Car! . . . Game on!

Five bucks to the first person who can name the movie quote.

I'm here today, folks, to talk about an addiction. My usual methods of coping with an addiction are two-fold:

1. Keep all resources and enablement as far away from me as possible; or
2. Indulge it.

The first is what I do with cookies and ice cream. Most of the time. The second is what I do with things like theatre, circus, etc., which, though legal, are often more difficult to attain than certain controlled substances. I practice "TYPE 1" coping with a number of things, not the least of which is television. I have no cable service, and a roommate who is okay with that. I've never attached an antenna to my TV. The only thing attached to it is my DVD player, and I'm seriously considering locking my DVDs in a time-sensitive safe that only opens on weekend evenings. This may seem excessive to you, but I assure you, it comes of self-awareness. And it always surprises me when I am praised for my discipline; for anything, really. Because it ain't discipline

.

Nosce te ipsum

. That's my only "discipline." If I am successful in working out regularly, it has more to do with circumstances that I can manipulate to make it easier for me than it does with any great, internal control. If I am at all impressive in my dedication to pursuing acting, it is as much because I have made my life so it's harder without the theatre, as it is because I feel theatre on a deeper level than some. It's choices, hopefully wise ones. I suppose maybe that's all discipline really is--a series of helpful choices.

My point? I have no point. (Haven't you been reading my 'blog long enough to know that?) But my purpose is to reveal that I have accidentally tripped over TYPE 1 into TYPE 2 on an old addiction. My circumstance became less helpful, I wasn't vigilant enough, and one thing led to another. Thus, I am indulging, once again, in that most insidious addiction:

Games.

More specifically:

Video games.

I know.

I know

. Therein does not lie the most productive use of my time! In point of fact, it is an astonishingly effective time-sucker. If you play, you know what I mean. You sit to play, maybe an hour, and when you look blearily up from your electronic pursuit, it's dawn. Someone is poking you in the head, making sure you aren't in a reflexive coma. Your survival instinct has been channeled into a screen for half a day, in which time your Mom has called saying she's fallen and she can't get up, and you didn't hear it because you thought it was the aliens firing plasma at your sidekick. The last time I was this plugged-in to the gaming world was when I was about 14, playing a

D&D game

in the basement (you flew dragons; it was really cool) while listening to Nirvana on my grandfather's

single-speaker cassette player

.

How did I come to this prepubescent nexus? A variety of factors are involved:

1. Friend D. Younce started emailing me about a year ago about game theory.
2. I gave unto myself a chemical epiditymitus (see 12/31/06), rendering me unable to exercise with purpose for months.
3.  
4. Friend Heather loaned me "Catch-22" to read.
5.  
6. Friend Adam got an XBox 360.
7. Friend Mark started playing "City of Heroes" again, and had my account reactivated so we could play together.
8. Friend D. Younce got his own "CoH" account and created a character to sidekick my own.

Perhaps you're wondering what Joseph Heller's immortal classic of war-time bureaucracy "Catch-22" has to do with my current plight. Well, I hate it. I am not enjoying it at all. This must be

my

problem, for it is widely acknowledged as hysterically funny. My feeling is that it excels with great vigor at telling the same joke ad nauseum.

War doesn't make sense, and neither do people, and we'll never, ever, stop.

I know: It doesn't even have a fart in it. Nevertheless, I am compelled to finish it. I only have 100 more pages to go. One hundred unrelenting pages, just sitting there, getting read four or five pages at a time. But oh, here's that

GameBoy Advance

dear Megan got me two years ago. So portable. So full of colored light patterns bent on my destruction...

So here I am, visiting Adam way up in Washington Heights to play "Gears of War," coming back home to sit at my laptop to play "City of Heroes," and during the subway ride I make Luke Skywalker my avatar for our journey through the only three Star Wars movies that matter. I am the addicted. I am the damned.

But it will pass (God, please make it pass). Because when all's said and done, I'd much rather be rehearsing a play or bettering my handstand, which is why the guilt. If I were "normal," and had a 9-5 job, and after I paid the bills could afford sections of time to save the virtual world, I doubt I would have this complex. But mine is not the "normal" life, and my "free" time is needed for a variety of pursuits, such as mailing resumes/headshots/cover letters, rehearsing audition pieces, networking and learning at long last how to do a kip-up. Hence: guilt.

