Happy Ending

Maybe I'm revealing more about myself than I ought, but I actually occasionally read the escort/model ads in the back of the Village Voice, and though I haven't seen it in a while (mostly 'cuz everyone knows what it means), occasionally you'll see a massage advertised "with happy ending."

You do know what that means, right?

Anywho, I'm here to tell you that, though it did indeed have some great highlights -- I had an incredible summer, professionally -- 2005 is going down in my tally book as not having had a very happy ending at all.

So there!

I Feel the Same Way About Acting

"Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

- EB White

On the Other Hand...

Yeah, the tail-end of 2005 has been rather spectacularly craptacular.

My dad died.

My aunt died.

My mom went to the funeral home to see her beloved sister laid out, and took a spill, and she's in the hospital in enormous pain, and completely unable to move her leg.

And I have no prospects for theatrical work.

So it's time for me to focus on the things I have to be grateful about.

1. I saw my father several times this past summer. He knew how I felt about him, I knew how he felt about me. It had all been said. Nothing to regret.
   
   
2. I've reconnected with my brothers & sisters.
   
   
3. I've made a bunch of new friends.
   
   
4. I got a beloved new camera.
   
   
5. Despite the departure of the Lagemæ, I'm still blessed with two amazing friends in the city. Four, actually. Well, five.
   
   
6. The fact that my heart can survive rejection means that it can also put itself out there again.
   
   
7. Long walks in the city.
   
   
8. There is, indeed, so much simple beauty in the world that sometimes it makes my heart ache.

I'm sure the more I think about it, the more this list is gonna grow.

Movieliscious

Last Friday, I was released from The Velvet Prison™ early, and rather than throw myself into packing and moving, as I should have since the transit strike had finally come to an end, I decided to do something infinitely more frivolous:

I spent the afternoon and evening going to the movies.

And, my friends, when I get it in my head to waste time going to the movies, I don't mess around. I saw both King Kong and Brokeback Mountain in one day.

I give a qualified thumbs-up to Kong. Though it's three hours long, I didn't really feel it (except, maybe for the extended bug sequence... coulda lived without that), and for the most part, the CGI stuff is amazing. Kong himself is kick-ass amazing. But, and here's where my review goes south, I swear I could see the outline where they put the humans into some of the CGI shots that didn't involve Kong. When Jack Black and Adrian Brody were running away from the stampeding dinosaurs (sorry, kids... that was a bit of a spoiler, I guess), it looked like nothing so much as two guys running in place in front of a screen. Maybe ol' Peter Jackson had to deliver the movie before he was really finished touching it up.

The real hero of the movie is Naomi Watts. Well, Naomi Watts and Andy Serkis. She's absolutely amazing, even when you know she's acting to a green screen. And Andy Serkis -- as the physical model for Kong -- was just a hoot. At least they didn't skimp on the CGI there. Kong's ultimate fall (the literal one, I mean) seemed a little hokey for me. I know it's a fantasy, but I wasn'tnecessarilyy able to suspend my disbelief -- knowing, as I do, that from the height of the top of the Empire State Building, Kong woulda hit the pavement like a Hefty Bag full of vegetable soup.

Still, its faults notwithstanding, I'm happy to recommend it. Just make sure you pee before it starts.

I have to admit to being very wary of Brokeback Mountain. I didn't see how it was possible for me to be any more affected than I was by Annie Proulx's short story. That story left me a on a two-day intermittent crying jag.

Well, there's no way the movie was gonna do that, though I've heard people who were still trying to come to terms with what they'd seen four days later. I wasn't that affected, but I sure did enjoy the film.

Heath Ledger absolutely deserves all the accolades he's getting for this one, and I even liked Jake Gyllenhaal, though some friends didn't. But I find him an engaging and interesting performer generally, so there's that. Of course, you know Jake's waiting with bated breath for my opinion. Heath, too.

In any case, I thought the cast was great. The real treat, though, is Ang Lee's direction, and particularly the astoundingly beautiful way he shoots the Western landscape. Watching this film made me want to go on a nice long trip through the Heartland with my camera. Wonderful.

So for what it's worth, that's my take. Feel free to toss your excess coins in the tip jar.

