Cast of "Thanks for Coming" and "Thanks for Waiting"

     I stood in a Long Beach city parking lot yesterday and watched the big puddle of reddish liquid flow out from underneath my car.  “The tell-tale color of water and coolant,” I thought.  “My car is bleeding.  This can’t be good.”
     And, of course, it wasn’t.  With a flashlight and mirror, the mechanic guru at the 10^th Street Garage determined that, for starters, the o-rings and the pipe from radiator to water pump were corroded – or something like that.  What I actually heard was “two or three days,” “end of next week,” and “$500.”  So much for that quick trip to L.A. I was thinking about,
     I had just spent the twenty-five minute drive from Oysterville to Long Beach trying to figure out how we could manage to get down to the Complex Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood to see my son, Charlie, in a new play.  It runs for one long weekend only.  Seeing it is just a matter of time and money, and now both had apparently run out.  Literally.
     The play is actually two one-acts – “Thanks for Coming” and “Thanks for Waiting.”  Charlie (at left, wearing a white shirt in the publicity shot of the cast) plays Larry Granger, “a veteran Hollywood casting-director-slash-producer who got into the business to make movies, not compromises – but he has sold his soul for commercial success.” 
     The play is a comedy and Charlie describes his role as a ‘leading man’ sort.  He was surprised when he got the part, as he thinks of his acting strengths more in terms of off-beat, mad scientist type roles.  I, of course, think of him as a genius – what good mom wouldn’t? – and I had the idea that we could leave next Thursday, drive south in two long days, see the play on Friday night, and drive back to be in time for our own Monday dress rehearsal of “Shoalwater Shenanigans.”
     Well, as they say, timing is everything.  Charlie’s play runs for that one long weekend only.  On the very two days we should be on the road south, our car will be incapacitated.  To say nothing of our bank account.