The Emergent Sea
Volume 4 Book 6 of
Living in the Bonus Round
(Part 3)

Jim and Steve in Milford Sound.

[ Book 4-5 ] -- [ Pt 1 ] [ Pt 2 ] [ Pt 3 ] [ Pt 4 ] [ Pt 5 ] [ Pt 6 ] [ Pt 7 ] [ Pt 8 ]
[ Pt 9 ] [ Pt 10 ] [ Pt 11 ] [ Pt 12 ] [ Pt 13 ] [ Pt 14 ]

March 24, 2006.
10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the Bonus Round Diary.
Time flies when you're having AIDS.
Thanks to Amy for reminding me.
Happy Anniversary.
Here's Day One.

 

March 15, 2006
Monday night, Jim and I got to give out awards at the L.A. Drama Critics Circle. I called out Michael John LaChiusa's name. He wasn't there, but at least I got to call out his name as the winner of Best Score. For readers who don't follow theatre, he's one of the most critically celebrated of the new wave of Broadway composers. I felt very honored. Maybe we can meet and have coffee or something someday!

Today, "Holy Dirt" was linked by Joe.My.God.
Joe's hilarious, bawdy, adult and often heartbreaking blog depicting his life of AIDS and living in New York is one of my daily reads. He's does more than make me laugh and cry. I guffaw and weep. He and I are also good pals. One day we also hope to meet face to face. Jim and I take frequent "Joe.My.God shots," which are photos of you and others as shot by yourself with your arm extended.
Thanks, Joe.

Meanwhile, the lovely Alexandra Billings is back in L.A. and I've been working on music for the two of us. She's been in Chicago doing a circus theatre thingy, flying up in the air. Be sure to read her hilarious account of opening night:
http://abillings.livejournal.com/174958.html.

I've also been making new recordings of a few of the songs from The Big Voice, including How Do You Fall Back In Love. The news on Big Voice is that we hope to open in the fall rather than the spring. For legal reasons, I can't say much more than that. What I can tell you is that we will open, one way or another, even if we have to stand on a street corner and play with a harmonica and a trashcan.

March 15
Steve Schalchlin

"Faith doesn't need to be defended. It needs to be practiced."

Sunday, February 23-26, 2006.
Lord Of The Rings Show.

4:30AM
BREAKFAST BUFFET ROOM

Video of the breakfast buffet:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8hBmUO28cI

It's late. I like it better when I wake up at 3. Instead of going down to the stuffy piano bar where I can't play the piano anyway, I came directly up to the breakfast buffet room. Now I can just write in this diary and edit a little video.

Last night I dreamed I went back home to east Texas, visited a Missionary Baptist Church and, when I told them that we needed a secular government, they all agreed with me. In the dream I attributed my success to how manly I made my voice when I preached my beliefs. So, I must remember that tone of voice is everything when you're convincing people of stuff -- and that religious people, for the most part, will believe anyone who says something using a certain "God-voice" and when you speak with absolutely proclamative certitude. Bill O'Reilly is good at that.

The day before yesterday, we were out all day on a train trip of Taieri Gorge which lies just outside Dunedin, New Zealand (pronounced Dun-NEED-din). The train ride is about 90 minutes long, and just before we got into the gorge we heard a call go out over the speaker system, "Is there a doctor onboard, or someone with professional medical experience?"

We saw three guys run through our cabin alone. Soon, we heard that we were going to back up to a road and wait for an ambulance. We didn't have to wait very long -- and we got word that the guy was okay. Low blood sugar or something. But it could have been anything. A lot of the people on this cruise are quite annuated, it being a segment of the World Cruise. At dinner last night someone said the average age on the previous world cruise was 77. Here's the video of the train ride:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc7Q7dBH0Mo

 
It is impossible to not love New Zealand. It may be the most naturally beautiful place on earth, especially when one takes into account its citizens. I see why Peter Jackson stays. And also, because there are so many incredible landscapes in such a small area, I also see why he set up his studios here and began a full post production and digital rendering studio, etc. here. I don't know why anyone would leave.

I kept saying to other passengers, "This is what the United States used to feel like."

