Friday, May 18, 2007

What? Me Bloggy?

It always seems like there’s so much to say and yet it seems so difficult to get some of it down on blog paper. The Monster show is finally open and things have supposedly lightened up a little bit but I’m still running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Many of my ongoing Disney assignments are simultaneously training subs in, so I’m still in the run around mode. Recent happenings of note:

The Re-election Blues

Mayor Buddy Dyer is running for re-election, and Keith, Darren and I went to a fundraising event he had at Urban Think Bookstore in Thornton Park. I was pleased that the Mayor remembered the SAK appearance at CityKidz fondly and was impressed he even remembered my name. He greeted us warmly and said “hey, after I say a few words, I should bring you guys up.” Of course I replied “yes Mr. Mayor, whatever you like.” He did. – “Hey my good friends from SAK are here, and maybe they’ll entertain us with a little comedy…” Don’t you just love set ups like that? We were very glad to oblige of course and ended up getting from the Mayor challenges he’s likely to face during his re-election bid – “Protestors!” were the first words out of his mouth, referring to the crowd that had formed outside waving soup ladles and protesting the city’s ordinance against public feeding of groups larger than 25 people. We sang the Re-Election Blues incorporating that and other suggestions and it was a hoot. There ought to be a video of that impromptu improv performance right here on this blog. In this day of cell phones with video cameras you’d think it would be easy. But here we all were in the ‘show’ - all with camera cell phones – but how do you get someone to work your camera phone without being horribly obvious and opportunistic in front of the Mayor. This is one example where “Baratelli Balls” would come in handy. Mark to his credit would have no qualms about saying “wait a minute, let’s get this for YouTube!," and hand someone his camera phone. As a final note on the story, there was an article in the paper (see it here) about the event. They mentioned the protestors, and had a photo, but no photo or mention of us. On Keith's suggestion, next time we do something like this we'll protest and the protestors can serenade the Mayor.




SAK’s Future Home?
We’re cautiously optimistic to be in discussions with the Downtown Arts District and a downtown developer for a potential new and permanent home for SAK. More on that as it develops. This deal is still a year and a half to two years down the road, but seems promising. Even though great number of snags and/or changes could come in 18 months, it is nevertheless very exciting to proceed down this path.




SAK Escort Service?
Well, not exactly. But one of our past Lab Rats showed up in the paper as a defendant in a criminal investigation for such a thing! That’s right, turns out she was like our local Heidi Fleiss, running an escort service that was really a front for a “full service car wash,” where 'car' is a metaphor for um, people, like famous sports figures and ‘wash’ is a metaphor for, um, well, you get the picture. Gives the phrase “in the SAK” a whole new meaning. Here’s the story: “Lab Rat in the SAK now in the Clink.” Once again, not even 1 mention of SAK.
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