Mike Mariano

While I hesitate to sucker you all into the trivia haven that is The Straight Dope, I found this article on urban legends interesting as it related to my short play

“Modern myth” has a long history (it dates back to 1911 at least), but it and “urban myth” suffer from the shortcoming that these stories aren’t myths in the sense that folklorists use the term. A myth is an orally transmitted story about the supernatural, believed by its traditional tellers, generally set in the distant past, and accounting for the origin of something.

It seems that my title, Urban Myth, is the worst way to refer to a “contemporary legend”, but I’m sure it’s quite suitable for a day in the life of Prometheus the Titan.

I’ve been blocked for over a week trying to put words in Chanel’s mouth.

Approach One: Give Chanel a speech that describes the event that dashed her hopes and caused her current heartache.

Result: Too much talking!

Approach Two: Give Chanel three, four sentences at most about the event and let the audience assume that it’s important.

Result: Her speech is stripped away to nonsense!

Approach Three: Skip the speech. Move on to more important exchanges like this one:

Cody No, Chanel, that’s not true; that’s not true at all! Every time I look at you, I can’t go a minute without thinking about my prong in your gash.

Result: Looks like I’m back on track….

I played Devil’s Advocate to Hot Pineapples Fermenting in the Sun, a Fringe Festival show that Mac Rogers credited with one of the four “Most Off-Putting Show-Description Blurbs” of the festival. Mac found their show synopsis incomprehensible, but I felt otherwise:

The description may be proof that they are performing verbatim transcripts from their spam e-mails.

And who doesn’t love spam?

But unfortunately, we learn from Eric Winick at NYTheatre.com that the play doesn’t realize the potential I had for it:

Hot Pineapples is pure self-indulgence, a college project that should never have been performed outside the classroom.

I stood up for this? Mac’s right; the Fringe stinks!

That aside, when can I sign up?