And it all begins with the people. They are literally the kindest and nicest human beings I have ever met. They are also self-effacing and utterly without airs. On our bus trip through Wellington (which was two days before Dunedin -- you can see how difficult it is for me to keep up with this diary with so many things happening every single day), the guide and his driver spent a great deal of the time giggling about beer and drinking beer and how great the local beer is. And since the driver had this higher-pitched voice that sounded even tinier over the speaker system, they resembled a ventriloquist act. Everytime the driver said something, Jim and I would hold our fists up like Senor Wences and imitate him. And these guys were burly New Zealand men. Like a grown up Kiwi version of Beavis and Butthead where instead of would-be musicians, they're would-be rugby players.

After going through the gorge, we went to a little community called Middlemarch where the entire town turned out to entertain and feed us. They did country linedancing, sheep shearing and lots of fun things. You'll see them in the video above, and here's a few photos.

Now, backing up a few days, let me tell you about...

THE LORD OF THE RINGS FILMING SITE TOUR

The first thing we saw on the "Tour the Filming Sites of The Lord Of The Rings" tour description was that the sites were now restored back to their original condition. During the tour we learned that Peter Jackson's crew had not only restored the land, but when they moved bushes or trees from an area, they kept them in a warehouse and then replanted them in the exact same spots.

New Zealand people seem to be very proud of the astonishing beauty of their country. Talk about a holy land.

In its own way, the tour was almost uneventful. We were taken around to some parks, shown a patch of grass, a dirt path, a particular tree, a creek and a clearing. All of which looked, to my eyes, like any other patch of grass, dirt path, tree, creek or clearing. One could just as easily have been in east Texas or Wyoming.
 
 

Well, except for that incredible mountain range hovering right over you. And the crisp, clean quality of the air. It felt razor sharp to the eye, as if someone had finally focused that damned lens. And all around, in the trees, were thousands of cicadas. Tens of thousands of cicadas. At one point I just stopped and let the surroundsound of the forest overwhelm me.

There was another guy there with long Michael Bolton hair who seems like a really cool guy. When we got to the plain where Gandalf was seen racing on his horse, he took off running barefoot. Then when we got to the creek where Elvendell was created, he drenched himself in the water.

"Did ya get baptised?" I asked.

He laughed and, eyes opened wide as if he hadn't thought of it that way, he said, "Yeah!"

William is also in our playwrighting class. I don't think I'm very good in playwrighting class. We were given a "cabinwork" assignment this last time, to write a scene featuring "Liz" and "Richard" just after they get the check at dinner in a restaurant. Fran and I are partners in playwrighting class. We don't care that our scenes aren't great. We just like laughing at each other.

Jim in Rivendell.

Where was I? Lord of the Rings Film Site Tour. Why don't I just show you?

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYwl_aKC-5U

The day after the Lord of the Rings Tour, we were treated to a special event staged by the cruise line and Weta, the company that does all the costumes and special effects for Peter Jackson, the director of both Lord of the Rings and the most recent King Kong movie. Our passengers were treated like celebrities arriving at a big Hollywood opening, complete with fans waving pictures to be autographed and lots of actors and stunt people wearing costumes and putting on a big show. It was fantastic. I captured it in these two video clips.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7K4V7tNoHY

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7K4V7tNoHY

6:09AM

I met the night cleaner up here tonight. Told him I knew Christopher and Cleo from previous cruises. He asked me if I was with the company and I assured him that I wasn't, not that it would have mattered. There are strict standards of behavior on board ships. He asked me my name and called me Sir Steve. So I answered him back by calling him Sir A*. I'm protecting his identity right now because some of this is his personal story.

"Can I ask you a question?" he said.

"Sure," I said, pointing to the chair. Sit here in my office."

He laughed and sat, but guardedly looked around. He leaned over and said, "I didn't have a father."

I was kind of shocked, at first, to be told something so personal by someone I had just met. But it turned out that he was actually just asking me for some digital expertise.

"I have not spoken to my father until... 14. I was 14 years old."

"You haven't spoken to him since you were 14?"

"And my mother. She tore up his letters and numbers. But he lives in London. And this  ship is going to London. Can I find out where he lives in London?"

"There's a place on the Internet. I forget the name of it, but you can enter a person's name and city and get their info. Zippo something."

"Ah, the internet. And you don't know name of place?"

"No, but my partner Jim does. Hey, why do you want to contact him? What are you planning to do when you meet?"

