Welcome Home.

I can't tell you how happy I am to be in New York City for Christmas - the realization of a dream I've held for a very, very long time. Oddly, I'm both excited and frightened to be spending my first Christmas season in 37 years away from my family. And as it happens, none of my friends are going to be in town for the holiday, so I'm going to be spending much of it alone. Rather than wallow in my solitude, I thought I'd volunteer at a church in Manhattan that feeds the less fortunate. If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that no matter how bad things seem for me, I'm way better off than some people. Sometimes, in my tendency to wallow in self pity, I find that I need to be reminded of that.

Since it's the beginning of the end of the year, I think I've been spending a lot more time than usual contemplating my life, and what's happened this past year. I've decided that there's really just no getting around it: This year really sucked snot.

Don't get me wrong. There have been some incredible highlights - not the least of which has been the chance to work at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia. Not just once, but twice! Those were two really incredible growing experiences. And the latter of the two, The Pavilion was probably one of the most challenging things I've ever done. I'm incredibly grateful for the chance to have worked on it.

But with all that having been said, this year coming to a close is one of the hardest I've ever had. As if it weren't turbulent enough to move away from my hometown and try to get work in new places, I also went through the end of a four-year relationship. Even though I've said that it wasn't a surprise to either of us, breaking up with Gavan was a lot harder than I would have thought it could be. Even if you don't feel the way about someone you did when you first met them, there's no denying that they become, after four years, a really, really important part of your life, for good or ill. And while we'd be physically separated in the five months before our relationship ended, the actual end of the relationship still left a void. I often wonder if he felt the same thing, or if the relationship had ended, for him, from the time I left Pittsburgh to go to Philadelphia. There are some things I guess I'll never ask him... or at least not for a really long time. It's possible to move on, I think, and still be a little raw about stuff.

I spent way too much of 2001 sad. And anxious and scared about what the future held. And I don't even mean the long-term stuff, but the immediate future, as in "next week."

So I'm getting ready to embark upon 2002, and it surely has snuck up on me. Here's hoping that it's better than 2001.

Screw You, Ben Franklin

You know that old saying, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?" Well, I'm living proof that shit is true. At least in the reverse. I'm a night person - I believe we've discussed this - and am pathologically unable to sleep the hours most people do, and I'm being punished for it, I'm here to tell you. So I'm definitely late to bed, and while I'm pretty darn healthy (knock wood), I'm six different kinds of not-wealthy, and my wisdom is seriously in question. Witness my agreeing to any proposition that has me rising at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning to head off to rehearse.

Speaking of "touch wood," do you know where that little custom comes from? I don't know how true it is, but someone told me recently that once, long ago, people believed that the Devil (with a capital "D") lived in trees in the forest, and since you didn't want the devil to overhear your plans and dreams and then actively work to fuck with them, if you knocked on the wood it would distract him or knock the thoughts loose from his head or something like that, and you were safe to carry on with your plans.

The capacity of human beings for idiocy should never, ever surprise you. Just keep that in mind. Hence me dragging ass outta bed at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Visit Home... Already

Well, I'm winging to Pittsburgh for my weekend full of rehearsals for Tony McKay's Father Figures, and I have to confess to having rather mixed feelings about the whole thing. Not doing the plays as much as this trip back to Pittsburgh. I've only been in New York for two weeks, and already I'm heading back. I can't escape this place. Maybe it won't let me go. At least this time I'm not paying for the trip!

We just climbed up out of La Guardia Airport, and the first officer just announced that the weather in Pittsburgh was winds of 50 miles per hour. I hope I didn't hear that right. I'm not sure I want to land in a place where the winds are at 50 miles an hour. That makes me all sorts of nervous.

So I had my audition for the City Theatre today, and I have to confess something: I think it was, if I may descend into vulgarity for a moment, a bit of a courtesy fuck. I happened to find out during the week that the part of the woman opposite whom I'd be playing if I got the job had already been cast, and I don't think that I "play" old enough to appear as her husband. That, combined with the fact that they called me mid-week to change the part for which I'd be reading, leads me to believe that they've also already cast the part I'd be "better suited" for. Actually, in my estimation, I could play either part, but at least in the part that's (I'm guessing) been cast, I wouldn't have had to match anyone for age.

