On a different note, I’m still desperately wanting you to hear the Lipservice podcast wherein I’m interviewed by fellow actor Steve Hendrickson – it’s really sweet. Alas, the Lipservice website is undergoing a some changes and I’m not yet allowed to link to the podcast location. Grrrrrr. Soon, though. It has a little audio-treat at the end – a clip from the Twelfth Night song recordings.

Documents have been declassified, permission has been granted, and here is your briefing:

You can now listen to the podcast in two ways.

1. Go to Lipservice Talent Guild. Click on the Podcast star. Then click on “listen…” The quicktime file (along with the rest of the site; so don’t worry, it’s not your computer) takes some time to load on the page.
2. Or you could skip the Lipservice site all-together and quickly download it here.

The entire episode is about 11 minutes long, and I’m there for roughly the second half. Therefore, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to boycott all Tom Cruise movies because he’s gone off the deep end and no one should be expected to support him and his nasty Scientology habit.

Ahhhh, gotta love those non sequiturs – they just feel so good sometimes. Look – a bunny! I like cheese. What’s that on my shoe?

Reggie and I had both narrated ice-fishing stories written by Minnesotans that accompany the photographs – you can now hear the narrations at the gallery listening station through June 18th, online (scroll down to “Art on Call Stops for OPEN-ENDED,” then click “play” to hear me on tracks numbers 2 and 3), or via telephone (dial 612.374.8200, then enter 1026. To skip the quick interview with Catherine Opie and get directly to yours-truly, press 1 – not that I would recommend doing such a thing).

In Your Eye
In the very near future the main leighahorton.com site will no longer say “coming soon.” I’m so excited, I could shout. The web-monkey has come up with a killer design, and it will have a bunch of downloadable goodies including my headshot, resume, and voice-over demo. Sometime after that main roll-out, sections for production-photos and press will be added. Yes, yes, I could shout.

In Your Future
I’m still desperately wanting you to hear the Lipservice podcast wherein I’m interviewed by fellow actor Steve Hendrickson and share a clip from the Twelfth Night song recordings – it’s really sweet. Alas, the Lipservice website is undergoing a huge re-design and I’m not yet allowed to link to the podcast location. Grrrrrr. Soon, though.

In My Dreams
I got cast at the Guthrie! Details to follow.

In Reality
Kidding about that last one.

Saturday, March 25 (through June 18)
My disembodied voice will be on the wall at the Walker Art Center as part of its newest exhibition, OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement) – just find the photographs of skyways and icehouses by Catherine Opie and nearby will be a listening-station where you can hear me read an ice-fishing story or two by local authors (this was from a public reading that I did for Opie’s residency in 2002; recently re-recorded in the studio over at Undertone by my friend, Mr. Tom). This, friends, is the one time where snowpants = sexy.

Monday, March 27
Filming a short PSA for Foster and for equality. It’ll be broadcast on the web at some point in the near future; link to snarky political statement to follow.

Getting interviewed for the April edition of the Lipservice Talent Guild podcast. It’s like my Lipservice quinceanera! Except I’m not 15 and I’m not Mexican. Okay, it’s like my Lipservice Bat Mitzvah! Wait – not 13, nor Jewish. Damn. What coming-of-age celebrations do they have for Irish/Hungarian/German/Russian Americans besides getting blitzed at prom? On second thought, don’t answer that.

Tuesday, March 28
Public reading of The Lost and Found, a new screenplay by James Byrne. Someone recently dropped out, so I will be reading several roles. Come watch me use funny voices so you can tell them all apart! Kidding, Mr. Byrne. 7 pm at The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown if you’re looking to hash up some college nostalgia; be ready with your joneses for coffee and exercises in futility.

Sunday, April 2
Screening of The Monster of Phantom Lake at the Faux Film Festival in Portland. I have family in Portland. Family, if you love me, you probably shouldn’t go to this. Our very special screening is called the B-Movie Massacre for a reason. There will be improv comedians “improving” the script, as it were. B-Movie? Check. Massacre? Check.

Saturday, April 8
Callbacks for a new low-budget (but paid) feature-film, The Completely Remarkable, Utterly Fabulous Transformation of a Regular Joe. I’ve read some of the sides and I’m already getting invested in it… I hate it when I do that. Getting invested is not acceptable unless I’ve been cast. Gah.

Wednesday, May 17
The Monster of Phantom Lake returns to The Heights Theater – back by popular demand! You’ve asked for it, and the people who can make it happen made it happen. So for those of you who had to leave early to shoot a basketball game and didn’t get to see the end, or were out of town, or were in a show, or, ahem, said you’d show up and then didn’t (you know who you are; and you should know that you’ve earned yourself the title of Chump for that little stunt) – you’ve got another chance! Cast the weight of Chumpiness aside! Redemption in the form of pure entertainment can be yours!

