This Pigeon, She Limps

If you get no other lesson or nugget of wit'sdom from this here entry, please let it be this:

The FedEx/Kinko's at Astor Place is the devil.

I am not joking. "Ha ha," you think with private, interior laughter, "He is calling a

location

the

ultimate creature of evil

, which is a hyperbolic impossibility and therefore meant to induce laughter. Ha ha." Or perhaps, "Ah yes, the righteous artist, rebelling against the establishment and insidious corporations that are dug into our society like bedbugs attracted to the heat of our commerce. Rail on, my scrupulous-yet-ultimately-doomed-to-failure savant. Rail on." Or just maybe: "Dude. Chill. So they screwed up your order. It happens."

WELL THAT'S WHERE YOU'D BE WRONG! 'Cause they didn't just "screw up my order" (and don't use that tone of typography with me, mister) once or twice, but yesterday would represent the double-digit rite of passage as they rocketed from 7 to 10 incidents of humping the dignity out of me. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that yesterday was the final straw for me and ol' Astor Place FE/K's, regardless of the convenience of their location, and I encourage everyone to find a local place--where they'll learn your name, like on Cheers--for all your copying and shipping needs. Though the fine people at the 52nd Street FE/K's are quite awesome, I must admit.

Anyway. So yesterday I'm holding up the wall (and holding in my Hulk-like rage ["Don't neglect the manufacture of my brochures...you wouldn't like me when the manufacture of my brochures has been neglected...."]) outside said Kinko's establishment-o'-evil, and I espy me another injured pigeon (see

1/8/07

), this one fully legged but limping. Again I'm confronted with the question of how exactly this pigeon (or any pigeon) comes to be limping, exactly. But again, too, I'm given hope by the image. The pigeon flies perfectly well, and does so to escape an oncoming minivan. For our younger readers, a "minivan" is what "SUVs" were before Americans started playing the I'm-taller-No-I'm-taller game. See also "station wagon" and "Hummer" for further extrapolations in both directions.

Speaking of cars, Heather ended up with a

red PT Cruiser

for a rental, so we headed down to Philly in style (and I did not crush the dashboard with FedUp/Killyouse frustration) and got there in good time.

To discover that no one came to our

workshop

.

So, maybe the Gods of Copies knew something I didn't. Maybe I used up all my attendance karma at KCACTF (see

1/17/07

). Maybe it was just the "Blue Monday" factor. Apparently, January 22nd has been deemed, for a variety of factors, the most depressing day of the year (this seems wrong somehow; it's the kind of thing I'd expect to be kept track of by a lunar calendar, and thereby float over the Gregorian days, like Hanukkah; anyway:) and had Heather and I but known, we might have scheduled our workshop for another time. Instead, we taught Heather's friend Kelly some acrobalance, discussed methods of creating physical characterizations, and joked profusely over the lack of attendance. It was a good excuse to spend three hours training, and we took it. We stayed at Kelly and Diane's last night, amidst their menagerie of catsandonedog, and this morning drove back into Brooklyn, whereupon I caught the train into work here.

What's my point? I have no point. Feel free to make observations of the events herein and interpret them as you will. This is a twenty-four-hour period in the life of an actor/teacher/artist doing something related to their craft(s). But perhaps this doesn't pique your attention, blunted as it is by constant in-streaming of advertising and appetite-driven media. Very well. A dream I had...a nightmare, actually:

This was Saturday night, amidst my gloriously care-free weekend (it always is, isn't it?). It was part of a larger dream, but this is the only part I can remember:

Wait for it:

Okay:

I'm walking up a sidewalk in the Bronx. I'm on my way to some kind of party, possibly a barbecue, and I was supposed to bring meat. Ahead of me, his leash tied to a radiator outside a store front (what's a radiator doing outside?), is a medium-sized black dog. Not sure of the breed. Possibly an

Australian Kelpie

mix. (This from looking up breeds; I don't know them instinctively.) So it's suddenly imperative to me to get out my

