The Show Must Go On

OLI (On Line for Idiots) is cutting back, AGAIN. Employees at the Head Office in Stiletto City are cutting and pasting themselves into new jobs as fast as they can. The latest job loss is the lady who designed the software program Plotnik uses to turn in his work. She's moved over to Disney.

Plotnik knows this because yesterday his software became corrupted. It can no longer be accessed without a major fix. So Plot IM'd the designer, to find out she no longer works for the company. She never got around to teaching the software to the person who replaced her, which makes sense because he will probably jump ship soon too. So Plot is SOL at OLI.

Without the software, the simple reporting process becomes far more time consuming for Plot, and infinitely more difficult for his editors.

But that's the only bad part.

The good part is that theater goes on anyway, the lighting, costumes and set designers, the playwrights, actors and directors, the publicity wonks, theater operators, ticket sellers and ushers all still show up on time, and everyone breaks their rear ends trying to tell a universal story in a unique way, whether Plotnik's software is working or not.

Out on the street, the guys you can pay to watch your car still gather in front of the Orpheum, the a cappella singers still show up to sing for tips as people are filing out of the Geary, the old lady with the roses still hustles up and down Valencia in front of the Marsh, the guy in the new parking booth at Fort Mason still puts on his cap to explain patiently to everyone why they can no longer park for free at the Magic, and when the old bejeweled palaces like the Golden Gate Theater and the Curran are dark, their entrance alcoves are still protected from the mean western wind. It's a nice place to sleep off a bottle of Thunderbird. Everyone has a job to do.

So life goes on. Tomorrow night is the first of four shows in five nights, the first at ACT, the second at the Marsh Berkeley, the third at SF Playhouse and the fourth at the Magic. Could possibly layer a Dan Hoyle show in there too.

At home there are lentils with feta, tabboule and Mauritanian Shrimp. It might not be a bad day for Domin-nik to be hungry at lunchtime.