Critical Mass

"I have of late, though wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave, o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire . . . why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!"

Any errors in quotation are my fault, done from memory.

I wonder what kind of reviews

Hamlet

got in the days of its first revival. "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and mostly it has to do with the direction by Forsythe B. Fmythe . . .."

A Lie of the Mind

closes this week, and we got several reviews, but none by major players as far as I know. In fact, we had two from theatre websites, and three from weblogs. None from printed publications, as far as I've heard. And, of course, countless reviews from friends and enemies alike. On the whole, very positive reviews. The best of us got some excellent praise, and most of the harsher critique came of Shepard's script or staging and budget issues difficult to change.

However. How. Ever. I have never counted myself amongst "the best of us" in this show, and in fact had some trepidation early on that I may have been the weakest link--goodbye! The entire group is among the most supportive I have ever had the pleasure of working with, so I got by with my uncertainty and frustrations. Then came my reviews. "...vibrant, but relatively unadventurous..." "difficult time tapping into the vulnerability" "overdone frustration" "seems as though this cast often does all it can to ignore these cues and idle until a scene change frees them from their stasis" And of course a good deal of my friends had nothing but good things to say, and I thank them profoundly. I should thank the ones who have had more critical things to say, too . . . and I do. But these critical reviews have culminated for me, and I am left with questions I need answers to. At first I simply hated myself, and it showed in my performances, I'm ashamed to admit. So questions are welcome, even if doubt inspires them more than curiosity.

If I had to sum up the critical response to my work in this show, I suppose it would have something to do with being too mannered (a common blight of practicing so much physical theatre) yet at once a bit mild, or incapable of accessing that spark of passion so essential to Shepard. To put it bluntly, unbelievable and dull.

Owitch.

Okay, so . . . I'm going to assume from the get-go that I'm not the world's worst actor. That's a good place to start, as it circumvents the otherwise requisite removal of my own eyes with this letter opener,

Oedipus-like

. So: not the worst. I mean, I've been at this for some time now. Someone would have told me . . . and even if they wouldn't, I know I've worked with worse than me. That having been established, I have to tackle some cause-and-effect. This is tricky territory, as it is essentially excuse hunting. I need to be sure to slay all that what might delude me, and capture that reason most true.

Maybe I just don't relate to the play/Shepard in any kind of helpful way.

Tempting, but no. That excuses having to work extra hard to do a good job, not doing an actual bad one.

Maybe I'm sabotaged by my physical theatre practice.

Less tempting; and maybe I'm just kidding myself here, but it seems to me they should feed one another nicely, and it's not like I'm never in naturalistic plays. In the past year I've done two contemporary plays, dramatic and comic.

Maybe getting older is draining some of my capacity for creativity.

Some people are going to be up in arms over this one, I know already. Nevertheless, I find validity in it. It goes at different rates for different people, but wonder is generally a more precious commodity in older ages, and it takes wonder to be creative. Then again, I invented a whole routine out of getting out the backseat of Heather's car last weekend, so perhaps not.

Maybe being an actor is not what I need right now.

Huh. Could be something to that. At the risk of sounding fairly self-defeating, perhaps the reason I lack luster is that my needs are not being altogether met. I don't mean that in a blame-shifting sort of way; rather, I mean to take responsibility for diagnosing and then fulfilling my own needs. It is not something for which I am historically famous, this actor-heal-thyself behavior. All the more reason to take the idea seriously.

Of course, there is also the possibility that my work in

A Lie of the Mind

has been very good indeed, and simply lacked good, expressed opinion. It's possible. It's probable that I should just work to please myself--not to the deficit of the audience, but to a high personal standard of constant improvement. I try to do this. It's hard to adhere to, particularly in such a spectator/commentator sport, and especially when you've seen so many examples of actors who seem so blissfully ignorant of just how terrible their work is. The temptation there is to believe your negative feedback to be absolute in its truth, to accept the verdict that you are one of the failed and undeserving. Yet I continue to try to do good work. Why? The show must go on.

Also: The readiness is all.

Holler if you Hear Me

I just want to give a shout-out to my peeps.

Actually, I hate

Peeps

(TM). They're just glorified puffed sugar, like diabetes-inducing rice cakes. But I know some people who love the Peeps(r), and I love the people who love the Peeps(patent pending) so, ergo, ipso facto, I love the Peeps(k) too, and must shout it out unto them. This entry, thus, is for ma'

Peeps

.

