Invited to Psychedelphia at the Rotunda by the lovely and talented Jessica Abigail Adams (what a name)… couldn’t make it though, too bad. Sounded interesting. Good company too. Since I can’t draw worth crap (but I can fake it in Photoshop), it fascinates me to see good work coming from up-and-coming artists (I probably sound like a tool saying that. Oh well.). Jessica’s set for SFANW qualifies. So does Caroline Harrison’s ambition to become a comic book artist. And who knew the history of fonts could be so interesting? Must remind myself to pick up Helvetica at some point.

I’m sitting in Colbert’s chair. Sheira, Mili and Maya in the background. Photo by Allison Karic.

John, Sheira and Caroline posing in front of Colbert’s portrait. Photo by Allison Karic.

In other news, Brenna’s sister may be staying at my house come fall. She’s in some nursing program? I still need details. BKII herself is making an appearance in two weeks, and I’ll see her again in June (I think). I may be music-directing another musical at Penn in the fall with Jason Butler, and later this week, I’ve got a gig at Annenberg. I’ve also got two more gigs with Monty, a Sing-along AND the dedication of the Studio Theater as the Montgomery Theater.

Spent the entire weekend, essentially, with SFANW. The entire week too! The whole week the Colbert Report was filming in the Zellerbach Theater at Annenberg Center, while our show was in the Prince. We were originally asked to vacate Prince for the Colbert Report, but we refused. Good thing, because we had what we wanted AND we got to see some celebrities. Saw Stephen Colbert in the hallway. He looks more normal than he does on TV. He apparently called Mili and some other girl “glamorous” for fooling around in feather boas. Djo Fortunado remembers himself being a klutz in front of Colbert. And I was just a dude pushing a cart and briefly looking his way. Also saw Ed Rendell. Unfortunately, missed seeing the Roots, John Legend (though I was at his intimate concert at Penn a few years back… class of 1920 auditorium and him doing all his cuts from the CD, it was AWESOME) and the Iggles cheerleaders. Oh well. Secret Service was being tightass about security, so we didn’t get to see Hillary, Edwards or Michelle Obama. Not that we would have wanted to go through the process to do so. Hillary held up traffic around Penn. Wonder what will happen to her in two days, what with the important primary, mass defections and lots of superstars campaigning for Obama.

Sound was messed up on Thursday. Partially fixed by Friday, and fully working by Saturday. Caroline blames it on shitty equipment – it’s apparently rented out of Houston Hall from some local sound shop, and of course, it probably gets treated like shit by all the groups. Also, it was wireless and that always has issues. Johnny was always a problem to pick up because his voice was so breathy (and for good reason, he was singing way high). Band was tight (though best on Friday) and singers did a good job throughout. Friday and Saturday were definitely more inspired, though not because of the audience – the best audience came on Thursday.

Thursday, went out for beers with Djo (congas), Max Hass (bass) and Sebastian Modak (drums). Seb went to JIS for all of high school, and we caught up on general Indonesian stuff. Nasi G, bah-mee Gahjamada, blah blah blah. Djo is in with the hipster crowd at Penn, and Max looks older than his age. Got to the party late, but made a great appearance and gifting was successful (though man, I was a slacker about it. I could have gotten much better gifts for people if I had had till Saturday.

Friday, saw Forbidden Kingdom. Pretty awesome movie… like what kid wouldn’t want to live this movie. Learn kung fu in a dream and be able to use it right away… and meet hot chicks that are apparently real. Yifei Liu and Bingbing Li are the two chicks in the movie, and whew. Cuties, man. Jet Li and Jackie Chan, awesome as usual. Wasn’t Jet Li supposed to be done with this stuff? Guess not.

Saturday, had dinner with the cast at Bistro St. Tropez. Spent some quality time with the cast NOT celebrating Passover before we did strike. THe attendance at strike was a little anemic, so as usual, I helped a small bunch of people do a LOT of lifting. If I didn’t like doing some manual labor every so often, I’d probably skip too… but I wouldn’t do that to the crew. Especially a real fun crew Went to FroGro with Caroline, whom I learned has some rather unfortunate food allergies. I should count my blessings, really. I’d pretty much just curl up and die if I couldn’t eat gluten any more – though in the scheme of things, that’s a pretty tiny thing to have wrong. At least it’s not ciliac disease. Spent the party getting Mili drunk, feeling sticky, wanting to talk to Jess but feeling so, so tired, and being altogether too sober, even after repeated trips back to the bar. The Princess Bride was showing. I’m going to miss some of these people. Off to better things, I hope.