At this point, A* clenched his jaw just a bit and I watched his eyes gaze off into the room. "I'm going ask him why he went away. Why he left. And. I am 29 years old. I have a 4 year old son."

"And you're having to be away from him right now."

"Yes, and I want to tell him that I will never be a father like him. That my son..."

I looked at him and said, "I don't think you want to do that." And suddenly I went right into a speech I heard on Doctor Laura. "He's already proven that he's not a good father. He's not going to approve of you, which is what the child in you really wants. This is energy that should directed right toward your son."

"I want him to apologize to my mother. I want to tell him that I would never treat my son like he treated me."

"Look, maybe he was young and left because he couldn't cope with life and now he feels so much shame after so many years, he can't deal with it. Or maybe he's just as asshole and always has been. But you can't go in there wanting to strike back. It just perpetuates the drama and anger. If you hit him, then he'll have to hit back. It's human nature."

"Are you religious? A...?

"Christian. I am a Christian."

"Well, there ya go. When Jesus said turn the other cheek, he didn't mean 'take all the abuse and be a victim.' It meant stand your ground, look the other person in the eye and let the shame be on his head for hitting you in the first place. Your eyes will tell him."

"I don't strike back?"

"No. If you strike him, he will then have to strike you. Right now, look at the world. Everyone is striking back at everyone else. You have to stop the abuse with this generation. And it's an act of will on your part because your default button is to be like your father. He unfortunately taught you fatherhood."

"No. I am not like him."

Poor A*. All he wanted to know was how to use the phonebook.
 

Monday, February 27, 2006.
Cruising Milford Sound.

4:30AM (after having been giving an extra hour last night. i love 25-hour days. it's so bonus round to get 25-hour days.)

Last night, after the main show, which was an original dance revue created by the dancers onboard, I approached the cruise director to talk about the "movie" we're going to make here onboard. What Jimmy and I had discussed over dinner was finishing the sequel, "She's Headed To Rome." But the cruise director immediately nixed showing "You Mean She's Here" to the cruisers.

"Because there will be people on there that aren't on this cruise," was how he put it.

So, back to the main drawing board. Rick McKay, yesterday, while we were out on deck looking up at the Lord of The Rings sized, rocks and waterfalls of Milford Sound -- I hope the photos and videos do it justice. There's no way. Rick said something to me about what movie am I making. I told him I just hadn't thought of a plot and that right now I might just be making a video diary and not trying to make a movie movie like "You Mean She's Here."

We did talk about "She's Headed To Rome," though, referring to it as my "It's All True," the long never-completed film by Orson Welles where he filmed a bunch of Brazilian stuff back in the 40s, but then got called back to the US to do some government stuff. So far, no one has asked me to do any government stuff. So it's not exactly like Orson.

Still, there was I out on the deck of a beautiful ship, standing beneath this 400 foot, majestic waterfall that was pouring straight down into the water. The waterfall was fed by, I kid you not,  a valley in the sky. The "sound" is actually, we were told, a big cut in the earth made by a glacier. A fjord, which they spell "fiord." These were mountains of granite we were sailing through. Solid granite projectiles shooting thousands of feet in the air at some points.

Picture a mountain range with valley that has become a lake at a high altitude. Now imagine that you took a knife and, turning the valley long-ways, cut the whole thing in two so that the valley you can see the v-shape cross-section. From the tabletop, the halves would be solid wall. Then about 2/3 of the way up, it would see the point of the V shape. We were sitting on the tabletop (sea level) looking up at that "V" and a beautiful waterfall poured from that rock and crashed 400 feet down to the surface of the water, which was itself, thousands of feet deep. No shoreline. Just a huge rock cut in half.

What our captain did was take the ship 6.5 meters close to the wall, breaking a record set by another Norwegian captain. The Norwegians are apparently very competitive when it comes to what is basically fjord-play.

It occurs to me as I write this that I am supposed to be Norwegian. I don't know anything about Norway. I don't know anything about my family, really. My father's family was/is rural Arkansas, the Ozarks. Authentic hillbillies who rolled their socks down, poured their coffee into the saucer and drank from the saucer, Jed Clampett hillbillies. I never really experienced much of that.

