Take a risk. � Get uncomfortable. � Play ugly.
�last | now | next� | history | random | eMail | notes | gBook
about | profile | cast | FAQs | dLand
Rob Zombie's
se7en: PRIDE

2001-11-20
In town again, I couldn't shake the feeling that things were really good. I was on a three-day break between projects.

I've been having an unhealthy love-affair with that adreneline buzz of being busy all the time. When I have no deadlines looming in the near future (that, for me, being within the next three days), I have a tendency to reach for the welbutrine. Its effects don't work on me anymore, but the act of swallowing once or twice a day makes me feel like I've done something proactive.

Even so, as I drove north - without medication - from my one-bedroom to drop off film at Forde, not even the agonizing screeching of the engine belt bothered me. As I returned south to Portland, not even the chunky black oil plopping through the motor bothered me. Or that drizzly Pacific-Northwest rain - the kind that doesn't do much but hang in the air, soaking all that passes through it. I was just in a good mood.

And I knew I'd have to make up for it in the hereafter.

Eight weeks ago, I'd been given an assignment to design, with three other people, an avant-garde play in a mixed-media and live theatrical presentation. This, although on top of the regular work-load, should not have been too difficult.

In the beginning, my feelings toward avant-garde were hostile, to say the least. Using a loop of found footage projected behind two babies shitting in a sandbox would have conveyed those feelings well enough.

Then I got into Tom's idea of putting on a surreal circus of the damned. Tom and I decided my role would be the ringmaster, the presenter of these twisted works of art - The Gothic Sadist, The Insane China Doll and The Gimp. That was the last decision in which I had any involvement.

Somewhere along the timeline, Robin decided she simply didn't like me, especially my views on women. She told me so when I finally confronted her about ignoring me and anything I had to say about the project.

"You do not want me going off on you right now," she growled through clenched teeth. "And I'm not the only female around here who has problems with you." Her lips were tightening, curling, her mouth distorting against a full-blown bawling fit. I think a wise soul must have whispered into my subconscious ear; I nodded, accepted her disposition, and said nothing.

Under my collar I was fuming. I sat on it while the three of them tried to figure out how well the timing and length of the soundtrack fit with the blocking. I would have asked Tom for a clue, but he was fussing over the audacious suggestion that we shorten his masterpiece composition to fit the blocking. Robin wasn't the only one who needed her diapers changed.

What stung so bad was having never had a conversation with Robin; having never spent any time with her, socially or otherwise, yet she and Sarah would fabricate this self-righteousness and cut me out of the project completely. Our designated meeting times were useless. Either someone didn't show up, or we spent the whole time fucking off or gossipping until another appointment or meeting came up. Robin and Sarah had worked together before, and in the time they spent by themselves, they assumed all the decisions about costuming, blocking, spoken lines, technicalities, delegation of chores and responsibilities. Tom was naturally in charge of the soundtrack. They left me doing nothing. (Now that I think about it, I got a load more reading done.)

Our deadline was around the corner. Sarah had been editing on her home computer for three weeks. (?!!) Tom had been jerking himself off with a synthesizer for days. Niether of them had coordinated length, beat or tempo so that the audio might match the visuals before our presentation at four o'clock the next day. In a fit of pseudo-feminist male-bashing, Robin and Sarah had taken this presentation for themselves and run it nose-first into the ground.

to be continued...

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Requests? Beuler? Respond to this entry...

next:only one has ever come back
last:The Test Goes On

most recent:

�The End.�

�Confessions of a delusional fool�

�Put my rear in gear and stear�

�Terms of enjoyment.�

�Honesty about the truth of Nature�

you're one of readers currently reading LizardNuts out of a total of