Some of y'all (most of my peeps hail from Virginia [though Northern {which was going to secede just like West, until they realized they had no natural resources}]) may have wondered where the Aviary went for the past three days. Some, in fact, may have panicked, and I offer my most profound apologies to just those panicky some. It's all right. It's okay. You can cry without shame, and I will hold you just as long as you need to be held. Maybe a little longer. Why not? No one's looking. And maybe, if that's too warm for you, you can just go ahead and take your shirt off. That's cool. We're just friends hugging here. And if that hug gets a little rubby, you know, if the, fingers get curious and the breathing gets throaty, hey--

Whoa. Where was I going with that? Oh right: Jail. For lewd 'blogostomy.

Where have I been? Well, I was ill. Again. Yeah. Thas' right. Because I rule so bad. There are aspects of my reputation as a performer that I quite enjoy, such as being unerringly punctual (unless I miss rehearsal altogether, eh,

TP

ers?) and always having some outlandishly overwrought physical choice to contribute. The one I'd just as soon not have continue, however, is my proclivity for infection during the course of a show. I was wicked good at that in college (starring in

The Three Musketeers

with a swollen throat and fever of 102) and thought I had whipped it (whipped it good) in the early years of my adulthood, but the past year+ now has brought the return of the leprous liturgist. This time it was a head cold that fell into my throat, which created the intriguing aspect of never knowing if my voice would go out in the middle of

A Lie of the Mind

last weekend.

Owing to how we've staged the show, with cross-fades in lieu of blackouts, after the act break I end up lying mostly motionless on my side on a box for about twenty minutes at the top of our Act II (Shepard's Act III) before being suddenly woken to proclaim a somewhat lengthy monologue. Well, last weekend it was always a crap-shoot whether or not I'd have any voice whatsoever after my little silent nap. The worst was Friday night. I sat up and started talking, and it was like trying to rattle a piece of papyrus, my larynx had gone so brittle. I made it, thankfully. In fact, I got some compliments on how effectively I played the character's fever. Which I took. What? That's valid.

The other thing is, I plowed through my congestion to take yet another trip out to the sticks. Or, as it is more commonly known to those what live there, Scranton, Pennsylvania--home to all things

Northeast-Theatre

-like. I was there to go on a sort of first date.

Zuppa del Giorno

is beginning to collaborate with a few community groups for our upcoming projects, among them

Marywood University

and the

Scranton State School for the Deaf

. We were to attend a rehearsal for the latter's production of

Grease

, and while there show them a little something of what we do, too.

Yes:

Grease

. Yes: School for the deaf. I recognize that this smacks of a really poor set-up for some even worse punchlines. Such is not my intention, however, as the high schoolers we met that day probably have gone right out and found every single website associated with us they could. Gang, if you're reading, I can only hope I half rocked your world like you rocked mine.

As it was going to be just

Heather Stuart

and I to perform our half of the bargain, we planned to do our clown piece, "

Death + a Maiden

," and had to allot time to refresh it before unveiling its silly splendor for what we imagined to be culturally jaded teenagers. We had the theatre to ourselves, and that is a fairly big space. Well, huge from a struggling New York actor standpoint. I was reminded, between gasping for air without the use of my nose and chugging Alka-Seltzer Cold concoctions, of the sacredness of space for a performer. As Heather and I struggled to feel our roles again, to polish our beats 'til they shined like the top of the Chrysler Building, I thought of how it would be yet four more months until Zuppa rode out

our new debut

, and wondered what work lay before us.

Heather, as I have mentioned previously, has moved out to Scranton, and before we took to the stage of the deaf I got my first look at her new place. It's really nice; idyllic, in a

Benny and Joon

kind of way. The entire time I was there, she and David Zarko cracked jokes about how long I was going to wait before caving and moving out there myself. It's hard to say if they had any idea how much I'd thought about it in recent months. Still, their jokes peppered my appetite for New York adventures in a very appetizing way. Just tonight I was out past my bedtime, catching a mixed bag of short plays. How I would miss that sort of thing.

