The 5th of April

So April 5th, as I have described it to people, was both the most stressful and the best day ever. Stress doesn't even begin to describe the great feeling that the universe was trying to stop us. I wouldn't be surprised if a big black smoke monster showed up to course-corrected our asses.

It all began on Saturday morning, which was really just a continuation of the somnambulistic night before (I got maybe an hour and a half of sleep). I was trying to get some sound tweaked in Final Cut Pro (our editing software for those unaware), and the sound would not do what I was telling it to do. Angered, I yelled to the heavens, "Stupid goddamn fucking Final Cut fucking Pro!" BOOM. A transformer in the distance exploded, the power went out. Our hard drives, computer, open file, everything was at risk of being completely lost. We had a meeting at the Plaza Theatre at 1:00 pm to test our projector and our footage for any last minute changes. The power went out at 11:45.

Without hesitating, we quickly unplugged and packed up Eli's monstrous computer (a contingency we had eerily discussed the day before as a near impossibility) and hauled it to Julian's house. By the way, it was kind of raining. And when we got there, Eli's monitor was acting up. Minor details aside, we exported the file as planned, which took half an hour, loaded everything up and drove the Plaza. Upon getting there, we quickly realized that had forgotten an important cable and a laptop that would work with the projector. Julian rushed back to the house and came back thirty minutes later. We hooked everything up around 1:55 pm (we had to be out by 2:30), and....! The projector was a piece of shit.

Every color, detail, whites, darks, all were turned to a murky cesspool of amateur-looking shit. Brights were too bright, darks too dark, colors would eat up other colors, nuances were completely lost. It was devastating. We had worked so hard and at the fucking final hour, everything might have been for nothing. We started working out other contingencies, among them borrowing a 300 pound projector from a friend, renting a projector from some unknown location, and drinking spiked Kool-Aid while wearing sweat pants and Nikes.

Long story short, we went and bought an HD projector from Best Buy, based on recommendations from several tech-savvy friends. This turned out to be the best decision of the entire, the decision that we were apparently course-corrected into. The image was absolutely perfect, it could not have been any better. With that out of the way, we were able to enjoy our tremendous effort to make the audience laugh and awkward. It was a wonderful experience, marred only by Diana's rump sitting on the DVD player during "Promote!" Luckily, it was my DVD player, so I know when it's powered off, it will restart exactly where it was if you just turn it back on. I still think it's hilarious that it happened. With the premiere over, drinking ensued.

And then it was Sunday. What do you do after all of that? Watch the Simpsons and nothing more. This week has been a breeze, I'm enjoying not doing much (except taxes, but I get a refund, which is going to a DVD-R Upconverting player with HD tuner card, hooray.).