Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

One of the good things about having to come down to San Jose this week was that it gave me the opportunity to see one of the final performances of Emojiland, which runs through Sunday.

I initially worried that I was going to miss the show, because when I went out to catch the light rail train, it turned out that they were kicking everyone off the trains because the line was closed at First and Brokaw Streets, where an idiot driver had turned down the railroad tracks rather than onto North First Street. I walked to the next station in the hope that they might be running trains from there. As it happens, while I was walking to Metro/Airport, a tow truck managed to get the stuck car off the tracks and rail service resumed, and I made it to the theatre before they started seating people.

( Very Important Emoji )

The only bad part about attending the show (and making a wrong turn that cost me 15 minutes waiting for the next light rail train back to the hotel) is that I"m now going to get less than three hours of sleep until I have to get up and get ready to go home. Thanks to the way the schedules work, I have to be on a 4:30 AM bus out of San Jose Diridon if I'm going to catch the train back to Reno. There's no public transit at that hour, so I have scheduled a Lyft ride to the station for 4 AM. At least there shouldn't be any traffic.

Yesterday was my semi-annual diabetes check-in. Things are about where they have been. Maybe slightly improved due to adding a new medication to the mix. Nothing else has gone wrong. Losing weight would help. I wonder if the large numbers of steps I'm logging this week is helping. Also on the docket yesterday was the second and final dose of a shingles vaccine. As they warned me, I'm having a slightly adverse reaction to the shot — mainly lots of soreness in my upper left arm where they injected it (oddly, I didn't feel the shot itself at all) and up through my neck and upper back. It's annoying, not debilitating, and it's a whole lot better than getting shingles! Still, I'm glad that I'm not driving home today because I'm slightly unsteady.

Tonight I'll take light rail downtown to 3 Below Theatre to see Nine: The Musical. Getting back to the RV will be a hassle because late at night light rail doesn't serve the Mountain View line. There's a bus substitute, but it doesn't follow all of the light rail stops through the part of Sunnyvale where I'm parked, and I understand why. It's still annoying. At least now I know the last train to the last bus, where to get off, and where to walk to get back to the RV, and the weather is mild.

Tomorrow I can sleep in a bit before driving home.

After work yesterday, I parked the RV in my usual overnight parking spot, walked over to the light rail station, and caught a train heading for downtown. I had a ticket for the 7:30 PM show at 3Below Theatre of Disenchanted, a musical about Disney Princesses — but one that does warn people that it's probably not a great idea to bring small children, because it deals with the less-glamorous aspects of "happily ever after."

I was afraid that I would end up missing the curtain (and glad that I'd caught one train earlier than the scheduler told me that I needed) because for reasons I never quite determined, VTA closed light rail and terminated our inbound train at Metro/Airport. The driver promised that a bus bridge would be set up, but when I saw how many people were already waiting, I figured I'd better start walking. (A light rail train carries a lot more people than a bus, despite what a bunch of people seem to think.) By the time I made it to the next station south (Gish, which was once my "local" when I lived around the corner), trains had started running again, so I caught the next one going my way and made it with plenty of time to spare.

( On With the Show )

It was a fun production, with some entertaining performances and laughs, but also some zingers in there about "the princess complex" and what a negative message it ends up sending to women. I was particularly taken by Natasha Drena's turn as Sleeping Beauty, whose number "Perfect" sent the message that you're perfect just the way you are.

( Capturing the Vampire )

As ever, my thanks to Shannon, Scott, and now Lily Guggenheim (their daughter, credited as Assistant Director on the production), the performers (I thanked as many of them as I could, including one of the musicians) and all of the rest of the people at 3Below who worked to make another fine entertaining show. I even stopped to thank the sound engineer for not over-blowing the sound. Too many people seem to take a "We may not be good, but we're loud" attitude, and I'm glad he wasn't one of them.

If you're within reach of 3Below (it was where Worldcon 76's film program was held, if that helps you find it), you have two more chances (tonight and then tomorrow) to catch it before it closes. I'm very glad that my medical appointments, work schedule, and SFSFC board meeting attendance could all be rolled together to make it possible for me to see this show.

I definitely wasn't disappointed by Disenchanted.

For the first time in months (and several weeks after having to scrub a trip due to snow), I'm taking the Rolling Stone down to the Bay Area and working from the offices down there. I have a couple of medical appointments during the week, BASFA has their outing to the San Jose Giants next Saturday, and I also hope to get to see A Spoonful of Sherman next Friday night at 3Below Theatre. And I'll also be at BASFA this Monday night.

Lisa plugged the RV in yesterday to top off the batteries, and this afternoon I pulled it around to the front of the house and started loading it with everything that can be done today. (My toiletries, computer, and other personal items have to wait until tomorrow morning.) Based on past experience and because I've seen the darn stingers buzzing around as the weather warms up, I checked for wasp nests, and sure enough there were a couple in the RV, which Lisa and I dealt with and did not get zapped.

I'm glad we have the RV, but I'm also glad I don't have to do this every other week or every third week the way I once did.

I'm off to San José to see Who's Holiday tonight, with a bunch of my fannish friends. This is an out-tonight, back-tomorrow trip, and I'll apparently be racing ahead of another storm tomorrow, but I should have time to stop and deliver a Christmas present to my sister in Sacramento.

Thanks to having put in extra time earlier in the week and doing a bit of Day Jobbe work this morning, I only needed to take a half-day off from work, thus preserving an extra four hours of PTO for future Worldcon/Westercon/NASFiC trips.

The folks at the Wigwam restaurant know me too well. When I strolled in just after they opened at 6 AM, my usual server said, "You must be heading to the Bay Area today" because that's usually the case when I show up very early on a weekday instead of mid-morning on a weekend.

I had the opportunity on Saturday night to, along with David Clark and Linda D., to attend The People in the Picture, a musical being staged at 3Below Theatre (brought to you by the folks who ran the late lamented RetroDome).

( Worldcon 76 and 3Below: A Good Match )

As Linda, David, and I were walking over to the 3Below box office to collect our will-call tickets, David asked if we'd need some ID or something and I said that probably wouldn't be necessary. Shannon Guggenheim, part of the ownership team, was working the Box Office. As Shannon put it when I told her the story, "Yeah, it's okay; you're friends with the show's producers" as she issued us our tickets.

It was a wonderful show, which, as Ken Patterson describe accurately, "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh some more, and you'll cry some more." I was certainly tearing up at the finale, and that's a good thing.

On the way out, I stopped to thank both Scott and Shannon Guggenheim for their hard work, congratulate them on finding a new home for their theatre, and to say that while I'm not in the Bay Area anywhere near as often as I used to be that I'll try if possible to make their future live shows, because I can say truthfully that none of their productions has ever disappointed me and all of them have been fine entertainment.

The People in the Picture has one more weekend to run. If you can make it to San Jose, I heartily recommend that you try to attend this show. It ran on Broadway for a short run a few years ago and as Shannon put it when she introduced the show, after next weekend, it goes back into the vault and who knows when it will come back out again.