But sitting here in a ship full of Norwegian officers I realize I never went up to them like, maybe Greeks would do, and get all communal Greek together. For one thing, my family didn't drink. Drinking and dancing were not a part of my world. Being a preacher's kid, I wasn't an angel but I didn't get drunk until I was way out of college. It was at a drag show, now that I think of it, my first of very few big drunks. I'm not a drinker. Never really liked it that much. And now being diabetic, I can't SKOLL with the big boys. I feel about as much Norwegian as I do Chinese. I probably know more about being Chinese than Norwegian.

Okay, I have now downloaded all the pics and videos I shot in Milford Sound. Here is the edited video:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/v/YJsNVb3tAhA

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2006.
My Dramatic Scene.

3:15AM
(My assignment today was to write a dramatic scene for the playwriting class I am taking onboard the ship. I decided to just write a monologue based upon myself --of course. After finishing it, I went to class and one of the actresses read it. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera to tape it. Anyway, here is my monologue:)

My name is Steve and my partner, Jim, lectures on cruise ships. This can be a very dangerous thing. You see, I'm a writer. A writer of songs. I'm also easily seduced. By everything. Especially, I'm easily seduced by things that feel good and feed me and give me excuses to not write.

Cruise ships are full of these kinds of things. What? Finish verse two of song three instead of going to Mozart Tea in the Palm Court at 4pm. Heresy!

And don't even think about missing Team Trivia. You might as well slit your throat. The team needs your expertise on all those useless bits of information you soaked up while not studying very hard in school, but being addicted to early Christian history and what makes a heretic.

Heretic.

I've been obsessing over religion and heresy and people who declare other things to be holy. That gives me an idea that someone in my play suddenly declares an object to be holy. But that would take too large a cast. Once a "thing" is declared holy, I've observed -- a vase, a fork, a piece of cloth, a building, a piece of land, someone else's piece of land -- people start dying.

I wonder if the test of holiness is how many people die over your holy object.

The more dead bodies, the more "right" your religion is.

Last night, we got a 25-hour day. I love 25-hour days. 25-hour days happen when you are in a ship going eastward from New Zealand to Australia. They happen after you've found yourself slowly sailing into a gorge out in the middle of the ocean, with soaring, granite walls rising thousands of feet in the air on both sides. You can feel it in your ears. You can hear the walls.

And the hanging valleys. Valleys in the sky.

Who knew there were valleys in the sky?

So you cross the dateline. And when you go into your stateroom -- that's "stateroom," not "cabin," they insist -- there in the television is a image that says, Be sure to turn your clocks back one hour tonight before retiring.

Now, for us moderns, daylight savings time is not new. We love getting our extra hour, but it happens to infrequently -- once a year -- that you can't really revel in it.

What's fun is when it happens two nights in a row. It's the second night that makes a difference. Suddenly, though you've only added an hour, you actually feel two hours younger than the clock. It's like Star Trek when the characters speed up so fast that they're sound like buzzing gnats to the others.

So I woke up at 2:30AM. Which is really 3:30AM which is really 4:30AM.

At 4:30AM I was two hours younger.

And now I have all night to myself. Not a single living soul is up and around except for the night cleaners, and they're all my buddies. The night cleaners and I have deep philosophical conversations. Think about being a night cleaner on a cruise ship. When you're up and cleaning, the ship is silent except for the ship noises. There are no passengers dancing and laughing. No music playing in the hallways or rooms. No laughter. No gaiety.

For 10 hours a day, you start at one end of your zone and you scrub, wash, vacuum, scour, and brush alone. It might be the most zen job in the world. Total silence. Total attention to detail. Every last inch. The brass railing on the staircases. The elevators. The elevator buttons. The carpets. Make them like new every single day. Never show a sign of wear or dust or uncleanliness. Make the ship gleam.

Out on the decks, hose it down. Scrub it down, hose it off, scour the pool.

These are mostly young men. Boys, really. Early 20s. On this ship, from the Philippines. Usually married young. Usually with a kid or two or more. Wife also works. He's gone for months at a time. And the stories are always specific and interesting. I am a chef. I am a musician.

I wear a little "cleaner" uniform in a pastel color and I clean things, and I send the money home and someday I'm going to open a shop or finish school.

Deep thoughts.

Heretics.

Playwrighting class. I wrote a play for playwriting class. The assignment was to write a scene featuring a character named Liz and one named Richard. Putting it off until the last minute, I finally, between the many busy activities I've been involving myself with, sat down and wrote my scene between noon and 12:30. Then I went up for lunch. But, Noon is Team Trivia. That's how I got into trouble.

