The Plan

• I tend to get irritated by the smug, pseudo-clever attitude that leads to the idiot/awesome dichotomy. It goes like this: somebody tries something nutty, and if they succeed then they’re awesome. If they die, they’re an idiot. That’s stupid. The end result shouldn’t be taken as an indicator of the person and their intention when they make the attempt. It buys into the whole idea that the point of life is to avoid death as long as possible, which is also stupid. Sometimes (like with Steve Irwin), people will make the argument that it’s idiotic if you have kids. Listen: bad things happen to parents all the time. Kids too, for that matter. That can’t be a reason to not do things. I bring this up because I talk to a lot of people who don’t listen. I can explain what I’m doing, and the fact that it’s a choice, until I’m blue in the face. They can see that I’m happier, healthier and busier - and they don’t get it. I know that if I get mugged or murdered, these people will be the ones saying “Well, he shouldn’t have been in his car.” Let me spell it out: If you think that, you are retarded. I know what I’m on about, and I know that bad things can happen. If a bad thing happens to me, know that this was still the right thing for me to do.
• On Saturday, I attempted Yoga for the first time in something like five years, through Carla and her friend Crystal. I had a conversation with Erica about it beforehand. Her take is that people in Hollywood do yoga because they want to be Madonna. I said it’s just one more thing to do at the gym. Well, this wasn’t Madonna yoga, but it sure as hell wasn’t gym yoga. I signed up with Bally’s on Friday and have been hitting it with an intensity I hope lasts, and nothing (NOTHING) I could do there comes close to how grueling the yoga session was. I can’t exactly say if I liked it or not, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

• Auditions for Westward Expansion were yesterday. This is the Alliance show that will follow Dancing With the Bad Man, which opens next weekend. Westward is another original piece, written and directed by Cecil Castelleucci - who is linked on the sidebar. The audition was fun; a lot of new members came out, and the format was such that they got to meet each other and see each other work, which can only be good for the company. Also, I felt like I did pretty well, and that’s the really important thing. Me me me.
• The next time that fawn shows up, I may need to use a knife.

• I’m writing in this from the beautiful new library in the heart of Santa Monica. I say ‘new’, but it actually opened in January - it’s new to me, and that’s what matters - and it’s pretty fantastic. Huge windows, high ceilings, large rooms, many many computers and volunteers….nicely done.
• There’s a Google building at the corner of 6th and Arizona. I don’t know what goes on there, but I’m constantly tempted to walk in and start asking them stuff in the hopes that it’s a brick-and-mortar version of the website. “Where’s the post office?” “Cognitive dissonance!” “Define: alabaster!” I also like to imagine that anything that comes out of the building (reports, bills, etc.) comes out accompanied by a healthy stack of pornography.
• My search for a decent late-night laundromat was ended by my friend Jasmine, who pointed me towards Lucy’s. Lucy’s Laundromat seems to be designed to cater specifically to the domicile-averse. I’ve seen a few, but thus far only patronized the one near Sunset and Western, which combines a 24 hour laundromat, a 24 hour Subway, a late-night Burger King, a Wells Fargo station and an Ace Check Cashing place into one building, along with a few other useful services like water bottle refills. It’s kind of kooky but insanely useful - a capitalist commune, as it were.
• Just to hint: The song I’ve been working on with Darrel is coming along incredibly well. I’m itching to get it done - ideally by the end of next week or so. Whenever we finish, it’s going straight to the MySpace page, so please check it out. He’s spending a well-earned week in Hawaii with Kara, partaking in what I like to think of as a wake to their pre-parenthood lives. I can’t wait for him to get back, and I mean that in an entirely non-gay way. Mostly, at any rate.
• I had my first open call audition yesterday, and it was kind of fun. Silly, but fun. ‘Cattle call’ doesn’t begin to describe it; this was like being inspected by the person who tosses out inadequate Hershey’s Kisses as they scream by on the assembly line. On the other hand, I said I wanted to read for a voice-over part and they suggested an on-screen one, so who knows….

* I’m still trying to decide if this would be awesome or horrifying: what if, instead of billions of microscopic guys, sperm came out as one big one? Like, say, three inches long? Masturbation could only be enhanced by the possibility of a gladiatorial finale; blowjobs maybe not so much.

What if the thing could bark?

* What is language to an individual? I started musing about the evidence that a second language learned in adulthood is handled differently by the brain than is a second language (or a primary one, for that matter) learned in childhood, and then started kicking around the well-known fact that a language (especially/particularly a second one? I don’t know) that isn’t used can be forgotten by the user. The next question, for me, was: if you only know one language and you don’t use it, can you lose it? Be left language-less? My hunchy answer is ‘no.’ I think silly things, like someone talking to themself while doing a solitary job, point to the fact that language isn’t entirely about communication. There are two key elements of your standard dictionary definition of language: communication, and the use of arbitrary symbols to encode information. I think the second part of this is where my answer starts. The question has to become: can there be anything that we would recognize as ‘thought’ without language? Is there a machine language (haha) for the brain? I suppose Sapir and Whorf would have something to say about it, but not much (obviously the language one uses, with its unique collection of metaphor and rhymes and so forth, would influence the way one looks at the world, but since the language is still a symbolic construct regardless, saying that it affects thought after the fact doesn’t tell us much about thought BEFORE the language is obtained.) I’m so running this one by the Doctors Beatty.

* As a recent initiate to the twilight times, I realize I’m not the first person to visit. I realize that there are any number of people of various genders, ages and cultures who claim this area, as with any other. But I need you to do me a favor: whatever bizarre physical ritual you engage in when there aren’t many people around, I really need you to explain it to me so that I know it isn’t the astonishingly obscene act that it appears to be. I’m simply not up to the task of rationalizing what I’m seeing. I’d like to able to say ‘Oh, that’s Betty - she’s praying’ or ’she’s got The Trembles and that’s a therapeutic exercise.’ All you’re giving me is ‘that’s Betty. She thinks that it if she masturbates violently enough, world peace will happen.’

* I realize that what we theorize and what happens in the world are light years apart, and that thoughts don’t change anything on their own, but how is it not blindingly obvious that when we act violently it is a perversion of what we are? As far as we know, we are the only species that can apprehend its own mortality, that can think abstractly and that can communicate those thoughts. These are things that make us human - if we choose not to use them, we choose to be less than we are.