Afternoon post

I don't normally post in the middle of the afternoon and I don't normally post on the weekend but I wanted to talk about ushering at the PAC/Edge festival, I was out really late last night, and I may not get a chance to post tomorrow. I also said that I was going to list the names of the American servicemembers that were killed in February.

Before I get to the PAC/Edge Festival, I should say that until then, my weekend has been fairly quiet which is good because I expect to be busy this coming week. Friday evening, I spent at home after the typical payday billpaying/grocery shopping frenzy. Saturday afternoon continued with the bill paying and then went to loading my iRiver with singles I downloaded from the internet (legally) from Insound. Saturday evening, as I said, I ushered for the PAC/Edge festival. This was the first project I did with One Brick it will not be my last. I didn't know anyone that I worked with but I did notice, when I was signing in, a friend that I knew through Social and Service Chicago, Tom Li. Tom, unfortunately didn't make it last night. There were several performances that we ushered for, most of the time we were put in pairs to work a performance. My first performance I ushered was a free performance that was held in the entryway to the main theatre at the Athenaeum. It was a multimedia piece by a group called Mrs. Rao's Growl called The Role of Tourist as Seen in the Performance Piece: The Techno Buddhist as Tourist. The piece consisted of a movie of a group of people laughing in a cemetary and a group of people filming the people watching the movie. I didn't have a One Brick Partner for this but I did work with a very nice employee of PAC named Stacy, who was originally from Grand Rapids. I then went to prevent people from entering a show in one of our theatres after it had started. The person that I was going to work with originally for my last show, I was ushering a show that started at 10:30 PM had to leave at 10 PM so I expected to be working by myself. One of the girls in the group though volunteered to work with me (or that's the way that I understood it at the time). She had a show to do at 9:30, so I expected that she wasn't going to watch the show that she was ushering. I didn't see her at 10 PM when I went up to the theatre so I figured I would work by myself. There was no one around so I went down to look for someone at about 10:20 PM and saw no one. I figured everyone had left. There were three audience members that had come by the time the show had started. I went in shortly after the show had started. Theater Oobleck did a show called The Quasimodo Variations which featured two actors playing Quasimodo and Ludwig Von Beethoven sitting at a desk and talking about the troubles of artistic collaboration. It was very funny. I was embarrassed though when someone came in at the stage door after the show had been going for about 15 minutes. After the show, I went to get my coat and found a note from the girl that was going to work with me. She said that she had come up but the door was locked and wished me a good evening. So she had watched the show she was ushering and came up afterward to watch with me but was to polite to enter via the stage door and tried to enter via the rear door which was locked. I was flattered and a little sad. Hopefully, she comes to the show next week.

Tonight, I will be going ot see Lou Barlow in concert at Schuba's. Lou Barlow was the original baseplayer for one of the bands that could be considered the godfathers of Grunge, Dinosaur Jr. He then went to form his own band, Sebadoh and eventually Folk Implosion. He just released his first solo album which, surprise, suprise, sounds a lot like Folk Implosion.

In Iraq last month, there were 58 Americans (officially) killed. They are:

February 1: Spc. Robert T. Henderson

February 2: Capt. Sean Lee Brock, Lcpl. Sean P. Maher

February 3: Lcpl. Richard C. Clifton, SFC Sean Michael Cooley, Sgt. Stephen R. Sherman

February 4: Sgt. Daniel Torres, Ssgt. Steven G. Bayow

February 5: Lcpl. Travis M. Wichlacz

February 6: Spc. Jeremy O. Allmon, Ssgt. Zachary Ryan Wobler

February 8: Spc. Jeffrey S. Henthorn

February 9: Sgt. Jessica M. Housby

February 10: Ssgt. William T. Robbins, Lcpl. Richard A. Perez Jr.

February 11: Ssgt. Kristopher L. Shepherd, Spc. Robert A. McNail

February 13: Ssgt. Ray Rangel, Sgt. Chad W. Lake, Sgt. Rene Knox Jr., PFC David J. Brangman, Spc. Dakotah L. Gooding

February 14: SFC David J. Salie

February 15: PFC Michael A. Arciola

February 16: Spc. Justin B. Carter, Spc. Joseph A. Rahaim, Sgt. Timothy R. Osbey, Sgt. Adam J. Plumondore, Ssgt. Jason R. Hendrix, Spc. Katrina Lani Bell-Johnson, Sgt. Christopher M. Pusateri

February 17: Sgt. Frank B. Hernandez

February 18: Sgt. Carlos J. Gil

February 19: 1st Lt. Adam Malson, Cpl. Kevin Michael Clarke, Spc. Seth R. Trahan, Spc. Clinton R. Gertson

February 21: Ssgt. David F. Day, Sgt. Jesse M. Lhotka, Cpl. John T. Olson, 1st Lt. Jason G. Timmerman

February 22: Lcpl. Trevor D. Aston

February 23: Ssgt. Eric M. Steffeney, Sgt. Nicholas J. Olivier

February 24: Spc. Michael S. Deem, Ssgt. Alexander B. Crackel, Spc. Jacob C. Palmatier, Ssgt. Daniel G. Gresham

February 25: PFC Chassan S. Henry, Spc. Jason L. Moski, Spc. Adam Noel Brewer, PFC Colby M. Farnan

February 26: Lcpl. Andrew W. Nowacki, Pvt. Landon S. Giles, PFC Min-su Choi

February 27: 2nd Lt. Richard Brian Gienau, PFC Danny L. Anderson

February 28: Sgt. Julio E. Negron

Music: Hold Your Breath - Denali
Book: Last Call - Laura Pedersen
Iraq: March - 18
Total - 1516