Nerd Vacation

Sitting in The Brave New Workshop after quite a past 24 hours. Picked up Joe Bill, founder of the Annoyance Theatre from the airport, made our slow way to the theatre to see a FULL evening of awesome fucking improv. Seriously, I felt as if I had had a festival full of awesome moments, all on the first night. If you are reading this and you aren't going to come down for some shows in the Twin Cities Improv Festival , you are completely incapable of learning. Partied, had some pizza and beer, hung out with the guys from Pimprov, and got a good nights sleep. Came down to uptown, had a long lusted after and dreamt about Golooney's sandwich and am now in a roomful of improv nerds all sitting at cafe tables with laptops "learning about the world" by not looking out the window. The silence occasionally shattered by a random thought, voiced by a need for peer review. Thank you whoever invented this tiny little world for me.

Memories of tuna salad subs and orange gatorade.

Theatre de la Jeune Lune announced yesterday that it is closing. 11 years ago, or so, I got asked to come in there and do a seating move. (the crappiest job ever) I ended up working there for a little over a year, or maybe it was two, I can't remember exactly. When I started, there was a guy from New Zealand, an actor, who was in the current show as an intern (read: unpaid whore) who worked in the shop with us to make a little money. I can't remember his real name because he always referred to himself as "Gorgeous Cindy." He is one of those first memories of what made me love that place so much.
When I first left college to make a living in the theatre, I really wasn't sure what I was doing, I just wanted to have enough money to get my own pager. Butch ruined that part for me, but I did figure out my path a little and the many theatres on that path all pale in comparison to TJL. The sense of collaboration and friendship in that place was greater than anyplace I have ever worked, in or out of the theatre. I remember the entire tech staff and artistic company, including the two men who would later be knighted by the French government, yelling my name in unison to wake me up at the end of lunch break. (I worked nights too and often fell asleep over lunch) I remember Dan (the Technical Director) coming into the kitchen one day and asking who knew how to break the steering lock on a car. I allowed as I may have misspent my youth a little and we succeeded in pushing a car into the theatre from the street to turn into a set piece for the next show. (We got to make it look like it had been in a bad car accident. Theatre rules.) I built a pool there, I helped fly people there, I threw fake birdshit at the waggled ass of the dark haired girl from the background of the adrenaline-needle scene in Pulp Fiction there. I hope that in my career as a teacher, I can give some of the joy and love of theatre that that place gave me to my students.
I'm getting a little nostalgic and weepy, I know, but if you ever saw a production at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, then you understand a small part of what fun I had there. As if to prove to me that I would never find a better place to work, the reason I left was because of a call I got from the Guthrie. It kind of felt like getting called up to the majors, but I didn't want to go. I went to Dan (Lori, the TD again) to ask his advice. He told me to get the Guthrie on my resume. I could always go back to TJL. While he was absolutley right and that one piece of advice got me where I am today, I hated every minute of working at the Guthrie. It showed me the other side of theatre, where you just punched a clock and picked up your tools like everyone else. Even now, the worst of my days remind me of one theatre, and the best remind me of the other.
I hope that whatever is reborn from the ashes of that place gives us all the opportunity to go have a little more fun.

Taco Coins help man find peace.