MomWatch 2005

So, who knew there were so many different kinds of diagnostic tests out there? First my mom had X-rays, which didn't show anything. Then she had a "bone scan," the point of which I'm clueless about, and which was also negative (and negative, in this instance, I think, being a positive). Today she's having a CT scan. They can't do an MRI because of all the metal in her hip.

Note to self: Avoid, if at all possible, having metal permanently embedded in your body.

More later.

SNL Ascendant?

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in, like, fifteen years. This might actually just start me watching again.

If Only...

Oh, lawdie, if only I was half so eloquent as Wonkette:

In the War on Christmas, there were no winners because for all but the most retarded members of our society, there was nothing whatsoever at stake. In considering the vast history of Christianity and the dire trials its adherents faced in the past (and still do in far-flung places on the globe), it's a little hard to feel for people whose freely-practicable faith is rocked to its firmament because the shopgirl at Restoration Hardware doesn't break into a spontaneous chorus of "O Holy Night" at the completion of every tendered transaction.

Hope the turning of the New Year finds you all manner of well.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming!

So I got word a couple hours ago that my Mom, who'd been to the funeral home to see her sister laid out, had returned to Betts' house to get a bite to eat and, while going in, fell.

She's in the hospital. The first round of x-rays didn't find anything broken, but they're keeping her overnight so they can do an MRI in the morning. The poor woman just had surgery two weeks ago to help clean up the crusty arthritis in her shoulder. I can't even begin to imagine what the shock of this must be doing to her.

I'm trying not to have a really bad feeling about this, but as we've discussed before, it's kinda bred into me.

More as I know it.

Sweet Jaybird of Happiness

I'm excited about the impending arrival tomorrow of The Jaybird of Happiness, and his main squeeze, The Marxist. They'll be staying with me for a couple days before returning to their nesting place somewhere in the middling South.

It's going to be fantastic to see JoH, as I've not seen him since his departure from Pittsburgh this summer past, and one should never go too long without an infusion of Jaybird in one's life to make one feel happy.

The picture, by the way, is his look for a handy-dandy little piece of theater he did in early December called Piece-Meal. I would have paid money to see that in person. Though who knows... I may soon.

Tidings of Comfort sans Joy

You'd think that being unable to get home to my family for Christmas would be just the thing to push me firmly over the edge into a Swirling Vortex of Melancholy®. Not so.

I'm pretty disappointed that I couldn't be in Pittsburgh with my family -- especially my Mom, given the sudden passing of my Aunt on Saturday. But to be honest, this Christmas was one of surprising contentment, if a little low-key.

I spent Christmas Eve with Topher. He made a veritable feast for us; black bean soup and edamame & dill salad, and a Christmas ham with stewed tomatoes, onions and basil, all of which were just plain delicious. Sadly, Topher was suffering from the tail-end of a cold, and could barely taste his own cooking. I ended up being the main beneficiary of his labor. The only one, actually.

After we'd cleaned up from dinner, we shambled off to his church, St. Luke in the Fields, for Christmas Eve services. We'd planned on arriving early to get a good seat, but unfortunately misremembered the starting time, and ended up in one of the overflow sections, where we got to see all the backstage wrangling going on. Interesting. And let me tell you, high Episcopalians are really fond of incense.

We didn't get back to Topher's place and to sleep until nearly 2 a.m. (Topher, by the way, has a remarkably comfy sofa... at least for me; I imagine it'd be kinda a torture rack for a tall person). But come Christmas morning, we got up and exchanged gifts, and cooked ourselves some breakfast. We used the leftover ham to make ham & cheese omlettes! All in all, a great time.

I ended up spending most of Christmas day making phone calls and lying around reading while Topher went off to a dinner with his friends; when he returned, I ordered my traditional away-from-home Christmas meal: Chinese food.

Like I said, it was hardly brimming over with joy, but it surely was filled with the comfort of a good friend, and knowing how much I'm loved.

Hope yours was too.

I ask again...

...what world is this?!? Why does it seem upside down?!?

My Aunt Betts passed away today; something I find inconceivable.

She was my mom's older sister, and probably -- along with her younger sister Barb -- one of her best friends. Ever.

I can't imagine what a blow this must be to my mom, coming so quickly on the heels of my dad's death just over six weeks ago.

