Extra-Special Birthday Edition!!!

No, no, no. It's not my birthday. Not yet, anyway. It is, rather, that time of year around which all of my friends have selfishly decided to arrange their birth dates. Let's get organized here, people! Couldn't we spread them out just a little more, and maybe make them a little less immediately-after-Christmas? I swear, it's like the holidays begin for me a marathon of gift-giving every year. And I forget more birthdays than I remember! Totally; totally. I'm awful. You have to be known by me for, like, at least ten years before I start saying to you: "Wait. Wait. Isn't your birthday some time this month?"

Case in point: My adopted brother (adopted by me, that is), "Anonymous," just had his thirtieth last Friday, and I failed to plan for it. Granted, I didn't hear about the party until about a week beforehand, but I should have been better prepared all the same. I should have realized the significance of this year and--when

A Lie of the Mind

schedule conflicts were being arranged--included March 23rd as a no-go date for rehearsal. Alas, I did not, and so missed the digging of the shin.

I can be short-sighted like that, but it's also possible that I'm in denial. Anonymous' birthday kicks off the birthday schedule for my troika of oldest friends, affectionately dubbed by my mother as "

The Three Musketeers

." Anonymous is in March, I in June and Mark chimes in in August (It

is

August, right, buddy? [Man. Do I suck.]). This year, we are thirty. Ye Gods, the wonder of a round number.

It may not be wonderful, or even wondrous, yet the turning over of another decade of this life makes for some serious reflection. Even eschewing the coincidental little deadlines I set for myself at a very sage 21 years of age (see

2/5/07

), Year Thirty holds some significance for me. It holds significance in the universal subconscious as well. Jesus is widely believed to have begun his ministry in earnest 'round about that year of his life. Hamlet is often interpreted to be just thirty when he begins contemplating his readiness. And, of course, there was that

hit television extravaganza

that took the airwaves by storm for about a season and a half. My hope had been to celebrate my thirtieth year since kicking and screaming into this world in Italia, busking in

Piazza Navona

, Roma. As time inexorably jogs forward, however, the prospect of that trip grows slimmer and slimmer. Nigh anorexic. Leaving me with the question: What, then, can I do to celebrate whatever it is I am and do on that very special day?

I put it out to the universe. But it is not for this reason I 'blog at you today. Nor is it to point up the bizarre nature of an actor's schedule as it relates to his ever-patient friends (i.e., "Sure, I'll be in your wedding. That is, if I don't get a gig. Even if I get a gig, I'll try to get off, of course. Of course, if it's tech week or a performance there's nothing I can do. But count me in! Maybe..."). No, I am compelled to write today because of other people's birthdays, and the potential artistry in honoring them.

Consider all the people you've known in the course of your life. Consider not even everyone, but just those people you've held a conversation with more than once. There are probably a whole lot more than 365 at this point (not to presume too much upon the age of my [5] readers or anything). So there is the potential that every day of the year, someone you've known is celebrating his or her self; indeed, on some days, more than one is. How many people do you not speak to anymore, who are turning a year over at this moment? How many have you forgotten entirely who might be remembering you attending their sixth birthday, right now? And just what the hell is my point?

Well, I find it humbling to contemplate this. It reminds me that every day we make a choice to honor the people we've loved and who've loved us with our actions, or to not. UU's believe in the interconnectedness of all living things, and when it comes to other people, we're supposed to respect that particular interconnectedness even more. Similar to a bunch of actors on stage at a given moment, we all have to depend on each other for things to turn out right. It's frightening. It's awesome. We have to take it for granted somewhat just to get by, not panic or become mad with power. But every once in a while, it's good to be reminded how things really are.

You say it's your birthday? Well it's my birthday too; yeah. Happy birthday to you . . .

Dare You to put Your Tongue against the Subway Track...

Breach of etiquette: I triple-dog dare you.

That's also the subject of today's movie-quote quiz. I paraphrase, of course, but if you know it there should be no problem winning today's finsky.

Polar Bear swim at

The Pond

! Last one in is a higher order of human being who doesn't succumb to the pack mentality when it could mean his or her ultimate peril!

