Forwards

"It's a new Mother Nature taking over."

-- Three Dog Night, "No Sugar Tonight"

--

Been latent on posting lately, and the world is not at fault. It's been busy at the CTC, what with the job offer and late-notice road-related drama. Suffice it to say, I'm glad to have a job offer, and even more thrilled that the offer is a step upwards on the ladder. I've decided to stay in Cinci another year, to work for the CTC's mainstage productions (they have four).

So, pending any other opportunities that come of the League of Cincinnati Theatre auditions in the next month, I'll be in town, and I'll be working for the same folks. Just not doing the same thing. We won't be touring; that's a start. No more van, no more four-hour roadtrips to small podunky townships in rural Ohio. Not that it hasn't been enlightening. It's nice to know that we live in a country where even the smallest towns, even the most random collections of parochial people, even the seediest and lowliest American civilizations that crop up between dots on the map,--even these, God bless 'em, still have fast-food restaurants, or at the very least, a dingy diner that serves the same style of grub.

The new contract assures me four roles in four shows in the 2009-2010 season, but even more attractive than that, it offers me more time. I can get a "real" job, make some "real" money, and if it's in the cards, do some "real" theatre. (The quotations are there to show my ambivalence toward--and my skepticism of--of the future, which is not yet reality.)

--

Almost finished with the Dr. King book, too. I'm savoring, once again, his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," which sadly none of the other actors in this tour have read. Reist would crap a crab.

Alumni

"All their work has certainly bears fruit."

-- From an alumni letter I just received (maybe you read the same sentence, had the same cringing feeling?) from my alma mater

--

That letter was sent to Nebraska, not my new Ohio home address. Glad to see the bees at the ol' Hillsdale hive are savvy as to what I'm doing post-graduation. Maybe I should email someone. It is nice, though, to receive my alumni mail after it's been sifted at my parents' house. Send this one to Chris, but keep that one here, hon--that's a lame-o.

Along with the alumni caboodle came tax forms and documents. I plan to have my taxes finished by the middle of March this year. We'll see.

I'm amazed at how many people refuse--simply refuse--to file their own taxes. My dad once hired a bean counter to finagle more money from the feds, and it was a sort-of success. We got an extra $100 back. The only catch was, it cost almost twice that much for the service.

As for me, I've had my share of tax-related snags, but they have been my errors, and I own them proudly. But the fact is, in almost ten years of earning money, I have done my taxes every time around. I feel closer to my dollars as a result.

Backups

"Back that thang up."

-- edited version of Juvenile's 1999 hit, "Back that Azz Up"

--

Went through the iTunes library yesterday, copying all that music onto CDs, about two days' worth of eleven total, I think. Lots of duplicates I didn't know about, also lots of non-.mp3s that need converting. I want a homogeneous music selection, none of this diversity of technology and tracks; give me consistency, or give me silence.

Anyway, it was good to make back-ups, even for that small fraction. I have a stack of blank CDs an inch high around the black plastic spool, and a lot of files on this laptop that I don't want to lose.

And since the laptop has been making that angry grinding noise during boot-up, and has been sounding its displeasure for a good two years now, I need to start planning for the inevitable transfer.

--

I once wrote a short story--and this is in seventh grade, so humor me--called "Transfer," in which a computer programmer named Garret Sims wires money from a casino bank account and then erases his tracks. But instead of just deleting the transfer or account numbers, he goes one step farther, and deletes the casino's account entirely from the bank's system. So the casino sues the bank for negligence and the case goes to court over the next few months; but because the casino doesn't really have the finances to wage an all-out court battle, they give up and file for bankruptcy. While this is going on, Mr. Sims sips daquiris in some undisclosed island in the Carribean.

I thought it was a good story at the time.

But the reason I bring it up is this: I don't want to be that casino when this laptop craps.