Like my dad's death, Aunt Betts' passing is all the more a shock because, of Betty and her husband John, no one in their right mind would have picked Johnny to outlive Betty. The poor man suffered a terrible, debilitating, work-related accident years ago, and he's slowly but surely worked his way back to being able to walk with crutches, but he's just been so battered by life; and he's older than my dad was.

This shit is just crazy, man.

Anway, that picture is one of my favorite of Aunt Betts and Uncle Johnny. It was taken, I think, right after WWII, and it captures so much about them.

I said to one of my siblings at my Dad's funeral, "You know, aside from Billy [my eldest brother, who died back in the mid-70's], our family's been remarkably untouched by death. I mean, yeah, grandparents and the like, but really... we should probably start expecting this to happen more often."

I just had no idea it would be this soon.

Stop Making Me Love You

All you romantics are wrong.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a self-identified Romantic. With an uppercase "r."

But most people -- Romantics chief among them -- think that love is gooey and soft, protective and caressing. It's not. It's big, adrenaline-rushing, heart-pumping, sweat-inducing, stomach- churning, crazy-making madness.

And I do mean madness. With an uppercase "m."

Manhattan Death March -- Part Two

I have officially become a Crazy New Yorker™.

I started home last night at around 5:30 p.m., and the crowds on the street were the thickest I've ever seen outside of Times Square. Of course, I don't often wander down 6th Avenue in the middle of rush hour during the last few days of Christmas shopping season, so I may not be the authority you want to go to on this one.

In any case, I was facing an equally long walk back to Brooklyn -- I definitely needed clothing other than the stuff I'd be wearing and washing for three days past -- and needed to pick up more stuff from the apartment, so I set out.

I'm going to give you the abbreviated version of this.

From 58th Street, I walked down 6th Avenue to Canal, and turned east. I crossed Manhattan on Canal, and then went across the Manhattan Bridge -- the only point at which I felt the urge to pull out my camera. You can see the results.

After crossing the bridge, I hoofed it along Jay, then Smith Street, and finally turned toward home on Dean.

Of course, I didn't go straight home. I stopped at TWB and had a glass of wine and something to eat. And to give my feet a chance to re-coup.

Big mistake. Once they stopped moving, they didn't want to keep going. I thought they were going to fall off. As though I was the first person in history to be sued for divorce by his legs. The were gonna cite irreconcilable differences and maybe physical abuse.

Here's the surprising thing: When I woke up this morning, the only thing that really hurt were the bottoms of my heels, and the bads of my feet. Most likely, I'd imagine, from wearing dress shoes to walk fifteen miles in. Go figure. I think they'll be sore for a while.

Manhattan Death March -- Part One

After working from home for two days, I couldn't take being trapped in the apartment any more, and decided I would walk to work on this, the third day of the TWU's... er, unwise work stoppage.

I didn't start out too well, because I knew it was going to take some time, but I managed to oversleep, and ended up not leaving my apartment until 8:15 a.m.

I started out jauntily enough, though even before I left my block, I knew the fact that my running shoes were still in a closet back in Brooklyn was going to be a big problem by the end of the day. Still, I started out with confidence.

Foolish me.

First milestone: Ft. Washington Avenue at 161st Street.
Progress: 12 blocks.
I have no effing idea of why I took this picture. Maybe I wanted to remind myself of something... where I could get on the west side bike path, maybe? No clue.

At this point there weren't a lot of people on the street, though as I was fast approaching the area of Columbia's medical center, the crowds were increasing.

Second Milestone: Broadway at 125th Street
Progress: 48 blocks.
Welcome to Harlem, baby. Broadway at this point is so far west that you're really only on the edge of that famous neighborhood. And let's be frank, at 8:30 in the morning, there wasn't going to be a lot going on there.

Third Milestone: Broadway at 116th Street
Progress: 57 blocks.
Finally. Entering into territory with which I'm actually familiar. My delightful friend Dan used to live in this neighborhood, and we'd hung out a couple of times. In fact, passing along here reminded me that one of my favorite areas in Central Park (before I really started hanging out at Sheep Meadow) was the pool at the north western end of the park, accessed from 108th Street. I need to head up there again soon.

Fourth Milestone: Broadway at 103rd Street
Progress: 70 blocks.
Dan's old neighborhood. This one's for you, Dan.