Seriously: I want to cuddle with anything with a pulse, in front of a real fireplace, whilst drinking mulled wine and humming

sea shanties

. Instead, I am diligently returned to my day job and, like an early evolution of tiny mammal, merely overjoyed to be within a contained structure that has heated air being pumped through it. On my way up from the F train today I saw a homeless person laying out in the middle of the concourse floor, covered by a ratty comforter. Show me the police officer who would kick out such a person in such weather, and I will beat that officer mercilessly. Because violence solves problems. ( <--IRONY ) Today I had the opportunity to come into closer contact with Mona's clients than I normally do. In point of fact, I had not so much contact with her client, as with her client's soon-to-be-ex-spouse. (I think as long as I don't name names I can't be fired for this disclosure.) Yes, today I actually had to venture back out into the f'ing cold to serve a summons for divorce on someone. This is the third time, in four years of working for the same attorney, that I have been blessed with the honor of this particular sort of task. It was definitely the most pleasant of the three. The individual seemed very nice and was certainly cooperative. You don't get that a lot in the business of matrimonial law. It may seem cold to perform this task under any circumstances, but I like to think that when it falls to me to perform it I have the opportunity to at least make it as painless as possible, whereas when a service service (yeah--that's accurate) is made incumbent to the same thing it is of necessity professionally cruel. That's how I comfort myself. I have no real comfort to offer the people I meet in this role. Thanks to

Neil Gaiman

for suggesting (via his characterization of

Death

) that such a service is necessary and not necessarily vile. Just tough to accept.

An artist's life is invariably an interwoven mess of his or her personal, creative and professional lives (possibly best visualized by a

Pollack painting

). I'm not going to label myself an artist (leave that to the teeming masses) but I believe this metaphor extends to all those pursuing

The Third Life

(all rights reserved pending the apocalypse), and I sometimes wonder about the interrelationship between the elements of my particular pursuit. Today's task being a case in point, as is the fact that all my adult relationships to this point have been of necessity--to one extreme or another--long-distance ones. It doesn't exactly lend one an overwhelming confidence in one's ability to commit to and make work an ongoing relationship with someone, and I mean this both in the context of romantic entanglements as well as platonic ones.

Friend Patrick has made it something of his mission to remind me:

1. Stability is not necessarily contrary to The Third Life; and
2. Struggling ________s shouldn't fret over spending time/energy on things that simply make them happy.

For which I am eternally grateful. However, this encouragement has yet to make much of a dint in my wonderment over why the ol' personal life hasn't gone quite according to Hoyle. Not that I'm eager to attribute it to forces outside of my control or anything, but occasionally I have to wonder how best to make it work. And that's on good days. On bad days, I wonder if I've lost every chance for a long-term, meaningful relationship with someone by merit of prioritizing the career to the extent that I've had too many relationships fail not to have become jaded and absurd.

I try hard not to whine about it, but I am frustrated. The simple answer is, "Let go of the acting." You want a family, choose that and let the rest go. No dice, Cochise. I get about as far with that as I do on solving a

Rubik's cube

. It's not an option, and when I try to force that square peg into the round hole (minds: kindly remove yourselves from that gutter) it all goes to De Moines in a hand basket. Of course, there are varying degrees of compromise on this topic, and I've tried to explore them. Again: Rubik's cube. (I'm going to invent a "rubrics cube"; it can only be solved by speaking parenthetical advice at it until it suffers a system error from trying to process it all and catches fire, burning red until it's turned to slag...anyway...) Somehow I'm not yet ready to get a "real job" and practice community theatre, nor to apply to grad school and channel my creative energies into directing the senior class' production of

Angels in America

. Nor any of the other possibilities that spring to mind.

Yesterday I celebrated Friend Kira's thirtieth birthday with her. This March, the girl I moved to New York to be with is finally having her dream wedding. When I got out of college and was touring with children's theatre to save up enough money to move to this big city, I set my thirtieth year as the absolute, no-holds-barred decision date for hitting it, or quitting it, as regards pursuing a conventional family life. My thirtieth is impending, occurring in early June, at which time I will hopefully be in Italy, performing a clown piece in

Piazza Navona

. (Hear me, big G? For

reals

, yo.) So much has changed for me in the past seven years, I'm no longer assured that deadline was a good call. Nevertheless, it weighs on me occasionally. Okay: more than occasionally. RATHER FREQUENTLY. Yeah. That much.

I would like to go back and delete the last two paragraphs there. If you know me, it probably sounds like whining. If you don't know me, it probably sounds like relentless self-justification. Wait: Maybe it's the reverse. If you

don't

know . . . aw, to hell with it. It makes me vulnerable to admit that stuff, but come on. All you have to do is observe me for a short while for all of the above to be self-apparent. I'm not fooling anyone. Well, maybe Santa. Because I have yet to get just coal. Though I often wonder if generic electronics might not be today's equivalent.

