Fringe 2010: Internet withdrawal—scheduling overload

Halfway through the evening yesterday, I lost the internet connection at my apartment. Clearly I've been spending too much time online blogging and sorting through the Minnesota Fringe website lately, because I couldn't think of a thing to do with myself.

Here's a thought, your play that you're rewriting isn't online.

There are these things called books.

Radical suggestion, maybe go to sleep at a decent hour.

The internet connection issue was still present this morning. Sigh.

So much for getting a jump on blogging, perhaps stockpiling some entries to dole out over the next few days, keep ahead of the curve.

This new bookmarking feature on the Fringe website is mighty handy. Once you sign in, if you visit a show page you like, you can bookmark it. There's a little link you can click on that appears right under the title of the show with a little heart next to it. Then later just look at your page of bookmarks, rather than have to search the whole site or look at the monster listing.

Of course, this only works effectively if you are capable of narrowing down your options.

Which, apparently, I am not.

After I got done flipping through all the shows and the Fringe program, I realized I had 117 bookmarks.

(When you stop laughing, I will continue...)

OK, so that's more than two-thirds of the festival listings.

Of which I could only see less than a third originally anyway.

So there needs to be a little more ruthless hardcore winnowing done.

Some of them will fall away easily ("Hmm, that looks interesting...").
Others will be painful ("But I really wanted to see that...").

I'd already mapped out a preliminary schedule for the first seven days when Mom's here, based on her favorites, and things I think she'd like.

Revisiting that, there were already some changes to be made. Previews and other research have made some shows must-see that weren't on my radar before. Other previews and research made me think "eh, not so much..." on a few others. Plus there's just the logistics of getting from one place to another to take into account.

I have to say, the Fringe scheduling grids you can download this year are enormously helpful. I didn't notice til yesterday that they clump venues together by location - NE Mpls, St. Paul, Uptown, West Bank. Very handy. Well done, Fringe staff! My directionally impaired brain thanks you. (Mom's better with sense of direction, but I'll only have her the first seven days of the festival. After that, I'm on my own.)

OK, day job now. Online noodling later.

Matthew A. Everett

Matthew A. Everett is a playwright and three-time recipient of support from the Minnesota State Arts Board.