Before we even met the students at the Scranton School I felt simultaneously like I was dreaming and like I had returned to Italy. Obviously, all the faculty there use sign language. Not so obvious is who amongst them can speak as well. As in Italy, I found myself having to remind myself to look to the person being translated, rather than the translator, and as in a dream I began to sense the sense of a language and culture I had virtually no exposure to prior to the moment. It was a matter of only seconds before my mind began making connections and understanding the tone of some of what was being "said," if none of the words or symbols used. That would have been fascinating enough, but we were there to the meet actors who were native to that country.

In a gymnasium with a stage built into one end we met about twenty young actors and technicians who couldn't hear a word we said. Our introductions and conversation all flowed through the hands and lips of a translator or, often, several, as others "mirrored" what was being said in order for everyone to get what was being said. There were still kids more interested in what they had to say at the moment than what the class was discussing (one I think I even caught making something of a dirty joke with his pals) but in this context such side conversations were easy to let be . . . one just kept his eyes on the ball. Like all first dates, it was awkward at first. It was funny, actually. No one was quite sure what he or she was doing there, or what the other wanted from them. Eventually we determined that the home team would show their stuff first, so they brought us chairs as we sat back to see a scene from

Grease

.

Five girls played the sleepover scene, and broke into gesticulated song with "Frankie my Darling." ("Frankie my Love"? I don't know. I don't know

Grease

. Or sign language, for that matter.) There was no music--they were still working on getting their speakers rigged to vibrate the stage so the actors could feel the beat--but somehow the actors kept in perfect sync with one another. As they signed, a translator spoke, always about a beat or two behind their delivery. By the end of the scene, we weren't laughing at the translated lines, but at the delivery, silent and as literally inexplicable as could be, simply because we understood the characters and their feelings based on the acting and, somehow, the tone of the signing. Actually, it was some of the most naturalistic acting I have seen from high schoolers, and I wonder how much of that has to do with their living first and foremost in a physical language.

When they finished the scene, we applauded. There was an awkward silence. I mean, even hands were silent. We didn't know what was to come next; but I asked a question. Did they begin with a table reading, as we usually do? From this the actress playing Sandy launched into an explanation about how English is a kind of second language to them, signing being the first, and that there's no direct translation between the two. After all, it isn't like sign language evolved from a romantic or Latin-based language. It is its own entity, and so any time a script is performed in it, the whole thing doesn't just have to be translated, but transliterated. The interpretation an actor must perform begins at the level of the very language they choose, and thus there's an added dimension of reaching agreement between everyone in their understanding of the script. We asked them if they ever improvised, and had to spend some time explaining the very concept to them, so Zuppa may end up really giving them something different.

Finally, we took the stage with our little clown piece, and I was nervous as can be. Would they get it? Would they be insulted by the noses, or the style? Would the piece hang together without their hearing the music, getting the auditory jokes? At first it was silent. My entrance as a red-nosed Death usually elicits a healthy chuckle, but not this time, and I suddenly wondered how laughter came out of people unaccustomed to using sounds to communicate. Would I recognize it?

I did. Shortly after my entrance, I took an illustrative swing with my plastic scythe and the handle bent, hinging the blade back on itself cartoonishly for an instant before straightening out again. The laughter was some of the sweetest I've ever heard. From there in we were all set. They laughed at our courtship--an interesting parallel, the first-date scenario realized within a first date--and oo-ed at the acrobalance. When we finished, they clapped and we took our bows. There was a very brief question-and-answer session, akin to those following matinée performances at the theatre, in which one gets the impression everyone there is much more interested in lunch than information. But then class was dismissed, and every student came forward to shake our hands. When they saw we were not in a rush to go, they flooded us (in a necessarily one-at-a-time fashion) with questions. One boy said he loved "this clown stuff" and wanted to know if we'd teach him. One wanted to know if we'd be back the next day. One wanted to know if my character knew his kiss would kill the girl before he did it.

I can't wait to work with these kids again. Zuppa's becoming a sort of incorporation of different communities, and it's an exciting prospect. We speak of commedia dell'arte being a living tradition in our shows and workshops, and now it seems we're paying the tradition back a little for all the life it's given us. So let this entry be a shout-out to all the people who've supported Zuppa del Giorno along the way. And to our new friends at the Scranton State School, I raise the roof. You guys can teach me a cooler gesture when we work together in the fall.