I'm a little down these days. I've decided all doctors are fucking idiots. All dentists, chiropractors, legislators and everyone who seems to have any kind of mandate in their lives to help others, is a fucking idiot. My 71 year old father with emphysema and general fragility is held overnight in the hospital to be thoroughly tested because he had severe pain in his chest and left arm. Everything sounds great, right? They send him home with, "hmm. we don't know what it is. You should be fine though." My history with dentists is long, but suffice to say since the screaming bout of testosterone fueled rage that my last dentist and I had in his busy waiting room, I am down on those guys too. Doctors continue to look at me as if I'm retarded or a hypochondriac when I tell them that there's something wrong with me, and maybe they should actually check before they give me an unfounded diagnosis. (I don't have some big health problem I'm currently fighting, this is the story EVERY time I go to the doctor. Well except that whole post-coital headache thing. THAT they took seriously.)
The world of government continues to make me want to cry every time they do something. I am reminded of what my father said when I told him Paul Wellstone had died in a plane crash. "He was our last, best hope." At the time, I wrote that off as the pessimistic doom-saying that comes from all great tragedies, but is later forgotten. Now I'm not so sure. At least he could have been a voice for integrity and, in my left-leaning opinion, reason in these times of absurdly machiavellian or completely moronic public policy. So what's left for me? How can I continue to slog through the miasma? (to overuse my vocabulary)
A good friend who deserved not to be forgotten yesterday asked if I had seen The Daily Show's first day back after September 11th. I had not. So I went HERE and watched it. There could be a great deal to say about this video, but let me focus on one thing that he said. Jon Stewart asks, "Do you know why I mourn, but do not despair?" That question is everything I want to be able to answer and on the best of days, I can. But today the answer comes a little easier, and in words more eloquent than I had. And they have something to do with cottage cheese and sitting under your desk. Thanks Jon Stewart, and you, nameless, forgotten friend for giving me some cottage cheese. I have a big desk if you guys ever need somewhere to hide.

I begin to copy others when I am empty of brain.

I forgot I had a blog.  Dammit.  I was sitting at home last night, sated with the weight of mexican food and Dairy Queen, when it suddenly occurred to me that I had started this new blog and hadn't posted, (or been online for that matter) for 3 days.  Well, now I have to catch up. 

 All the blogs I read have had a significant amount of stuff about parenting and fatherhood the last few days, and I want to lend my perspective to the clutter.  My father moved out when I was 5.  He was a raging alcoholic at the time, so that was probably a smart move.  He gave up drinking on his own, with none of the support systems that the world has given us (I do not recommend this, by the way).  Because of his slow recovery and realization that he had been a complete asshole to ALOT of people, (that part is just coming through now.  Seriously) I didn't see him alot for the next 10 years or so.  About the time I was 14 or 15, he started showing up enough to do some of his jobs.  He taught me how to drive an automatic transmission, (Mom taught me manual when I was 13), told me I should start buying condoms and using them (I didn't lose my virginity 'til I was 18, but thanks for the thought Dad) and just generally started acting like my Dad.  My Dad had, at that time, screwed up 2 marriages and moved out on 4 kids.  I was the only boy, and the youngest.  This particular set of facts made me lucky.  Dad probably had a good idea how to relate to boys, seeing as how he has his very own penis, and I had the benefit of time.  Dad had time to heal and pull his head part-way out of his ass by the time I needed someone to straighten me out a little.  He would take me fishing, (if you are visualizing that, we shore fish, and catch almost nothing) take me out to dinner, take me down to Missouri to visit his family and my two half-sisters. (my "whole sister" went away to college and immediately stopped going on the Missouri trips)  Dad and I had alot of time together.  It gave me the chance to figure some stuff out.  The only thing Dad really knew how to do was love his kids.  I think he probably really fucked up with my oldest sister at some point, because they do not get along well, and the other 2 are sort of in the exasperated middle ground.  But he loves all four of us more than anything in the world.  And for that, plus a few good books he has given me, I am grateful.  I am far from an awesome father.  I yell at my kids when they are bad, and sometimes when they are not.  And I, perhaps, could do a far better job of understanding my daughter, But I make absolutely, goddamned sure they know how much I love them.  I just hope that's enough.  'Cause I suck at everything else, other than shore fishing. . . 

Jesus and his grammar. . .