But it's not rewardless. Sure, it's easy and artificial and time-consuming, but the game(s) has changed since I started wondering what it would be like to kiss a girl. Last night, for example, I signed on to "CoH" and discovered Youncey online. He lives in NoVa, and I see him maybe twice a year, if I'm lucky. And last night our heroic personae, Peppah (yours truly) and Salt Shakah (his, truly) got their asses whupped together for a couple of hours. Having a reason to see Adam more frequently than whenever the latest kung fu movie comes out is also great, and we end up talking about his stand-up comedy and my commedia dell'arte more than we might otherwise.

So all that remains (when my "discipline" kicks back in) is to sell my GameBoy on eBay. Maybe with the funds I can afford the Cliffs Notes on "Catch-22" . . .

The Food of Love

Still buzzing from my musical experiences this weekend past. I listen to music so much, I take it for granted. Silence becomes deafening, like a presence rather than an absence. Yet listening to my iPod any time I'm in travel, or alone . . . or breathing . . . has rather blunted my musical appreciation. Seeing live shows this weekend reawoke that sensibility in me a good bit. Obviously music is more emotionally affective when it's performed live (assuming it's performed competently [remind me to tell you about my one and only experience seeing

Smashing Pumpkins

perform]) but somehow I lose more and more sight of that connection the longer I spend not attending a live show. Which is ridiculous, because the exact same thing occurs in the theatre, so you'd think little ol' me could keep the notion in his little ol' brain long enough to remember to get out and see more live music. {I and Me are going to have to have a talk to figure out exactly what My glitch is.} It's cheaper than a movie, and there's all that wonderful subculture begging to be coolly appreciated.

Back when I was still in school, at

Virginia Commonwealth University

(V.C.U. ... unt V. haf vays of meking U. tok!), I realized one day that I hadn't thought very hard about why I was doing what I was doing with my life. Which was funny, because I'm generally a pretty thoughtful kind of guy, and moreso back when I didn't have a head crammed with bills, taxes, health issues and pressing social concerns. Specifically, I recognized that a lot of what I was getting out of my practice of acting was therapeutic satisfaction and, while that's all fine and good and all, I didn't judge that to be a very good basis for a (potentially) life-long pursuit. So I thought about it a bit, which led me to question what good theatre itself specifically accomplished. I mean, what is its particular value? I thought that if I could figure that out to my satisfaction, I could judge if it was worth doing. Because I didn't want to be doing something for my whole life that was only for me. If all I was accomplishing was a little much-needed venting and personal exploration, I may as well have hung up my aspirations and become an accountant who occasionally performs in community theatre productions. {A noble occupation, of course. Dad. If you're reading this.}

So I thought about it, backstage, in my dorm, in English classes, etc. And what I came up with has carried me through a lot of questioning times in my career. And I was reminded of it last night, when I was out

way

too late for a school night, listening to friends play music in a downtown basement.

My perspective of contemporary, western society is that we are all becoming dehumanized by little bits. Pixels. Zeroes and ones. Tiny squares. Great, big flat squares. All of them windows, all look, no touch. I don't hold myself above this, nor do I rail against the mediums. (I mean, I'm writing you from a weblog here, and it's not like I'm turning down

Spielberg

when he calls. Yes:

When

.) Rather, I see my stage work as restoring some of that sense of humanity, of actual connection. If you get coaxed to see a play, regardless of its artistic merit or content you are connecting in actual space with that pair of round windows most of us have attached to the fronts of our faces. And it matters. Moreover, theatre allows us the experience of being lifted into this experience rather than forcing it upon us. You go to be entertained, to ostensibly receive similar entertainment to movies and television, in that a fictional performance with some emphasis on verisimilitude is going to occur. A story will be told. In this way, we relax into a familiar arrangement. But theatre, and only theatre, takes this journey

through

its window. Anything can happen, in real time with real people, and if it succeeds a play leaves us feeling

more

human,

more

connected. Awakened instead of subdued.

I have a lot of short-term gigs coming up (including one in film), so it was good to be reminded of the personal value of this work from an unexpected source. Go out and support the lively arts, folks. I acknowledge that it can be expensive and risky. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Play on.

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."

