The Plan

People who are angry at Barry Bonds for using steroids are kind of pathetic. Of all the people and groups that might deserve some blame for this sorry state of affairs, Barry is way the hell down at the bottom.

Third place goes to the MLBPA, for deciding that image is more important for their members than, say, functional testicles.

Second goes to the league, for half-assing the entire issue for years.

First place, of course, goes to you, Mr. & Mrs. Baseball Fan.

Why?

Because after the strike, you were so angry at baseball that you didn’t watch it as much. You told baseball you didn’t care anymore. And what brought you back?

Sosa and McGwire.

Two acne-scarred giant-headed monstrosities banging dingers.

You made it clear what you wanted to see, and you’re getting it.

No * for you.

One of my Christmas goodies this year was a secondhand Blackberry courtesy of Erica, and it’s insanely useful. In fact, I’m posting this from it. It does, however, limit the amount of text I can enter, so expect more smaller posts as I learn it. Still and all, I get to plug in a little bit. I even found a Google Talk client for it, so hit me up if you have gmail. And, you know, know me.

I’ve once again been wrestling with cigarettes, cloves this time. It’s the loneliness that does it. They’re like little friends.

Unfortunately, all this really does is once again throw into relief the fact that these things, these crutches, don’t fix the problem, they mask it. I do not want to be a smoker again.

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I need to start making some money. I’m not yet through with the experiment; I won’t be until I’m on a journey of my choosing. Well, I guess I already am, but one with leather seats would be nice. The debts worry me, but only so much. After all, if I can’t pay, I can’t pay. But it wears.

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This weekend we shot Don’t Gag Me!, and I can’t WAIT to see how it came out. It felt good; Carla brought together a hell of a crew, wrote a fun script and gave a great performance. It’s inspiring to work with someone like that, someone who makes things happen, through sheer force of will if necessary. Today I shot another episode of The Dopler Effect, which I really feel is going to be a cut above most of what’s floating around the net these days.

I have another audition for a short tomorrow, and a few other things which could - should they come to pass - help ease some of my other troubles. Which is, of course, the fucking goal.

That, and an oscar.

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There are now ten more performances of Westward Expansion through next Saturday. Starting Monday, it will run in conjunction with the Alliance’s week of Susan-Lori Parks’ 365. This should be fun.

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Hmmm, this is kind of a downer post. Oh well, at least nobody died in this one.

A big chunk of Alliance members attended the Valley League Theatre Awards (called, for some reason which I do not care to research, the A.D.A’s) last night, where as far as can be determined the company finished an incredibly close second in every category where we were nominated. There was a surprising amount of overlap between presenters, League board members and winners (not that I’m suggesting anything….) but it’s pretty cool that the company picked up as many noms as they did in what seems to be a pretty insular little club. The ceremony ran longer than it should have (Fred and Mary Willard hosted entertainingly, although as the evening wore on their patience seemed to wear out) but it was nice to see everybody and hang out with the Kids.

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So I’m trying to be good about…pretty much everything, at least in terms of my general physical health. This past weekend marked the first time in my life where I could suddenly fit into something that was too small when I bought it. The downside is that I’ve given up so many bad habits and such over the past two years (and, let’s face it, I’m pretty addicty) that when things get tough I get all sorts of cravings. Not so much for alcohol, definitely for cigarettes and pills and stuff. With food I go the other way, and decide that instead of eating a burger I won’t eat anything. For a few days at least, then the burger

But I’m realizing now that the worst, most dangerous cravings aren’t for food or drugs, they’re for people. Insane cravings for absolutely the worst possible people. Damned if I know why.

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Yeah, that’s right. It’s a Backstreet Boys lyric. Don’t mess with me.

First things first: I auditioned a few weeks ago for a sci-fi thing that I heard about through my friend Emma (if you saw Anniversary at the Alliance, she was the Princess and a fetus….that’s a phrase I never expected to type.) I found out a few days ago that I’m in, and while I have very little in the way of details, I’m extremely excited. There’s a link on the side where you can check out the trailer. Emma’s the one who’s going to teach you about DARPA.

Carla’s script for the short looks sweet, but I don’t want to say too much. She wants to have the thing shot by the end of November, so that one looks to be firing up pretty quick here as well. She’s linked on the side there, too. Yeah, she’s gorgeous.

Westward Expansion has made the transition from a WIP to a play. I’m really happy with how it’s going, and we still have a ton of time. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Cecil’s writing that one and it’s opening at the Alliance on November 9th - both the Alliance and Cecil are over there on the side. The sidebar is pretty much the place to be.

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I’ve been talking a lot with friends and colleagues about why we pursue this nonsense career. I still feel like there’s something noble in coming out here and doing this, mainly because I don’t see the goal of life as a game with a scoreboard. The point is just to live, not to score goodie-two-shoes helpy points or own a bunch a stuff - and we give up a lot of security to pursue this silly life. Don’t worry, I’m also aware that it’s kind of dark and uniformly selfish. These things aren’t necessarily limited to acting or the industry, but dammit, I don’t know everything.

