What Kind Of A Girl Do You Think I Am?

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

How do I start telling this story? From the beginning, I suppose. No wait, from the end. Err... the middle?

Oh hell, just try to follow along...

This morning, just as I got to my desk at work, my cell phone rang. I answered because, well, that's what you do when your phone rings.

"Hey, Pete. This is Matt Christopher."

I wasn't surprised to hear from Matt. He owns the theater where I worked for many years before a less-than-amicable falling-out. I had lunch with the Artistic Director a couple days ago and had basically been offered a role filling in for an actor who can't make the time commitment to an extended run. I figured this is what Matt was calling about.

"Hey, Steve tells me you guys had lunch the other day. It's good to hear you're doing well." Before I could respond, he continued. "Say, I have a question for you about putting some audio files on our web site and sending links to those files to patrons in our weekly emails."

I sat silent for a moment. Was he serious?

Let me back up a bit and tell you about the falling-out the theater and I had. My leaving there was due mostly to my diddling everyone there and causing all kinds of emotional collateral damage... but not entirely. At the same time I was allowing my personal life to publicly erode, Matt had hired me to build a web-site for the theater.

I built the site and he used it for about three months. All the while neglecting to pay me for my services. I eventually sued him. The suit was eventually settled. The site I built was taken down and he paid me with the agreement that he would not use any of the work I had done. Many unpleasant things were said by both of us.

But that was a few years ago and we've had some contact since. Things seem to have settled down and our few, brief conversations have been amicable. I've even been back once for an audition and call back that went pretty well.

Fine. So we no longer want to kill each other. That's good. But is he seriously calling me now with questions about his web site? Especially given our history but more especially given that they may want me on stage in less than two weeks and we have not even come close to working out those details. Plus, he's got two first names. Never trust a guy with two first names.

I stammered a short answer that I knew was over his head, technology-wise. He then asked if he could have his current web guy give me a call for some help.

Then I told him, "Matt, I think you can understand that I can't really get into helping you with this much more than giving a little advice."

"Oh sure, yeah... really, I'm sorry about what happened with all this before."

"I am too.. nevertheless, If your guy needs some quick questions answered that's fine but I'm not really available to get into a whole project right now."

Sheesh. I think I escaped getting dragged into something I want to avoid, so that's good but really, can you believe his nerve?

All this comes on the heels of another project I'm doing for a company who fired me for who knows what reason. They called out of the blue too wondering if I could bail them out of a bad web site situation. I told them yes though because, well, they've never fucked me on an invoice and I'm a whore like that.

Oh, in case you're wondering, I don't know yet if I'll end up on stage or not. I haven't been formally asked but if they extend the run and I am interested, the role is mine. The real question is, am I interested? I don't know... am I?

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Filed under: Entertainment | Technology

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