The Big Break Up

I'm not getting into the hows and whys.  I know that we are programmed to want all the juicy little details, but I'm not giving them.  There wasn't any cheating.  Anyone who ever truly knew us... I mean really knew us...knows how nearly impossible that would be.

There wasn't any lying.  No sneaking around.  No broken dishes.  No yelling.  No screaming.  None of that really good juicy stuff.  There wasn't.

There was pain.  Of course.  How could there not be.  There was open dialogue.  There was long discussion.  There was hurt.

There was nothing that would make for good water cooler gossip, and I'm sorry to those of you who may need that in order to remain interesting at said water cooler, but the break up? It was pretty mundane as far as something to talk about with your friends later.

Initially it was her decision.  She made the move, and you know what...it was the right one.  For both of us.  That doesn't make it hurt less...maybe even hurt more, to know that you are exactly wrong, for the person you love the most.

That's pretty much all I have to say about that.  No more information is needed to communicate what is really between her and I.  The rest is personal, and I hope you can respect that.

So now I'm single again.

This is not my first breakup.  Previously I had been married for ten years to an amazing woman, whom I am still friends with, and that ended in similar fashion to this relationship.  Upon being single again that time, I discovered that I got along rather well with myself.  I enjoyed it.  I adjusted well, after a time, to the company of me.

Then I began my next serious relationship.  The one that is ending now.  I told a very dear friend of mine that if for any reason it ended, then that was it.  Two and out.  I meant it then.

I'm sticking to it now.

I'm tapping out of the love game.  I know at the top of a breakup this seems like something very easily said.  I know a lot of you will be thinking...oh just give it time, you'll find someone else.

I don't want someone else.  I really don't.  I've been with two amazing, incredible women in my life.  I have been more lucky than a person like me ever really deserves to be.  I have given my everything to both of them, and both times it was phenomenal.  I can't express that enough.  I have no anger, or bitterness, toward the idea of love.  I find it to be the most beautiful thing on the planet, and the greatest source of joy.

I'm just not built for relationships.  Some people aren't, and that's okay.

Friendship?  Yes.
Love?  Yes.
Sex?  Oh yes.
Relationships?  Not so much.

I aim to dedicate myself to bachelorhood.  Truly.  I want to be a much less good looking, much less wealthy, probably much less interesting version of George Clooney.  The kind of guy who makes a career out of being single.  The guy who has his shit together because he has dedicated himself to himself.

I don't know what the future holds.  I really don't.  I am going to focus more than ever on theatre.  That has always been my first passion, and part of the reason my relationships fail.  I might as well make my mistress my bitch.

I will suffer through the pain, and I will not share much of it with any of you.  This also is my nature.  Then I will move on.  I will continue to discover, to live, to laugh, to obsess over the things that make people uncomfortable.  To say the things we're all thinking but never talk about.   To go into the deepest darkest most horrible places, and find the jokes that live there and bring them back out with me.  Because that's who I am.  That's what I do.  And those who understand me will know that everything I do is dead serious, and nothing I do is serious at all.  Everything I say is a lie...except for the things that aren't.  Here is a truth...I probably care very deeply about you.  And if we haven't actually met, and you've made it this far through my little diatribe, I could probably care very deeply about you.  I probably love you.  And if I don't, I probably could.

Your friendship, your love, your laughs...these have all added so much more color to my life than I can ever tell you.  I will never have the words to properly express how much this means to me.

Single or not single.  Alone or with someone.  I am simply who I am, and if you have given me your friendship, knowing full well who I am, well that says something pretty amazing about you.

So thanks for bearing with me.  Thanks for being there.  I can't wait to see you again...or meet you for the first time ever.  Whatever the case may be...

There is always tomorrow.

Celebrilust

Today both FB and Reddit, my two most frequented websites veritably exploded with the news of Tom and Katie getting divorced.  I was completely overwhelmed with a feeling of meh.