A Love of the (Neo) Classics

After Easter they suffered a huge nor'easter.

I'm really digging the rain these past couple of days, actually. Sometimes one is simply in the mood to have their city look like something out of a noir flick, all sheeting greys and visible light beams. I'm prowling about in my grey trench coat . . . but with an umbrella. Which is not terribly noir, but I had to concede defeat years ago on the umbrella issue. In the right hands, umbrellas are a force for good, and for a lack of mildew-y smells.

The weekend was a strange blend of circumstance for yours truly, overlapping past and present, business and pleasure. My sister and her boyfriend Adam finally saw

A Lie of the Mind

Friday night, and it didn't scare Adam too badly, which I consider an accomplishment.

Chris Kipiniak

, of Torture Project and Spider-Man fame (see

3/8/07

) attended the same night, which was especially rewarding to me, having the respect I do for his work and knowing how busy he keeps his schedule. Saturday night

Friend Kira

made it all the way out from New Jersey, though she couldn't hang around afterwards owing to bus schedules. Perhaps the most surprising appearance, however, involved the return of Friend Christina and her fella' J.C. I reunited with Christina at Rachel's wedding (see

3/21/07

), and they both attended the opening weekend of

ALotM

. This weekend past they brought friends and family with them, and one other.

As I took my final bow Saturday night, I glimpsed a face in the crowd smiling with satisfaction, one that I recognized. I immediately, however, thought to myself, "Dang. I'm so Method. Frankie's delirium is bleeding over into the curtain call." Sure enough, though, when I had scrubbed my face and removed my bullet holes, I ventured out into the lobby and was ambushed by none other than Mrs. Rachel Lee herself. Which was

the weirdest thing that has happened to me in years

. She was up seeing friends, and Christina invited her along to see my show. A group of eight, we all went out afterwards, first to

La Lanterna

, then

Puck Faire

, and I had the opportunity to actually catch up with Rachel a bit, something that was impossible at the wedding and which in actuality we hadn't done in years. Mostly I was curious how things were for a person who came to the city with as ardent a passion as I for professional achievement, and who had since returned home and, shall we say, modified her own personal

The Third Life

(r). It sounds like she misses the more unique aspects of city living, but not the struggle to achieve. It sounds like she's very happy with her life now, which it was good to have confirmed. Most of all, it's wonderful to see in person that she's on her good path, and that I'm on mine. An unexpected fortune.

The next day I was up and out to attend the closing of

Friend Nat

's appearance in Moliere's

The Learned Ladies

, at

The Gallery Players

, just thirteen short blocks from my apartment. Acquaintance Alisha Spielmann was also in the production, whom I know from Nat's readings of

The Exiled

. Nat does quite a bit of classical work; I think I can say with some safety that it is his forte. He's tall, with a wiry, energetic frame and a deep voice, and he put it all to wonderful use in

TLL

. He played the villain of the piece, and I'm here to tell you: Nat does a delicious villain, especially when its one that can be as flamboyant as Trissotin. I met him on a show in which he was playing an undercover demon. His enthusiasm for mischief would make the role of Trissotin type cast, were it not that Nat is genuinely intelligent where Trissotin is merely conniving.

This is the second production of Moliere I've seen in the past few months (see

12/25/06

), and the prior experience was in a theatre of very similar dimensions and budget (apart from paying Manhattan rent, that is). I took issue with certain of the aspects of The Gallery Players production, the which may be a result of too close a comparison with the show I saw in the winter. There were little choices (among them, the decision to incorporate contemporary clothing into relatively period costumes to varying degrees--the young hero [played admirable by Marc Halsey] wore a belt on his jeans whose buckle distracted) that I can be free of with a little time to forget, but my biggest gripe was how the actors seemed to have, at certain points, been instructed to make choices of delivery that emphasized the rhyme scheme. It's hard to say if such a thing is the fault of a director, or a failing of certain actors, but in my opinion it is a big no-no. Moliere wrote specific ending couplets when he wanted the rhyme to take precedence, and his commedia dell'arte inspired characters deserve to spew their dialogue with more ease. In balance, and to the credit of Neal J. Freeman and actress Candice Goodman, her Martine--the only consistent servant character in this particular show--spoke with a great candor befitting her character and an amusing translation of her dialogue.

