Heaven’s Gate
18 Announcement
I did get some research done for my thesis Sunday morning. The only reason I could concentrate on it was because it was about the show. It was a relief to be able to look at numbers regarding the show instead of looking at content. CEN wasn’t making a fortune off the show. The ratings for the first week were weak. We’d find out our second week ratings on Tuesday. I wondered how much we paid for the vital statistical information we got from this company. Sarah was in charge of that.
We’d talked a bit about my thesis and she agreed to supply the data she used to profile the audience. She was working on her PhD and was using the methodology development for her dissertation. It was interesting that we were working on two aspects of the same problem.
Most of Sunday afternoon, though, was spent cuddling with my cónyuge. I wasn’t at all surprised when Liz settled her freckled butt in my lap and began kissing me.
“It’s positive,” she whispered. “Oh, Brian, I’m so happy!”
“Are you ready to tell everyone?”
“I think so.” Before we could call people’s attention together, though, Casa del Agua came in and Doreen plopped C-Rae into our lap.
“Look! Notice anything different?” Rhiannon called when she’d stripped. She stood in the middle of the room, raised her arms, and slowly pivoted. We were all chuckling about not seeing any tattoos. Liz practically jumped out of my lap.
“Wait!” Liz screeched. “Don’t say anything!” She rushed to Rhiannon and hugged her friend. It was unusual to see Liz with her naked body pressed up against another woman’s, but they held tight as they whispered as they whispered to each other. “Yes!” they both squealed. Then they finally turned to face the baffled stares of their hearthmates, still holding hands.
“We’re pregnant!” they both exclaimed.
“Which one of you is the father?” Nikki snickered.
Doug and I went over to our cónyuge and hugged them.
“I definitely nailed this one,” I said holding Liz.
“I was all in on this one,” Doug said, kissing Rhiannon. C-Rae took that opportunity to reach out from my arm to Liz. Liz held the baby and tears ran down her cheeks.
Penn State was different than IU. Sororities didn’t have separate houses, but rather had floors of certain dormitories. As a result, the ability to have us in a sorority house was gone. What the Nittany Lions did have, however, was their student union, called the HUB. The combined sororities had rented a large lounge area for three days in the HUB that would give us ample room and a homey atmosphere for the production. We had a small platform that I would perform on, but unlike the hotel ballroom, it was only a couple steps and gave us just enough height to be visible. It also had lots of comfy seating and it was convenient to food, coffee, soft drinks, and other refreshments. We were on campus but in a single location for the three days we’d be taping.
This was our first shot at taping five shows in three days. I talked to John and he rented a four-seater plane at BMG and flew Liz, Rose, and me to University Park Airport, just a mile and a half from campus. He had me sit in the right seat and wrote it up in my log book.
It was a little frantic getting things switched from one show to the next on Tuesday and Wednesday, but mostly it was smooth. Maybe it was getting into the swing of things that helped, or just the more laid-back attitude at Penn State, but I thought the shows went much better. Rose got some good primary experience with audiences and touring as she and Liz assistanted.
After the evening shows, I made sure to show Liz a lot of loving. I kissed and loved all over her tummy—and everywhere else. I didn’t neglect Rose, either, but she knew as soon as Liz announced she was officially pregnant that Liz would be my focus for the trip. And Liz had such a mischievous look on her face that all I could do was love her and go along for the ride.
I loved getting home at noon on Thursday and having a long weekend with my family. Even April and her crew were home by Thursday night and wouldn’t have to leave for Columbus until Sunday night.
It looked like the Delta National Conference was a go. I was mostly worried that everyone would show up drunk in bikinis or wet T-shirts. Or not at all. How can an organization have a national conference in the middle of spring break in Florida? It was just too much to fathom. Elaine was going to shoot Chick Chat from the same location that week. It was spring break at IU, so my entire casa decided to go to the beach that week. We even managed to get Josh to take a week off so he could come with us. The only one who couldn’t go was Angela. Damn it! Med school just doesn’t break. And, of course, Whitney. She didn’t get spring break from The Basic School, but she did say that she could now get a weekend pass. We started planning a weekend rendezvous in our near future.
Before all that, though, we had shows to produce. I talked to Chuck and Frankie. I talked to Nikki. Nikki talked to Chuck and Frankie. Chuck and Frankie and Nikki talked to me. We all agreed on one thing. I wasn’t very funny. The best monologue I’d done to date was the one where we improvised the conversation with Lynn at Gamma House. That had been the first show of the season. We looked at all the others and put pluses and minuses next to them for what kind of laughs we were getting. Most of them had minuses. We watched tapes for a solid day and analyzed the scripts and my delivery. We came up with a couple of things that stood out.
First, I did better in an intimate setting where I was directly relating to people in the audience. When I was on a stage, I lost touch with what was real. I might as well not have had an audience. We agreed that the low platform I’d had at Penn State was okay. I’d actually stepped down off it a few times during my monologues and wrap-up, and talked to the audience members. That seemed to have a lot of positive energy that was missing at the University of Illinois, even though it created headaches for April.
Second, the more audience interaction I had, the better the material came across. The improv with Lynn was a great example. We definitely needed more stuff that got me face to face with members of the audience and made them participants.
Third, I really wasn’t very funny. Even jokes that had an obvious punchline and were ha-ha funny fell flat. I was an inspirational speaker, not a comedian. I guessed Elaine’s job was safe.
We started reworking material and Sam and April started working on the audience configurations so that I’d have more contact. There was a constant tension between getting intimate with the audience and having the audience able to see everything. There was no question that I performed better in close quarters. It really put the burden on April to make it work.
We gradually improved. Ohio State wasn’t too bad. We had the dais problem at the University of Iowa because we were in a hotel again, but I tried to get off the dais more and walk in the audience. That was a good one because we had another high school audience. Purdue was a little raucous, but we were hosted in sorority houses and, in general, we had good audience interaction, especially when I started doing more skits in the opening that used an audience member to play off of. That was a little stressful. I had material prepared, but I just had to wing it when my improv partner went way off in left field. It was exhausting.
And then it was time to pack up the family and go to Florida.
Holy shit!
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