Grubby at PokerWorks

Today I learned from Amy that with the start of the Chinese New Year yesterday (go pigs), you’re not supposed to wash your hair because you don’t want to wash out the luck.

Little did I realize not washing my hair nor bathing on Sunday would help with my luck.

Weekends I sleep in and somehow I slept way in on Sunday, awaking half an hour before a play I’d planned on seeing.

The play was a preview of One Fine Day by Drew Martin, and I already paid for the ticket, so I thew on the previous night’s clothes (which didn’t contain lucky red), hopped the Brown Line, and made it just in time.

Stage Left Theatre is my favorite type of black box stage, and fortunately Chicago’s crawling with ‘em. The play revolves around a fateful day in the life of a professor after he dressed as Hitler to prove a point, offending a Jewish student who went to the media.

Unfortunately, previews (and for a small play that doesn’t open until Feb. 27, that’s a lot of previews) only really concentrate on the technical aspects. The script could use another rewrite, mostly to pare it down from its 135-minute running time. The second scene with his daughter overstays her welcome and repeats, as do other scenes where we revisit the same character.

The opening shows promise with the professor’s dream of being attacked by a Jabberwock while his students sing the dreidel song, and I would’ve liked to have seen more of this fantasy interwoven with reality.

By the end, we don’t get a closing bookmark of the Jabberwock but instead a meeting with its creator Lewis Carroll, and it’s set in a confusing way that we’re left wondering whether the professor killed himself, something clearly out of character.

Mostly, though, I was hoping for that little revelation, particularly being in David Mamet Oleanna territory. One heated moment with the professor calling his student an ethnic slur would’ve been a nice touch to confuse the issue (that you can curse a race without being intrinsically racist), but instead we get a politically correct and safe reveal that only shows how good he is, which we already know.

I don’t expect much to change in the next nine days other than choreography and cues, but with it being a world premiere and the length of preview week, maybe more drastic changes are in store.

This summer, the theater company is putting on DrekFest, a festival of the worst 10-minute plays. They’re making a mistake by charging $10 per submission, because it limits potential talent out there. Even though all fees go toward the winners, surely they could find a sponsor or two and award a cash prize.

Long ago I made a rule not to submit any plays that required a fee (screenplays are different, as contests and fees are pretty much the only way to get read), but maybe I’ll dig through the sock drawer of 10-minute plays and submit one as worst.

After a delicious pho soup and spring rolls at Pho 777, I returned home to test out the luck that I didn’t know I had.

Had the blackjack urge and the $200 that was in UltimateBet dropped to $0 on $16 bets. I just don’t do well in double-downs and splits, and that’s that for me and UB.

Switched to 5/10 6max on Stars and won back $240 of that loss before dropping back down to a $180 win.

I consider that lucky.

Tonight I’m grabbing a pulled pork sandwich to celebrate the fire pigs. Maybe eating the sacred symbol of the Chinese will solidify that luck as long as I’m digesting. Maybe I should even order it as Chinese takeout.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.