"Where were YOU, today?" they asked me at 1:05PM when they walked into the lunch buffet and saw that I was blatantly sitting there reading a book.

But I did write my scene. Fran and I wrote about the same thing. We read each other's just as we were sitting down. Last time, in class, some woman dropped in who hadn't been in before and she sat down with Fran and me. And her boobs were totally falling out of her black silky dress. I think she was rehearsing for the passenger fashion show and wandered in afterwards.

Then Jim told us we should write about that. So, in our assignments, we both had Liz and Richard talking about some girl with big boobs. Except Fran made hers about a woman who had breast cancer. And her husband was looking at the girl with beautiful breasts, and "Liz" was able to joke about it and it even had a sweet ending, but you could see that it was always on Liz's mind, her breasts. Her partial body. Her heretical body that got cancer.

I made mine funny.

The scene was a dinner theatre and the waitress performer had big boobs and Richard liked them, but Liz was drunk even though I never say she's drunk. Our teacher told us the secret to great dialogue writing. Apparently, the trick is to make sure the characters never say a single word that they actually mean.

"You know," the teacher explained. "Like real life."

I didn't get to read my play in class because the time ran out. Neither did Fran. Fran and I waited afterwards so that the teacher would read our plays, too. I waited until she and Fran finished their deep, philosophical conversation about Fran's play and then I walked up and said, as disappointed as a kid who had done his homework for the first time in his life and the teacher decided not to ask for it the next day, "I didn't get to read my play!"

Fran said, "Yeah!"

So Fran read my play with me out loud. She played Liz to my Richard. And the three or four people in the room laughed. The teacher told me it was funny. My next assignment is to write a write a monologue about being on a ship.

How will I ever find time to do that?

[End of monologue. What do you think?]

4:15AM

I just had a great moment. I looked down at the clock on my laptop and thought it said 5:30. But I just looked at it again and it says, 5:14 AM, which means it's actually 4:15 AM. Oh, man. I love having more time. Time for videowork. Back to Milford Sound.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006.
Final Day at Sea.

5:00 AM

"You're late," said A* the Filipino night cleaner to me at 4:30 when I arrived at the Breakfast Lido Buffet room.

"Yes," I told him. "I felt so tired at dinner last night, after such a long day, I thought I'd lie in bed and dream." And that's what I did. Dreamed long dreams. Alex was in one. She and Jim and I were in some house in east L.A. listening to gunfire and drinking beer, and hanging out with country western rednecks on the front lawn. Then I was riding in a van holding a cashbox where an African American owner of a shop was yelling at his sons for losing the shop's money until I found it under a little rubber thing in the box. And then we drove past an apartment carved into a rock hill which was very fancily decorated like a brass train and for some reason I remember the interior being uncomfortable.

Today we are in Sydney. The cruise is feeling too long. I want to get back to my studio. I miss my microphone. I miss recording my songs. I want to see if our producers have any word on New York. I miss working with Alex. And I can't wait to meet Honey West and work with her. She's coming out from Chicago in March to stay with Alex. I miss the cats.

Today I'm up early enough, though, to catch our sail into Sydney harbor which is, I'm told, spectacular. I missed it the last time we were in Sydney because we flew in, joining the ship there for the cruise up to Hong Kong.

I think the Captain usually tries to time these things with the sunrise and sunsets.

I'm very impressed with this Captain. Yesterday, he was still quite pleased with himself for having broken the record for moving the ship those 6.5 meters close to the wall of the waterfall. Now the Norwegian commanding the previous record also knows about it and is no doubt drinking himself silly in shame. But it's not just his navigational skills that impress me. This Captain is simply a very nice man who is quite willing to do silly things at the request of the entertainment staff.

For instance, the other night at the faux carnival games played out on deck, he let himself get drenched by a water balloon while he was still in full captain regalia.

The day, there in the fjords, just after his big "win," he invited Jim onto the bridge. We were stopped dead in the center and he told Jim that we had a medical emergency. (Lots of people dropping on this cruise full of elderly folks).

"What kind of emergency?" Jim asked.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "They tell me to stop. I stop."
 

Thursday, March 2, 2006.
Sydney Picturebook.

Yesterday, we had a great time in Sydney and I took lots of pictures.