Anyway, the audition itself went really well. I walked into the room, greeted the folks I knew from City, and met the director, who was very nice to me. Thinking that the person ushering me into the room had picked up my headshot, I hadn't brought it with me, which caused some momentary confusion for the director, but that was quickly rectified, and we jumped into the audition. I was a little more nervous than I'd have thought, and though I used the nervous energy well, it kinda changed the timber of my reading, I thought. But still, I was really pleased with my reading. And I'm usually not. I happen to think that I'm a great performer, but an awful auditioner. More than once I've thought about taking an audition class now that I'm in New York. 'Course, I have to get settled in and get a job first, so I can pay for an acting class.

So now I'm on my way home to Pittsburgh. It's my first time flying since September 11th, and though I'm not really nervous - you remember how much I love to fly - I can't help but think about what those passengers on those planes were going through. And on top of that, as I was sitting around waiting to leave for the weekend, I was watching Mike Wallace's The Twentieth Century on The History Channel, and what should be the topic but the crash of TWA Flight 800.... complete with the CIA-generated animation of what happened to the plane - how the front third of the aircraft was blown off by a fuel tank explosion, and how the rest of the airliner, with the sudden change in weight, suddenly shot up from 12,000 feet to 17,000 feet before the engines stalled, it rolled over and plunged into the sea. It took nearly a minute for it to fall out of the sky... and of course the mind can't help but wonder if anyone was alive in there for that. I have to believe that, at 17,000 feet, the air would have been too thin and anyone alive would have blacked out. At least I have to hope that.

Anywho, I need to sign off, as we're getting in to wind-swept Pittsburgh and I have to assume the crash position. Wish me luck. (Of course, if this actually gets uploaded to the internet, you'll know that I've survived to do so, so all the drama's lost, isn't it?)

In a Holding Pattern

Life continues apace, though there's not much happening here in New York City - 'specially for a guy on a budget. I have a callback for Fuddy Meers at City Theatre on Friday... my first audition ever for City Theatre that isn't in Pittsburgh. That's kinda exciting.

I had dinner last night with David... our second date. It was really nice. We went to a restaurant down in Chelsea called (if I'm remembering this correctly) Buona Sera - but I think I got that wrong. In any case, it was really good. Afterward, we went for drinks at a bar called Candella, which was lit by candles and featured lotsa heavy wood furniture. He's a very sweet guy, and pretty smart, too. Smarter, I think, than he gives himself credit for. He's very opinionated, too, which I like, for now. All in all, a pretty fine evening.

I haven't heard back yet from Jeff's agent friend, but it's all well & good, since I still don't have the voice demo complete. Amy and Rob have been hit with a lot of work at their studio, and since they're doing it gratis, I'm hardly in a position to complain, right? Right. Hopefully they'll have a chance to get it done before I fly back from Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. That would be sweet.

Other than that, not a whole is going on in my life. The temp agencies are reluctant to put me on assignments when they know I have to miss two days next week, so hopefully when I get back from Pittsburgh that stuff will go great guns... wish me luck!

Hello.

And the search goes on. I had a flurry of activity today - I talked to Cary Spear, to whom I've not spoken in an age, and it turns out that both she and Ron (Siebert, her husband) are here in town, at their apartment in Inwood, so we're going to try to have dinner tomorrow night. It'll give me a chance to collect some of my crap from their apartment, but more importantly, it'll give me a chance to see Cary & Ron. Besides being such sweet people and such great friends, they're really good for my ego, and give me a lot of hope for my career, which I'm not often good at doing myself.

I also put in a call to an agent at Jeff Bergman's agency, Todd Jenkins. Jeff's set up the introduction, so hopefully I'll be able to get an appointment with Todd, and after he hears my voice demo, hopefully he can offer some wisdom on which way to go in getting representation and thoughts about improvement. So I'm looking forward to making that connection.

Other than making a bunch of phone calls and sitting on my keister (is that how you spell that word? is it really even a word?) I haven't accomplished much today.

