Hugging the Shoulder

I will be playing Jeremy in Chicago Fusion Theatre’s production of Hugging the Shoulder. It feels good to have something to work on again.

I play in this one a heroin addict. My brother kidnaps me and takes me on the Great American (Withdrawal) Roadtrip.

Those Anarcho-Punks are Mysterious…

or, What I’ll Be Eating This Week

So I’m biking home from callback #2 of the day, and I pass these anarchist hobo kids on the corner of Damen and Milwaukee. I guess they didn’t get the memo that there’a a Bank of America moving in and the whole neighborhood is overrun with douchebag hipsters (as distinguishable from ordinary hipsters, which are fun).

They had a hat out for cash money donations, and were doing some seriously off-kilter numbers on what seemed like a washboard, a guitar, and something that loosely correlated to my idea of a banjo. There was a girl with a tallbike, and another doing headstands. They were filthy, rotten hooligans dancing around in the middle of the street, obstructing pedestrian traffic. They mostly seemed like hey were hanging out, though. Unmistakably trainhoppers.

So I stopped. I hung around and listened for a minute, hoping one of them would engage me in lively conversation and I could bust out my harp and we could all sing songs of reconciliation and adventure until early in the morning, when they’d roll their headstandy-tallbikey-ragmatag operation onto the closest boxcar, with promises to raise my children if I should be eaten by wolves.

This of course did not happen.

I looked at them. They looked back. And I could see in their eyes that I looked like The Enemy to them.

Crushing. So I hoped on the bike, rolling down to the local grocery store, thinking I could make them the offer of a lifetime: “Hey. I passed by and I was really glad that you guys are in the world, so I bought you apples.” They’d dig on that. They’d appreciate the spontaneous, anarchic generosity, and we’d all Break Bread together and so on right down to the wolf insurance.

But naturally they were gone when I got back with the apples.

Which means now I got like ten apples to eat before they go all leathery. Story of my life.

Cheney on Iraq

Wha happened?

1994:

I gotta hand it to the guy. None of us ever put the thing so concisely back in 2002.

Anyone? Anyone else feel like getting roaring drunk?

ps
Oh yeah. GTC are a bunch a suckas in the 9/11 conspiracy camp. Don’t bother.

The Goodman Calling

So…

Somebody at the Goodman saw my headshot “lying around” at “the office” and decided to call me in for an audition this weekend. Apart from this being totally awesome, it is also totally unexpected. I never auditioned for the Goodman, I never sent them a mailing. So my main question (apart from how to capitalize on this good fortune) is how the fuck did they get my junk? I think Ina Marlowe must have given it to them. She seems like the only one that I’ve worked with who runs in such circles.

It’s all part of a cosmic upswing.

And it’s also, the more I think about it, a Weird Fucking Thing to happen. A bona fide Nugget of Fortune dropping into my lap.

I’m giving over authority to the upswing. Whatever it needs, I’m giving it.

Update: it’s a cosmic joke, actually. It’s the Griffin Theatre. The message was a little garbled. Har, har, god. Har, har.

Albuquerque's Abandoned Train Depot (in pictures)

I finally posted my pictures of what can only be described as one of the world’s most beautiful places. These are from early Spring 07.

Summer, don’t look, we still have to go there. Or, just go.

My flickr will one day be organized, and hopefully soon. I finally got my act together and sent in my camera for repairs. For now, just go.

7.08

Slow going, swift waters.

Personal

Apparently I’ve been pretty stressed out. This is according to my back, which has been mainly three kinds of fucked this month. Take one jigger of the stress of uprooting one’s whole life and then digging into a new one, mix well with the purely physical strain of the excessive amount of biking on a bike which is slightly less than big enough for me. Either way, yoga’s on the ticket, and the massage I splurged on last week killed the most main parts of the most egregious knots.

The bike shop job ends in less than a month. Funny how people stop buying bikes in September. So… yet another exciting and stressful opportunity to change the circumstances of living. Hopefully I get to keep Britney (friend).

Everything changes, the trick to floating on the river is evading me.

Very slowly connecting the social threads in Chitown. Ian lives here, a stand-up kid that seems to have beaten most of the demons of ambition without losing his edge. We recently had beers in a Mexican joint where they literally laugh at you when you say you’re going to keep a tab open. Delaney is here as well, a good friend from the third grade. Sophie, one of the bizarrest conversationaists I have the pleasure of knowing, is moving in. Erin might be coming to visit, and hopefully to move to Chicago – for a job. How adult. Knuckles was in town for a weekend, which was fun. Met Margot, her buddy. All in all, it is downright frightening how I’ve been able to spend time with almost no one at all that I didn’t know at least five years ago. To do: make new friends.

And what’s with the feast or famine? Why do pretty girls seem to flirt with me entirely in waves? It’s lots of fun this last week, but nothing to write home about.

Professional

I’ve been auditioning about twice a week. I’ve got a pretty reliable system for parsing them, if I could only not succumb periodically to the numbness caused by staring at the massive blur that is, apparently, my life.

Redmoon Theatre sent me a letter after their generals that keeps me pretty encouraged: no immediate casting needs at this time, but keep in touch!

Turned down Van in Dog sees God [...]. The linky has the first page, and it pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the piece: cheap shots at the Peanuts gang (wIth a strong haters-step-off message jammed in). It would have run until mid December, with no pay. I was close to taking it, and then remembered that Tony might kill me. Thanks, Tony, for having enough faith in me to kick my ass.

It may be a while before I actually land up in anything. People (especially the paying kind) audition pretty far in advance out here. I’m already auditioning for things that will run in December and January.

Political

I missed YearlyKos, which was stupid, but okay. I’da been taking some real activist’s spot on the list anyway.

This article on the CIA’s Black Sites, and the torture conducted therein, has me just about as sick as I’ve been in the last year about everything. And today I learned that my great uncle Barney was a POW in Germany in the Second War.

Jesus is my favorite philosopher? Eloi, eloi…

As for the horserace, a little, wavy opinion is forming: Can’t trust Hillary (I was young, but I remember Seattle). The more I see of Edwards, the more I like him, but Johnny Sunshine might eventually cave as the third guy – which leaves Obama wide open to take Edwards’ boys away from Hillary. Which might make me for Obama.

Not that any of them couldn’t still get my vote. Including the old fart, Dodd, despight the fact that all of the other serious contenders either espouse or imply by virtue of identity politics Big Shifts.

We need a New Freakin’ Deal.

Alabama