Beam me the fuck up

Mad scramble to get ready for the Drafthouse show tonight (9 p.m., Alamo Lake Creek) in the Austin exurbs, testing to see if there's an audience out there. In outer space. For the love of God, Jim, not at that hour! We'll never survive!

Wackiest part of the evening came after 1 a.m. after we'd been at it setting up the stage and sound and lights and doing a tech rehearsal, ins-and-outs, for about four hours, busting butts to get ready, and we were finally getting some time to rehearse TO BOLDLY PHONE, our Star Trek piece, which is really tech heavy, loaded with sound cues. Kudos to soundman Jim McKay. Dino had to host his karoake show next door so missed most of the rehearsal, and he'd pop over trailing pure karaoke goodness to run up on stage, say a few lines and then dart away trailing pure Gag Reflex goodness to do yet more karaoke hosting. Wackily disruptive!

Then Dale throws in the f-word into one of his lines (at this point we'd been working on the Star Trek piece for a good 20 minutes) and it all went to hell. Hellarious. Like this:

McCoy: For the love of God, Jim, what time is it? Eight a.m. on a Sunday morning and what's that I hear, fucking Klingons mowing their fucking lawns? In outer fucking space?

Kirk: Get the fuck hold of yourself, Bones! We've got a fucking job to do, mister!

Spock: It is highly fucking illogical!

Kirk: Uhuru, dial the fucking Klingons! I'm gonna give them a fucking piece of my fucking mind!

Uhuru: Fucking dialing, Captain! Fuck me! A disconnect!

Scotty: Captain, the ship can't fucking take this!

Etc. etc. You get the idea. At 1 a.m. that was high-fucking-larious. So tonight we'll get together and glib like alienfuckers to get that thing ready. Nutty.

Dale brought in the yellow puppet stage, paint still damp, for Spiggets. It's cool, folds up, fits in a car, has a crushed velvet curtain. Him and Jim scrambling to get the sound set up, Julie and Kim and Clay working on setting up the stage and the little backstage awkwardly residing in the fire-exit stairwell. (Note to fie marshall: We're being very careful not to block the exit.) I put $25 on the troupe credit card at the Home Despot and set up two shoplights with 100-watt floodlights for our lights, and brought every extension cord I could find at the house for setting up stuff. Hung the lights from these movie-reel light fixtures on either wall.

It's been pretty nutty. The Drafthouse is now ready for our own special blend of comedic zaniness. As Dale said, it was easier setting up a barber shop in Chicago for a show than it was setting up the Drafthouse. After all this work I sure hope some of you people show up.