Ruth and Steve in Sydney.

A little shopping walk-through.
 

A marquee in front of a live theatre.

Queen Victoria Building, a historic shopping center.

Inside Victoria Station.

An antique tea set in a window in Victoria Station.

The huge clock hanging in Victoria Station.

A young surfer at Manly Beach.

Steve and his favorite cow at Manly Beach.

The harbor as seen from a boat returning from Manly Beach.

Saturday, March 4, 2006.

3:45 AM
Last morning at sea. Today we leave the Emergent Sea. We leave the maid who cleans our room and makes our beds, not once, but twice a day. We leave the breakfast and lunch buffets and the gleaming brass and the hanging valleys and the pianos I have to find ways to break into. We leave the people who tell us that life on board the ship will be less without us. (The World Cruisers will continue on. The Segment People will also leave, only to be replaced by other Segment People.)

A* was vacuuming when I arrived here in the breakast lido buffet room this morning. He said he would miss me up here every morning.

But the truth is I'm glad to be going home. I miss my studio. I want my studio. I crave my studio. If I hadn't kept my mind so active making new music and shooting video I would have gone stir crazy. And that's something I wonder about. Most of the people on this ship are retirees who have a lot of money and they are sailing around the world. Many of them sail around the world every single year. It's a beautiful life, but most of them are people who are very smart. People who've accomplished much in their lives. They have great minds. One wonders if they really enjoy getting caught up in the drama of shipboard life where gossip sails around as easily as the spinning ball on the roulette table, bouncing from slot to slot, changing fortunes as it threatens to fall into the wrong number.

I suppose I could do it. I suppose I actually will do it someday.

But right now, the only place I want to be is home in my studio making music. It's going to take me hundreds and hundreds of hours of slavish devotion to begin pumping out new recordings because, right now, it's all new. The software is new. The songs are new. The arrangements must be put together through trial and error. It's a tedious, all-consuming task that lies ahead of me.

But I never really had a studio before. I never had the capacity to make good recordings before. To me, it's the greatest place on the planet. I want to be there now, but I'm patiently not there. I'm here. And when I get home, I have 37 gigibytes of video to edit down and upload.

In a way, this cruise has done me a favor. Usually when I'm home, I have nothing to put into my diary except, "I went upstairs. I turned on my computer. I worked. I took a break. I went for a run. I went back to my computer. I went to bed."

But now, I have all these video diaries and stories to tell. So, when my ears get tired of music and I need to take a break, I'll finish one of the video diaries from the cruise and upload it.

I can't wait to show you the hanging valley. The valley in the sky.

Who knew there were valleys in the sky?

 

March 15, 2006.

Monday night, Jim and I got to give out awards at the L.A. Drama Critics Circle. I called out Michael John LaChiusa's name. He wasn't there, but at least I got to call out his name as the winner of Best Score. For readers who don't follow theatre, he's one of the most critically celebrated of the new wave of Broadway composers. I felt very honored. Maybe we can meet and have coffee or something someday!

Today, "Holy Dirt" was linked by Joe.My.God.
Joe's hilarious, bawdy, adult and often heartbreaking blog depicting his life of AIDS and living in New York is one of my daily reads. He's does more than make me laugh and cry. I guffaw and weep. He and I are also good pals. One day we also hope to meet face to face. Jim and I take frequent "Joe.My.God shots," which are photos of you and others as shot by yourself with your arm extended.
Thanks, Joe.
Meanwhile, the lovely Alexandra Billings is back in L.A. and I've been working on music for the two of us. She's been in Chicago doing a circus theatre thingy, flying up in the air. Be sure to read her hilarious account of opening night:
http://abillings.livejournal.com/174958.html.

I've also been making new recordings of a few of the songs from The Big Voice, including How Do You Fall Back In Love. The news on Big Voice is that we hope to open in the fall rather than the spring. For legal reasons, I can't say much more than that. What I can tell you is that we will open, one way or another, even if we have to stand on a street corner and play with a harmonica and a trashcan.

March 24, 2006.

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the Bonus Round Diary.

Time flies when you're having AIDS.
Thanks to Amy for reminding me.
Happy Anniversary.
Here's Day One.

© 1996-2006 by Steve Schalchlin. You have permission to print from this diary and distribute for use in support groups, schools, or to just give to a friend. You do not have permission to sell it.