Fifth Milestone: Broadway at 73rd Street
Progress: 100 blocks.
First glimpse of destination. I was so happy to see this sight. I was in serious, serious need of some water and a place to take a load off, at this point.

To be honest, this area of the Upper West Side is where I'd live if I could. If I were filthy rich, it'd be at a condo in The Dakota, which is at Central Park West & W 72nd Street. Second choice would be in the the Ansonia, a former hotel frequented by artists that's now a condo. It's at this point, by the way, that my legs were beginning to tire, and I thought I could use some juice.

The odd thing about it, though, is that when I finally got to the office (7.2 miles. in just under two hours. In dress shoes. I've never been a particularly fast walker), my feet didn't really hurt that much. I'd expected them to fell as though they'd been worn down to stumps.

So I survived. The first part of the March.

Who knew?

So go figure. The TWU struck. I have to admit I didn't think it'd come to this. But it did.

I spent the day working from home, a rare and precious blessing, given that I'm actually a temp. My employers at The Media Giant must have faith in me. It's a great motivator. I think I worked harder, and got up from my computer less today than I do on a normal day. Of course, it helps that there's no pantry near my computer here (unless you count the refrigerator I've drained of anything tasty), and that there's no cafeteria in the apartment building.

That might have something to do with it. Although I did get up to pee a couple times. That was probably too much information.

Today, a court in Pennsylvania -- my home state, by the way, and for those of you who didn't know it, a bastion of the Ku Klux Klan -- ruled that the school board in Dover, PA can't force the school to teach Intelligent Design. I don't know on which side of this debate you fall (I hope to God you fall on the side of ID being taught in church, but I'm not judging).

I think Richard Dawkins put it quite nicely (via Jason Kotke).

This, by the way, is a marriage that is made... well, in heaven. Why didn't someone think of this before?!?

I just saw a Chanel commercial with Nicole Kidman in which Rodrigo Santoro plays her love interest, and is, like, forty-seven times more hot in a 60-second commercial in which he's barely featured than in the entirety of Love Actually. I'm just saying.

It's just something to consider next time you're thinking of casting him in a movie. I wish, actually, that I could understand Portugese, so I could watch more of his films.

Again, just saying.

I realized recently that -- because I've not had a working computer -- I never got to post the photos from my trip home for Thanksgiving. Not that I took that many or that they were very good, for some reason, but still, I think my family would enjoy looking at them, and the rest of you palookas can just suck it up.

On the left there are my brother Patrick (who often manages to put his back to my camera. Sneaky), my sister Sue, my Mom, and my sister Lois. As you can see, they're presiding over the remnants of the Thanksgiving feast.

There's my mom; I have no idea who she's talking to on the phone, but she sure seems serious about it, doesn't she? Actually, most likely it's some one calling to comfort here... it was, after all, the first major holiday since my dad's passing. That was hard to deal with, I can tell you. It's one of the reasons we had the dinner at my mom's place. Traditionally we celebrate the holiday at my sister's house; but she wasn't looking forward to seeing the empty seat at the table. I wasn't either.

There was some fun. My niece, Maggie, helped Sue put up the Christmas decorations. Rachel -- my sister's other daughter -- came along later and helped. They all have a fondness for silly headgear.

All in all, the holiday was great. It was getting there and getting bck that was the pain in the ass! Greyhound to be its usual freakfest. And the folks at the terminal in Pittsburgh were particularly inept at wrangling the extra-heavy holiday traffic. I showed up at the terminal nearly two hours before my bus was supposed to leave so I could queue up to get a seat. The nice lady from Greyhound pointed me at one line, and about an hour before I was supposed to leave, started redirecting us all to different lines... it was chaos. I left nearly two hours late. Thank you, Greyhound. You suck snot. The picture at the left is of the line long before it got hairy.

Deja Vu

Well, here we are again.

Last week, the city of New York was held in the thrall of the Transit Workers' Union, as we waited to see whether or not they would be going out on strike -- effectively shutting down the city for the first time since 1980.

Of course, there was no strike, and the union and MTA went back to the bargaining table. To avoid the anti-union Taylor Law (which prohibits strikes by public employees), the union has some bus drivers striking who work for private bus companies that are in the middle of being swallowed by the MTA -- but aren't yet technically public employees.