Seeking M&F Actors, Singers, Dancers, Stunt People, Accountants, War Criminals, et al...

Who here hasn't seen "

The Princess Bride

"?

Okay. Get the hell out. Yes: Right now. Don't look at me like that. I'm completely serious. I'm going to need you to go out and not come back until you've seen the film. It's a simple request. Go on. Go....

Thank God they're finally gone. Okay, all we normal human beings, this movie has been a rather continuous presence in my life ever since it came onto video. (For my younger readers, video:DVD::cassettes:CDs. What's a cassette? Medieval torture device. Never mind. Go back to your Sidekick/PSP/iHat.) I'm sure most people of my generation will concur, unless of course they were too busy outside playing sports during their childhoods. (Childrenhood?) Just recently, however, the movie has been insisting upon my attention. I got the DVD (See? I know what's hip.) for Christmas, as well as the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, and it's being quoted to me left-right-and-center. This morning my friend texted (I hate that as a verb, by the way: texted.) me at 8:00 am (his friend status thereby endangered) to inform me of this self-same movie playing a midnight show at the Sunshine Landmark theater tonight (friend status re-assured).

And two days ago I received an email from someone whom I can pretty confidently call a former, or lost, friend, referring me to this play:

The Hotel Play

. It included instructions to be cast as the lead in it and then call her.

The play is by Wallace Shawn, or as most of us would know him, "

Vezzini

," the Sicilian, red-herring mastermind of Prince Humperdinck's malicious ploy. (That sentence should root out any non-P.B.-seeing bastards. Get OUT of here!) I can't claim to be a devoted fan of Mr. Shawn's, but I have enjoyed him in everything I've seen him do. The play is enormously appealing. The porter sound like he's right in line with a lot of the kinds of characters I've created and played for

Zuppa del Giorno

. The glitch, of course, and the thing that puts such a sardonic twist on this potential reunion of at least email contact with an old friend, is that the play literally calls for 70-80 actors. Wallace seems to feel part of the point is to have each of a huge cast of characters played by an individual, rather than by, say, a dozen character actors. It would be fascinating to see produced. And it's an ingenious ploy (what else from "Vezzini"?) for never, ever getting your play produced.

List of things Not To Do:

1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia;
2. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line; and
3.  
4. Never attempt to get over 10 actors in a room together without serving alcohol.

I haven't had the pleasure of reading the play yet, but I'm going out to look for it today. Hopefully I'll remember to update the adoring fans of this here 'blog with a Pulitzer-worthy review. Hopefully it exists in print.

But above all, I hope that my former friend and I have, well, hope for being friends once again. I have a nasty habit of severing relationships that I really didn't want to do so to. Sometimes it's the choice of the other, sometimes it's the unconscious act of neglecting them for other (usually obsessively artistic) priorities. Sometimes it's even a conscious act, when I come to find I've developed an unhealthy sort of interaction with someone. Overall, I wonder if these severings don't come about in part owing to the transitory nature of the theatre work.

It shouldn't be difficult, in this day and age of constant contact--of the attainability of

everyone

by one means or another--to remain friends with your friends in spite of constant travel. Regardless of how dehumanizing email and telephone interaction may or may not be, it still facilitates keeping with someone's head-space (and, I dare say, heart-space) marvelously. Imagine your first girl/boyfriend leaving to sail the world and make her/his fortune, the only means of communication being the happenstance of crossing paths with another ship bound for home, and all the circumstances that may involve. Madness, the faith it would entail. (Yes, I am stealing wantonly from "The Princess Bride") Yet it is difficult for me to keep my friendships alive even in our contemporary context. And it's not just the travel, though that makes it significantly easier to become neglectful of people. It's also the struggle to live without too much routine, without too much assumption. The adventure itself of an examined life becomes a sort of friend, following you everywhere, so long as you make honest choices that allow for unpredictable possibility. That's hard for a lot of people to understand and, frankly, easy for such people to judge harshly. And more than keeping one away from regular contact with one's friends, such a life also creates a turbulence or resonance that some people can't abide.

I have a real love/hate relationship with that turbulence.

