Weekend Hijinks

This weekend, the Giants won the Super Bowl, Vampire Cowboys concluded their first Saturday Night Saloon Series (where Nosedive wrapped up its Wild West Noir serial, Pinkie) and the Welding Club performed the pilot episode of its sitcom for the stage, 3800 Elizabeth. All in all, a pretty packed weekend for Yours Truly. (Not that I really had anything to do with the Giants winning the Super Bowl. I was with them inspirit only. But you know what I mean.)

Having now finished Pinkie, I have to say, participating in the Saloon series was an incredible amount of fun. I had never written a serialized show before, so I was happy to take the challenge. We may very well see how the show looks all together as one full-length play, although I definitely enjoyed making every episode a distinctly different and (semi-)self-contained story while having each episode serve the overall arc of the giant story.

The other fun and nerve-wracking challenge with writing Pinkie was realizing that I had a definitive cap to writing/telling the story: I had five episodes at 15-25 minutes each to tell the story. And episode five was going up February 2, which meant that, come hell or high water, the story would have to be completely wrapped up long before then. This meant that I ostensibly had to stop "writing" for episode five: no wondering what it'd be like if Blossom and Harry had a scene together, no exploring Stubby's relationship with his "ladies," no forgetting any major threads. The plot had to be resolved at this date, in under a half an hour, No Matter What.

It was a lot of fun.

Many thanks to Abby, Qui, Robert and the rest of the Vampire Cowboys crew for letting Nosedive participate in this. And many congratulations to the other writers and groups who were involved. I'm mildly bummed that I won't be milling around with y'all every month.

So, with the Saloon out of the way and Colorful World still in the pre-production stages, I'll once again direct your attention to 3800 Elizabeth, Aaron Baker and Frank Padellaro's sitcom for the sage, complete with fake commercials and catchy opening theme song, playing every Sunday at the Battle Ranch until March 16.

It's some fun. And it's free. What more could you want?

I'm looking forward to seeing the next episode.

Relieved that January's over,

James "Oh, Wait. I Hate February" Comtois