My overall favorite moment of the show, however, was a very naughty one, theatrically speaking. It should serve to take my criticism down a peg or two. At one point in the show, Trissotin and Henriette (played by Alisha) are left to their own devices whilst the other characters in scene wax poetic about Trissotin's, er, poetics. For this sequence, the two characters actually took seats at opposite corners of the stage (I have to imagine that in most productions this time is used to further illustrate Trissotin's intentions toward Henriette), she utterly bored and he arrogantly unlistening to his own praise. What ensued was a kind of ridiculous silent war of entertaining gesture. Nat had developed some business involving inspecting his teeth and snorting snuff, and Alisha was reaching new heights of boredom which led her to sprawling against the wall and vacantly inflating spit bubbles, all the while the three scholarly women energetically stroked one another's egos, oblivious to the unspoken commentary. It was hysterical, if possibly gratuitous. But in my world, what gets the laugh stays in the comedy.

I've written here before about the effects of past lives on the present, and it's a theme in my theatrical work. I seem to constantly be finding myself in memory plays, and

Zuppa del Giorno

is itself a tradition of finding the ancient roots of contemporary entertainment. Our next show,

Prohibitive Standards

(the which I also set up

the collaboration 'blog

for this weekend), is to be set in prohibition-era Scranton, and is likely to be influenced by characters from that era and centuries earlier. Perhaps it's a theme in theatre in general, as classic characters like Richard III or Trissotin continue to inform us about choices we're making on a daily basis. Part of the key to living and creating effectively is in learning from the past, honoring it as it deserves, but also being realistic about it and recognizing it is, indeed, passed. Similar to being alive in the moment on stage, one can't always base his or her decisions on what he or she has done (or regretted doing) before.

Sometimes the only answer is to improvise.

Dang. It. Dang it!

It's raining today. I mean to say, it is

RAINING

to

DAY

. I woke at 7:00, struggling to avoid over-indulgence in my snooze alarm, struggling in fact to remind myself to start jogging again today, when I heard outside my window the pitter-patter of raindrops--the most coma-inducing sound ever. I don't know why the raindrops sounded so pittery and patteresque, though, because when I stepped out into it on my way to the day job, it was a steady downpour, with just enough wind to keep it in your eyes. And I lent my sublettor my umbrella, because she's a girl and will apparently melt if she gets wet. It's science. By the time I got to work, I wanted to kill everyone. Violently. With a

broad-bladed bastard sword

.

See (ye non-New-Yorkers, ye princes of providences), when the weather does something this disastrous during a commute time, there's an interesting phenomenon that occurs in The Frickin' Huge Golden Delicious. The first symptom is a mass decision--akin to Jungian archetype--by every New Yorker who

drives

or

walks

into work to forego that, fearing that the rain is a sign of God's vengeance, and take the train. Side effects of this perception include a voracious increase in aptitude for careless acts, such as forgetting to say "excuse me" when the situation invites, or intentionally shoving disabled octogenarians into the tracks because they might contribute to oxygen consumption in the train car. The second symptom of the phenomenon is that everyone's intelligence quotient drops by at least twenty points.

At least.

People in suits, people accustomed to making decisions dependent on long-term thinking and strategy, become multi-pronged ballistic missiles when they have to carry an umbrella (inevitably right at eye-level [I am not in the upper half of height quotient in this city] leading me to believe that if I ever have to compete in illegal bloodsport in Canada, I'm taking my umbrella) and giant men who work with their hands all day long act like debutantes when faced with a curbside puddle. "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

My bitterness may have preceded (hence colored) these gripes. I may have awoken in this frame, as last night's

A Lie of the Mind

wasn't quite up to snuff for me. (Terrible phrase: "Up to snuff." What does it refer to? Nasal inhalants? Illegal movies?) It was awkward being back in the penny loafers o' Frankie, and I had a strange time trying to balance a jittery nervousness and a rather tired energy level. The scene with Beth went fairly well, I thought. But I blew that damn final moment again.