To a certain degree I understand celebrity lust.  In that I understand it exists.  I personally don't share it.  I see it, but it always feels so foreign to me.  I can't help but be aware of it.  It is impossible to stand in a checkout line at any store anywhere and not become oversaturated with all the latest gossip about who's pregnant, who's cheating, and who's fat now.  Half the television programming is celebritycentric, focusing all the attention on people who already have all the attention.  If not that, then giving other people the opportunity (they hope) to reach that level of stardom.  Meh.


I have worked in or on the periphery of the entertainment industry for over half of my life.  Seven years spent specifically working with people who have attained some level of fame.  From the top of the top A list on down.  If I were to start dropping names (and I won't), I could fill this page, and probably a few others of people I've met, mingled with, or worked with.  You would know most of those names.  I've joked with an Oscar winning director.  Shared cigarettes and a few laughs with film and television stars.  Worked with Platinum selling musicians.  I'm not famous, but I've enjoyed perks of the life.  Yes I have stories.  No I'm not going to tell them.


With only a few exceptions...the thing that strikes home every time, is these people are pretty much just like me.  They are for the most part...normal people.  Just rich and famous too.  And really pretty to boot.


Thing is though, we treat these people much like pets.  We watch them.  Observe them.  Feed them with our attention.  We project so many things on them, and we can't wait...I mean REALLY can't wait for our opportunity to drag them down from Mount Olympus and watch them roll in the muck.  Some of them make it very easy for us.


We are entertained by them, and then cry when they die, although...we never knew them.  We don't know dick shit about them.  We only know what little parts we glean, learn about, read about, or face it...create about them.  You can read a thousand biographies about a person, and still not know the first important thing about them.  But we sure love to pretend to.


Don't get me wrong.  This is not so much a defense of celebrity, as it is a condemnation of those of us who aren't.  I fully understand that to put yourself in the spotlight, you accept the position of extreme scrutiny.  If you want to be famous fine, but understand at that point your life is no longer yours alone, but shared with millions who will from that point on, judge you by the type of latte you get from Starbucks, the style of clothes you wear, how much you weigh, who you date, what drugs you are caught with at the airport, and whether or not you may or may not be gay.  Because goddammit these things are important.


If you marry.  If you divorce.  If you eat, sleep, or shit...these things are no longer personal.  Live with it.  Your most private moments now belong to the greater community.  ESPECIALLY if you make a sex tape, or take naked pics of yourself with a cell phone.


And as I write this diatribe I realize I am just as guilty.  For me it is the same sickness with a skewed perspective.  Because of my own personal desires.  My life choices.  My decision to follow my own passions, I fall into the same traps, just with different targets.  I don't give a rats ass about who TMZ, or Perez Hilton tell me I should follow, but show me a good local stage actress, someone who steals my breath in a performance...and yeah...I get a little starstruck.  Of course I imagine what it would be like to have sex with them...or drinks at the least.  Even more than that...in my deepest darkest...inner sanctum places of my non existent soul...I imagine what it would be like to share stage space/time with them.  This is what I do.  This is what I want to do more than anything else with people who make me feel that way when I watch them.


So maybe it is just our human nature.  To create pedestals and put people on them.  To put ants in a jar and make them fight.  To hang a facade over our own reality, just to make it a little less mundane.  Maybe we need the scapegoats.  Maybe we need to see the mighty rise, and fall, and rise again.  Maybe its inspirational, or fun, or just adds a bit of flavor to an already almost perfect dish.  I really don't know.  


Here's what I do know.


I still don't care that Tom and Katie are getting divorced.

Boobs: By request

To begin.

I don't objectify women.  I simply don't.  I don't view them as a separate species.  I don't believe that any single person, male or female, was put here to serve the sole purpose of being my personal pleasure bot.  I love, and am fascinated by the extreme complexities that make up each individual person I know.  This is absolute fact.  I am writing this simply because I was given this as a topic, and because its pretty well established by those who know me that this is a topic I'm pretty fond of.  All that preamble out of the way...lets get down to business.

Boobs.

Anybody who knows me at all knows that I love boobs.  Its a fact I don't even try to hide.  I'm not totally out there about it.  I don't make it a main focal point of my existence.  I have spent many years learning to control myself while out in public so as not to overtly stare at every pair that passes me by during the course of the day.  I haven't entirely mastered that skill, but I am getting better. 