I had a dinner/acrobalance/planning session with my dear friend Patrick last night in preparation for a workshop we're teaching together at KC/ACTF next week, and our conversation turned to this subject, somewhat. As he is wont to do, Patrick reminded me that it's entirely possible to live

The Third Life

[patent pending] with all the stability and security of a First or Second one (this in response to my entry

12/31/06

), one just has to avoid viewing it as an impossibility. I have to decide if that's the way I want it.

And I don't know if this former friend really wants to reunite, if enough water has passed under enough bridges. I think she felt, when we rather unofficially bid one another adieu years ago, that I had at worst manipulated her life, and at best had a profoundly unhelpful impact upon it. In the face of such a problem, in light of my lifestyle having gotten no less adventurous, is it possible to heal a friendship?

It's just conceivable.

"You ain't shit. You ain't about nothin'."

This past September I found myself suddenly teaching filmmaking to South Bronx high school freshmen. I mean it when I say "suddenly." It ocurred with great suddeness. Ask me how it happened and I'm likely to give you a blank stare. "How what happened?" I'll ask, then blink twice, look around me and exclaim, "

There's water at the bottom of the ocean

!"

Actually, how it happened was that I returned to the city from months of travels abroad, spoke to my friend Alison and happened to mention that I wanted to continue, in the city, the teaching I had experienced elsewhere in the summer months. Bing. Bang. Alison and her roomate Briana and their friend Sam are collectively hanging with their friend Rebecca, who administers at

Wingspan Arts

and is desperately seeking a replacement. Boom. A troika of testimony on my behalf lands me an interview which lands me the job.

Of course, I owe three women my first-born child now, but somehow I think they'll barter on trade instead.

Cut to now (

must...resist...redundant...

Morphine

reference

), when I am cutting together all the raw footage my students have filmed of themsleves over the semester, head screwed on tighter, yet still slightly awhirl with the out-of-context-ness of it all. As I watch moments from class on repeat, I vividly remember the caution with which I approached this world, a lot of which caution remains for me. I clearly don't belong there. I'm not wanted. I'm not part of the community. The students and I have earned quite a bit of each others' trust over time, but we're still aware of the different worlds we come from, the worlds we'll return to when it's all over. The moment from the semester when my caution was most apparent came during an indoor basketball game.

The kids had set up the scenario that they were two groups who had a dispute and decided to settle it by playing sports (an immensely clever ploy to get to play sports every Friday). We had just moved to a basketball court indoors, pursuant to their request to move on from football. It was a heated game, with a lot of smack-talk. At first glance, I thought they were actually playing their roles for once. It gradually became clear, however, that two of the students were getting results from one another. As such things go, when it escalated the verbal arguments became much simpler and repetitive, like a chant:

"You ain't shit. You ain't about nothin'."

"So do somethin'. So do somethin', niggah. So do somethin'."

"You ain't about nothin'."

"So do somethin', niggah!"

They were ready to go, but another teacher and I pulled them apart and eventually took them to separate rooms to cool off. Once faced with the prospect of not playing any more, they managed to quiet down and rejoin the game, keeping a wary eye on one another while projecting the image that they were doing no such thing. That game ended peacefully, and in the following weeks they seemed fine with one another. I even spoke to them together last class, to survey their thoughts on whether I should include footage of their argument or not. At first they were lackadaisically mute (stock response of the teenage set), then one said he didn't care, then the other said:

"Unless it make us look good."

"Yeah! Yeah, if it good for the movie."

"Yeah."

And as I try to splice together this spat on my roommate's iBook (O, Dell, your notebooks are cheap, but yea, they are also...well, cheap.) all the same feelings of fear grip me. I have never been able to respond to real violence appropriately. I become sort of petrified. This never happens when it's a matter of violence threatened on me or my situation, rather only when others are coming to it. I don't understand it. It's like being bathed in ice water all of the sudden and frozen to the spot.

The really startling thing about rewatching the tape, however, was to notice what the two were actually saying. "You ain't about nothin'." It's devastating, isn't it? A terrible thought. And one which I believe we're all somewhat afraid of. It's horrifying to imagine that I might not be about anything, that I'm just a collection of random occurrences. I don't know; maybe some people are completely at ease with that idea. I'm not.

I've been lucky to visit these kids in part of their world, and I wish I could show them more of mine. I've got two classes left, the last being when we show their film to the rest of the school. I hope it's been about something to them. I know each of them is about something important to me.