ATC's Best Little W'house in Texas is honkey tonkin' along!

So we had a fantastic opening weekend for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, even though I was sick.  I'm just now starting to feel a bit better, so I'm really excited about this weekend.  The show is really great, if I do say so myself :-)  Everyone who has come has had nothing but nice things to say.  I can't get the music out of my head, which is probably a good thing - it will help me keep the harmonies straight.  This show is never done, which is odd, because it has such a touching story, fantastic songs and so much more depth than a normal cheesy musical.

Y'all come back now, ya hear! 

Security Ambassadors

I'm sitting here in one of the last sessions of the Sun Security Ambassadors conference, and thinking how lucky I was to be able to attend - getting the opportunity to learn what we are doing wrt to security in all our different GEOs, get in depth information into emerging security technologies, and I got to hear from some excellent luminaries in this field: Matt Bishop, Radia Perlman, Susan Landau & Michelle Dennedy.  We've had a great agenda and I feel like my team and I will have a lot to take away from this.

With Sun Security Ambassadors this week, and RSA last week (more on that later), I've been away from my email and "day job". That means a lot of catchup for next week!  

first rehearsal on stage....

Last night we got to use the actual stage for the first time for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In some places, the stage is MUCH bigger ...in others, smaller than what we practiced with. That's what adding props and set pieces does to a little theater group ;)  The stage is much wider, and now we have access to the stage and the platforms that are between the orchestra pit and the rest of the audience.  Spacing was an interesting challenge last night, so we spent a lot of time last night fixing the big dance numbers. I only whacked one person with my tamborine last night... unfortunately I got poor Heidi more than once. I promise I'll be much more careful tonight!

Tonight we should have a few more of our costumes - I'll get a chance to try out my velcro tear off denim overalls (how else do you take off overalls over cowboy boots when you have 15 seconds to change?!?!)  I never thought I'd be wearing tear off clothing for a show... :-)

Band sounds great!

We had our Sitzprobe (sit and sing) last night with the band for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and they sounded fantastic! The slide guitar and violin add depth we just weren't getting with the piano fill in rehearsal, and the bass and drums will definitely help us feel the beat as we dance and sing (at the same time ;).  Yesterday morning and afternoon, we got most of the set put together, so tonight we'll actually be on stage! and with the band! I'm very excited! We won't be running with costumes until at least Wednesday, which I'm a bit nervous about, as I have a few very fast changes (including one that occurs onstage!).  I'm sure it will be fine. Linda has reminded me several times that we often didn't have our costumes until opening night at the Gaslighter, and we somehow survived and still put on outstanding shows.  This will be no exception! This is one of the most challenging roles I've ever had - I'm not used to musicals having such great depth, and I've certainly never covered so many emotions in one show.

[VABF: Oops! I wrote this yesterday, but didn't post it! oops!]
 

ATC Last Rehearsal before moving to the theater!

We had an interesting landmark in our evolution towards opening night of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas - we did a full run through, choreographed the bows (because, yes, there is more dancing! yay!) and completed our very last rehearsal in the rehearsal space. Sunday we load into the theater, do our sit-sing, then we'll just have to run, run, run the show from top to bottom til we're ready to open.  I'm really happy with where we all are. Most of our costumes and hair pieces are in, everything is choreographed and blocked, and everyone is off book.  Sure, there were a few forgotten lines here and there last night, but that's the beauty of live theater. :-)  I'm so excited about getting into the actual theater so we can really understand where our entrances and exists are, and we'll have so much more space!  I helped base paint some of the sets last week, and I have a feeling that Stephen Watham is going to outdo himself again!

We're opening April 19. Make sure you get your tickets now! Actors Theatre Center performs in the historic Hoover Middle School theater in San Jose (right across from the Egyptian museum). It's a short run, and you definitely don't wan to miss out.

Loudness war and perfect pitch

So, it's not my imagination - music is getting worse. I found this article from IEEE on how the amplitude of music is going up on one of my friend's blogs and found it truly fascinating. I had heard that this was getting worse, due to the way MP3 compression worked - but this article was enlightening! It seems that MP3 compression has improved enough where loss of quality is no longer as necessary, but that "louder" music attracts more attention - so that's what the sound engineers are going for.  What this really means is that my wacky friends that insist music sounds better on vinyl are right.

There was a follow on article that blew my mind - it covers pitch correcting software used in more than 90% of recordings today. I find this shocking, because I consider part of being a good singer to have a good sense of pitch. It's hard, I know - I've heard some recordings of myself where I'm learning a new song where clearly my sense of pitch at that moment was... a little off. This just seems to me too much like cheating.  How do we really know what we are listening to?  Clearly, I'll have to continue to go  see live theater if I want to see the real thing.  The second article is "multi-media" so you can actually hear the pitch corrections as they are applied.

Speaking of live theater, rehearsals for ATC's Best Little W****house in Texas are going exceedingly well. We did our first run through this week. Yes, still lots to polish, but we're really getting there!

Absentee ballot voter fraud

I've long had my suspicions about the potential for fraud with absentee ballots, and this article out of the UK shows just how easy it is to abuse the absentee ballot situation. Someone actually used this to rig an election! This is a tricky issue, because obviously we do not want to disenfranchise folks who cannot make it to the polls, whether due to travel, work or disability, but a lot of states, including California, are trying to move as many people to vote absentee as possible.  We've already seen problems with stolen ballots in the state of Oregon, which votes 100% absentee. I wonder what it will take to get the powers that be to seriously look into the implications of all of this.  Not that voting in person is much better. I reregistered with my new name this year, but my polling place still had me under my old name. They let me vote with a normal ballot (vs a provisional one) anyways.  Also, my parents said that for years after I left Indiana my name was still listed at the polling place by their house.