The latest threat was that a strike would happen if no new agreement was in place as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning. It's now 12:30, and still no word.

I want to go to bed, but I want to know if I have to get up and go to work, or if I need to prepare to work from home.

Craptastic 4

I decided to lay low last night, so I had a Netflix film festival.

I watched an interesting but odd Italian film called Without Conscience. Not exactly a laff riot, if you know what I mean. The distributors of the film, Picture This! Entertainment, have chosen a rather (IMHO) misleading marketing strategy for the film. I'm not even sure I can recommend it; it's one of those things where you're going to have to see and make up your own mind. Or, rather, not.

Also in the Netflix pile was Fantastic 4, the latest attempt by Marvel Comics to cash in on their brands. I saw it in the theaters when it came out and I remember thinking, "Well, that wasn't so bad." So I figured it'd be good for a night of mindless fun.

I mean, it's got Michael Chiklis in it. He's great. It's got Ioan Gruffudd in it. He's wonderful in the Horatio Hornblower series. And it's got Julian McMahon, who's great in Nip/Tuck. And don't forget Chris Evans, who I thought helped make Cellular a really outstanding thriller -- way better than it had any right to be. And there's Jessica Alba. She's... well... she's pretty.

Alas, the story sucks, and the writing is worse. Even good actors can't pull this one off.

There's no getting around it, though. There's one reason, and one reason only to watch this film:

Chris Evans. Scantily clad. 'Nuff said.

The evening was quasi-saved by the last film in my pile. Michael Showalter and many of the folk who brought us Red Hot American Summer and "Stella" on Comedy Central are back with his latest film, The Baxter. I enjoyed this one, but I have to say, the way Showalter plays the main character, Elliot, is just a little on the far side of weird. Still, it was fun, and it had the added bonus of featuring one of my favorite actors (who, it should be noted, is also on my why-the-hell-isn't-he-my-husband list), Justin Theroux.

Dreamy and talented. Just like me!

Anyway, The Baxter wasn't great, but it sure went a long way to making up for the other two.

Central Park

About a week ago -- actually, a little more than that -- I decided I would take a walk during lunch and go check out Central Park. I've been feeling the need to walk off my lunch, lately. Not getting as much biking in as I should.

I ended up spending a lot of time at the beginning and end of my walk staring up at Time Warner Center, and the way it interacts with the environment around it -- especially on a sunny day with a lot of fluffy clouds floating around.

If you check out the picture to the left, you can see that it almost looks like the clouds at the top of the south tower (on the left) seem to continue straight into the building, and how the cloud in the middle of the shot seems to continue through the glass in the same way. I didn't notice this effect until I actually downloaded the picture, but I think it's pretty cool.

Anyway, I forced myself to walk around the southeast corner of the park... an area I don't get to very often. I got a lot of photos of the walkways around the Wolman Rink, and took a couple of the rink itself.

I can't believe that I've never been to the Wolman Rink before. It's a bit of a staple of wintertime entertainment in Central Park, and I've lived in the city for four years, after all. Kinda nutty.

Anyway, there were people out skating, even at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, long before the holidays. That's the beauty of New York City. Not only is it true that not everyone here works in an office, but huge numbers of people are free and out and about during "working" hours. Despite the fact that I was destitute, and didn't have money to feed myself, and had no idea of how I was going to pay the rent, I still think fondly of that summer when I was jobless and got to spend all my free time hanging out in the park. Of course, it was the only thing I could afford to do, so there's that.

Ho Ho Homeless

Molly Ivins is at it again. By the time you get around to clicking on that link, the column might well be gone (her syndicate, as far as I can tell, doesn't archive them... at least not on-line), so here's the opening salvo:

Aunt Eula wrote from Fort Worth, Texas, to inform me that in 1954, 50,000 reindeer migrated from Lapland to Finland. An interesting seasonal note, but the most interesting thing about it is that we know it. Someone counts migrating reindeer so we know if they're up, down or holding steady. Try getting an accurate count of the homeless in America.

I love Molly Ivins.

She goes on to cop to the fact that she knows she's being a spoilsport by bringing everyone down during the holidays, exercising her cliched liberal guilt, but the points she raises should be raised -- how funding to help the homeless has been slashed over the years, and how paltry it is in comparison to the size of the "war" budget -- and it's a discussion we should be having.

