The hour badly spent

First, the headline: "’Noises Off’ displays play within a play." Although descriptive, it somewhat misses the point, and the "play within a play" concept is not fully explained in the report. That concept is: "Noises Off" farcically reveals the behind-the-scenes antics of "Nothing On," a play performed within "Noises Off."

Of course our description sounds more satisfying, but it’s probably because we’re so pompous. It’s a bit technical, but Noises Off was an extremely complicated production. The headline should probably include a touch of the play’s bedroom humour, giving readers a feel for what was really going on. Something along the lines of ‘Noises Off’ tickles audience until they splooge laughter. You get the idea.

Then there’s the lede.

A man walked lazily across the stage in front of the red velvet curtain. He rubbed at his eyes as though he were just waking from a rough slumber. The man, identified as Tim, yells offstage and the curtain rises to reveal a quaint living room.

Tim, played by Greg Myers, is just one of the many eccentric characters in the most recent KSU Theatre production “Noises Off.”

We see this technique all the time. Amanda Keim is trying to draw you in with a soft introduction. The lede is a special time for a reporter, a unique moment wherein she can demonstrate her style, her attention to nuance, her own true observations; this is the only time she can pretty much editorialize and get away with it.

In keeping with the ambience (we hate that word) of Noises Off, Amanda’s lede should have painted a picture of the stage in all its magic and zest. Unfortunately, Amanda described a scene that was so uneventful, so unlike the rest of the play, that she flat out failed.

Also. "Eccentric" is another word we hate. It might sound impressive, but it’s so general-purpose that it doesn’t actually describe anything.

There were a few more technical problems in the article, articulated nicely in comments left at the Collegian’s website.

To have "Jack McFarland" comment at this blog would make our day.

The lights begin to flash across the stage and Tim yells at the controller to calm them but it is no use. The lights continue to flash and a character claims he is about to suffer a seizure. This ignites the first burst of laughter from the audience.

“It’s pretty entertaining,” said Joe Asley [ed. note: ha ha ha, we kept the misspelling], freshman in history. “They’re too dysfunctional to complete their rehearsal.”

That’s how we know it’s funny; we’re being told of the laughter. Just in case we’re not totally convinced, some freshman gives us an eye-popping description: "It’s pretty entertaining." Ho hum. The Hour Badly Spent believes it was more than "entertaining."

There was a lot of humor packed into Noises Off. It’s a shame that Act II, with all its manic irony and brilliantly timed physical humor is not given any treatment. Instead, the reporter just fixated on sex.

The character Brooke was named a favorite by audience members. She was an attractive and tall blonde who appeared to be very distracted.

“[My favorite part is] probably how dumb the blonde girl is,” said Abi Wilson, sophomore at Manhattan High School. “It’s really funny and it really makes the play.”

Brooke could be seen spacing off and as the night progressed, she was so involved in the performance that she managed to tear her black pantyhose. As Brooke’s pantyhose took a hit, more than one of the male leads was found dropping his pants.

“Sex maniacs everywhere!” exclaimed Roger, played by Michael Wieser.

Come to think of it, on principle, we have no problem with this.

[K-State Collegian]

The Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Couple arrived at Friday’s Visiting Writer lecture at four on the dot, right on time. The Dodd had already begun her introduction of memoirist Meredith Hall.

Hall explained, before reading, that she had lost a tooth on the plane on the way to Kansas. "It seems to me the only thing people can notice about me. I wanted to tell you that writers from Maine don’t always have teeth missing." Charming! The Olds have the best comic timing!

Hall was ostracized from her small New Hampshire town at age 16, when she got pregnant. Even her parents wouldn’t have her any more.

"It’s a powerful story about being a girl in a world where people don’t want you," said Susan Rodgers. Susan was the head of the creative writing program last year; she abruptly left K-State in August, after she and her husband got jobs at Oregon State Uni.

Hall read chapters from Without A Map, about the months after she was kicked out of her father’s house. She wandered around Europe, broke, stealing and selling shit to get by, relying on the kindness of strangers for the occasional place to crash. She met other families, other drifters, all sorts of people who didn’t speak English.

There was a real sense of disconnection between her and the people and places around her. This was partly due to the difficulty of communicating with people whose language she didn’t speak; much of the process consisted of pidgin sign language and heavy, rigorous observation, in addition to picking and choosing which truths she wants to reluctantly reveal depending on the person listening; but it was mostly because she was in exile. She was hugely depressed. She never missed a chance to remind us of that! It was like an eternally dissatisfied wine-taster, sampling and spitting out everything, all snap judgements and no intimacy. She was romanticizing her isolation. Five minutes into it, the Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Blogger was getting bored. He started passing notes to the Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Hipster.

Blogger: I hate memoirs. I will never, ever read one.

Hipster: Aww…I like them! I like this. You don’t at all do you?