What might be really hard to deal with is the fact that, of all my fantasies about how my life could go, which is my fantasy for this milestone of three decades?

In Bocca al Lupo

. Acting for spare change in a city in which I don't speak the native language. Not the fireplace. Not the Willsian progeny. Hat tricks and laughter in a piazza in Rome, which is really just a kind of New York with about two more millennia of history.

So there's no simple answer. Except, perhaps, to say that life is full of surprises. I figure if I can avoid choosing to apply my tongue to sub-zero-temperature alloys, then I'm still making reasonably intelligent decisions. So: I'll see you guys at 5:00 AM tomorrow morning at The Pond!

I Am a Banana!

Dewds: Oh my dewds: What a day have had I.

Today was the suspect

KCACTF

workshop, and I must say I am SO glad I didn't bail (for fear of not being on their program:

12/15/07

). Patrick and I drove up bright and early, and spent some hours strolling the seemingly desolate

campus

, pinning up fliers for

In Bocca al Lupo

. Scavenging push-pins was fun . . . especially when we were done, landed in the check-in area just in time to hear one of the student volunteers walk in a demand to know why she couldn't find any unused push-pins on any bulletin boards. I worried (I'm a worrier) that there would be no students, for we saw so few on our lengthy back-and-forth over the campus. So many attempts at promotion have ended in disappointment for the theatre in the past, I've learned to brace myself for the worst possible outcome.

I needn't have worried.

We had nearly 50 students for the class.

I thank God:

1. They gave us a plenty-big room.
2. Patrick was there.
3. No one fell on his or her head.

Seriously: It was a liability nightmare. I suppose I should have kicked some people out, but I was just so surprised that I went straight into problem-solving mode. Five minutes before we were supposed to begin, Patrick and I quickly conferred amidst all the quasi-nervous college actors and agreed the best way to proceed would be to have them break into groups of three, see if there was enough space, then proceed in the hope that the spotters (those assigned to catch anyone who might fall) took to their jobs with grim determination.

We had them make a circle, shoulder-to-shoulder, and they essentially filled the 40x50 dance studio. To warm up, I had them count of one-two-one-two, and the twos step forward. Now we had two concentric circles, and we warmed up for about a half an hour. They were very responsive to my (cheesy, gratuitous) humor, and it wasn't too long before we were all warm in body and buzzing on the joy of being together and active. Great energy. And we did it all. In two hours, we learned the acrobalance poses of

Angel

(Superman) and

Front Thigh Stand

, worked on the dollar-bill exercise (teaching threes, separate and specific beats, listening) twice, and even covered some ground regarding building

commedia characters

from their appetites. And it ended with them almost unanimously hungry for more, which was great for

In Bocca al Lupo

. Hopefully students for that will come from this, but honestly, right now I'm just thrilled with how well it went.

That's about it, folks. I close the day, safely returned to my Brooklyn apartment now, gratefully exhausted from travel and

real

work. It was the kind of day to remember, when your work proved valuable and you feel useful and eager for more. There's a wonderful series of cartoons called "

Rejected

," by Don Hertzfeldt, that springs to my mind whenever I get in a situation that's potentially awkward or disappointing. It's a way of lightening my own mood and getting my mind off of worry. ("

My SPOON is too BIG

.") Some days, those same sheltering chants become

victory shouts

.

Fear of the Third?

Yesterday, amidst the bustle of an office desperately trying to resolve its business before the impending holy daze, I got a call from my roommate, Zoe. (An "umlaut" goes over the "e." Let this parenthetical represent "umlaut.") Now, I am a master of silencing my phone, particularly at work, but I try to make a point of answering calls from family or roommate if I'm possibly in a position in which I may. It turns out I was, at that moment, available (doing nothing but musing and typing away over some silly 'blog) and I answered to discover that the call had nothing to do with the heating, a bill or me leaving my stuff out like some kind of domestic endurance course between the work room and the kitchen. No, Zoe (an "umlaut" goes over the "e"; let this parenthetical represent "umlaut") needed help of a different sort altogether.

Zoe (a"u"got"e"ltpr"u") and her partner Dave engage in a rarefied profession, coined "acro-salsa." Under the guise of

Paradizo Dance

, these marvels of modern physicality travel the world, performing and competing with their unique synthesis of movement traditions. They rock. Seriously. I don't know performers personally who are as strong and dedicated as these guys are. I met Zo(a"u"got"e"ltpr"u") through Kate Magram, who founded a circus-dance-theatre collective called

Kirkos

. Anyway, one of Paradizo Dance's new ventures is to put out a series of instructional videos in their approaches to salsa and

acrobalance

. Last night they had space booked, were all set for another filming, and Dave's back got sprained.

