We've come for the Festival

This weekend is full of the kind of plans I never could have imagined myself having during my first year in New York. Nothing fancy, just particular to my life and the people who I've ended up on the same path with. (That was awful; "people with whom the same path I have ended upon"? No. Gimme a minute...) In a matter of minutes I'm off to Port Authority (Ah, Grand ol' P.A., how I love thy grandeur!) to catch the Martz bus out to Scranton, PA. There will dear John Beck pick me up, feed me lunch, then we'll catch my friend Billy Rogan's concert at The Northeast Theatre, after which will come dinner and the main event,

Almost, Maine

, with a cast of people with whom I've worked with on different shows. (Grammar lobe broken is. Resist must I joke of Yoda.) Afterwards, there will probably be much rejoicing, I'll spend the night at John's, then after a leisurely breakfast with said John, catch the bus back here in time to rehearse for a reading that night at

The Knitting Factory

.

Now, let's see how the events described above surprise us...

_________________________________________

Man. Let me just say, the genius of my friends astounds and humbles me. It was a very musical weekend. Billy Rogan is a genius of technique. GET his album, if for nothing else than to get on the cultural ground floor of a guy who is on his way to gifted reinvention of guitar music. Honestly, his current effort is a bit beyond my capacity for complete appreciation. He's so freaking

good

at his self-proclaimed "two-hand" approach that I can't quite keep up with its versatility, but nevertheless, he is good and good. Give a listen:

Billy

G.D.

Rogan, Ya'll

.

So I attended his debut concert, and it was wonderful. Part of what's great about Billy (name-dropping, I assure you, because this guy's going places) and his craft is that the practice of it is so lofty, yet his personal demeanor is so unassuming. He almost apologized for performing his unique and demanding art, yet revelled in it and shared his joy for it with all of us mere mortals. The music sounds like a whole rock band at times, replete with lead guitar, bass, and drum set, yet all performed on Billy's lone acoustic guitar. When he just relaxes a bit, and performs for individual connection more than virtuosity, he will take every audience by storm. And that's not a critique of his concert; just a perspective on where this impressive and unlimited young artist will be headed. The concert was still beautiful and surprisingly magnificent. (Hi Guillermo. This is your shamelessly unabashed plug.)

Reeling from that, I caught

The Northeast Theatre

's production of

Almost, Maine

, by

John Cariani

. I must admit here that I am horribly biased about this production, having worked with all of the four-member cast in one capacity or another. Nevertheless, I must say that I believe this production was leagues beyond the accomplishment of the New York debut, which I took in about a year or more ago. When I saw that production, I thought it was enjoyable, but largely ineffective. I don't know what to attribute it to specifically, but that show left me a little cold. Technically proficient, but a little "below" the actors in some respect.

TNT's show

, however, made me care about the characters so much I didn't want to leave them. Brilliant.

Heather Stuart

,

Duane Noch

,

Conor McGuigan

and

Amber Irvin

, my hat's off to you. It might have been simple romantic entertainment, but you guys made it more. Significant. True. Lovely.

Following that, festivities ensued at John Beck's house, and they were lovely. Beer, wine, snack food...what more could we ask? I stayed up too late, and when 8:00 AM rolled around, I wanted to stay in bed in John's guest room (replete with a walnut-veneer work desk) for a few hours more. I left, however, treading boot prints in the shallow snowfall on my way to the

Martz Bus

station.

Upon arriving back in The Big Apple, it was off to perform in Nat Cassidy's reading at The Knitting Factory. It was my first time at TKF, and it was great fun. Three floors of entertainment, that place is. Oddly enough, though I didn't catch them, one of the few local bands I know,

Nakatomi Plaza

(Ya'll get the reference, right?

Die Hard

? If you don't get that--get out.), was playing there that night as well. The reading went well, and was even well-attended. Nat hopes to succeed in submitting the play to the

NYC Fringe Festival

. We'll see how that turns out, but the reading itself got nothing but positive reactions. Afterward, there was much brew-ha-ha, and bands. Nat's girlfriend,

Alexis

, performed, and I was duly impressed with her folky glory. Then

Nat (Cassidy and the Nines)

took stage, and was wonderful. I heard Nat's first NYC demo when we met, working in New Hampshire, and liked it, but had no idea how great his live show would be until I saw it tonight. It was like watching Dylan with a sense of humor.

That

able, and

that

entertaining. The crowd had a ball. That final act contained a member of the reading, and the band was

Stephanie Podunk and Ghost Town

. They were great too, with dual female vocals and rock sensibility, though they suffered a bit from classic sound-mixing issues in live performance.

It was surprising and musical weekend. I had many moments of lament for how little work I was actually doing (though the audience of "The Exiled" was very complimentary of my reading) but I can't help but grin at the abundancy of creation. It was inspiring.

And Patrick: Somehow I had pancakes both Saturday and Sunday. Miraculous pancakes...