Ginsu knife

and cut the dog into four even pieces down its back. Which I do. The dog is now held together by I know not what, and just looks at me, very sadly, ever-so-slightly whimpering. Now I'm in trouble deep, I know, because the owner is probably just inside the store. So I scoop up the severed dog, rather like how one holds a few boxes together by applying inward pressure in a two-sided grip, and run him around the corner. Now I'm in a neighborhood much more suburban looking, and possibly a cul-de-sac I knew not far from where I grew up. I put the dog down and sort of lay down with it (him, I know it's a him) in a nook of curb, semi-obstructed by trees, and think to myself "Oh man. Now I have to kill it." To put it out of its misery and so I have something to bring to the party, presumably. I decide slitting its throat is what needs to happen. (Why that's going to succeed where full-body amputations didn't, ask not me.) So I prepare to cut him...

And wake up. It might be angst over allowing the film to be cut (see

1/21/07

, "Film Debuts"). It may be about a metric tonne of guilt over some of the seemingly brutal decisions I've made in my life of late. It may just be I was hungry that night, and couldn't summon the creativity to imagine a

Royale w/ Cheese

. All in all, however, I would rather have the kind of dreams my friend Dave has:

Dave's dream.

Eva Green: Call me. We'll do lunch. I know this great

place

in the medieval quarter of Orvieto...

I'm in UR Epic, Stitchin' UR Chrysanthemumz

Dudes. Oh my dudes.

Last night, in recognition of Adam's (sister's roommate-slash-boyfriend) birthday, we graced the AMC 25 at 42nd Street to see "

Curse of the Golden Flower

." (Afterward, we went up to their apartment in Washington Heights and played "

Gears of War

" on his new XBox360. I only mention it because I am

terrible

at console games [thumb issues {also don't touch-type

...COINCIDENCE

?}] and eventually actually found myself

not

embarrassing myself around every corner that night.)(Merely every-other corner.) How was this movie, America inquires with fervent anticipation...?

Bad.

So bad.

It was bad.

Now, I confess that I may be missing the point here, somewhat. It's always difficult to be entirely well-informed about the creative products of cultures one is not necessarily a part of. (China, in my case, for instance.) Perhaps this movie was actually a brilliant send-up of a semi-obscure form of technicolored water-torture that the folks out east engage in for entertainment purposes. Maybe the dialogue was rife with puns, analogy and metaphysical ponderances, but the donkeys who translated it for us have the collective IQ of one-and-a-half...er...donkeys. Maybe I missed the point.

I doubt it, though.

It seemed to me to be a movie that eschewed convention and decided to accomplish very little with a whole lot. It seemed to me to be a weird blend of quasi-kung-fu/art film, with Beijing Opera added for eye-bleeding visuals. It seemed to me that Shakespeare might have stolen from it for one of his tragedies, then thrown away the draft and pounded his ink-stained hand to his already-balding head and muttered "Even Titus moved better than this stuff." It seemed, to sum up, like a complete waste of time.

But my sister liked it.

Oddly enough, I just received an emailed response to my request for feedback on myself as an "artist." David Zarko has always given me excellent advice on my craft, and an opportunity presented itself to ask him for an update on his opinion on me, where I was and where he thought I ought to go. To sum up his critique in my own words, he feels I should do what I can to work with simple, vulnerable aspects of myself, rather than a certain priority he sees in me to entertain or make beauty with my acting.

It's a matter of opinion (and very limited one, since so few have seen enough of my work to have a reasonable one) but I agree with him. I only wonder if the crew behind "CotGF" might heed such advice...

Merry Christmas, Baby

I know, I know. I referenced one of those most obnoxious yuletide (Look out! The yule tide is coming in! Kids, get away from your fruitcake castle!) songs. I like the Boss, I really do. But damn. Enough already. Between that and "Feliz Navidad," it's miraculous we don't have a few more cases of holiday homicide...at least amongst the disc jockey set.

