What a remarkable place New York City is. I know I've said this before, but it never ceases to amaze me. I'm sitting in my favorite spot - Sheep's Meadow in Central Park - and Justin Lazard just walked past me munching on a sandwich, shirt open, catching some rays. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's a B-Movie actor (and I do mean B-Movie... I think the most famous thing he's ever done is Species II), but the fact that I can sit here and have movie actors of small fame walk past me, or go out to dinner and sit next to Treat Williams, or be walking down the street and jog right to avoid bumping into Charlie Rose just blows my mind.
Feeling pretty well today, even though the money situation continues to suck snot. Still no temp work, still having bank problems, but the day is extraordinarily beautiful, and there are hundreds of people enjoying Sheep's Meadow with me. Most of them profoundly beautiful. That's one of the things that makes this town so intimidating, I think. As if it weren't bad enough that there are cultural and economic social strata to deal with, there's also a very rigid beauty stratus. The beautiful people don't hang out with regular folks like me. I've never been in the least insecure about my normalness - in fact it's usually been an asset, when it came to working on the stage. My "every-guy-next-store" plainness, which is, in all honesty, never going to be considered anything more than "cute" (hey, I'll take it!), has served me really, really well over the years. I get the chance to do things really beautiful people never do, 'cuz the perception is that they can't ever be anything but pretty, so I get to morph into all sorts of things... pretty guy, evil guy, funny guy. Lately, I've had fewer chances to do the morphing in any direction but the funny guy. My work over the last few years has definitely tended toward the comedic.
That's what has made the chance to do The Seagull for PICT such a thrill, even if it's on a painfully lame contract that I'm not going to be able to afford working on.
I got the call today from the Arden Theatre. They've offered me a contract to do The Pavilion, and it's a long one. It runs from August 14 through October 28. Eleven weeks at a LORT D salary, which is roughly twice what I'd be making per week, and for nearly half-again as long as I'd be working at PICT. Such a shame that the two of them conflict. If I take the Arden gig, the folks at PICT are never gonna hire me again, that's for sure. Something to really think about.
So here's what I love best about New York City. It surprises you. People as American-looking as apple pie walk past you and they're speaking some un-decipherable eastern European language. Then a couple of people of obviously Asian origin walk past, and they're talking like they're from the deep suburbs of New Jersey. I love that. Everyone I know hates the tourists, myself included - though only when I'm stuck in Times Square with them. But where else in the US, or for that matter, the world, do you get so many bloody different kinds of people all jammed together? Nowhere, I think. Not even L.A. And I can't help but stare at them all. It's gonna get me punched out for sure someday.
But here's what I hate most about New York: It's a hard place. Hard if you're not rich. If you're not well-bred. If you're not pretty. I mean, I don't have illusions... people who are those things have troubles of their own, and I wouldn't trade mine for theirs for all the tea in China. But being here is, in many ways, made easier for those people. How's that for sour grapes? I guess it's just my mood, but it does make me happier to know that I'll be earning everything I'm taking from this place.
Now that I'm single again - which believe me, is pretty damn weird - I keep finding myself strangely unable to go beyond the flirt-point at which I'd have stopped while I was still ball-and-chained to Gavan. Maybe it's the freshness of having just ended the relationship, but I find that I can't go beyond surface level flirting with the guys who keep checking me out. 
I guess I'm still learning to deal with being single again. Which, of course, doesn't stop me from looking. Never did, really. Neither Gavan nor I ever really stopped checking out the other pastures, even though we never really had the desire to graze there. There was an incredibly cute guy at Sheep's Meadow earlier. No doubt straight, since I found him attractive. It's my curse.
Feeling pretty well today, even though the money situation continues to suck snot. Still no temp work, still having bank problems, but the day is extraordinarily beautiful, and there are hundreds of people enjoying Sheep's Meadow with me. Most of them profoundly beautiful. That's one of the things that makes this town so intimidating, I think. As if it weren't bad enough that there are cultural and economic social strata to deal with, there's also a very rigid beauty stratus. The beautiful people don't hang out with regular folks like me. I've never been in the least insecure about my normalness - in fact it's usually been an asset, when it came to working on the stage. My "every-guy-next-store" plainness, which is, in all honesty, never going to be considered anything more than "cute" (hey, I'll take it!), has served me really, really well over the years. I get the chance to do things really beautiful people never do, 'cuz the perception is that they can't ever be anything but pretty, so I get to morph into all sorts of things... pretty guy, evil guy, funny guy. Lately, I've had fewer chances to do the morphing in any direction but the funny guy. My work over the last few years has definitely tended toward the comedic.
That's what has made the chance to do The Seagull for PICT such a thrill, even if it's on a painfully lame contract that I'm not going to be able to afford working on.
I got the call today from the Arden Theatre. They've offered me a contract to do The Pavilion, and it's a long one. It runs from August 14 through October 28. Eleven weeks at a LORT D salary, which is roughly twice what I'd be making per week, and for nearly half-again as long as I'd be working at PICT. Such a shame that the two of them conflict. If I take the Arden gig, the folks at PICT are never gonna hire me again, that's for sure. Something to really think about.
So here's what I love best about New York City. It surprises you. People as American-looking as apple pie walk past you and they're speaking some un-decipherable eastern European language. Then a couple of people of obviously Asian origin walk past, and they're talking like they're from the deep suburbs of New Jersey. I love that. Everyone I know hates the tourists, myself included - though only when I'm stuck in Times Square with them. But where else in the US, or for that matter, the world, do you get so many bloody different kinds of people all jammed together? Nowhere, I think. Not even L.A. And I can't help but stare at them all. It's gonna get me punched out for sure someday.
But here's what I hate most about New York: It's a hard place. Hard if you're not rich. If you're not well-bred. If you're not pretty. I mean, I don't have illusions... people who are those things have troubles of their own, and I wouldn't trade mine for theirs for all the tea in China. But being here is, in many ways, made easier for those people. How's that for sour grapes? I guess it's just my mood, but it does make me happier to know that I'll be earning everything I'm taking from this place.
Now that I'm single again - which believe me, is pretty damn weird - I keep finding myself strangely unable to go beyond the flirt-point at which I'd have stopped while I was still ball-and-chained to Gavan. Maybe it's the freshness of having just ended the relationship, but I find that I can't go beyond surface level flirting with the guys who keep checking me out. I guess I'm still learning to deal with being single again. Which, of course, doesn't stop me from looking. Never did, really. Neither Gavan nor I ever really stopped checking out the other pastures, even though we never really had the desire to graze there. There was an incredibly cute guy at Sheep's Meadow earlier. No doubt straight, since I found him attractive. It's my curse.
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