Wallace Shawn: Call Me

Hi there, Wallace. How've you been? You're certainly looking well. I like those pants. Really I do. I'm thinking about getting some myself. Where did you get them? Oh yeah? That's part of what I love about you: stylish, yet down-to-earth. It's great. It's just great. Oh, and Wally, while I have your ear, about

The Hotel Play...

WHAT?

And, if I may pose a follow-up question:

WHY?

For those of you, avid readers, who are ignorant of

The Hotel Play

, it is a work of unparalleled...er...work by the actor probably most widely known for his portrayal of Vezzini in "The Princess Bride." And to apply a little intellectual CO2 to the burning question of how this play exploded across my horizons, see my entry dated

1/12/07

. It is a play requiring no less than 70-80 actors, covering the events of twenty-four hours in a tropical hotel. It has a ton of characters about whom we learn only a little from selected moments of their day, and who are designated only by certain demographic information, such as "Middle Aged Couple" and "Man Who Listens to Fish Story." The only character representing a through-line in this forty-two-page epic is the clerk.

SPOILER:

At the end we learn that said clerk is a ruthless murderer. Possibly by accident. (It turns out "ruth" is an archaic word meaning "pity." So to be "ruthless" really does mean "lacking in pity." I am not smart enough to know this, just lucky enough to have a friend who does.)

Now, I will concede that I may have missed the point entirely. I did only read the play once, and certainly that is not enough to grasp the brilliant interconnectedness of the dramaturgical likes of

Shakespeare

,

Beckett

or

Lewis Carroll

(his adaptation of "The Illiad" for the stage--words can not describe), but I still have trouble shaking the feeling that

The Hotel Play

just doesn't quite matter. Or inform. Or entertain. Like I say: I may have missed the point. But I quote here the final line of the clerk, whilst steeped in the remains of his quasi-sadistic act:

"The pumpkins--the pumpkins, tumbling down the road..."

A line worthy even of my translation of the lyrics of Paolo Conte (

1/10/07

).

On an entirely different note, let me announce to you that I saw (solo, which seems to be a very successful formula for my enjoying the hell out of a film) on Thursday "

Children of Men

." It is the rare day when I actually need a rest that I get it, and Thursday was such a day. I had plenty I could have gotten done--what aspirant actor doesn't?--but found myself wallowing at home, unable even to compel myself to do laundry, much less write the great American novel. So out I went, in the finally-wintry weather. The best thing, the only good thing, in fact, that I can say about the way cinemas are packaging their viewing experiences these days is that even if you are running dreadfully late for a film you stand a good chance of only missing the first seventeen previews. I got in, in other words, and had one of the most satisfying movie-watching experiences I've had in a year.

The

Times review

does a fair job of summing up some of the quality of this film. I think

Manohla Dargis

is surprisingly narrow-minded in the connections she draws between "Children of Men" and current events, relating the thing wholesale to the situation in Iraq. That's hard to trace to an explanation. She started writing for The Village Voice, and both papers have reputations for waging war on the current wars, but perhaps it was a matter of having only so much column space to devote. And World War II parallels may indeed be over-worked by this time. At any rate, the climax of the movie may indeed be a sneak-peek at battles in Baghdad, but the connection I drew over and over again was to documentaries I've seen on the subject of the

Gaza Strip

.

The movie is a drastic, yet to me entirely credible, supposition on where all the evil in the world may have us heading. It's a time-honored tradition in the science fiction genre, but rarely have I seen it so intelligently, effectively and (dare we hope) humorously done. The movie is in this sense more of what I had hoped for in "

V for Vendetta

," and achieves some of the seemingly magical prognostication of "

Minority Report

"...sans the guilty aftertaste and empty calories. Its stabs at modern society are acute and undeniable. As Michael Caine's character says, we live in a society that endorses drugs for potency and assisted suicide, but marijuana is still illegal. There's even a running joke (beautifully, subtly crafted) in which different people admonish our hero for smoking, reminding him that it will kill him (thankfully, Owen is never given a line in response to this advice [and, hey, uber-geeks: the cigarettes are manufactured in similar fashion to those smoked by Willis in "

The 5th Element

"--all filter, an inch of tobacco; it's never stated, that's just the prop used]). The best joke, of course, is that even after the world goes to diarrhetic shit and all the children are gone, Julianne Moore will still look

ethereal

.

I

will

go on, if ever I get talking about this movie with someone for whom I will not spoil it. Sadly, it seems to be getting ripped for all the wrong reasons. People are trying to understand it as a science fiction movie, as an action movie (and the action sequences

are

amazing, exciting but terrible with consequence), as a well-funded art film, and so keep pegging it as being flawed for various reasons. It's not, folks. Yes, the ending is unnecessarily conclusive for a story that dares you to accept ideas about the coexistence of chance and faith that no one's been able to quite get around in the course of human history. It should have ended merely with lights approaching through the fog. Remember I said that when you see it.

The meaning to it all, here? Don't let chance trick you into visiting

The Hotel Play

. Have a little faith in the "Children of Men."

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...