Our first rehearsal is tonight. Read through of the script, some music excerpts, meet & greet etcetera. I will document all that later tonight. For now, I thought I would mention some of what I have been doing to prepare for the role since auditions three weeks ago. So, Bobby is a  huge role, and although I don’t yet know how this will get staged in this production (which is set in the 1970’s so I don’t expect any John Doyle-esque detachment) but there is a fairly physical love scene and of course one wants to look good for such things—or at least not embarrass oneself. So, I immediately secured the cooperation of my good friend and golfball Alex Kang to bootcamp me. 10 weeks is not a lot of time and I am not expecting miracles or anything, but as I explained to him anything is better than nothing and I was willing to be aggressive about it. He is incredibly fit and has been working out forever (and it shows) but he has expressed to me frustration with helping folks out in the past, mainly because they aren’t willing to commit. We came to a meeting of the minds, I joined the Gym at campus and committed to getting fit. We did some pretty intense workout sessions before the Holiday break (omg the PAIN!) and then the gym closed for the break –dammit! We have kept up our routine of daily pushups in the a.m. (one more every day – I started at 20 cause I am a weakling and he at 25 cause he had pity on me, we are now at 39 and 43 respectively). I have added another 20 at night.  We text each other when we complete them to keep each other on task. He’s a good guy. My other good friend, Edson Gonzales, participated in one workout and had some really good advice and we were supposed to go to his gym over the break, but a tragic event with his roommate’s family derailed that. He and I will get on track with the alternate workouts when that gets a little distance on it.

Golfball Akang and I  are also committed to doing P90x which is intense, I ordered a chin-up bar and the resistance which are supposed to arrive any day now and then we are both off to the races with that – I have already begun following the P90x nutrition plan which is challenging for me because the first 30 days are very low carbs very high protein which is exactly the opposite of how I eat (I really really like rice and bread-sigh). I also don’t normally eat more than once a day and this thing requires grazing all day long which is actually really hard. I am committed. I have already created a really good egg white omelet recipe (hey! I will take pics of the prep for that tomorrow morning and share – it is actually really good!). I am surprised to find that in an omelet you don’t really notice the missing yolks, who knew? So I have stocked up on all these low fat high protein no carbs foods and am eating more greens and fruits. This has also necessitated that I prepare foods and take them to work – hence the picture above. Chicken salad, Spicy bellpepper/roma tomato relish [made by me], spinach and red-leaf lettuce. fat-free honey mustard dressing. Super low-fat, good greens/veggies, actually very tasty. I suspect I may die.

The gym is finally open again today, but only until 7pm so I am going to go over there, by MYSELF, to do an hour or so of workout before rehearsal. We shall see how that goes.  I am absolutely committed to giving Bobby the respect he is due, part of that is being disciplined about being healthy and fit and presentable for this show. Also I want to one day be buff. heh.