Hence, the phone call to me.

Now, I'm the sort of chap (don't restrain from hollering if you hear me) who spends a certain amount of his day planning out his evening--at least on the rare occasion when that evening's activities are not otherwise prescribed. This becomes a particular priority to me in times of flurry-ous activity, i.e., the week before Christmas. At the time Zoe(") caught me in these machinations, I had a good plan all well and settled: 1) visit Geoff at bar (Live Bait) and deliver Xmas present, have dinner+beer(s); 2) wrap-up Xmas shopping; 3) go home and start laundry; and 4) catalogue footage from film-making class. All-in-all, a nice little stratagem, sleekly designed to annihilate a certain amount of holiday stress. To top this off, about a month ago I injured my groin, or, in medical specificity, my

ballular area

. (What can I say? My sister's a nurse.) And so, when Z. proposed my presence as a base to her flyer for the purposes of posterity, I had a moment.

One of doubt.

Perhaps more anxiety than doubt, or inconvenience, but all roads led to doubt in the final summation.

I changed my plans. I went to

BAX

and helped out. Nothing spectacular happened. My groin did not 'asplode. My list of things-to-do remains precariously heavy. I'm so glad I made that choice.

Now for something completely different.

My dear friend,

Patrick Lacey

, began a project right around the autumnal equinox called

The Traveling Muse

. He began it by distributing three masks of his own making to the fellow members of our little group, The Exploding Yurts. (No, it's not a yodel-rock band from Sweden, it's a creative collaborative from the five boroughs.) The assignment was, amongst other things, to hold onto the mask for a month, then send it on. There's a lot that goes into it, but as I understand it the basic idea was to create something, send it out into the world to exist on its own and affect people as it will (though I'm pretty certain Patrick hopes it will inspire change for each person, be it in smaller or larger ways). Great idea. LOVE IT.

Loved it so much, in fact, that I was guilty of hanging onto the Muse for nearly three bloody months. There it sat, on the wall opposite my desk, boring its non-existent irises into my back. For me, it served as a reminder of all the things I'd rather be doing--indeed, feel I

ought

to be doing--if only I were in a demographic with more time for such things. It's possible it even inspired me to make more time, somehow; eke it out of my already jam-packed Third Life. All the while, I dreamed about when and to whom I would release it, and what effect it might have on him or her.

I got the most unexpected result. The person I sent the Muse to received it with enthusiasm, but when I explained to her about its purpose, she declined to engage in the project. The Muse will soon be winding its way back to Brooklyn.

There could have been any number of reasons. Perhaps she was too busy to be bothered, or maybe the project didn't make sense to her. Or, if it did, maybe it just wasn't something she could find the value in. There must be hundreds of reasons along these lines

not

to do it.

Yet it inspired in me a new idea about how a person might react to the kind of invitation the Muses are extending them. That reaction is: Fear. (A kissing cousin with Doubt.) Some people might be frightened by an excuse to step back and examine their wants, wishes, desires, dreams. Some may view their imagination as a place fraught with danger, unpredictability and disappointment. And, you know, I believe such people are right. It is dangerous in there. It may be where you got to make out with Angelina Jolie, but it's also where insanity sets its roots, and where Brad Pitt beats you down...and not in that nice Fight Club way.

I was reminded a couple of months ago of what an act of bravery any creative examination is when I had the opportunity to listen to Neil Gaiman speak during a tour promoting his new

book

. (It's a great read, as is his 'blog, which he writes in daily.) He talked about a lot, but what was striking about it all was to sit there and take in a person who had made his entire life about his creations, stuff purely from his mind and its collaborations with other minds. I thought, "God. That takes balls."

It does. Now, I don't know if my friend who is mailing back the Muse had this reaction. I can only guess. But the events of the past twenty-four hours add up to remind me that

The Third Life

(tm) is a high-stakes game, and playing it for too long can make one a little jaded to the feelings of others who may not be as involved in that particular game. Every act of creative examination is a very, very brave thing.

Three is funny.