Saturday, June 3
I’ll be wearing my best Appropriate for Children Disguise while reading Pinocchio the Boy: Incognito in Collodi to a bunch of youngsters as part of the Walker Art Center’s Free First Saturdays program. I will be reading the book aloud, playing several characters – come watch me use funny voices so you can tell them all apart! Not kidding, Mr. Byrne.

August 3-13
The Minnesota Fringe Festival returns. And so does the Ministry of Cultural Warfare. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Some of you have recently been surprised to learn that I’m part of that company. Part of it? Hell, I’m Foster’s slave-driver (Write me a script! And make it good!)…seriously though, he’s the Artistic Director, and I’m the Executive Director and Stage Hog, which means he writes the good stuff, and I make sure people see me in it. Here’s a photo of an, um, elated Foster once he heard our name announced at the Fringe lottery! So what is MoCW going to present at Fringe this year? It’s a surprise! To us, too!

Summary
While I shared all of the above so that I could be instrumental in getting you away from the computer and into an active role as part of the arts community, I also did it to prove to myself that I’m a working actor. Sometimes I freak out about stagnancy. List compiled = freak-out averted. Mostly. There are some awfully obnoxious gaps between the April and May gigs, and again between June and August. Perhaps those would be good times to go to New York and San Diego, respectively. Yes. Freak-out officially averted.

Cool busy thing number one: The WTO ministerial is happening in Hong Kong this week, and therefore I am reporting for the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Radio Hong Kong daily. They send me the news they want covered, I record it here in the U.S. of A., then upload it to the IATP website. Then Foster and Tyson, a couple of the many IATP staffers actually IN Hong Kong right now, compile it with the interviews they took that day and release the little bugger to the world.

Cool busy thing number two: I got cast in my favorite Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, at Theatre in the Round. David Mann is directing, and I really have no idea who the rest of the cast is yet. We’ll perform in February and March.

Cool busy thing number three: I’ve officially had more auditions through Lipservice since starting a little over a month ago than I had last year with my two non-union agents combined. Sweet.

Annnnd DONE. Ttfn.

Extra-Special Internet Treat Number One is from Systm – “a downloadable how-to technology show geared towards teaching the common geek various hot topics and projects. Each episode focuses on one subject and is between 10-15 minutes in length.” Episode 4 – Podcasting demonstrates the quick and dirty of the form; from recording to digitization to web. The episode is pretty accessible, although they do assume that you have a basic understanding of computers. If you were able to get on the internet and read this, you’re a-okay.

Extra-Special Internet Treat Number Two is Audacity – a free, open-source audio-editing program. I’m just starting to get a feel for it, rather tricky since I don’t have prior knowledge of audio software or a manual; but this girl’s got a little geek and a lot of curiosity in her and that’s all it takes, right?

Armed with my newfound podcasting knowledge and recording capabilities (ha!), I spent an entire evening last week recording commercials off the television and then transcribing them into Word. One thing I learned through this tedious process is that commercials aren’t nearly as obnoxious when I don’t care about the programming…hunting them down and then deconstructing them is rather satisfying – even if rather cumbersome with a VCR. So I’ve been toying with recording these commercial scripts over the past several days, experimenting with pitch and pace and energy, and it’s been extremely helpful – even though a bit narcissistic. I’m an actor; narcissism should come as no surprise (I write a blog, for crying out loud).

With all the tech-treats in mind, one might wonder if there’s a reason for this belly-flop into Geekdom. There is a reason, and a good one at that, but it must remain under wraps for a wee bit longer. Okay, okay, it involves my strong desire to make “wee bit” into one word: weebit. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Weebit. SO CUTE! That would rank right up there in my list of all-time favorite words to say joining such notables as “button” and “pumpkin.” KIDDING. Kind of. Seriously though, I will share the reason (that makes me so excited that I want to vomit) at a later date when said reason is fully formalized. Until then, you’ll just have to settle for the weebit proposition.

The episode one issue at hand is that Foster, bless his heart, made me believe that my performance was good and that it sounds all NPRish. Just for the record: it wasn’t and it didn’t. The next time I think I can get away with “phoning it in,” I need to think again, because this is audible proof that I can’t. It just sounds, well, boring and strangely irritating. Point taken? Good.

Today at 4:45 pm, I received this e-mail:

Could you come back in tonight? There’s a FUCKING HISS all over everything.

Feh. FEH!