--

Going up north to Springfield, OH, this evening, for our third string of all-nighters. For every show, we do this half-week stint for their arts council, which translates to us staying at the Ramada for three days and going to two or three schools per day. It's not a bad set-up, especially since we're close to a pseudo-downtown part of Springfield: Chinese beside Mexican restaurants, fast-food near the Big Lots, gas stations that stink up the area for miles around.

But it also means a lot of time in the pool and hot tub, free HBO, and nice, high-powered showers. You could complain about these per-diem trips, but really, they're a scream.

--

Re-arranged the room yesterday, too, trying to size up my possessions as I contemplate moving. Whether I stay in Cinci or move to Chi-Town, I will not be living in this cubby-hole room anymore, with its cracked marble bathroom floor, its walls painted half-blue and half-white. If I stay, I'll move to a Kentucky apartment. If possible, I'd like to avoid renting a U-Haul. My bed collapses, my books are my furniture, and as for my clothes, well, what are hangers for?

--

Been craving a pizza with tomatoes on it lately. Had to settle for a sandwich, some T-Bell and some shell pasta and cheddar last night. Tonight, at the hotel, either I'm walking blocks to the Pizza Hut, or I'm ordering Dominos. One of the two.

You've got to have a back-up when food is concerned.

Doggy

"I am the dog you put to sleep..."

-- Billy Collins, "The Remenant"

--

You'd think auditioning for the people who hired you once already would take some of the mass, the weight, the density out of your preparations. Make it fluffy, drawn-out, like a dog spread sleeping on a mat. No speed-through of old monologues, no coaching session with actor friends. The whole thing, you'd think, would be a trip into a sort of cocky reluctance: "Now, cut the BS, folks; do we really have to do this?" kind of stuff. Your attitude would be smoother, like a mirror reflecting upon rather than a corkboard stuck into. As opposed to other auditions, you would take your time learning your format, smiling at mess-ups because, hey, baby--it don't matter anyhow.

Yes and no.

Sure, it matters. You can't climb the stairs but one step at a time, and you can't trip in your ascent.

But on the other hand, they already hired you once. Not hiring you again would be an insult to you, and a gesture of regret from them. If they don't feel bad about the work you've done, they should ask you back.

Not that they have to. I've seen actors rise and fall with the flub of a line, the accidental outburst, the overnight escapade gone wrong. So throwing an audition is the inverse of them not hiring you: It's an insult to them, and a token of regret on your part. For your parts. ("To-day we have naming of parts...")

"Yesterday, we decided which parts went to whom. And you, tiny Asian squirrel, you threw the audition. So go to war, out in the wide, wide world; we have no parts listed under your name."

--

The temperature is rising outside. It's five degrees warmer today than yesterday, and tomorrow looks to go higher.

Just had a thought: Maybe the earth's rotation is a cooking method. Global warming is the natural cooking of the earth, and we are being swirled slowly to our consumption. Like a pancake being cooked on both sides, or an English goose twirling laterally on a spit, the earth is getting an even roasting. The poles will go, yes, but after the crust--(!)--has grown crispy around the middle, and the oils inside bubble with excreting excitement. We are bacteria, living in and on the meaty surface of this globe, Homo sapiens Escherichia coli, borne of dust, grown in guts, broiled in ruts. We scramble as we colonize, eager for rich depths and Vitamin D, but the oven is only coaxing us onward, upward, inward. For what strange, magnificent feast are we bound? Who are we, coming to the sacrifice, and to what green altar do we plod? And as we are hewn, served and digested, will we, this race of bacterium man, survive in the lower intestine of some galactic mammal?

Probably not. Thank God for reproduction, eh?

--

I have accumulated so much shit since August. Unless I can sell half of it, moving's gonna be a bitch.

Transcribed

"Writing began with the effort to record speech. All writing is an attempt to fix intangibles--thought, speech, what the eye observes--fixed on clay tablets, in stone, on paper. Writers capture. We playwrights on the other hand write or rather 'wright' to set these free again. Not inscribing, not de-scribing but...exscribing (?)...'W-R-I-G-H-T,' that archaism, because it's something we do, cruder, something one does with one's mitts, one's paws. To claw words up...!"

