This is the third time todayish that I’ve used this as a title for something: once for the webcomic I do, once for my actual site, and now for this. But, this time, it kinda counts for something; it was officially the name of tonight’s show.

Not that there was much black to it. Or for that matter a lot of Friday. Technically, the show was after midnight and into Saturday; and, however metaphorically, I suppose it was more blue than black. But Blue Saturday isn’t really a thing, so we didn’t call it that. This time.

So, that’s…that. I guess.

There really wasn’t a theme to tonight’s show, apart from having a lot of loud fun and kinda marvelling at the number of people showing up despite the external temperature. I mean: I was wearing enough layers to double my weight out front, and I was freezing to death; meanwhile, half the audience were waiting out there for up to an hour wearing glorified floss. So, either you people really dig the show, or you’re all uncommonly crazy. Though I suppose it could be both.

About the show: this is where it’d be really cool to mention that we pulled it off without a hitch; also it would be kinda untrue. As it was, the show worked just fine—music and dancing and robostrobes and all—but a couple additional things we’d been planning for the last month puked at the last minute. One of them, we discovered at zerohour, woulda set off the fire alarm and sprinkler system. So we’re going back to the drawingboard on those things.

Also, and on the subject of technological disasters, my DigiCam’s back to normal. Sucking. Though I’ve developed a hunch about that. Well: two hunches; the obvious one’s that the warranty ended about ten years ago. The other’s that it seems to get like this, with the battery leaping from three hours left to ten seconds, mostly when it’s really cold outside. It’s possible that it would work a lot better if I let it warm up before trying to use it.

On the bright side, while I only got a couple hundred shots this time, they were mostly redundant anyway. Being one of the only cities to have been doing this since 1975, and for that matter a cast approaching its thirteenth year in existence, we attracted the attention and ultimately the HDV of a documentarian who, starting tonight, has committed to filming the whole scene for approximately the next six months and compiling it into a feature film about RHPS. Which means that A) while my battery was being schizophrenic, I was trying to stay outta his way all night and B) through May or June, showing up to see the show could land you in a film to be released around 2013. I think. Whatever release date works best after a couple dozen hours of footage have been molested into something worth seeing.

So, if you wanna be all famousish, show up starting in December on the twenty-third; if you don’t wanna be famousish, show up with, like, a Guy Fawkes mask, or whatever.

On that note: December’s show is…probably not Black Christmas, amusing though that might be. But it’s something along those lines. Festivus or Cthulhumas or…something; Dawn of the Dead, maybe; whatever you’d call that thing where SantaClaus got nailed in a manger and died to save you from the Grinch—I’m not…real theological.

What counts is that it’ll be a themenight. And it’ll have something to do with Consumermas. So show up wearing a big red bow; other clothes are of course merely optional. Though, supposing it’s gonna get colder before it gets warmer, a big warm trenchcoat might not be the worst thing to bring along to survive the line into the building.

See ya then….

I knew I was forgetting something….

Actually, I knew that last night, once it was too late to unforget it, when I left my DigiCam at home. Once I realised that I didn’t have it, I figured I’d be okay with the PhoneCam in my Droid3, since that’s eight megapixels; it’s not like my Sony DSC717 is the best DigiCam—it’s more like it was the best DigiCam, ten years ago when I bought it.

It’s still better than a PhoneCam. Because the thing in my phone likes to stop and think for a full second after I hit the shutter icon, making shots of moving things impossible; if I’m trying to get a shot of something stationary, the PhoneCam App likes to force itself closed; if neither of those happens, someone calls or texts me.

Basically: I didn’t end up with any shots worth uploading last night.

Because I didn’t upload any shots, I forgot next to write one of these. I’m that used to writing one of these while the shots are uploading.

I just remembered. Mostly because I got a text from Animal, who on Thursday nights has a bedtime and can’t stay out that late, asking how the show went. Because I hadn’t already covered that here.

So, here I am. Hi there. Here’s how the show went….

Lacking a DigiCam, and giving up on the PhoneCam, I wound up sitting there actually watching the show most of the time. Usually, I’m moving around and getting shots of things, which is more visual; it’s all about threedimensional spatial relations, so I’m only listening to anything to the extent that it helps with a sort of confused echolocational navigation thing. So, seeing the show almost like a member of the audience, and in an unfamiliar cinema, I caught a couple things in need of improvement; I’d tell you what they are here but, optimally, they’ll have been improved by the next show, on the twenty-fifth.

Not that the show was bad. Mostly, it was hasty. Precipitous. Rushed to work to whatever extent in an unfamiliar place. Viewing the show as a job to do, and then supposing that the job is, like, telemarketing, and then moving the gig from the office to the middle of the Sahara: a certain percentage of the efforts is dedicated immediately to figuring out how to spam people with whatever offers in a new environment.

In any case, the audience dug it. Which makes it better already than telemarketing under the best of circumstances. More people had showed up than expected: initially, we’d heard that six tickets had been sold; by the time the show began at ten, there were more filled seats than empty. So it kinda all worked out, in the end. There have certainly been worse shows, in the past.

Anyway: that’s that. Now we’ve got two or three weeks off before the show returns to the Esquire on the twenty-fifth—the day after TurkeyDay—with a full crew and a soundsystem and probably a damned DigiCam. Tickets should become available online for that around the eighteenth, I think; or you can wait until ZeroHour and see what’s left onsite at the box office.

See you then….