BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

Saturday, August 30, 2008

live theater

    Well, I am upset about The All Powerful Blogger making the comments on my blog very very small.  I don't get it; does it make them feel powerful or something?  Since I did nothing to warrant this terrible change, I cannot think of anything to make it stop.  Except my ever-optimistic hope that it will just go back to normal soon.  


   I mean, that is what I generally do for injuries and most of the time it works.  Take my knee, for example.  Two weeks ago it was hurting, right at the patella (the knee cap, for those of you who don't remember junior high anatomy so well).  What did I do?  Just hope that it went away, and it did.  Which is what I did for my hamstring pain, my elbow pain (yeah, who hurts their elbow unless they're a tennis player?--and I am not!!!), my gluteous medious pain, and my foot pain. And again, it has worked, more or less.  But being the optimist that I am, I am gonna focus on the more part.

  Tonight, the show was kind of weird.  Let me rephrase this: the sound was really weird.  At one point, somebody's mic was popping and making horrible noises, so the sound person decided to do something to all of our mics that resulted in an unnerving alien-like noise that descended upon the poor, unsuspecting audience.  I could see them shudder and cover their ears at the noise, and I was struck with two feelings: the first was sadness that such a terrible noise was occurring during what is slated as THE BEST MUSICAL. EVER; the second was a desire to laugh because it is ironic that these people had bought tickets and were expecting to hear something beautiful, poignant, evocative, or funny--and instead were covering their ears in horror.  

  It reminded me of that scene from Serendipity where the mid-eastern flute player had made a music video and in it all of the local sheep people (or whatever they were) were covering their ears and running away from his music.  He said something like, I don't know if that gives the right impression of my music; shouldn't they be like clapping in joy and inviting me to their homes for a meal or something?

  Anyway, that was obscure, but I know Jenna will know what I am talking about, at least.  My point was, I don't think the alien-mother-ship-landing-on-earth sound was giving the right impression of our show, because certainly the audience holding their ears and shuddering was not what we were going for.  

It was unfortunate.  
But, kind of funny too.

And when I start seeing other people laughing in the show, well--it's really hard to hold it together.  I might have laughed a little on stage.  Maybe.  

But, it's live theater, folks.  Things happen in this flawed world that we live in and sometimes it means that you fall, forget a line, or miss a step, or sometimes it means that it sounds like aliens are landing on stage.  Either way, it makes for an interesting life, I think.  

11 comments:

Jessica said...

So, drew just informed me that, once you get to the comment page, you can press down the apple button and the then the plus sign button and the comments will become big again-at least if you have a mac!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Drew!!!!

counting down the days, Jess!

Jessica said...

You and me both, mom!!!!
Not too long now;-)

Anonymous said...

Right, but then all the other pages on the internet are too big!

Jason Jazemski's comments are still the right size and he's on blogger... ask him what he did!?

Anonymous said...

And you're right about live theatre, and actually filmed stuff and music and anything creative at all. There are ALWAYS things that will go wrong, the thing that matters is how the people involved handle it. In fact, when we were auditioning for Electric Chainsaw I purposely changed up the script a little to see how the people handled something unexpected.

Some DID NOT handle it well!

Anonymous said...

I DO NOT like the tiny print, either!! I am leery of doing what Drew said, because of what Jason said, so I think Ill wait and find out what you say when yours changes, Jess! Did everyone get that?! ;-)

I liked Serendipity a lot (it was just on TV recently, too) and that music video scene is funny!

Did they get the sound worked out? 'Cause that's a shame, and not what a member of OSA wants to see: the audience covering their ears and shuddering!

You know, all of life is like live theater, except you don't get to rehearse...WOW...I mean, like, wasn't that deep?! ;-)

Peaj said...

Funny, but I don't see the tiny font problem, on either Internet Explorer 7 (Windows) or Firefox 3 (Windows).

If you want a temporary fix on Internet Explorer 7, go to the View menu, select Text Size, and then pick a listed size. Set it back when you are ready for the rest of the Internet (as if you needed anything other than Jess's blog). In Firefox 3, it is View > Zoom.

And Jess, you should be able to change the text size if you want to; Go to Blogger, go to Layout, then Edit HTML. First back up your template! Then search for a string like the following:

/* Comments

Then below this string, find the string that starts with

#comments-block {

In this section (before the next "}" bracket), you might see a line that has "font-size" on it. If you do, adjust the number upward. If you don't seee such a line, add a line like the following:

font-size: 120%;

This will increase your comment font size. Make sure the line ends with a semicolon!

Congratulations, you are editing page source! You could get a job at Elany Arts!

Jessica said...

thanks for all that! but, how do I back up my template? I don't know how to do that, so I am afraid I will mess it up if I try to fix the font but don't back up the template...

Anonymous said...

To back up the template just copy and paste the existing template into like a word document or something and save that, so in case you screw something up you can just put the old code back in there.

Jessica said...

sounds too complicated...maybe I can get Drew to do it for me;-)

Peaj said...

On the "Edit HTML" page, there is a section at the top that says "Backup / Restore Template". Click the Browse button in that section, and it will prompt you to save it to your hard drive somewhere.

The problem can probably also be solved by picking a new template for your blog. You might even be able to pick a new template, and then go back to the old one and you'll get a "fixed" version of the old template. Just an idea.