-- Happy, in Tony Kushner's Reverse Transcription

--

Been plowing through ten-minute plays lately. They are basically shortened one-acts, and one-acts are basically shortened plays. But shortened is perhaps too simple a term. They are condensed plays, like canned soups, and if diluted with the water of a two-hour play could fill more space and time. They are cranberries at the bottom of yogurt cups. They are smaller chunks of bigger moments, lifted from unwritten plays as sort of vignettes. That's it. A vignette on the stage. That's a ten-minute play.

Anyways. I've been reading them. Scouring as well as savoring, mostly searching for monologues for American or ethnic males, from mid-teen to early 20s. Time to reign it in, to aim at types.

Tomorrow, I audition for my employer, the Children's Theatre of Cincinnati. The job is for next year's traveling season, which has kept me fed and warm so far. But if I stayed in Cincinnati another year I would want to do some mainstage work, which would free up my days for "real" jobs, and a decent amount of my nights, too, perhaps for other theatre work. I want to move to Chicago, have wanted to for at least a year, but no sense burning the bridges here just because I'm sick of crossing them.

Sick is the wrong word, too. I have lived, says the dying old man; I have acted. Not that I'm a dying old man--thankfully, I have escaped the jading effects of professional acting. And shit, I'm only twenty-two. If I'm jaded already, it's time to work in the sweaty asshole of a restaurant kitchen again, forcing graciousness back into this thick, numbed skull. No, I am simply considering options, looking at the opportunities and the opportunity costs, wondering where my supply and demand curves cross, floating behind graph-paper bars between X and Y.

Speaking of crossing bridges, though, if I stayed another year, I'd also move to Kentucky. Things are cheaper and more interesting across the way, and let's face it, the view of the Cincinnati skyline is prettier than the muddy washes of Newport. (The grass might be greener there, too.)

--

So my audition tomorrow. I'm using a piece called "The Remenant" by Billy Collins, which I first heard on a Garrison Keillor collection called English Majors. It's just a nonrhyming short poem, quirky and poignant, and I'm hoping it makes a funny monologue. I've cut it down to a minute or so; with a forty-five second selection from the same song I used in Chicago, I'm certain this one's a winner. Especially if I start on all fours, like a dog, and through the strength of poetry rise in heavenly defiance. Love it.

--

Walked to Kroger today, sauntered through aisles and carried my stores home in a backpack. Five cans of vegetable broth, two cans of crushed tomato, some cheese, broccoli, peas and spinach, and some purple gloves for a Valentine's present.

There are five squashes in the kitchen basket, waiting for me to stab, slice and pry them open, scooping out their seedy innard gourd bellies with the biggest spoon I can find. I may have to bake them a little before I can peel them; apparently taking the skin off a squash is harder than being a dog.

--

Started writing a play, too, about my high-school drama teacher, and the drama (indeed!) that ensued shortly after I graduated and came to Hillsdale, a place where I was determined I would never again walk the stage.

Funny though: The rough script that came out of my head is about ten minutes long. You are what you eat, and you write what you read.

Back to vignettes.

Underneath

"You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. The money doesn't exist. What does it ultimately mean? Will there be cutbacks in those services? I think that's where we're headed."

-- Terri Sexton, http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1600656.html, in a story whose link I found using Facebook Notes

--

I've begun to use the Notes app on Facebook, or leaving comments, more like. Not that two blogs--one personal, one professional--aren't enough. It's just that even though I claim political apathy (apparently because of a "lack of social conscience"), I find political quips sprouting in the gardens of daily conversation.

Bad metaphor? Fine. Some examples (straight from this horse's chomper):

"Jeez, these roads still haven't been plowed. Good thing taxes in Cincinnati are so high."

"Being a conservative in theatre is like being a liberal at Hillsdale."

and,

(after an actor suggested America do away with the National Endowment for the Arts and replace it with a National Theatre:) "You know who else created national theatres? Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and revolutionary Ireland."

