus and Mary aren't the only religious figures making appearances in unlikely places. Here are some miracle photos of Islam.

From The Smoking Gun's gallery of concert riders, here's Iggy Pop's list of demands, which is probably the wackiest you'll ever see. Apparently written by one of his roadies, it aims to entertain. Don't forget to read the last page.

Three years ago: "Halloween is Friday and I haven't even thought about what I'm going to do."