Waves Accumulate

I would like to tell you a story of a man named Engrid.  Engrid lived in a small town on the prairie, west of where he was raised.  His chief occupation was in the field of labor relations.  Meaning he started fights, and occasionally ended them.  Like many men, his occupation tried desperately to define him, but Engrid was quietly defiant on that one particular point.  He was more than a toady for the union.  He (he often told himself, silently) was a mathematician.  Numbers were the language native to his soul.  As he threatened strike as a recourse for every dispute, he was distracted by his urge to calculate the possible losses to the worker, in terms of 401k contributions, sick leave accumulation and tangentially, salary.  On the surface this seems helpful, but you have not spent any time inside the head of Engrid.  Numbers fly around inside the cavernous expanse of his intellect like the arrows of an army of blind, disoriented morons.  In fact, mathematics so distracted him, that it would often get in the way of his accomplishing anything at all.  That is to say, Engrid was a single man.  But he longed for the warming presence of a mate.  He was not a picky man.  Labor negotiations had taught him that you often get what you want without realizing you were asking for it, or conversely, asking for what you want would almost ensure you would not get it.  So in the category of women, Engrid saw value in everything.  Or, as the years advanced, anything.  

One fine day, Engrid walked into the local cafe.  Engrid always sat right in the center of the cafe where, he hoped, his presence would hint at a service workers strike and engender better treatment for the staff.  But today, his automatic calculation of floor joist deflection seemed to hint at his sitting in the corner, far from the action.   It was here that his life changed.  Here in the corner of the room, there was not only a potential for greater silence, allowing him to focus on finding patterns in the floor tile and convert them into haiku-like mathematical structures, but he also discovered Muerta.  Muerta was a woman of great size and promiscuity.  She disrupted the movement of everything around her with her great buttocks and her keen sense of where to place them to greatest effect.  Engrid, in between 5's and 7's, was distractedly smitten.  After finding the requisite 575 unique tile arrangements within the apparent repeating pattern, he asked her for an iced coffee and a doughnut.  She spun on the balls of her considerable feet, lightly brushing his casually placed hand with her best feature.  His heart raced at a pace previously unknown to him.  He hurried to finish adding up the wattages of the lightbulbs in the room so he could, perhaps, stare at her for a free moment, undistracted.  That moment never arrived, because as she was gliding back his way, hot coffee mistakenly in hand, his greatest fear was realized.  The vast preponderance of numerical evidence hit him squarely in the heart.  In a world where thirty-one 60-watt lightbulbs would overload a 15 amp circuit, Muerta could never love him.  She was too much woman for a distracted union rep with a head full of numbers.  She needed more capacity for affection than he could ever supply.  His heart was shattered while his brain started laying the groundwork for some very interesting load-bearing calculations related to table legs and beef commercials.  He drank his dismally hot cup of coffee, took two bites of his poorly glazed doughnut, and left a 15.27% tip for his failed aspirations.  Counting sidewalk cracks he recklessly stepped on, he went home to count aspirin.

power in the hands of a worker. . .

Occasionally, my job is just sitting in my office and listening to music. For Many hours.  This may seem awesome, and in some ways it really is, but man.  When you're not getting what you want it will make you weep like a recently abandoned puppy.  For those who don't understand or even know what I do, besides teaching sound design for the theatre, I design as many as 10 shows a year.  One of the parts of that process that few understand  (including many designers) is that the music that is heard pre-show, as underscoring, or even as you leave the theatre is not just some crap that you throw together, or, as some people have asked, written into the script.  I spend a great deal of time reading and re-reading a play and finding the themes that I want to explore musically, and then either finding, or in some cases (very rare for me) composing the music that is needed.  Listening to a piece of music and being able to understand the "emotional content" of the music and attach it to a scene, or even just the broad feeling of an entire play is a daunting task, especially when coupled with the period, style, and locale for that particular production.  A play set in the 20's rarely is improved by your inclusion of some awesome song by a modern grrl rocker or bumpin' techno beat.  So today I am searching for the perfect piece of music to communicate the empowerment of some developmentally disabled guys living together in an apartment.  I'll get there, but I like to think that what makes me good at this is that I am very picky.  I see action and emotion in every piece of music that I listen to.  I like to think of it as my particular version of synesthesia.  Then I get to figure out a way to have a kitchen timer tick away in the kitchen of the set, and have it "ding!" at exactly the correct moment, no matter how the actors decide to pace the scene each night.  All while sounding like a real kitchen timer actually in that location on the set.  Oh and we should probably be able to see it count down too.  And to think, there are people in cubicles right now. Wahahahahahahahaha!  YOU FOOLS!