And it's been annoying, if not to others, then to myself. Why preach apathy if I'm not apathetic? Just because I, like many, don't care enough to act on a lot of these beliefs, doesn't mean I don't have them. So, to depressurize, I'll leave my comments on Facebook.

In other words, instead of living with the hypocrisy of pretending not to care, I guess I'd rather live with the hypocrisy of pretending to care.

Hm. Well, I'm over it.

--

Watched In Bruges today. I always feel weird when I watch Colin Farrell, because I think I kinda look like him. (No? Anyway.) I liked seeing Ralph Fiennes play a cockney role.

--

Tomorrow (and tonight, I suppose), I am devoid of my girlfriend and by extension, her car. (She's up north, standing up in her best friend's wedding.)

I have plans to walk fifteen minutes uphill to the nearby Kroger and gather supplies for Sunday night's dinner (squash soup, stuffed peppers and an off-brand pie are on the docket). I may push the walking a little farther west and catch an indie movie on Ludlow, or south for bistros and trinket shops and the like. Maybe I'll really balls up and walk across the river into Kentucky.

I'm also budgeting time for a lot of reading and writing. At least an hour each, hopefully in the same genre. I've no real pretensions for getting a play published anytime soon, but at the same time, the last real attempt I made was sorely and hastily thrown together for a class. This time, with time enough at last, I want to make it worth my while.

Really, tomorrow is going to be all about using the time I have alone. For an audience of one, a performance has to be perfectly tailored. And I'm not in the mood for some winter improvising, nor some standstill existentialism. I need action, monologuing, and at least one set change. And maybe a change in tactics, but that's neither here nor there.

Penguins

"This turtle can snap a broom handle in half with a single bite."

-- a sign at the Newport Aquarium

--

Touched African black-footed penguins, horseshoe crabs, various sharks and P. F. Chang's today with my girlfriend's friends. The animals live at the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky; so that one's off the list--the short, short list of nowhere-else attractions Cincinnati has to offer. Honestly not as impressive (in my opinion) as the aquarium at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, but I hear rumors that the Cincinnati Zoo is better than the Doorly. Scholars debate.

After the Aquarium, we searched in vain for the original Montgomery Inn, craving barbecued ribs. Ended up at P. F. Chang's, where the sesame chicken is spicier, the servers dress like unhooded ninjas, and the jugs of water sit on shelves beneath large Chinese statuettes (it looks like these stone ancestors are peeing into the refill jugs).

--

About the animals, before the food: Those little critters were interested in everything they saw, from shoelaces to zippers to thermometer straps. Absolute, unadulterated interest, like babies. Such naivete always confronts me with, well, naivete. It stares into my narrow eyes with its wide eyes, challenging me with its inability to challenge. Innocence cannot comprehend guilt, cannot fathom its depths.

After the van discussions of two days ago, I've been thinking more and more about what it means to be a good person, and those penguins were waddling examples of simplicity in its simplest state, the state of being unable to realize one's own simplicity.

As the penguin keeper, Crystal, told us when we first entered the penguin pen, "They either think we are big penguins or they are little people."

--

They wouldn't make good pets, though. Apparently they piss or poo about every half hour. Think of the carpets, think of the diapers.

Magnanimous

"Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Snow Flakes"

--

Yet another day of snow in the 'Natti. My toes are cold in scratchy socks, my girlfriend's best friend (and her fiancee) are coming to town for dinner, and at some point I need to do laundry. These scratchy socks are the last clean pair. They are scratchy, and they are thin. There is a hole in one heel.

All the area schools canceled at the first hour of snow last night. It was supposed to continue coming down as we slept, but this morning the ground was still mostly visible and nothing was falling from the sky. Oops.

Not to be a prick about this city's reaction to winter stuff, but they wouldn't cancel everything so needlessly if they only got a competent plowing system. Snow on the sides of roads hurts no one, and if you can count on a number of trucks to plow and salt, snowfall isn't that bad. Especially since last week's awful storm took out four days of school, why add another snow day when hardly any snow fell?