This isn't really surprising.  Everybody loves boobs.  Dudes love boobs.  Chicks love boobs.  Even all my gay friends love boobs.  What's not to love.  They're lovely.  I know this already.  I am not an anomaly.  

I do however transcend the normally socially acceptable levels of boob appreciation.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a whole package kind of guy.  In the end...I really am.  I especially love eyes and faces.  A FUCKLOT.  But that's not what I was asked to write about.

When I was five years old I found my fathers playboy collection.  Many of us probably have similar experiences.  That first discovery that bodies are different.  Adult bodies different from our own child body.  Girls and boys with distinct differences.  Everybody's first realization of this is probably a just as if not much more interesting story than my own.

For me it was a profound awakening, and the beginning of a lifelong love affair.  I was instantly and monumentally transformed.  My innocence gone.  At five years old, I was Adam stepping out of the garden, and into a harsh, yet beautiful world with so many curves and nipples.  Suddenly my eyes were opened, and breasts were everywhere.  

On the heels of this, my father got rid of all such material, changed his own life, started going back to church, and I got to learn that it didn't matter if I loved tits...apparently God hated them.  All my hopes and dreams were wrapped up in the shameful idea of sin.

Of course that is a very broad generalization of something that is much more complex, but you get the idea.

The body is a temple.  Sex is sacred.  Blah blah blah.  Every thought about tits is a sin and must be controlled.  Masturbation makes Jesus bleed all over again.  There are so many "loose women" out there, and you have to be yada yada yada...blah blah bullshit.

Years later, having left all that behind me, its still one of the things that makes me the most angry about my formative/religious years.  I hate the way religion treats women.  I do.  Entirely different blog though, and one that I am no where near ready to address.  Back to the fun stuff.

My first real girlfriend let me touch her boobs.  I was seventeen.  She let me see them, and play with them, and all sorts of really neat stuff.  I was once again transported to another world.  I was filled with wonder and delight that I lived in a universe where these soft, round, beautiful squishy fatbags exist.  The really neat thing is that after all these years, all these experiences, all these thousands of jaded days later...I still feel the exact same way.  So lets really dive in now.

I LOVE them.  So many people make the assumption when they find out about my passion for the boobies that its all about size.  They couldn't be more wrong.  I don't give two blue shits in a bucket about size.  I fucking LOVE small breasts.  I love average sized breasts.  I love big breasts.  I honestly don't care how big or small they are.  I am not the least bit concerned about that insignificant piece of trivia.  I simply love that they are. 

I can unhook a bra strap in under a second with my left hand in the dark while doing any number of other things with the rest of me.  

I am a walking encyclopedia of celebrity nudity.  

If you have boobs, I want to see them.  If I have seen them I want to see them again. If I've seen them a million times, I want to see them a million more.

I've mentioned before that I am not motivated by money.  This is more true than most people can wrap their heads around.  I really...honestly...am not motivated by money.  I need it.  I have a job so I can pay rent, and buy food and cigarettes.  That's about as far as my interest in it goes.  You cannot bribe me with money. If there is a task you would like for me to perform, and offer me money...I may or may not take you up on the offer, depending on my level of not wanting to do it.  Offer to show me your tits, and no matter how horrible that task is...it will be done.

When I was in college I watched a man perform a pretty cool little card trick.  He won money over and over and over again with his performance from different dupes.  He had mastered that trick, and it payed off in spades for him.  I convinced him to show me how it is done.  I wanted to learn the same trick for the same purpose...just a different payout.  I have now also mastered said trick, and have used it for you guessed it...get girls to show me their boobs.  I don't perform that stupid little trick much anymore...in fact its been a few years...but I still have it mastered.  I can't fail.

All that being said, in the end...boobs is boobs.  If you have them I want to see them.  I know I said that already, but its worth being said twice...or a thousand times...but really...boobs is boobs.  If I never ever ever til my dying day DO see them...in the end...it doesn't matter.  As much as I love your tits...

