I slept pretty well, I went to sleep at a normal time, today it’s a Monday so it’s one of my sleep-in days, which meant I got up at around 6.50, when somebody, I’m not naming names, Lauren, was having a coughing fit downstairs, not COVID or anything, just one of those coughing fits that anyone can get, and that’s what woke me up.

But it was a good amount of sleep, and yet right now at this exact moment as I record this episode, I am too darn tired.

What makes this even more offensive than it would be just in general, is that earlier today I was thinking, you know what, it might just be one coffee day, I just don’t have any tiredness in me, and then, I don’t know, an hour and a half later I was like, man, I need a second coffee, and I did have a second coffee.

Now I could go crazy and have a third coffee, I don’t mind, but I’m not going to, because I don’t have to stay up for much tonight, I can go to bed a little early, now tomorrow is an early wake-up day, but it’s okay, everything’s going to be fine, and I can’t make a whole episode out of being tired, but it does annoy me that I’m tired.

Now as you may recall, I am deep into the rehearsal process for Bat Boy the musical, and I have done some more work on my accent, and I have decided that the key to my accent that I’m attempting to do for this show, we’re kind of set in West Virginia, somewhere between, you know, not quite Southern, more Appalachian than Southern, but a lot of each, my trick is I’m bringing my tongue as far back as I can, and so, you know, when I’m being the sheriff, it’s really just talking in what I consider to be my own voice, but obviously there’s an accent there that’s entirely being driven by, it’s just pulling the tongue as far back in my mouth as I can, and it seems to be going okay, at one point I get to say like, I say something like, that boy was hopping around like a scalded dog, and I really enjoy hearing the words scalded and dog come out of dog, that was very jerky, I like hearing the scalded dog come out, well, I don’t like hearing scalded dog, that’d be terrible, but I like hearing the accented scalded dog, anyway, that one wasn’t as good, but you get it, so, but I’m deep in these rehearsals, and last night was, you know, I would say a taxing rehearsal in some ways, first people were late, the rehearsal started late, and I find that very frustrating, but it’s fine, I tried to be as zen about it as I could be, but it’s just we’re in the hard part right now, right, because I’m learning a whole bunch of songs that I don’t know, and then you’re learning choreo, and then there’s also, you know, the blocking, and the lines, and I don’t know any of it yet, so, trying to learn, like, the choreography for a number, whose music I’m still learning, and whose lyrics I don’t know by heart, it means I don’t know any of it, so my brain is working really hard to try to remember all these things at once, and to do all these things, and to not just do them, but do them well, and it’s a lot, and it gets fun, but right now it’s not fun, right now it’s work, and that’s okay, but you have to kind of be in the mindset for it, and yeah, it can be rough, it’s self-imposed, like, I have no one to blame for this work but myself, and it gets fun, like I said, this isn’t the fun part, this is the challenging part, I would say every time I do a musical that I’m not already pretty familiar with, I think to myself, why do I ever do this, doing musicals I know pretty well, it’s fun, because I don’t have to learn the music the same way, doing plays, I don’t have to learn any music or choreo, right, just lines and blocking, so it’s just easier, right now it’s learning all the things, that’s what it feels like a lot, it’s okay, everything’s gonna be fine, nobody worry, it is a Monday, and I don’t have rehearsal until Thursday, but that means I do have homework, cause I gotta get better at these things, like to get in and do better at my next rehearsal, not that I did bad, but you know, to improve, to actually get there, I’ve gotta study, and it’s always fun when it comes naturally, or when you just know it, and in this case, I don’t, so, as I think I talked about last week, I have these rehearsal tracks that the musical director makes, I record over them so I can hear what my actual lyrics and notes are, and the words themselves, and then I just listen to them all the time, particularly when I’m in a car, and then of course, you get in the car sometimes and you’re like, you know, I’d really like to listen to a podcast, but then the disciplined side of you is like, no, I should listen to these songs, and yeah, it is definitely the way that I learn now, is listening to these things over and over again, and I’m certainly getting better, but there is more work to do, and even as I record the tracks for myself, as I put it together with the music that the musical director has recorded, you know, all I can think about is, as I’m making them, boy, I have a lot more work to do, like, I’m gonna listen to this so many times, like, I can see how this will eventually get into my brain, it’s not yet, but it’ll get there, anyway, if you’re in New Jersey, come see Bad Boy at the end of October, yeah, anyway, I think that’s all I have for today, I hope you’re having a wonderful day, if you got a new phone, I hope you’re enjoying it, I finally updated my Mac to, well, Sequoia, is that what it is now?

I hate these dumb names, I updated my Mac, and a couple fundamental things went wrong, and I complained about it on the internet, and then somebody said, restart your Mac, and I did, and it fixed all the problems, but when many, many of my files were gone, that was not good, that was an unpleasant first boot experience, anyway, happy Monday, and you’re the best, yes, you, Lex!