Monday, February 11, 2008

AA Auditions

Auditions are done and we have our cast. Our cast is diverse and very talented. We have a couple of core members, a returning regular and two completely new people to add to the Urban Samurai family.
It was also really refreshing to see many new faces at the first round of auditions. I am constantly amazed at the consistent quality of actors in this town.
Rehearsals will begin March 2nd. Cry HAVOC and let lose the dogs of war!!!!!

Friday, February 8, 2008

Non-Profit Hell

Well it's official, we at Urban Samurai Productions have finally passed through the seventh level of hell. Hell being the incredibly ardouous process of applying for Non-Profit status. According to our lawyer (and she could be lying) our 1023 application for 501 c3 Non-Profit status was shipped out in the year of our lord twenty-O-eight on a dim and gray but mostly dim February afternoon.
This marks an enormous mile-stone for our company that started with me back in 2005 when I was living in my friend's parents basement staring blankly at mounds of legal forms and thinking "Mmm...grunt....non-profit good! Me like free money!" Oh how young and simean I was back then. Now three years and countless gray hairs later we have completed what was begining to seem like an unending process. Of course it's not over yet. We still have to wait for the IRS to "File" our application. Evidently it takes about 6 months, though our lawyer warned that it may take longer because the IRS is "really behind right now".
We're really only at the mid-point of the process so allow me to explain what steps are involved next. We take you to the IRS headquarters where we find a short, stocky, and fairly grungy man (Who we will call Jorge) wandering the halls. Jorge is wearing mostly leather and a dishevled hat stained with grime and his own blood. He is leading a wretched looking burro with mange and dissentery that is pulling a rickety wooden cart through the halls of the seventh floor of the IRS that for some reason looks very much like a Hormel packing plant. He arrives at a battered office door that has the name "Charles W. Turt" on it but this is crossed out and below it written in blood is "Kenneth C. Tainter". He knocks on the door...there is no sound. The door flies open revealing nothing but complete darkness, a veritable black hole. Jorge, now shaking uncontrolably, timidly extends a tattered slightly charred manila envelope toward the void as he averts his eyes. Though the lable is marred to the point of being almost illegible if one were to look closely they would make out the words"Urban-Samurai Non-Profit App. Please file". Suddenly a grisly almost inhuman hand and arm shoot forth from the darkness grasping the envelope and Jorge's wrist and pulls both he and his delievery into the nothingness. And then there is silence...for a moment you think you may have heard the screaming plea's of Jorge or our Non-Profit Application but it is only the wind. What happens after this no-mortal knows.
All I can ask of you is to pray. Pray for our application that it might survive countless indescribable horrors and come back to us in one piece and approved.