 I love just knowing you even more.

SOC2

I get ahead of myself.

I live three seconds in my own future.

I have a horrible memory, but I can memorize like a motherfucker.  I know it does not make sense...but as soon as I do not need the things I've memorized anymore...they are gone.

People can quote lines from my favorite movies and I will still have to ask "What is that from?".

I can read books over and over again, and often do.

My life seems more interesting in retrospect.

I think that people have forgotten how to breathe.  Sometimes I forget myself.

Did you know that The Moonlight Sonata is actually called Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor.  This piece of information is not important.  It will not change your life.  In fact think back to the last time you actually heard The Moonlight Sonata.  It has probably been a while.  I hope not.  But this also is not important.

I am a huge fan of simplicity.

I am also a huge fan of bad ideas.

I love shortcuts, but I also love taking the long way.

Sometimes I look at things for one second too long.

It is nearly impossible to offend me.  Although unfortunately I find that I can be quite offensive.  This is not done on purpose.

You can easily make me laugh.

I do not do favorites.  I do not have a favorite food, song, movie, book, author, playwrite, person, or any other noun.

My favorite adjective is purple.  Except I do not have a favorite adjective either.

I am an actor.  This is what I studied in college, but more importantly this is what I studied in life.  I have been in countless productions.  I have been naked on stage.  I have been gay.  I have been straight.  I have been Irish, and British, and French,  and American.  Even Chinese once.  I have been a soldier.  A fighter.  A smuggler.  A baseball player.  An artist. An architect.  A shopkeeper.  An athlete.  A child, brother, father, lover, hater, killer and thief.  I have played, laughed, cried, died, and most importantly lived on stage.  I always....ALWAYS...can't wait to do it again.

More on all that later.  Another time.  Another night.  If you've made it this far, you have probably realized I am nowhere NEAR focused enough to concentrate my energy on my greatest passion.

I am currently writing/not writing three different plays.  Someday maybe you can read one.  Even more neat would be if you get to see one.  Who knows.

I love to explore.  So many things.  So little time.  So much to do.  So much so many so often.

So long.

SOC

In an effort to get back into the habit of writing, I'm writing.  No one ever said it would be good.

I used to do this daily.  Then weekly.  Then wheneverly.  Then neverly.  Now back to it.  The bad part is though, I've lost my ability to think.

Its that thing where I can't tell if I want to start caring or stop caring.  I'm stuck in the middle with me.

So tonight...just a free flow stream of consciousness. Things that have been on my mind in one small way or another.

YOLO.  I hate the word.  I hate the new catchacronym that is supposed to justify all sorts of douchebaggery.  While it is true that you only live once...you don't live alone.  We are sharing this rock with nearly seven billion other people.  Why should your YOLO take precedent over any other?  That's all I have to say about that.

Did you know that you are mortal?  I'm sure you do...but do you?  Really?  There is so much more to YOLO than some stupid little two syllable justification for brief stupidity.    There is something so profoundly important that mere words...any words...all words...no words can capture the essence of...fuck, I'm losing me again.

Take two:

Everything is temporary.  And by everything I mean EVERYTHING.  I mean every fucking beautiful goddamn thing.  Not just you, and your pictures, and your bank account.  Not just this life, or your families life.  Not just this planet, or this galaxy...the whole goddamn universe is temporary.

In a relative sense of course.

I'm still not getting there...but its leaking.  Slowly.

The greatest force in the Universe is gravity.  This is fact.  In time (and I find this ironic because when it happens time will cease to exist) gravity will eat itself up.  The Universe will collapse and no longer be.  This is going to happen.  It is.  Probably in a billion billion billion years.  Long after this solar system has already been consumed by its own little insignificant supernova, but it is going to happen.  Then the REALLY neat thing is it will explode again, and start all over.  Who knows...maybe this has already happened thousands of times.  Maybe.