I spoke to David, the guy with whom I've been corresponding the last couple of months, and we're wrangling over our second date. Did I tell you we had a seven hour first date? I met him at noon on Sunday in front of the Barnes & Noble on the north side of Union Square, and we went from there to lunch at Mayrose Diner, which we discovered is a mutual favorite - I'd been there before on my own and with Amy Hartman, when we'd met Roy Yokelson and Jeff at The Sound Track studio, which is right around the corner. It really is a tiny little world. From there, we wandered through the holiday bazaar in Union Square and then hopped the subway for the little adventure David had planned for us - he'd been promising me that when we finally met we were going to do something he thought would be cool that he'd never done, and was pretty sure I'd never done, and was free! That last part was good for both of us. Anyway, we ended up on the Staten Island Ferry, shuttling back and forth across New York Harbor and checking out the new skyline of lower Manhattan. After a trip back and forth on the ferry, we made for the Lincoln Center area in hopes of catching a 4:15 showing of In the Bedroom, but by the time we got there, it was sold out. So instead, we went to dinner at a little diner around the corner. Afterward, we walked all the way down to 42nd Street where we each caught our respective subways for the trip home. He lives in Astoria, and I live in Brooklyn. Two ends of the same line. Anyway, I had a great time, and I think he enjoyed himself as well, so we're working on finding a time when we can get together again. His weekend's pretty booked up with work and visiting friends, so we're aiming for next week.

In the meantime, I've got a lot of work to do, and more temp agencies to visit, so I'll update you further as soon as possible. Hope all's well!

Delerium Tremens

Well, I'm in living hell, and suffering delirium tremens. I've been in the apartment since Saturday night and there's no phone service yet, so I'm suffering from a hideous withdrawal. Jesse met me here Saturday night and got me settled in - he'd come in over the weekend to await the arrival of his new bed (which turned out to be too large for the frame that the sublettee's had told him was a queen-sized one), and that's when he broke the news that his roommate, Maya, was supposed to be taking care of the telephone service hookup.

But Maya, who I've met and seems very nice, is trying to move her own crap in while at the same time trying to prepare for a trip to Canada to visit her family for the holidays, and between bouncing back & forth between here and Philadelphia, hasn't had much of a chance to get any phone stuff done. And it's beginning to look like she's not gonna get much of a chance to do it before this weekend. I can't tell you the last time I had to go without an internet connection for over a week. I'm having night sweats.

The bright spot is that I've gotten a lot of writing done. The pope screenplay has been stalled for quite a while, and I dragged it out, dusted it off, and tinkered with it a little, but didn't make a whole lot of progress. However, there's another piece that's been taunting me for almost a year now, and I've been running from it 'cuz I knew that it would be not just hard to write but painful in a personal sense. Well, I've started into it, and so far, I like what's happening with it.

I'm not gonna describe it any more than that, except to say that my family may hate me when it's finished. It's that personal. I mean, it's fictionalized, but the degree to which it's based on fact, and the parts that are fictionalized, might hurt my family. But I can't worry about that right now - I have to write the thing, and then decide what to do with it once it's done. If I need to, I can alter it in later drafts to make it less about my family, but for now, I have to try to get it down.

Oh, and I just got off the phone with Gary Klein, the director of Father Figure, the showcase show I'm doing in Pittsburgh in January. The final details have been attended, and it looks like it's all going to work out. I've got to find some work soon, though, or I'm not going to have money for rent when the end of the month comes.

That's a big worry for me. But I guess it's not like I don't always have something to worry about, huh?

Another Odyssey

Well, here we go again. I'm starting this entry at 8:55 a.m., sitting in the train station in Pittsburgh, waiting for my train to New York City to pull in. It's already about an hour late. And thought the thought of spending the next eleven hours on a train isn't thrilling to me, I'm really looking forward to getting to New York and settling in. Well, as settled in as a person can get when he's living in a short term sublet and looking for an apartment, that is. But I think you know what I mean.

12:25 p.m.:
So my trip to New York City happens to coincide with deer hunting season in the state of Pennsylvania, and a moment ago, I happened to look out the window as a hunter was digging around in the carcass of the deer he'd just slain. Just as I looked up, he was standing up and shaking his hands off as though they were wet, and then I realized they were covered in the deer's blood. It was kind of a disturbing image, but I'm hardly in a position to give the guy shit for hunting dear, since I'm a big ol' carnivore from way back. I sincerely hope he's hunting that deer for a reason, like he's gonna eat the meat or something... I'm totally against hunting for trophy purposes. I don't understand why a deer has to die just to prove some guy's got a big dick. And while I know that a hunter can survive perfectly well by going to the grocery store to buy his meat, I don't see anything wrong with a guy going out and killing something he intends to eat. Hell, if he has to look the thing in the face before he shoots it, he might think twice about the whole damn thing. Have you ever really looked in a cow's face? I don't eat as much red meat as I used to. Fowl, I'm all for killing and eating... except for maybe ducks, fowl are, to generalize, the most ill-tempered, irritable, irredeemable avian creatures to be found.

How did I get on that rant?

