(Also Titled: The Ongoing Diary of Thppgrg, Goblin Minion)

DAY FORTY-EIGHT

So, the show is going . . . oddly.

The second and third nights of rehearsals were, if anything, a step up in the general-insanity department, and I sincerely expect tonight’s extra-long Saturday-evening session of blocking, line-reading, and screaming, explosion-filled hysterics to be downright, full-blown, abject madness.

Quite a few fights have broken out over how to do the ostrich-jousting sequence at the end of Act 1, in particular.

Apparently, the ostrich costumes are racist to were-ostriches, but actual ostriches are too weak to hold up some of our more . . . “Large-plus and larger-size” cast members, but dire ostriches are prohibitively expensive to rent, and the first prototype animatronic rob-ostrich that was build by our crack team of robo-imaginationator-eers blew up.

This is primarily because our crack team of robo-imaginationator-eers is composed entirely of my three idiot nephews and a pyromaniacal, half-deaf gnome named Wallyworkle Tinklehammer, who seems unnervingly overjoyed at having a cabal of youthful degenerates to throw explosives for him, and upon which to test his new steam-driven combination morningstar/nunchaku/crossbow device, the “Tinkle-Hammer 3000.”

It’s apparently a pair of crossbows, linked via chain, that shoot morningstars instead of crossbow bolts. Or nunchaku, when you hold down the secondary fire button. And which runs on steam. He’s been spending a lot of our now-severely-depleted-budget on building the thing, which would be a pretty serious legal issue if he wasn’t also the treasurer of the Art Co-Op that’s producing the play.

Wallyworkle has also been making weird, vaguely threatening, and ominously maniacal comments about getting access to the blueprints of the entire dungeon, just for fire-code reasons. I assume it’s nothing.

Anyway, I expect someone to storm out in frothing, indignant rage within fifteen minutes of getting on-set tonight.

And then, unless I get much, MUCH better at telling people to shut up, and to go away, and to just, please, really, leave me the hell alone, afterward I’m going to be dragged to a trendy dance club down on Level 68—it’s called “The Level 68+1 Club,” quite uncreatively—by General VanO’Shaughnessy Blah-blah-blah #3, Jimbo, and several other members of our ever-snowballing Unrequited-Admiration Octrangle to “blow off some steam.”

I told my stone-golem boss/director flat-out that I like my steam just the way it is—that is to say “neither blown, nor off, nor involved in any way with experimental nunchaku—based weaponry”—but she just laughed and told me that I had quite the sense of humor.

She said this, I should note, while gazing longingly—and, might I add, somewhat wistfully—at Greg the vampire accountant in his vampire astrophysicist costume, under a lederhosen-themed vampire-yodeler disguise, all while General VanO’Shaughnessy Blah-blah-blah #3 gazed at HER, semi-surreptitiously, with equal—if not profoundly, pathetically MORE—wistfulness, simultaneously making wildly exaggerated hand motions imploring me—from the bottom of his heart, behind her back—to accept her invite.

Ugh.

Anyway, the group of people who will be guilting me into pretending to have fun with them tonight will include not only all of the original, founding Messy-Longing-Octrangle-Society members mentioned previously—some of whom will say they are not going, but who will no-doubt meet us at the club—but also a truly ridiculous gaggle of new, additional love-lorn, star-crossed lonely-hearts, approximately quintupling the size of our little cadre. As far as I can tell, every single person involved—no matter how tangentially—with the production of Margin of Errors: +/-L.OV[E] is now desperately, head-over-heels, brick-to-the-skull, pants-on-head STUPID in-lust with someone who isn’t interested in them.

It’s just like Jr. High all over again.

Fortunately, the aforementioned gaggle of mixed crushes will probably include Kyle the evil pseudodragon with a troubled past and nothing left to lose—he’s easily my favorite new addition to our angst-ridden clique, since as far as I can tell he just likes hanging out with us morbidly romantic folks and occasionally making hilarious, incredibly rude off-the-cuff jokes.

He had one particularly catty bon mot yesterday about taping a candy bar to the middle of Chris the Maintenance Yeti’s back that had me smiling for HOURS. This was after I found out that Chris—much like myself—has the hots for Abliguritia Thundersmasher-Roth, but that—unlike myself—he had the gumption to actually ask her out on a date. She accepted, which was unfortunate. They’ll be at the club. Tonight.

I really needed the acerbic pick-me-up, is what I’m saying.

So, after rehearsal this evening, there will be hours of stares of longing, and awkward pauses, and heavy drinking, and no doubt a whole lot of tears, bitter recriminations, and bouts of sob-choked self-examination, most likely in the bathroom. Also, dancing.

It will be just like rehearsal, except with dub-step.

I hate all of those things.

Except heavy drinking, I suppose. So, then . . . count me in, I guess.