Everything Old...

Lest you think that the current trend toward judgmental right-wing crazies putting a metaphorical cap in the ass of the rest of us is a new thing, witness that pop sensation from the middle part of the last century known as The Louvin Brothers:

I do have to say, though, that as full of self-righteous crap as half the Louvin Brothers music is, I do love them to death. Jay O'Berski turned me onto them when we were doing Stones this past summer.

But, like so many of the wingnuts on the right, the darlling Louvin Brothers didn't practice what they preached. One fought a long-running battle with alcohol which he ultimately lost. Sad, really.

Still, their music -- if you're willing to look past its "holier than thou" qualities and chalk it up to being an artifact of its time (albeit one relevant to today's weirdness) -- is really quite good. I love their harmonies. Then again, I loved the Everly Brothers, too, so color me bumptious.

And So It Goes

Synchronicity: I was sitting here thinking about E.B. (aka The Waiter), and Jonathan Schwartz played a cover of Billy Joel's "And So It Goes."

And I thought, "Yeah."

That's what I get for having too much wine and waking up bleary-eyed, foggy-headed, and cold.

There's That

So, it's mainly a good thing that I'm back online at home, but there's also a bad side:

I'm back online at home.

Just joking. But, really: When was the last time you caught me blogging after having imbibed way too much alcohol?

I'm just saying.

[As a side note, I'd just like to point out that I made what can only have been a Freudian slip and typed "alcohole." Again, just saying...]

So.

Today was incredibly stressful, and amazingly delightful. And to celebrate it, I got myself liquored up!

At work today, the department for which I slave work pulled off a coup: We produced -- practically without hitch -- a global employee broadcast from six locations to thousands of employees all over the world. Thanks to the totally-on-top-of-it kick-ass planning of my colleagues, it went incredibly smoothly. This on top of many of them having recently pulled off a huge global management meeting event. All in all, it's been a nigh-unto triumphant month for my pals.

So today, the VP of our department threw a little afternoon "congratulations" celebration.

The long and the short of this is that we started drinking champagne at, like, three o'clock. Then, after work, I met Doug, Wayne, Mitch and Kathy for a quick drink and a pow-wow over which movie we were going to see. The only problem with that being that we couldn't agree on a movie that everyone wanted to see. So we settled for sitting around drinking even more.

Instead of going home, I stopped in at TWB and had one more!

Which brings me to my current situation. I'm getting ready to crawl into bed, and dreading (a wee bit) the deadly morning looming before me, 'cuz I don't think there's a single analgesic in the apartment. At least there's water, I guess.

Still, I'm not gonna fret about it too much. As the preternaturally wise Mercury points out in his recent post, we should go out and make mistakes and own them.

Tonight's got my name stamped all over it.

Oh, anyway, the other thing about today:

I had a rather great audition yesterday, for which I had a so-so callback today. Coulda done better. But hey, you do it, and you let it go, right? Here's the thing, though. I know the director (a delightful fellow from my past), and he and the casting director from the theater he now runs very kindly pointed out to me how ridiculous it is that I don't have an agent (I know... my long-time readers are all saying to themselves, "Tell us something new!"). Appears they'd like to hook me up.

The thing that's got me so jazzed though, isn't the possibility of getting an agent. Don't get me wrong; that'd kick some mighty big ass. The best thing, though, is the reminder that there are people out there who can and do enjoy helping others even when there's no payoff, nothing to be gained. They see some situation that they can effect, and they charge in.

I love to be reminded of those sorts of things, mostly because I hope that the lesson will rub off. And maybe I won't just pay it forward, as it were, but I'll pay it outward. Radiate it.

So, wish me luck, and wish me perseverance of generosity.

There's really something to be said for the first serious snowfall of the season. We had a bit of a false start recently -- the weather service predicted a storm that might have been outrageous, but it turned out to be a tempest in a teacup. Last night, however (sometime late, as I was awake way too late) we socked by a doozie. It closed schools in the counties surrounding the city, and dumped as much as a foot on surrounding areas.

It was stunning. Granted, I didn't have to drive in it, so I might have a skewed perspective.

