h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just guessing.

Anyway I missed rehearsal Tuesday (Spartus's fault) and that was the last rehearsal that was all for me.

All the rest of the rehearsals are really long full-show rehearsals.

I'm talking, by the way, about the Bad Show, if that wasn't completely obvious.

So anyway despite the fact that I am in dire need of rigorous rehearsal, I get my wish, which is to not have to rehearse it at all, ever, and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

I wonder now if that was the wisest wish I could have made...

It's never good to have to make a fool of yourself on stage.

On the bright side, though, it's a bad show, so even if I do make a fool of myself, who'll be there to see it?

Who would pay to see this show?

Two more weeks exactly, by my wall calendar, which I can't see very well from here but it looks essentially like two weeks exactly. Two weeks more of rehearsing the Bad Show, then on with the Bad Show, just four performances, and then we suffer a cast party, and then home, to bed, and done with it.

The morning after we close the show, I'm supposed to do another car wash.

I should not have signed up for another car wash. I didn't like the first one. They made me—get this—WASH CARS! Hundreds upon hundreds of dirty, smelly cars with dirty, smelly people in them! Well... all right, in fairness, the people themselves were pretty clean. Not the ones who were washing cars with me though. They were all quite wet and filthy and some of them tried to talk to me—three of them at least, perhaps as many as six—the dirtiest ones—and they tried to make conversation and they smiled and things and it was all wrong and awkward and miserable.

They might have been all right guys had they not been sweating and dripping and had I not actually been *extremely* stroppy from the heat and the unnatural amount of work I was being asked to do... but I may never know, and I can't say I particularly care to.

What was I talking about?

Oh, closing the show. Yeah, so we close the show on Friday night, and then the cast party, so I won't get in till probably midnight, and then, you know, then the car wash in the morning...

Of course, seeing as I hate the "cast parties" this group throws, there's nothing keeping me from inventing an excuse and not going to it.

I'm not being sulky and bad again. No, you see these are not parties we're talking about. These are things where everyone leaves the theatre in a few cars and migrates to Applebees to sit at a long table and discuss silly and irrelevant things for an hour or two. After being trapped in the dressing rooms with them for... well, two hours before curtain, then most of the show... at least three hours, hanging out with them after the show is not a perk.

Nowhere else do I learn to dislike people as quickly as in the girls' dressing room.

We have lighted mirrors. Normal vanity mirrors like you'd expect in a dressing room, only it's not those cute little vanity lightbulbs. It's full-size 75-watt light bulbs. Why? Why would they do this? And naturally, from the time the first person arrives until the time the last person leaves, all seven sets of them are on quite steadily.

So the room is very, very, very, very hot. Every try getting ready in a room that's very, very, very, very hot? You know how you're supposed to be careful that you use makeup that won't melt in the stage lights? We don't have to worry about that. We have to be careful we don't melt in the dressing room.

There's something wrong with that!

Yes. So. Cast parties suck... I forgot about that. In fact I didn't go to the last one. No. The spring show. I didn't go. I forgot! Anyway, yes, so I won't go to the cast party, and then I won't be too tired at the car wash. Maybe I'll make it the full six hours (ha!)

Well, I've got two weeks from Saturday all figured out. I've just got to work out what I'm going to do this weekend, which is when we're having a yard sale.

Ewwww.

This is quite possibly the longest h2g2 journal entry in the history of, um, h2g2 journal entries. And a fascinating insight into the twin worlds of showbiz and car washing, to boot.

Er... thanks.

I don't know. I didn't read it.

But thank you.

No but you did write it... I always hated washing just one car, let alone many, this is probably one of the reason I have no plans to ever own a car

Try and enjoy the play, you never know, it could be fun, well it could be

Didn't I tell you the Bad Show's about AIDS? It's not politically correct to have fun doing it!

I've certainly never thought of you being politically correct Well don't have fun doing it, see if I care ;-p

Actually I do care, so er just get through it then, okay

Oh I am politically correct! I call everybody ______-American! All the time!

African-American... Native-American... Visually-Challenged-American, Nazi-American... everybody!

So what am I then, a-not-born-in-america-english-american?

Yes, all right. A non-American-not-born-in-America-English-American even, if you want to get really technical about it—though then again...