Ratting Myself Out

I have a bit of a huge crush on one of Ken's friends, who's lately had a bit of success in his theatrical endeavors and, according to a recent missive from dear ol' Ken (who is himself enjoying a cornucopia of romantic or possibly romantic swellness -- yay Ken!), it's netting him a lot of attention.

So here's a big shout out and good wishes to my crush -- whose privacy I'll only barely protect by not naming him. Those of you who know me will be able to figure it out.

Alas, I can't ever reveal my longing to this sweet and inestimably talented lad, as he's already taken. Story of my life, ladies and gentlemen.

And so I struggle valiantly on.

Delerium Tremens

So I've been without a computer for a couple weeks, and I have to tell you, I'm like a junkie without his fix. This is pretty wild. I have determined that the problems with my computer are purely electrical (that is, all my data is intact and sitting there waiting for me) -- dear old Dan thinks there's something wrong with the electrical board, or maybe a short in the fan that's causing it to shut itself down every time it starts up.

I've yet to find a laptop repair service nearby that will do a free estimate on the cost of repairing the damn thing. But the search continues.

All that aside, I've been having a very eventful couple of weeks. Not that anything particularly noteworthy is happening, but I have, at least, been keeping busy.

In addition to performing Stones in His Pockets, which closed last Sunday, I've been rehearsing for The False Servant at PICT, which opens this coming weekend -- Saturday, I think. I was supposed to start rehearsals this very day for Henry, the new play by Thomas Kilroy based on Pirandello's Encrico IV -- which is totally different from Shakespeare's Henry IV, which PICT did earlier in the year. Confusing, no?

So, yeah, we were supposed to start today, but there's been a bit of a catastrophe, which I'm not entirely sure has been announced to the public, come to think of it, so it may be inappropriate to talk about here. Suffice it to say that the start of rehearsals has been moved back a week.

Drama, drama, drama.

In addition rehearsing and performing, I've also spent the last week subbing for my dear friend Cary. She got a summer gig at St. Vincent's Summer Theatre, and asked me to take over last week and part of this week for her classes at the Carnegie Mellon summer pre-college theatre program. I've been spending Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the company of coming-up seniors in high school who're at skit camp. It's been fun.

I've forgotten what it's like to be 17 and wanna set the world on fire, and to be so passionate -- or at least passionate in a completely different way -- about acting.

And these kids are whip-smart. I had a long discussion with one of them yesterday about just how good some one who's 17 can be, not having had much life experience -- and he was the one arguing that you can only be so good at his age; that it takes a life to make an actor. I can't remember what I thought when I was that young, but I'm pretty sure I believed I didn't have to wait 'til I was 40, or even 20, to be good. I hope I disabused him of that belief.

I pointed him at a number of the blogs I read -- not least of which is Chasing Mercury -- written by people so much younger than I am, but who seem to have their heads screwed on pretty tightly, and who write with skill and passion about subjects I never mulled when I was their age.

I can promise you, I wasn't as smart.

Yeesh.

Haven't seen me in a while, have ya?

That's 'cuz my computer is completely kaput, and I'm working on getting it back up and running. For now, just about all I can do is check e-mail on the fly on good ol' Jay's computer. Alas. Keep an eye out for me. I'm gonna be back on my electronic feet soon.

I'll See it for Dakota

I love movies. Unabashedly. Unreservedly. And, some would say, with little or no taste, rarely differentiating between the good and the bad.

Which is why I'm going to see War of the Worlds, post-haste.

But I'm seeing it for Dakota Fanning, whom I adore. Never an untrue moment with this precious little powerhouse.

I'll decidedly not be seeing it to support Tom Cruise, about whom I've had increasingly mixed feelings lately. What with his crazy stunts on Oprah, his moronic observations about Brooke Shields and the whole science of psychology and psychiatry (not, mind you, that I don't think we're too quick to medicate our problems away), and most assuredly in spite of his increasingly annoying the-lady-doth-protest-too-much insistence on his virile and overwhelming heterosexuality.

No, I'll be seeing this flick because I love movies. And the beauty of my lack of taste in movies is that I go into them with absolutely no expectations, so I'm rarely disappointed. I can find something to like about the worst cinematic piles of trash. Mock me all you like, but I think I'm better off than you people who actually expect something for the money you spend on your movie ticket. And remember, I live in New York City, where we spend $10.50 on a movie.

So yeah. Bring it, say I. In spite of crazy Tom Cruise, and bad reviews. Bring it, and I'll have fun.

But it does beg the question: Why don't we have real movie stars anymore? Where are the likes of Cary Grant? Cary Cooper? Gregory Peck? Katherine Hepburn? Bette Davis?

I think it's because those old stars, the ones we put on a pedestal, didn't release all the messy details of their lives for public consumption, so all we had to focus on was the roles they played. We never had to watch Cary Grant put a lip lock on Irene Dunne and have that image spoiled by knowing he was suing the hell out of a gay porn star to keep him quiet.

Good and Bad

Anyone who tries to tell you that life isn't all things at all times, needs only reference my day yesterday to have his or her arguement shot to hell.

Talk about a great day. And a shitty one.

It's just life, baby.

Jay, his new girlfriend Dana & I went to Sandcastle, Pittsburgh's riverside water park yesterday, and spent three glorious hours frolicking in the sun and water. I had a delicious time. Got sunburned like a lobster. Saw more eye candy than my eyeballs could process. And the beautiful part is that once we'd had our fill and were ready to bug out, the skies opened up and a downpour flooded the city. Lightning. Thunder. Astoundingly beautiful.

We had a great show last night. Good audience. Laughed at everything. Fun to play with.

And then I got home afterward and discovered that something about that storm had fragged my laptop. Not fragged completely, mind you. But I came home to find it completely locked up, and when restarted, it would get into a loop in which it would nearly finish booting up and restart itself. By futzing around with it, I discovered that the source of the problem was my internet connection. Every time I plugged in the ethernet cable, the system would shut itself down to protect the system. Totally freaky.

And very, very annoying.

So it's taken the better part of a morning for me to uninstall and reinstall the ethernet hardware and get the damn thing working again. I'm wary. Three times it's seemed like it's working and then it's locked up and shut itself down again.

The point is, however, that it's a great example of just what life's all about. It's the most important lesson we can learn. The good and the bad don't necessarily alternate. They're both present all the time. You do have to take the good with the bad, but contrary to most people's ideas of how that works, I think they come together.