Did you know that there is exactly the same amount of energy in the Universe right this second as there was at the moment of The Big Bang?  Its true.  Energy cannot be created or destroyed.  Only changed, or expanded, and when the Universe DOES collapse...whenever that may be...all that energy will still be there.  It will just be in the nowhere that is somewhere that isn't anywhere...and will have no choice but to escape again.  Creating the entire process anew.  I think that's fascinating.  Some people think that's bullshit.  However the people who think its bullshit have no problem believing in worldwide floods, talking snakes, and hippy zombies...so whatever.

The point is...what I've been taking the long way around to...is that everything is temporary.  Even the things that we take for granted as always having been, and always being in existence...aren't and won't be.  In the long run, we all move at the speed of who gives a fuck.

We're on this little blue green marble with no instruction manual.  So we make one up.  We make up many.  We make up meaning.  There isn't meaning, but we can't accept that.  We form groups, and clubs, and societies, and we cast out, or accept membership based on the most ridiculously arbitrary rules we can imagine.  We invent rules, and laws, and morality, and money, and some of it is necessary for the perpetuation of mass population, but most of it is insane.  And then we focus on the insane, and we say that's not quite insane enough...lets make it even crazier, and amid all of the attempts at creating order in the chaos, we forget that the original chaos was pretty goddamn beautiful all by itself.  So now instead of a system of shared existence, we have numbers, and pretense, and a moral judgement system that is based in no sense of actual morality.  The beauty, and the love, and the life have been replaced with a sense of importance placed on little green pieces of paper.

Neat.

And eventually...this too shall pass.

I think that's what's always on my mind.  Always.  Is that all these things that have been superficially made important, aren't that important to me.

I hate celebrity.
I've never been motivated by money.
Politicians all say the same things with different words.
Some things are true.
Some things are false.
Some things are true and false.

I am temporary.  I will cease to exist.  This is a fact.  I have an incredibly limited amount of time, and I want to care about the things that make sense to me.

I want to laugh with you.
I want to tell stories with you.
I want to watch the stars with you at night.
I want to be stripped with you of all pretense, and imagined reality, and discover our own.
I want to love you as people should love.

Because someday I will be nothing more than your memory.  You may someday be nothing more than mine. I want to smile when I have that memory.  I want you to smile when you do.  I don't want to be missed.  I want to be cherished.  And I want the same for you.  I mean after all.

YOLO.

I have no opinion

I am not going to try to define art.  Greater thinkers than I’ll ever be have been trying for millenia, and we still can’t come up with a solid foundation on what art even is.  Sure there are a lot of pretty quotes, and tons of conjecture, but really at the end of it all, art is subjective, and can therefore never be defined.  At least that’s what I think.

That being said I think they should change the name of the Utah Arts Festival.  I don’t know, maybe the Utah Trinkets Festival, or the Look What I made in My Spare Time Festival, or the I Didn’t Have an Original Though of My Own, But I Did Like Putting a Zombie Twist on Someone Else’s Unoriginal Though Festival.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not posting this out of anger or frustration.  I’m not intentionally attempting to sound jaded or cynical.  I had a wonderful time at the festival.  If you were there and saw me, you probably would have seen me smiling most of the time.  I was among friends, and drinking up moments.  Its just that the so called art had little to do with it.

When asked what I thought about any particular piece I would simply state…”I have no opinion.”.  It was true at the time.  It still is.  When I first said it, I hadn’t even really put any thought into it.  I was just responding to the question.  It wasn’t until later, upon reflection and examination of the truth of that statement that I realized how incriminating it really is.

I am no student of art.  The most I’ve ever researched it at any given time was when I played Picasso in “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”.  I don’t know anything of the technical aspects of it.  I do know that most of what I saw today was a display of some considerable talent, and that I can appreciate.  A lot of stuff I can’t do, and that I can appreciate.  Art though???  I honestly don’t know.

For me for something to be artistic it must evoke some sort of visceral response.  Love it, hate it, at least SOMETHING it.  No opinion though…that’s something to think about.  Absolutely no visceral connection to anything.  At all.  Appreciation sure.  Entertaining?  A little bit…sometimes.  Emotion?  None.