I see three types of people out here: first are those who ‘know’ they can do it. I put myself in that category - nobody else can, you either feel it or you don’t. I could be wrong, obviously, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I’ll keep at it forever because I know I can and if I don’t I’ll be dead eventually anyway.

Category two is those who don’t have that rock-hard certainty, but plug at it anyway. This describes most people out here, I think. Basically it’s ‘normal.’ People who don’t get what they want out of the industry and say ‘the hell with it, I’m going to law school’ are twos.

Category three is people who just don’t have the heart. I don’t know if they know it or not, but after a while it becomes clear to the rest of us. I worry about them. They can still make it, but it won’t do them much good - Kurt Cobain would be in this category.

It’s not particularly important to me to have categories except in how it helps me define myself in relation to others (see? selfish.) Why do I ‘know’ I can make it?

I’m incredibly insecure, and I’m also extremely arrogant. My current theory is that the former applies to who I AM and the latter to what I DO. Somewhere in the collision between the two, in the swirling interior nexus where my need for love and approval fights it out with my talent and the work I’m willing to do, there’s an answer.

For now, this illustrates where I am: I get people thinking they recognize me all the time. Sometimes they tell me that I look just like somebody they know. Sometimes I’ll be at a bar or something and hear people trying to figure out if they’ve seen me in something (they haven’t.) Sometimes I’ll walk by someone on the street and I’ll see that double-take and know they’re wondering if they know me.

And what I think to myself is: Wait a year. You will.

Sometimes, it’s all you can do.

I’m very grateful that, when things get a little too rough or scary, I can still find solace in the almost incomprehensible absurdities of existence - the most absurd being, of course, that there is an existence at all.

My life is pretty ridiculous. I mean, I sleep in a car. One of my grandest ambitions is to spend the rest of my life pretending to do things in front of people. I suffer from inflicted celibacy, but that’s OK because I seem to be single in the bones. I find that I can finally commit to a fitness program when I leave myself no alternative. I have some serious debt issues, and I’ve ensured that my chances of having a ‘normal’ future are virtually nil. The way things are going, it looks like I’m in exactly the right place at the right time.

I love it.

The gag, of course, is that your life is no less ridiculous than mine.

The nuts and bolts of the universe - such as we understand them at this point - can squeeze the brain until understanding drips out your ears, but there’s no reason to cast so far afield for befuddlement. I’ve mentioned it before, but bread blows my mind. Well, not bread exactly - I mean, I can accept that there is such a thing as ‘Rye’ - more the process by which someone (or some group) managed to envision bread in grains, and then make bread happen. Don’t bother looking it up - the early history of bread is filled with ‘probably’s and ‘perhaps’s. Wikipedia puts the emergence of bread in the Neolithic era - around 11,000 years ago, at which time the Food Network was only available in France.

Even simple bread takes a lot of steps that, to me, are astonishingly non-obvious. You have to start with whatever grain you’re going to use, many of which don’t really look like food in their natural state. You have to grind your grain up into flour, which is tough to imagine happening by accident, and sort of weird to imagine happening just for the hell of it. You have to mix your grain with water, which is quite a bit easier to see happening than the other stuff. Then you have to cook your mush. I kind of figure that immediately after gaining the ability to control fire, early people went around cooking and burning every damn thing, so this one doesn’t boggle me too much either. All of them together, however, sprain my noggin.

Robert Spuhler and I were discussing gelatin not too long ago -a substance whose provenance is so unlikely that I’m pretty much convinced gelatin doesn’t actually exist.

These things shock me because the road from their initial appearance to their final product - the processes by which they are refined - are so distinctive and unnatural. To see bread in wheat amazes me.

But there are plenty of other ways to be shocked. You want to marvel at the age of the universe and the interconnectedness of all things? Try this one on for size: Gold.

Most of you know this, so in brief: the order of introduction of elements (according to current evidence and theory) in the early universe goes hydrogen, hydrogen, hydrogen, and then helium as things cool down enough to allow the formation of atoms, and so on through the Periodic Table, adding heavier and heavier elements until we get stars. Yay! The thing is that if we end there, we’re missing a lot of elements (obviously, since several are essentially manmade.) It turns out that, as far as naturally occurring elements are concerned, anything heavier than iron can only be synthesized in a supernova - including, of course, gold. So for Earth to have any gold at all, many many stars had to be born, live out their entire lifecycle, and explode - before our planet was anything more than the tiniest cloud of dust.

That’s pretty cool, but now think about the California Gold Rush. Think about South Africa. Think about your idiot friend who thinks he NEEDS gold Monster Cables for his home theater system. Wonder if The Wizard of Oz really is an allegory about the move away from the Gold Standard. Think about that spike in Promontory. Look at your wedding ring, or those earrings. If you’re me, you can think of the ruined motherboard in your sorely-missed laptop. Hell, in all likelihood you have trace amounts of gold inside of you. Every bit of it, every last ounce, came from really far away.

The stuff that started out as some undefined potential, became hydrogen, became a star, became gold and became the frame for your glasses has been around for a LONG time. The stuff that makes you is no different.

Now THAT is ridiculous.