. . .got the time, time tickin' in my head. . .

I find myself wanting to blog for the sake of blogging, not because I have anything useful to say.  This must be what high school counselors feel like.  I was listening to a re-run of This American Life this morning called "Quiz Show" in which they explore three stories of peoples experiences in the world of game shows (or a dork competition at MIT, in one case)  The first story was about an Irish fellow who has dedicated his life to being that awkward, self-loathing, effeminate guy who lives with his mother.  But his mother died, and then he won 250,000 pounds on the Irish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  (I believe it's called Who wants to win a wee spot of money, pour me a pint of the black stuff)  And after the original airing, went on to win a gold medal for Ireland in tennis in the Gay and Lesbian olympics.  The only luxury he has afforded himself with his new-found wealth is a strange sounding piano.  Don't ask.  Anyway, there was one part of this whole story that got me thinking about my own prejudices.  The guy has a high, feminine voice.  That alone, did not make me think he was gay.  He told a story about how, when he was 18, he became very close friends with an elderly man who sexually abused him for A YEAR.  It never entered my head that perhaps he was gay.  It just seemed one of those horrible realities faced by people who do not have the self respect to stand up for themselves.  They seem trapped by their own lack of self-worth.  This all made sense to me.  But then, at the very end of the story, when they mentioned his gold medal at the gay and lesbian olympics, my first though was, I am ashamed to say, "was he really being abused?  Because if I was sexually abused by a man, I think I might not find men attractive after that."  This is horrible, I know, shut up.  So is this just founded in my own lack of understanding?  Why am I an asshole?  I have spent my entire life around every possible minority or social group you can imagine.  My mothers closest friends were either black, gay, disabled or just old hippies.  I grew up in a town with a large immigrant population, largely because of the turkey plant down the street and all the Schwans corporation plants in town.  My chosen career path is not exactly peopled with a bunch of white, republican men.  (well, there's one guy who's a libertarian, but who likes to talk about them?)  So what's wrong with me?  Maybe nothing.  Now I am, of course, aware that there are reasons for this type of sexual abuse being common among people who are gay.  Abusers have brains, if a bit fucked up, and some are able to convince themselves that these relationships are consensual. And fucking a straight guy in the ass is pretty hard to pass off as consensual, in one's diseased brain.  So I can intellectualize all this shit, but I still have those thoughts.  "Was he abused?"  Well of course he was.  So I think what's wrong with me is what is wrong with everyone, to a certain extent.  As a puppet once said, "Everyone's a little bit racist."  We all have horrible thoughts that come, unbidden, to our tiny minds.  Stereotyping the seemingly single mother at Walmart with her 6 kids, a feeling of fulfilled expectations when the news talks about another young, black, male suspect in a murder investigation, or another WASP CEO on trial, for that matter.  When my 71 year old father was in the hospital for 2 days this week, I started researching funeral arrangements.  I am not proud of my dark thoughts, ever.  But it is what we do with them that makes us good people.  One can not ignore the stimuli our society gives us.  But a healthy mind is one that takes it all and uses it as ammunition to fight back against racism.  Against homophobia.  Against planning your father's funeral.  So there.  I guess I wanted to blog today.

You know, that one guy?