I know the argument can be, and has many times been made that I’m pretty disconnected from my emotions anyways.  Maybe this just maybe makes me more critical.  Maybe it makes me a douchebag.  Either way I can live with it.  

Thing is though…I wanted to have an opinion.  I really did.  I wanted to connect to something.  To have something resonate.  To see art.  Instead I had a wonderful time with friends.  People watching.

I’m also quite possible a Theatre snob.  That’s where those moments happen.  At least for me.  

The first show I saw when I arrived in SLC was at Salt Lake Acting Company.  It was something I’d never heard of before called Skin in Flames.  I love seeing new theatre and I was pretty excited about it.  Now, all these years later I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about it.  I remember bits and pieces.  A vague memory of what it was about…but…but…

What I do remember is a moment.  There was no dialogue.  There was just a moment, performed by one of the actresses of such brutal and intense honesty that it burned itself forever in my memory.  That kind of moment that you come back from later and realize that the reason your heart is racing is because its trying to make up for that brief period when it stopped working altoghether.  

This happens to me sometimes.  Those moments when you’ve seen something.  When you were part of something shared, but just yours.  When everyone is looking at the same thing, but you are positive that you’re the only one who really…REALLY…was there for it.

I get that in theatre.  I’ve read that in books.  I’ve seen those paintings.  I’ve understood that…THAT…as art.  Perhaps that is my problem when I go to UAF.  My own personal standard of what art is/should/can be has been set to high by my own experience of it.  

And I’m also not stupid.  I fully understand that those moments are rare.  They have to be in order to have any meaning, but I would at least like to see someone who is reaching for that.  Who understands that that is the potential of art, and what can be achieved by it.  To me…painted shoes that cost 200 bucks isn’t art.  Another black and white picture of some naked chick done with a digital camera isn’t art.  I’m not knocking it… in fact I even like it… but I have to ask Mr. Artist…  What are you trying to say?  What emotion are you trying to connect to?  What is your goal?  Why…Why…Why….

Open letter to Theatre Companies, artistic directors, directors, and producers.

When you decide to do yet another production of Annie, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I learn two things about you as a group. First thing I learn about you is that you're lazy. That's right I said it. You Are Lazy. You show an absolute lack of creativity, and a seeming refusal to rectify that. You do not go to see what other shows there are. You don't read plays. You don't listen to music of anything else that may be exciting. You're lazy. You don't have the ambition to look for something new, and honestly in my opinion that lack of ambition indicates more than anything else that perhaps you shouldn't have the job that you have. You're too old, too tired, and too blind to continue working effectively in your position. Give it to someone willing to do what you are not.

The second thing I learn about you is an extension of the first. You just want to make money. Everyone knows that those particular shows are "money" shows. When I see your audition post for yet another production of one of said shows, the first thing I think is that you just need a box office guarantee. You're too lazy to try to find something that could be just as effective, and too scared to take a risk. So you settle. You settle for the same, tired, rehashed, done to death shows, that will almost guarantee butts in seats. This says a lot about Utah audiences as well, but trust me, that's a whole other blog, and a subject I do intend to address, but I put a large part of whats wrong with Utah audiences on you. Yes. Take responsibility you lazy, money grabbing pseudo artists.

You see that's my ultimate complaint. You are destroying the progress of art. Art should say something. Should speak to us. And yes, there is nothing at all wrong with it entertaining us, or making money for you. I honestly do not have the slightest problem with you wanting to turn a profit for what you do. I applaud it. I simply criticize the way in which you choose to do it.

You are not helping Utah theatre at all. You are simply helping to stagnate it. You are contributing to its slow death. In cities where the art is alive and flourishing, there are people always, ALWAYS, looking for whats new. Trying new things. Exploring new works. And sometimes, its a complete failure. Which is fine. Wonderful in fact. At least they're trying. They're growing. Learning from mistakes, instead of beating to death 30 year old successes.

There are groups out here that are moving forward. That do perform new works, exciting works, or work that has been done in other places, but still actually relevant. Most of you however, do not.

You're too lazy.

And too afraid.

Fear and laziness have no place in art, and perhaps...neither do you.