There's No People...

...Like Show People

The contractor running the renovation of my new house just said the words "Monday or Tuesday" to me. That's as in next Monday or Tuesday.

We're moving in Sunday.

They were supposed to be done last Saturday.

And that doesn't count the original agreement and scope of work which said they'd be done by memorial day.

While I may in fact no many "Show People" that don't smile when they are low - quite the reverse, I know many who frown when they are happy - there is one thing I really admire about show people:

They understand a deadline.

Oh how I wish my house were a show and the guys doing in would treat our moving in as an opening night.

There's just something about folks that do theatre, movies, or TV that gives them a special relationship with deadlines. Remember the opening of "Broadcast News"? Where the Joan Cusack character sprints through the studio building nearly getting brained by a file cabinet so that the network wouldn't accidentally run dead air? If the guys building my house had been editing that report, the network would have seen color bars.

When you work in theatre you definitely take a lot of things for granted. Being motivated to finish tasks on time is a great big one of those things.