Played for laughs.

I ran in to an old friend last night at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. She was there for the free concert on the lawn and had already seen both shows. We chatted briefly about her thoughts on the shows (this is someone I once acted with in a summer theatre production, and who's theatre "claim to fame" is that she once acted on stage with Harrison Ford [in college]). Mostly she seemed to enjoy the shows, but one comment struck me. Regarding Twelfth Night, she said, "Of course, they played it for laughs."

She did go on to say that while Winonans are always quick to give a standing ovation to nearly everything, she admitted that she was first on her feet at the end, "so of course I must have liked it" she said.

But her comment about playing for laughs has stuck with me.

I hate playing for laughs. But I think there is a fine line between playing for laughs, and playing the comedy which you expect will get a laugh. When I tell me high schoolers to do something a specific way because it will get a laugh, is that playing for laughs? Or is that playing the comic moment, which is intended to get a laugh?

One of the things that I really like about the GRSF production of Twelfth Night is that it is funny. I've never seen a production of the show before that I enjoyed, and in large part because no other production that I've seen (maye three) has made me laugh. I'd always wondered why it was considered a comedy when it's always seemed so dry, and even nasty (consider what is done to Malvolio). The current GRSF production, to me, is funny, and I've finally enjoyed the show (and with the ability to watch it multiple times, as I have, I've gotten more from it).

And so I wonder ... is playing for laughs, in a comedy, wrong?

ebooks and things

My eBay name and account has been restored, my computer is functioning with a new hard-drive, and I have re-loaded probably 75% of my programs on to this new, improved, lemon-scented (not really) machine. And with my work for the Great River Shakespeare Festival done for the season, and soon to talk about my place with the company next year, I finally feel I have a moment to sit and blog.

While weeding through my emails, I came across an interesting article about free e-book downloads. This only lasts until August 4 (for this great variety of ebooks, anyway), and I would encourage everyone to check it out: http://www.worldebookfair.com/. I still think that Project Gutenberg is a great idea, as long as we can avoid copyright issues!

What I missed the most while spending long hours at work, was reading. I didn't get any chances to read for pleasure and I missed it. To make up for lost time, I'm trying to read too much. A stop in the library the other day had me walking out with six books, all that looked really interesting (and of course there are the shelves and book cases full of my own, unread books). And so... I think I'll go and read.

Wyl, if you're reading this, I need the link to your blog(s) -- it was lost with the hard-drive crash.

Who am I ? (or, an on-line identity theft)

I've spent the better part of the day trying to find out how my eBay ID was stolen, and to change it back. After a very late, and then sleepless, night, I continued my quest to restore my good eBay name. After all... I'd had the name for seven years, with a perfect eBay rating. Of course the concern was also wondering what else might have been taken.

I did manage to convince the eBay chat person that I was indeed the owner of the account, and the ID name was changed back to me, and a new password sent my way. I had to go back in and change the name of the owner of the account, and I see that the thief won two auctions for playstation equipment in Great Britain. I still have to try to deal with not paying for those auctions and retain my good rating.

FORTUNATELY, while eBay accounts are invariably linked to PayPal, I kept different email addresses and passwords for my eBay and PayPal accounts. Otherwise, I am certain that my PayPal account would have been used to pay for the $600 worth of merchandise.

Now, while you might think that tracking the thief is easy because there was a name and address listed as the account owner, I hesitate to think that it is an actual person and/or the actual thief. Further research on my part finds that the request to change the information came from an IP address located in Beirut!

It's been a real pain in the ass to go through and change as many passwords as I can think of changing, and to change them to something completely new and different than I have ever used. Again, I am keeping eBay and PayPal separate.

Moral of this blog... change your passwords! Regularly.

Back...but without a hard-drive.

It feels as though it's been ages since I wrote in this blog. I've been terribly busy with the Great River Shakespeare Festival, but I'm incredibly proud of the shows that they've got up and running. Twelfth Night is about as funny as theatre gets, and Romeo and Juliet is appropriately dark and brooding. If you are in the Southeastern part of Minnesota, I hope you'll check them out.

I did decide that I'm getting too old to spend two solid weeks of fifteen hour days at the theatre. I was incredibly exhausted by opening.

Other than working such long hours, the other reason I haven't blogged much is because the hard-drive on my laptop computer failed. One repair store has said that the information there is not retrievable. I am going to try another place as well, though the outlook is grim.

This also explains why I haven't visited many of my friends' blogs, as well. Without my computer, I also don't have any of my "favorites" in my queue, and heaven knows I don't remember many of the URLs.

I am using my children's computer to post this blog, and thankfully my newest email address (at gmail) is web-based, so I can check in there periodically from this computer as well. It'll be a few days before I can get my computer to the geek store for repair, and longer still to load all the important programs, so please feel free to drop me a line at my address: daniel[dot]munson[at]gmail[dot]com and include a link to your blog, or any other site that you think I might enjoy.