Blogger: Is it that obvious?

Blogger: It’s starting to remind me of Huck Finn

Hipster: How?

Blogger:

1. i can’t quite figure out where she’s going with this.

2. this is almost exclusively her inner life - little interaction with the outside world except to observe it and move on. not quite like Huck, but it’s getting monotonous.

3. the present tense has NEVER EVER SOUNDED MORE ANNOYING to me

4. sorry; only 3 things

Hipster: haha i do agree that it is getting monotonous

Blogger: it’s a travel blog. It feels like IT MIGHT NEVER END

Hipster: yeah I know, and damn you for mentioning the present tense, because now that is bothering me

Ha ha, he’s sorry he ruined it for her, but he really wonders whether she expressed her guilt to him.

The book was originally a collection of autobiographical essays that had been printed individually in various trade publications. Publishers know how to market "memoirs" but they don’t know how to market "a collection of autobiographical essays." Hall didn’t know how to convert her "autobiographical essays" into memoirs, so she called around and spoke to some other authors for help. In the end, she took the title of each of her essays and added "chapter X" to each of them. Clever!

So the reading was kinda dull. Afterwards, at the House of Dodd, Hall was the belle of the ball, still charmingly toothless, warmly engaging everyone including the Underminer but especially a Pretentious Literary Douchebag chatting her up. The Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Couple split up and floated around. They shared a Disgustingly Self-Absorbed glass of white wine, passing it off when their paths crossed. All in all, this soiree was much more fun than expected, except for one glaring omission.

Normally, if Erica Hateley is at an event, all the poorly-dressed slackers have a leader to inspire them. But her absence left the slackers feeling empty, adrift, and pathetic. When the Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Couple stepped out for a smoke with its Underminer, Emily Kennedy stepped up to the plate to lead us.

It turns out that Emily is just as awesome as Erica, except no quirky accent. Except! She also does a pretty good Saucy Aussie impression. "I’m not down with the vag," Erica once told Emily, "but if I were," blah blah blah (we were still processing the confirmation of Erica not being down with the vag so we didn’t hear anything after that, but we know we want to hear Emily do Erica’s accent some more). It was great! Now the slackers have a new punk-rock-girl crush, and Erica has her very own underminer!

After that the Disgustingly Self-Absorbed Couple left to go see the Laramie Project. The Underminer left too, not only so she could go see the Laramie Project but also because she needed to broadcast some more underminerey sweeping generalizations.

This scene was unseemingly heartwarming, which NEVER happens. Elizabeth Dodd, Karin Westman, and Meredith Hall are all talking as though they are actually BFFs. Also, Tanya’s husband lurked around and Kim Baltrip sat back in the foyer. Dr. Westman has this way of craning her neck and tilting her head when she’s listening to someone, and she did just that with Hall. It was cute! The Hour Badly Spent was deeply moved.

Overheard in the newsroom:

Reporter: "You can tell which of these things on the calendar was written by Hodgin and which was written by Brisendine, because they both have such different handwriting."

Copyeditor: "They both have really bad handwriting!"
Reporter: "But Brisendine’s is so much better!"

Those of you who actually do give feedback recently observed that in the past, we have been preoccupied with rampant homophobic binge drinking, penis size, and "poetry" about shagging and/or not shagging 21-year-olds.

All that is behind us now. We are completely sober, our penis has grown (I’m a grower!), and uh, we can cool it on the poetry for a little while. Mostly because there are important, more mature issues to focus on. One thing, in fact, has been needling us for weeks now, and the confusion from it is driving us up the fucking wall. WE HAVE TO RESOLVE THIS. Specifically: who exactly the heck is reading this blog from Lake Charles, Louisiana? Seriously. If we don’t find out, we’ll keep blogging, but we’ll feel kinda weird about it. So Lake Charles, feel free to say hi in the comments.

We just found a new way to stalk you on Facebook. And "you" know exactly who we mean, COUGHCOUGH*sexycommunistspy*COUGHCOUGHCOUGH. Apparently, if you go to the search box and hit the [down] key update: hit the [period] key — Gawker.com), you get a list of five people. Who are they? The following prowlerey theories are circulating.

• five people you’ve searched for the most.
• five people who have searched for you the most.
• five most recent people who have searched for you. Juicy! (we probably show up for The Grey Lady, Saucy Aussie, Princess Glitter Bunny, and Atomic Fireball Candy, and that girl you all thought we would hook up with the other night but didn’t. Did we leave anyone out?).
• five people Facebook thinks you like. We could be wrong, but based on some tinkering and some guesswork, we think they use the following snippet of basic fucking arithmetic to figure this out:

Of course, that’s pure speculation. Just, umm, make sure you throw (= 5) somewhere up in there. Calculus is whatever we want it to be.

Go ahead and scope out ours, just for shits and giggles.

Who’s in your five?