There are quite a few axioms in Comedy. (I choose here to make a distinction between "comedy" and "Comedy"; comedy is when you pay $10.75 for the privilege of seeing the other half of the jokes, those

not

exposed in the trailers, and Comedy is the process of making the funny sans benefit of editing and CGI [I briefly considered making the distinction between the terms the way we {read: Americans} do with theater/theatre, but "comedye" looks too much like an emo band name.]) Some axioms that spring readily to mind:

• Three is funny. Generally speaking, there's something about repetition in threes that just works.
• It's all in the timing. Both an axiom and a warning akin to "Starve a cold, feed a fever." Some people think the funny relies on volume and energy, and these so-called people should be dragged into the street and shot.
• Never work with children or animals. They will always upstage you.
• Always work with children and/or animals. They are often unpredictable, hence always funny. This is a producer's rule, and, therefore, inherently flawed.
• Wear a funny hat. Ridiculous? Cheap? What are you, Richelieu?

So we have these "rules," wheresoever they may spring from. Some are fond of saying they definitively come from the vaudeville tradition but, frankly, I think vaudeville is more likely responsible for developing them into one-liner phrasing. Chances are that these ideas stretch about as far back as any oral tradition. My opinion in this is, of course, biased by the fact that I have devoted a certain percentage of my adult (HA!) career (HA-HA!) studying

Commedia dell'arte

and adapting it into a contemporary context. So I have become a little concrete in my views of evolving performance traditions, at least insofar as my belief that everything-steals-from-everything goes.

As a result of my associations, I began to wonder yesterday (yesterday's when I thought in actual language, the idea's been floating about in me for sometime in the form of a mental, "Huh...") if a particular axiom of comedy and a certain law of improvisation weren't existing in conflict to one another.

(Interestingly enough [to me, anyway], yesterday I also impulse-bought a movie,

Imagine Me and You

, that I had impulse-seen about a year ago. One of the cleverer bits of dialogue involves a paradox: What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? This leads me to be more willing to accept that the question I'm about to pose is unanswerable, which, in turn, leads me to question how much credence romantic comedies bear in my worldview.)

So here they are:

In improvisation, the players must say "yes" to one another in all things.

and/but

In comedy, contradiction and reversal of expectation are funny.

Sew. Perhaps it isn't an omnipotence paradox, but if you've ever been on stage and trying to make a scene fly, it sure as hell can feel omni-important. I'd be curious to hear anyone's comments on this. I'm aware that it's not directly contradictory. In a given improvisation, you can introduce elements that defy expectation, and your scene partner(s) can support that choice, and/or supplement it with more surprises. The contradiction humor, however, is virtually impossible to incorporate into free-form improv. As an (admittedly stilted) example of what I mean:

"Konstantine, we've got to get to Moscow."

"Da."

"I've got the perfect solution."

"Da?"

"You know how you've always been good at yodelling?"

"Da..."

"And I've always been an excellent knitter?"

"Da..."

"And we are descended from the Czars, and our favorite band is The Exploding Yurts, and we can seduce any woman so long as Saturn is in retrograde?"

"Da, da and da!"

"Then all we have to do is invent a knitted iPod that fits into a woman's hiking pack and comes preloaded with The Exploding Yurts covering 'Styurgenburginfjordinhewt-yay-hee-hoo,' stamp it with the royal seal, and we'll make enough to finally, finally get to Moscow. Whadaya say?"

"Nyet."

"What? For God's sake, why not?"

"You never say 'please' anymore."

I wish I had enough of a grasp of Russian vernacular to translate "whadaya."

Okay, admittedly, the dialogue sucks. But I assure you the structure is classic. And in a free-form improvisation, you can't use it. Why? Because negation of ideas in an improvised scene that has no underlying structure almost guarantees that you'll send the scene into a dizzying downward spiral of bickery and waffling (sounds like excellent UK cuisine, but terrible to happen on stage). Now, sure, if you have pre-agreement that the scene will end in a particular way or something will be accomplished by the end (structured improvisation, see Commedia dell'arte) you can certainly bicker, because your characters are nice and established, and the goal is imminent and agreed. Creating all on the fly, however, is another matter.

Normally, what happens in this scenario is the "yes" law trumps the "contradiction" axiom. The object continues to exist. And that's fine. But I find it fascinating that rules of comedy and rules of improvisation may be in conflict. In this sense, we prioritize of necessity the scene above the laugh. That's as well as may be (theatre teachers from my past are bristling with potential indignation) but are we, in some cases, gypping our audiences? Is there one among us who is not guilty of breaking that cardinal rule once (or twice) because s/he could practically precognate the uproariousness of their audience?

Another rule of comedy is:

• Defy all rules.

That one rather speaks for itself.