But I love the way the first serious storm of the season always seems to catch the world around us by surprise. All the leaves haven't finished dropping, the bushes haven't quite turned into bristle brushes of scratchy twigs. Autumn doesn't quite seem ready to quit its work when -- OOPS! -- suddenly everything's covered in a blanket of frozen water.

There's something about the juxtaposition that just kicks my ass. In a good way.

It's true that we've entered that portion of the year when I begin to suspect that I'll never, ever, be warm again, but that having been said, bring on the snow, say I.

J'adore Me.

You know, I'm not vain -- well, I am vain, despite being thoroughly convinced I'll never be anything but "cute;" that I'm the least photogenic human on the planet -- but I have to say: I adore this picture of me:

Imagine

Well, my computer's up and running again. The new memory is installed (THANKS RON), and I can do things like blog at normal hours. And not feel guilty anymore about occasionally checking in on my personal e-mail at work.

And, I can scan the internet(s) for nifty little items like this.

I have to admit, I wasn't the greatest John Lennon fan after the Beatles broke up. I suspect I just didn't get him. Maybe now that I'm older, I should explore his music a little more. That aside, though, I seriously dug his politics. "Imagine" is practically a philosophy.

So here's to you, John Lennon. I hope your bones are happily interred, and you've reincarnated as... well, whatever you imagined.

And You Wonder Why I'm Depressed

This item in yesterday's NY Times (might require free registration to read), goes a long way to explaining why life as actor is so hard.

What it doesn't address is the fact that -- unlike the past -- the entertainment industry is geared toward making movies/plays/TV for a much younger demographic, which leaves us "old" folks with fewer and fewer jobs.

And everyone's got to be beautiful these days. I'm beginning to believe that in a few more years "character actors" will be a thing of the past. They'll just be pretty people uglied up.

Don't believe me? Check out these character description snippets from "the Breakdowns," the daily casting notices sent to agents. This is just a sampling, taken from five random days over the last couple of months, searching for the terms "handsome" or "good looking":

"Male, Caucasian (Walden girls friend / House Crasher) 20's, very good looking. SUPPORTING"

"Handsome, arrogant English professor who is caught with a transvestite prostitute..."

"Indie director, who has that "whole handsome, artsy, ultra-cool Ethan Hawke thing going on..."

"David is a handsome, hardworking, successful Ob/Gyn who shares a practice with his father and brother."

"handsome, very macho, brilliant psychiatrist, good upper crust British accent, capable of both savage murder and drawing room conversation."

"he's a smart, handsome, problem-solver with a razor sharp wit."

"male; Smooth, handsome, and fit..."

"Mid 20's. Italian. Hot. Aggressive. Energetic. Smoker. Jon's former lover."

And yet, we struggle on...

Blue

For a while, I've paid lip service to the idea that, not only do you have to accept the good with the bad, but that very often they come at the same time... that's what life is. Always some good, always some bad.

Lately, I've been struggling with a "where's the good?" attitude. Things haven't been going terribly well. Mostly, I think I've just been skating by, not really in that black a hole (or, as one friend likes to put it: a "swirling vortex of Need"), but skirting the edge.

My dad's death; my increasing weariness with being a poor, struggling actor; yet another approaching holiday spent "alone;" waiting (fruitlessly, it increasing appears) for the guy who's supposedly supplying the memory for my laptop to come through -- all these things have piled up in such as way as to make me wonder when the good stuff is supposed to start flowing.

Several years ago, I wrote in my journal that I'd remarked to a friend how I felt like a sword being forged in a bright, hot flame -- and how I was looking forward to the finished product, but also how the process was kicking my ass. I guess I'm just a wee bit weary of feeling as though I'm being bent over an anvil and pounded on by a big hammer.

Hmm... maybe that metaphor was inexpertly applied. You get the idea, though.

Anyway, I've been spending a lot of time lately feeling sorry for myself, and that just pisses me off. It's a learned behavior, you know, all that "woe is me, look how badly the world is treating me" bullshit. Don't get me wrong... some people are ill-treated by the world, and sometimes I think I'm one of them. But really, how you react to it all is up to you.

I struggle to remember that. And I try to stay positive. Impoverished, but positive.

Brilliant. No, really. Brilliant.

Loathsome

Courtesy of Jason Kottke.

As if we needed another reason to loathe Corporate America, here it is.

Jason puts it best: Pussies.