That's not quite accurate. I didn't blow it. I managed to serve my function in it (whatever that may be), but the feeling behind it was not as intense as I would have liked, and as I had discovered last weekend. I'm not sure what went wrong there, being off my game in general, but I suspect it had something to do with nerves and forcing it. Have you ever tried

not

to think about something? I mean really tried? You tell yourself, "Don't think of an

elephant

," and for the rest of the day your thoughts are ambushed by elephants. This is what it is to try to avoid self-analysis on stage. The best tactic I've found is to focus on something immediate, and urgent. (Such as the action at hand.) But our body's defenses are strong, our minds labyrinthine and there's a minotaur named Disbelief that is hunting us at every moment.

"Was that over the top? I can never tell!" <-A hum-ding-er of a movie quote, if you ask me.

SOME SEVERAL HOURS LATER . . .

Well, the rain has stopped, and the world is a quiet, cool place. Once again I performed the show, and once again I experienced emotionus interruptus. It was baffling, just a frustrating shock to the system. I'm open as all hell! What's wrong with me now? I was contemplating it all the way to the subway, where I ran into fellow actor in the show, Todd d'Amour. He asked the obligatory "How was your show?" and I somehow managed to be both honest and brief (as the parentheticals may suggest, I have been having the greatest difficulty of late explaining myself in twenty-five words or less) and voiced my frustration with that last moment, actually referring to it as "my last moment." When I had said what I had to I could look in Todd's eyes again, and there I saw total recognition. Identification, even. He went on to say that he has struggled with that moment for himself, and felt, as I had, that he had broken through last weekend. Now it was gone again.

How much better that made me feel, and how much sense that makes. It's our moment, his, mine and Laura's, and we're each of us going to feel it in his or her own way if something's off. Now we just have to unite again, somehow, and lift each other up.

I wonder what the weather will bring tomorrow.

Cry Me a River, Emo Boy

You think Rivers Cuomo "broke up"

Weezer

because the unflattering tag of "Emo" was applied to the band, which started as a sort of garage-band flavored pop sensation in the latter era of alterna-rock? That Emo crap bugs me. Not the supposed lifestyle--which, really, has had many different names through the ages, including "angst"--but the way the label seems to be applied to any kind of vaguely depressive or introspective subculture. Like being thought of as "Goth" in high school because I was creepy and wore black all the time. Which is . . . well, Goth. It's Goth as f%#k, actually, but let's understand the artist's intention before we rip him a new one with labels, shall we?

Speaking of which,

A Lie of the Mind

has been reviewed. Yes it has. (Friend Nat passed it along.) And it is a goodly review, as far as the show is concerned. You must believe me when I say that I feel the slander of my performance is deserved for the job I did last Wednesday night, though inaccurate in specifics. I claim it, and so my next claim should hold more water: The review reads like it was written by a twelve-year-old. Think I'm exaggerating? Lie thy judgments

yon

.

Having a bad review is a burden, but in this case one easily shaken off by a variety of factors:

1. Feeling I deserved no praise for all the mistakes I made in that particular performance.
2. The critic obviously devoting about ten minutes to the writing of it (at least it's spell-checked).
3. Friends.

Oui: Friends. In my days off from the show (glad to be getting back to it tonight, though slightly anxious about having sufficient audience to justify the effort), I have spent time with a number of friends, the which it can be hard to find time with even when I'm not embroiled in a rehearsal process. Sunday I met with Friend Adam for catching up on "Heroes" episodes and talking about superheroes(TM) and comedy, then adjourned to Harlem for dinner with Friend Patrick. Monday brought me to dinner with Friend Dessida (of Friend Kate fame), and last night I saw Friends Geoff and Melissa.

Each friend brought me something I needed without knowing it. Adam brought me indulgent joy by creating a space in which geeking out is not only allowed, it's encouraged. Patrick brought me so many, many things, not the least of which were several excellent books to read now that I'm (pretty much) line-perfect for the show. (Incidentally, if you ever get curious about what it's like to be an actor in the process of interpreting a great character, read Antony Sher's account of portraying Richard III: Year of the King. The only bad thing is how envious you may get about how one man can contain so many well-developed talents.) Dessida brought me new insights into art and life. Melissa brought me unrestrained joy and some time to meditate upon life paths (plus a little more information on what she expects of me in my joining the ranks of Kinesis for a project this summer, which was a relief and terror all rolled in one). And Geoff, as always, brought me beer(s). And questions. Which are always good.

I can only hope I brought each of these people something they needed half as much as I've needed them.