Halfway of 2024
Hi there!
Been a minute, hasn’t it.
I’ve failed you. I have no excuse.
But, I tell you, it’s been a busy year so far and now into the beginning of Summer it’s a little slower.
Let’s recap, shall we.
Throughout the year, my artistic collaborator, David Stoll, and I have been shopping around a pitch for a comic we call “Too Old For Such Things”.
It’s the story of a hitman who erases the imaginary friends of children whose parents think enough is enough and they are (I refer you to the title). And business is going well for our hitman until he is confronted by the imaginary friends he created as a kid who he had banished from his life 20 years ago. They’ve heard of a human erasing their kind and, regardless of who it is, they’ve come to stop him. Mayhem ensues.
I love this story. Working with David has been tremendous and I’m so grateful that he has been as excited about this story as I have been. The series hasn’t been picked up by a publisher yet, but we’ve gotten a lot of very positive feedback from everyone we’ve shown it to. One way or another, we’re going to get it out into the world. I think people will really enjoy it when we do.
Otherwise …
Through much of the Spring, culminating with performances mid-May, I co-produced a small new works festival called Locally Sourced.
It is a festival of new plays -- 10-minutes and short one-acts -- written exclusively by members of the Live Arts Playwrights Lab. I was one of the production managers of this year's Locally Sourced and one of my plays was also produced in the festival. Gosh, I think I’ve been a production manager for this festival five or six times(!!!) since its inception.
My play in the festival was called "Sold Out Houses".
It's a play centered on an film actress who sits alone in a restaurant in the hours before her next film will premiere at the local film festival. She's reserved the entire restaurant to herself so she can have a quiet meal ahead of her premiere. The other character in the play is the bartender who finds this arrangement and her extravagant reservation irritating as she has displaced the regular customers - his "friends" - who usually eat at the restaurant.
"Sold Out Houses" began simply from an image that came to mind one evening during our local film festival last Fall: an actress sitting alone in a restaurant. Followed then by a series of questions: Why is she there? Why is she there alone? Does she want to be alone? Why would she want to eat alone? Who else is in the bar? Someone waiting on her, sure, so who is he? Does he want to be there? What issue does the bartender take with her being there and why?
There wasn't anything more to it than that at the beginning, but I'd been kind of searching and yearning for a short play to write, then this image popped into my mind and it was intriguing enough that I started writing into that image and exploring that space and those characters. How does the tension between the two rise and fall over the course of the play?
The play ended up being about two lonely individuals who spend most of their days surrounded by crowds of people. I didn't know that was the play I was writing at first. Only when I explored the idea further did the play kind of emerge and become.
I uploaded the play to my profile on New Play Exchange and it can be found there if anyone wants to read it.
I had two great actors filling the roles: one of whom I've known in the theatre community for many years and she's always fantastic; and the other actor, this was his first production ever at Live Arts and he was great. I'm always happy when theatre artists who have never done anything at Live Arts before make Locally Sourced their first show.
What else … ?
We Got a New Dog
This beautiful girl is Posie.
She is a Pit mix, maybe three or four years old. Our vet was fostering her after she was found in a crate on the side of the road. She’d been gnawing at an injury or something on her leg for a while and our vet determined it would be too much agony to attempt to save it. Here she is in all her tripodal beauty.
She is such a sweetheart. 50-pounds of lapdog. Loves getting her belly rubbed. Makes a lot of snorffely noises. She’s got a favorite spot on the couch downstairs. We’ve had a wonderful dog trainer who’s helped us sort out the new dynamics with Posie in the mix with our other two dogs. We’re honestly very much in love with her.
We hadn’t been looking for a third dog, but we’re very happy we can be a home for this lovable derp.
Watching
The NCAA Women’s College World Series and the Men’s College World Series.
Great tournaments throughout. The big story on the Women’s side was, of course, the potential and nigh-inevitable four-peat by the Oklahoma Sooners, which didn’t look so inevitable as Oklahoma struggled against Florida in the semifinals. But emerge as the national champions once again Oklahoma, they did.
And on the men’s side, which just wrapped up last night, Tennessee won their first national championship in baseball staving off a comeback from Texas A&M in the 9th inning Another great tournament that reached it’s largest average attendance in history, which is great to see for the city of Omaha and the state of Nebraska — speaking as a native Nebraskan. I’d been worried that the tournament had started to see a decline in attendance and viewership over the last several years — regardless of the Covid effect — but it was great to see the stadium full of people game after game, and there were so many exciting games throughout that it was tremendous fun to watch. I lament that the conclusion of the softball and baseball seasons mean the end for the academic year of NCAA sports, but at least means volleyball and soccer will start their preseasons in only about six weeks.
EXTRAORDINARY
The first season genuinely lived up to its name. A slight slump in the first half of its sophomore season, but I thought it finished very strong and left a cliffhanger on the end that left us wondering where the fuck are we???
Next up on the watchlist is The Acolyte and Season 3 of The Bear! Summer sports will be NWSL throughout, Wimbledon which starts next week and probably a dash of the Olympics.
Comics
I think I’m going to do a separate Substack about comics I’m reading and other comics-related things, but I will share — just for the sake of beautiful art and because I love everything Gabriele Dell’Otto paints — the connecting covers for Marvel’s BLOOD HUNT event:
Thanks for reading, everyone!
I’ll try to be back more often. Hope you’re all staying cool wherever you are.
Scott