So my 6yr old has found discrimination in the world and I can't help but feel proud that he has joined the ranks of the different. One simple haircut, (and the willingness to stand out) is all it takes. When I was 13 or so I decided to grow my hair out. There was this guy who showed up in my school that year that used to mock me mercilessly. We'll call him dude, since I cannot remember his name. I was, at that age, about 5'4" and 125lbs. I had braces and a short haircut much like all cleancut boys have had for the last 40 years. Now, I was raised by hippies, so it's not like I was just trying to be what my parents wanted. I wanted to fit in. This guy that showed up though, had alot of hair in what can only be described as what happens to your afro if you don't take care of it. There were not many black kids in my town, but the ones that were there all managed to fit some stereotypes so that all the racism would be better hidden. Dude, however had unruly, untamed hair, a gift for riding a skateboard, and an undying love for metal. While he was pushing me out of my conformist ways by pointing them out to me, we had alot to talk about as I had, for the last year or so, been becoming increasingly obsessed with Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus, and any music that kicked alot of ass, and did it quickly. By the end of that school year I had enough hair to piss off my grandmother and a new found understanding of speed metal. What does all this have to do with anything? Well, I had spent my whole childhood on the fringes. I was kind of chubby at times, always out of shape, and the only sport I was good at was european and not played in my dumb school. (bitterness recedes slowly) Finding my way into the world of outcasts and drunks gave me a place. And when my hair engendered discrimination, it just confirmed for me that I was different from everyone else, and I was ok with that. Buck up, little mohawk wearing boy o' mine. Soon you will have a life others only dream of. One of drugs, booze and the occasional "you're different!" beating.

. . .were all learned with workers' blood.

I'm here to discover if my blogging reticence is related to the format.  I spend my time reading many blogs, some funny, some to-do lists, some heartfelt and some just stupid (Mark). 

I, however have many thoughts that never see the light of day, partly because of self editing, partly because of my sense of privacy, but mostly because I'm lazy.  I once took a creative writing class in college and all the stories I wrote were just actual stories from my life.  The professor always said, "wow, your dialogue is terrific!"  Yay memory.  So I will see if telling stories can get me started.  Maybe I'll continue to tell stories, maybe I won't.  Find out with me, won't you?

When I was 15 years old, I was spending my time drinking with my sister's boyfriend (he was in his 20's) or doing theatre.  I had an old friend who I'd hung out with off and on since kindergarten who I would occasionally go play video games with.  He was a video game fanatic, which was more rare in 1989 than it is now.  He had made friends with the proprietors of the local computer store and would go there after school and play games like Battle Chess and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. (yay puberty) One day I went with him and then after a few visits, his other friends started showing up.  There was a guy named Bob, who I sort of knew because we both played cello in grade school. (I stuck with it, he's a big quitter)  There was another guy named Travis. Every group of friends has that center.  The nougaty bit that holds everyone in.  Travis immediately became that guy.  They always seem to be Scorpio's.  I know that's dumb, but they do. Travis would later become the only person I would plan to murder.  I stood outside the door to his apartment with a french gothic mace trying to decide how to beat him to death without waking up his girlfriends' baby.  Babies fuck everything up.  Back to being 15.  Those 3 guys, Travis, Bob and Tyler (the video game afficionado) became my entire life until the end of High School.  If we went to a party, one of us drove.  If we didn't sleep at home, we slept at Travis' house.  If one of us got a buyer, we all got liquor. (except Tyler, he already had a vice) When we talked of forming a band, it was just us.  Tyler on lead guitar, Bob on bass, me on rhythm and Travis would get the chicks.  I'm not sure if he played drums or not, the chicks were more important, and he had a gift for that.  We all listened to the same music and wore the same clothes.  About the time I turned 16 the group of friends had been cemented. There were hangers on of course, but the four of us were always together.  We drank together, got in trouble with the law together, broke into cars together, saw Metallica together, got stuck in Sioux City together and yes, played D&D together.  Then Travis ruined everything, Tyler met a girl, Bob squirted out a million kids and I. . . kept playing D&D.  Man I miss Leisure Suit Larry.