M

There was a stupid faulty cable that had to be positioned just so to provide hiss-free sound. The hiss was so bad that they couldn’t even minimize it to a point of usefulness in post. One would think that we would have heard this during playback, but one would be wrong.

Back I went to re-recordingville. Tonight did not rock nearly as hard as Tuesday, but it was acceptable. I kept yawning which made Foster keep yawning which made the recording session go a bit longer than planned because it kept making us laugh and whine about how tired we were; but all in all, we did good. I got a giddy call from Foster a few hours later saying that the edited piece is sounding exactly like something one would hear on NPR. Not that we want to rip off their style or anything – the point is that it sounds awesome.

I think it’s time to get a voice-demo out to the agencies. Reppe said he’d toss one together for me for free (since he has all the unedited Fringe Podcast recordings on his computer) – I shall call him. Yes, yes, I shall call him, and we shall make money. Money would be nice.

It is my understanding that IATP takes a balanced stance in response to the WTO – they assert that the purpose of the WTO is a positive, but that it is poorly mismanaged by large, self-interested corporations that should instead forge a more democratic approach including wider markets. This is all very new to me and I need to do quite a bit of research on the matter, so I may be entirely wrong in what IATP’s views are… Updates on that to follow.

I have been told that there is extremely high web traffic on IATP’s site during the fair, and that last year’s podcasts were downloaded 6,000+ times. I’d say that’s pretty good exposure, and I’m doubly lucky that I’ll again be working on something that I believe in.

If you’re not going to take a listen – for shame! (except you, Minnesota parents, California-now-Oregon parents, and Grandma – I’ll make a CD for you), just know that these numbers impress me the most:

# page views on the Minnesota Fringe Festival website: 1.1 million
Average number of page views per visit: 12
Number of tickets sold: 44,630
Number of artists involved: 1,053
Number of volunteers: 377
Number of venues: 29
Number of sold-out performances: 67

It was also a blast to hang out again with some of the wonderful people I met in Montreal when I performed in their 2004 Fringe – Foster, Cooper, and I bugged them enough to get them down to the states this year, and it was a joy to have them here with their excellent, excellent shows. At the closing party, Geoff (the Montreal Fringe Managing Director) hollered “Tag!, you’re it!” So, I guess it’s my turn to go back to Montreal in June. Oh, okaaaaay.

The Scrimshaw Show appearance went off without a hitch – and luckily there were enough other guests that night to keep me from being singled out for harassment. The brothers had their high-school creative writing teachers on as guests – snarky old men with tall, empty to-go cups of coffee (they reminded me of my favorite director and teacher from college, George Poletes, whom I was convinced was older than dust because he directed my father in shows at the University of St. Thomas circa 1962). Anyway, the evening’s guests were the aforementioned fellows along with former Look Ma, No Pants cast members Tim Uren and Dan Hetzel, in addition to myself. We all saddled up to bar stools on stage, were offered drinks, and then answered audience questions…one of which was about my “favorite farm animal” – um, what? – I gracefully handed that one off to the brilliantly funny Mr. Hetzel.

Favorite Experience at this Year’s Fringe:
Picture this: Closing night party, roughly 400 people, Leah Cooper onstage at Fringeville (the Suburban World Theater) announcing all of the staff members and having them come up on stage for a little recognition. Amy Lewis, Andrew Cleveland and I were brought up to be recognized for our work as the Out-of-Town Artist Coordinators and we were met, like everyone else, with polite applause. We stood there amongst the others as more and more staff were introduced. Then the moment: Cooper brought up stats about the podcast and then went on to introduce The Voice of the Fringe with an elaborate and highly complimentary preface including the words “The. Sexiest. Voice.” – when she finally announced my name, the audience erupted in applause and hoots and cheers. It was so thrilling I could hardly contain my joy and shock (and embarrassment at the joy and shock). It’s funny how sometimes goofy grins give away the secret that humility has lost the battle of the moment.

So the podcast stats? It turns out that the first four podcasts were downloaded from the Fringe website more than 2,000 times – that’s not even counting the ones downloaded from iTunes! And there’s one more being released today! And I was all freaked out about no-one listening (that entry was one I never posted here because I thought it sounded too needy). Way cool, way, way cool. I think this calls for an…you guessed it! – HORTON HAPPY DANCE!!!

Favorite line of the Fringe (courtesy Allegra Lingo, House Manager extraordinaire): a woman, with a small child in tow, was attempting to gain entry into a sold-out performance of “Nibblers: A Musical With Sharks” – a kid’s show, mind you – and became so angered by the sold-out status that she burst out, “Goddamn the arts! They pull you in and then they f*** you over!”

I hope somebody works that into a show next year.