So now, sitting on a couch in a cold apartment with no show to perform all day, having all this free time seems as pointless as the tornado siren that blared a thirty-second test wail at noon. It's much ado about nothing, a desperate prayer call to a city that does not worship.

--

But it's all good. I'm planning my contribution to the house for Sunday dinner. It's my night, and I am told there are a lot of potatoes and squashes that need to be eaten.

(Side note: Yes, the plural of "squash" is "squashes." But you can also say "squash." The breakdown goes: It tastes like there is a lot of squash in this dish; why use so many squashes?")

So the idea, until I find or conceive of something better, is to do a squash soup as an appetizer, followed by some sort of starchy entree, like twice-baked potatoes. Whatever it is, it has to be vegetarian.

Profits

"Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

-- King Solomon (?), Ecclesiastes 2:11 (KJV)

--

Back on the road today, we drove two hours north and then drove two hours back, and in the latter drive, we spoke of higher things: God, free will, rabbinic parables, the problems of pain and pleasure.

The rule is that you don't discuss politics, sex or religion at work. We mostly don't talk about the first two. But the last one, probably because one of us is the daughter of a pastor and the other two are uncloseted (kinky?) Christians, and mostly because the remaining actor is a sort of deistic agnostic devil's advocate, is unavoidable. But enjoyable, too. I sometimes feel like I'm back in classes with Jackson or Reist when these conversations happen, and I wish I had a doctorate mind to plumb; I'd return with ditties and jewels and words of worth, and the ensuing silence would be golden.

And it's always nice to be able to talk about C. S. Lewis with people who won't automatically worship him. "C. S. Lewis? More like C. S. Gay!" I remember. I remember the striking prose of the English scholar, too, those moments in reading when I feel like the monk who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing: the cloud parts, lightning hits when the sparks fly upward, and for a moment, a celestial, brilliant, terrifying moment, something makes a little bit of absolute sense.

A chip on the mosaic...and all that. I'm pretentious; I'm over it.

--

Auditioned in Chicago this weekend with my girlfriend and old friends. Everyone approves of everyone. Got call-backs and hopefully will get more. Used the GPS to get around in the rental car, pigged out at Chili's downtown, brunched on Sunday--a warm, melting, bright and open-aired Sunday--in a sweet Swedish bistro.

It was a weekend of big meals: Giordano's deep dish on Friday, the biggest burger on the menu at Chili's on Saturday, and French toast and Swiss eggs in a pile the size of my head.

And the dance call was awful, because it was too fast, too furious, too fucking hard. Even seasoned dancers struggled to get through a third before blanking, slowing, stopping. Staring. My approach: Use the Elaine dance from "Seinfeld" as a default. So when I finished the first eight counts, which included three steps, two claps and one turn, I stuck out my thumbs, threw back my head, and kicked up a foot. Then did it again--a solid minute-and-a-half of Elaine moves.

And the result? A producer called my number, and asked me to come to yet another call-back. At which he told me, "You could sell your shit in a bag."

See this grin? I just ate shit; my shit; let me sell it to you. I'm an actor; I'm over it.

--

My start on Teresa's blog (she has paid for three words so far):

I'm an actress.

--

I don't know if she's over it yet. But her laughs add inspiration. So:

Between food and friends, trains and treks, monologues and dialogues, one thing was certain: Chicago was a good choice, could be a better choice, might be the best choice.

I don't talk like this. Some people write like this. Can you believe that shit? You shouldn't believe that shit.

Just because someone's good at selling it, doesn't mean you should buy it.

Hi ho.

--

Anyways. What does all of this profit this man? Maybe a future job, maybe a future move. But you know, the children's theatre assures us of our job security, come what may. So with wind in your sails, so to speak, you at least feel like you can sail anywhere. And in a business where feeling and technique are only half the battle--the other portions are one-fourth luck, one-fourth smiles and ass-kissing--you want to sail as soon as possible.

The true doldrums, after all, are not in the center of the ocean, but on the shore.