I am typing this up on my Mom's computer, which is cobbled together from various archaic components (the CPU isn't so old, really, but the monitor weighs enough to bow the hardwood shelf it squats on) and dialed up to the interwebz via something called a "phone line." I don't know why phones need a "line." I think it has something to do with the Nixon administration. At any rate, I am home for the holidays. And no, the appended picture is not of me drunkenly shrinking because I drank from Santa's special reserve of champagne, though I inevitably feel just that gluttonous after our family's Christmas dinner. (It's a photo of my performance of Lloyd Schlemiel, a silent-film style improvisatory clown, from dear Melissa's benefit for her dance company: Kinesis Project.)

So: I have survived another season (assuming that ham wasn't cured with strychnine). It was a highly successful one, if but a bit lonely for yours truly. But lonliness is easily overcome when people appreciate the gifts you give. I swear there's few greater pleasures I get than watching someone open a gift I've prepared for them. Don't think it's like I'm naturally beneficent or anything, either. It's like performance art for me. It's manipulative, actually. I love to toy with people's perceptions and expectations. As an example, one year I was dating a girl who was, shall we say, used to the finer things. I was young(er) and madly in love (it's the only way to do it, really), but also aware of how this girl (let's call her "Bertha") had learned not to get her expectations up too high for me, at least as far as material rewards go. We had an ongoing debate about why we should/n't get a cat, with me taking the typical male perspective, i.e., Cats Are Evil. So for Christmas, I bought her a pure white cat puppet. "Surprise, honey! It's a compromise for Christmas!" She was, shall we say...nonplussed. So I continued, "Oh, but it's not just a stuffed cat. Look! A puppet! Try it out!" The sweet kid, she played along, barely containing a rage I'm glad I didn't have to confront. At that point, at any rate. And wouldn't you know it, when she pulled out her hand, there was a Tiffany's box with a pair of platinum earrings within.

(This kind of game can backfire terribly. For one of Bertha's birthdays, I set her on a sort of scavenger hunt about different spots we had shared in the city. But I made the clues too hard, and received a tearful phone call whilst I sat at the end of the labyrinth. Poor Bertha. She played that through, too, inspite of my ridiculous gaff.)

These plans we draw, they can go in any direction at any time, and perhaps this is the resonance I find in performing improvisatory theatre. Even from a botched scene (or entire play), we can say we learned a new thing or two. Interestingly enough, one of the activities my family enjoyed for the New York segment of our holy daze was to see a Moliere play, School for Wives. Now, as any self-respecting BFA recipient will tell you, Moliere was heavily influenced by the Commedia dell'arte traditions, and most of his plays are drawn directly from such scenarios, or at least such stock characters. School for Wives is a brilliant example of this, and a value pack of Kudos(r) to the good people at The Pearl Theatre Company for including a "Commedia Coach" (Christopher Bayes) in their roster of hard-working artists. The entire cast was solid--one of the best overall casts I have ever seen, anywhere. Not a weak link among them. (I particularly want to note Hana Moon and Bradford Cover as exceptional actors [willfully acknowledging that such notice is easier to achieve the funnier the character is written] and T.J. Edwards as well, who demonstrated a stylistic ease between two supporting characters.) The play was performed in nearly pure commedia style (only masking the Pantalone and Dotore characters would have topped it [and no doubt scared the shit out of the audience in the process]) including some improvised dialogue and much direct address and asiding.

{I aside; you aside; we aside; they aside; we have asided; you are asiding...?}

{Here we go a'wasailing, a'wasailing are we..."}

Particularly when we are with our families, I think the ability to improvise is a valuable skill. Having only lived this experience from the aspect of son (and brother), I am remarkably narrow in my view. Nevertheless, I think most of us can agree that reuniting with any group with whom we once--and now no longer--spent our daily lives is an exercise in subconscious revisitation of our former selves. That is to say, you can take the overpriviledged kid out of the suburbs, but you can't take the suburbs out of the now-rather-less-overpriviledged kid. We return to the group, and there is a natural tendency for everyone to resume where they left off. In this context, there is no better refreshment than being able to really listen...and maybe throw in a curve ball when your loved ones are least expecting it.

But just drinking a lot of eggnog is another option. I'm off to frolic in the yule tide. The water is unseasonably warm...