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!