.

I’m exhausted.

I just spent the last 20+ minutes lying on the floor, one shoe on, unable to move, pants half on and half off.

I don’t think there could be any clearer indication that I need to come home this weekend.

Who would’ve thought the last day of classes would be so tiring? I don’t even have the strength to go celebrate.

With today being the last day of instruction, we were also given our exam plays and roles today. The way this works, I now know, is that we’re given roles in two plays - and we’ll perform one act of each. We have roughly three weeks on the first series of plays, and after we perform we get a second series. The first series (the ones we got today) is drama, the next is comedy.

My first play is called The Dancers by Horton Foote. I have no idea what it’s about, but the author’s name is Foote, so… how can it be bad? I’m actually playing two characters in this one, both are middle-aged father figures. They’re both small parts… and that means less dialogue to learn! Woohoo!

My second is A Far Country by Henry Denker. I play a little character named Sigmund Freud… who’s in a vast majority of the thirty-five page act. That means far more work for Ricky, and, therefore… I’m gonna be a cranky sonofabitch who shuts himself in his hole and doesn’t emerge for the next three weeks. But, hey… there’s a bright side — I get a wheelchair! Hooray for Freud!

Sleep now?

Holy Pope!
So, here’s the situation.

Your pope dies.

You’re faced with decision of choosing a new pope.

Out of the pool of hundreds of hopefuls… do you pick a slightly younger, more youthful pope… or an old dude?

Personally, I pick the youthful pope. Someone who doesn’t have perfect credit. Somebody you wouldn’t mind kicking back, watching the respective sporting event of your choice, and drinking your favorite beverage with. Somebody fun. Somebody like the Fonz… only with a funny hat.
Instead, we’ve got an old dude.

Stay tuned next month, kids… for Pope Funeral 2 : Electric Boogaloo.

Same Pope time. Same Pope channel.

Well, I’m sure enough people are thoroughly offended enough for me to stop. G’nite, Gracie!

And so, now I’ve become obsessed with Reefer Madness: The Musical. I strongly recommend to anyone who reads this to catch it on TV. It’ll be on tomorrow night at 8, and this Sunday at the same time. I just wish I was able to catch the show when it opened Off-Broadway.

Unfortunately, it opened two days after 9/11… so its chances weren’t all too good. Believe it or not, there weren’t many theatregoers in the city at that time.

But seriously, if you dig ridiculing the American government, marijuana, zombies, cannibals, brownies, William Shakespeare, Asians who eat babies, Jesus, talking clams, Neve Campbell, and F.D.R. (among other things) all in song-and-dance… you’ll enjoy Reefer Madness.
Now that that commercial’s over… let’s throw in another commercial!

Family Guy premieres it’s fourh season (after waaaaaay too long) in two weeks on Sunday. Who’s not excited?

To appease the addiction before that, a new CD - Family Guy: Live! in Vegas will be released on April 26th. It’s interesting — it doesn’t seem as if the tracks come from the TV show. Check it out here.

“Spamalot,” Broadway’s hottest show, drawn from the 1975 cult film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” has managed to tap into a rare, highly prized Broadway demographic: men; specifically, the kinds of teenagers and 20-somethings who find jokes about fish, flatulence and the French absolutely sidesplitting and who normally wouldn’t be headed to the theater unless dragged by a girlfriend, school trip or court order…

- The New York Times

And I smile.

I have seen Spamalot… and I will say that it is definitely way near the top on the list of “the must fun I’ve had as a member of a Broadway audience”… probably tied with Avenue Q.

Maybe theatre’s not dead.

Reefer Madness! The Movie Musical premieres next Saturday, April 16 at 8PM on Showtime.

Hell, Nightcrawler’s in it.

Let’s hope it doesn’t suck.

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In other news…

Apparently, in an effort to cut down on child obesity, the honchos over at Sesame Workshop decided that Cookie Monster should learn that cookies are “sometimes foods,” and that fruits and vegetables can be eaten at any time.

I shall now cry… and eat cookies… in protest