So my last days in Pittsburgh were filled with packing and moving my crap out of Gavan's house, and laundry and packing suitcases for New York City. I ended up missing the opportunity for one last evening out with Patti Kelly last night, 'cuz I couldn't get to the laundry before then. Very disappointing.

One thing I did manage to do was spend two days this week re-working my voice demo reel at Rob Deaner's studio on Mount Washington. Rob, you'll remember (or maybe you won't) is Amy Hartman's husband, and they've got a great recording studio on the third floor of their house. It's a great facility, and I had a wonderful time. I think the demo's gonna sound good, too. Once they're able to put everything we've done together, I'll convert it to mp3 and post it on the website.

During those two days, I stopped each time I got off the Duquesne Incline and snapped a couple of pictures from the top of the mountain. The first one is of Pittsburgh on a pretty overcast day (something that happens, frankly, way too often). The other one is from the same spot the next day, after dusk. I think the night-time picture is probably one of my favorite ever - of the pictures I've taken of Pittsburgh, that is.

Oh, and on Thanksgiving Day, as I was on my way to my sister's house, I managed to snap a picture of one of my favorite childhood sights. The Hornes Department Store Christmas Tree! Hornes went out of business a long time ago, but each successive owner of the building has agreed, apparently, to continue the tradition of putting up the tree. It used to be such a big treat when we were younger to be allowed to climb on the bus and go Christmas shopping in downtown Pittsburgh. I used to love to shop for my mom at Hornes and Kaufmanns department stores. You know, I don't think I ever realized just how damn big that tree was... but seeing it again as an adult just confirms what I thought of it as a child.

1:30 p.m.:
Have I talked about how unnerved I've been at what I've been calling the patriotic hysteria that's run rampant in our country since the attacks of September 11? It's seemed to me, with President Bush declaring "You're either with us, or with the terrorists," that suddenly we're all expected to fall lock-step into line and support everything he does, even when it has nothing to do with the "war on terrorism" or national security. And I've found myself unable to put the correct words to what I'm feeling, because I am genuinely patriotic, but I don't believe that means blindly following the game plan of a man I didn't trust to lead my country in peace time. The idea of the president having control over the economy scared me shitless, and now if I don't like the idea of him having unchallenged authority in a war on terrorism, that makes me unpatriotic?!?

So I've been at a loss for the past few weeks as the whole war thing has ramped up, about how to explain this to people without being attacked. And not long ago I happened to be listening to NPR and heard commentary by a woman named Kate Nelson, who writes for the Albuquerque Tribune. I was so excited by what she said that I immediately wrote to her and asked for a transcript of her comments, which I'm pasting below... it kinda sums up what I'm feeling perfectly.

Are you with us or against us? Do you support the economic-stimulus package or would you cripple an economy at war? Do you back the USA Patriot bill or are you sheltering terrorists in your basement? Yeah, we're united. If you don't agree, can you really be a patriot yourself?

Consider it the ultimate fruit of talk radio. He who shouts loudest wins. And all hope withers that a diverse nation can discuss its way past the black and white into the shades of gray. It isn't limited to national affairs.

Earlier this month, New Mexico executed its first inmate in 41 years. In response to the most drastic act of a so-called corrections system, death-penalty supporters and opponents gouged out a rhetorical chasm. I sided with the opponents. But I still couldn't find a shred of sympathy for the inmate, who had kidnapped, raped and killed a 9-year-old girl.

But the supporters did little to win me over. Talk radio became their haven. Some callers offered to be the executioner. Another day, they debated whether God would let the condemned man into heaven. "Hmmmm," I imagined God saying. "Rachel in Las Cruces says `Fry the S.O.B.,' but John in Roswell says `Let him rot in prison.'"

We journalists hardly help. Too often, we pair the person who demands "no" with the person who shrieks "yes" and avoid the people who say "I don't know." They're just too gray.

That's a failing of a democratic ideal, and in this time of war with terrorism, it's hardening into a national gag rule. If reasonable people cannot disagree reasonably, then let's not let people disagree.

Let's be unified.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that there are no right answers, no wrong answers, no black, no white. We live in a swirl of grays, of ever-changing events and uncertain solutions. I don't know if we can find a better way to avenge the murders of thousands of innocent Americans. I don't know if we can find a better way to punish the worst criminals.

I do know that we won't find out unless we hear all those people who decline to join the verbal version of American Gladiator. Listen, there is a new and silent majority among us. And it shouldn't have to beg to differ.