Finding something Holy in the Holiday.

In which we discuss:
Discouraging generosity as a means of absolving ourselves of the guilt of poverty during the season of giving;
Bus rides on Christmas day;
Making friends with family;
Telling stories in play;
Coming out to your family as an Actor;
Et all...

I'm on a bus.
I seem to do most of my *sarcastic air quotes* "Writing" while riding public transportation of some kind.
My dad and I left a family party in Northern VA (a delightful time, of which we will speak later) and dropped me with a backpack, and one more suitcase than I arrived with. 
The first is full of clean laundry, and the second with the gifts of my doting family (both of which will also be discussed, at length, later).
It's dark and my eyes are tired from all this screen staring, and all I can think is how strange it is that we have found no better configuration for mass transit seating than 'front and center, everyone!'.
Where is the genius of the American innovator now, when all I want is to take a piss in the porta-outhouse they call a bathroom and to do so I have to try to parcour over the prone form of some sweet old lady who just wants to catch a few winks(she's leaning on me and it's adorable) before we hit city limits?? 
Inquiring bladders want to know.

If this blog weren't evidence enough, I will admit to being a fledgling amateur storyteller: I love to spin yarns and play with verbiage and composition, and I'm constantly exploring new venues to do so. 
So!
I've found a new one: I am going to write and run a campaign in one of my favorite if not my Difinitive favorite role playing game settings.
It's cyber punk, post apocalyptic trans dimensional, magic slinging alien slaying (or saving) epic ness on a scale like I've not seen in any other such game, and I'm writing my own (competitively) low scale epic to fit nicely in this delightfully fictional waste land earth.
Any interested parties living in, or within commutable distance to the NYC metro area, please contact me in the comments.
But the game is hardly the point!  It is that I've been given a framework to structure my narrative around (around which to structure my SHUTUP), and that's always been the hardest part for this already mystifyingly difficult process. 
I can see why so many fantasy authors have made novels out of their game sessions; the storyteller's initial process is so vague in anything but the large, set-piece details, that the actual practice of Play, the collaboration with a party of adventurers can serve to detail and inspire the finer details of the narrative as it happens.
I am so gonna get rich off of this, I just know it.

So, my family, my madre y padre, are very generous.
My impulse is to say 'too' generous, but that smacks of ingratitude and diminishment of the value of their gifts.
And I'm trying to get over that.
I am in an ok place when it comes to my finances, and by that I mean that I think I can actually pay my rent without help from my family this month.  And I'm actually rather pleased about my progress in the city thusfar.
But I could not, in any sane world, purchase them gifts Knowing that doing so would put me in a situation that would demand I ask them for help again.
Yeah, a conundrum, to be sure.
so, instead, I brought all the love and focus a gift might seek to symbolize in a visit.  I bought a round trip bus ticket and that was my gift.
And I've known that this was going to be my gift for a while.
So, knowing this, I discouraged my family from buying Me anything, thinking the sheer inequity of value of giving and blah blah blah.
I love my family, and they love me.  And they can share the success they have now because they worked very hard for many hears to have it.  If, in addition to every other expression of love they offed me, they want to show their love with generosity, knowing full well I can't reciprocate (yet) who am to discourage them? 
Is it more noble to discourage the gift for the sake of pride and equality, or to accept, swallowing price and being thankful for the bounty of new socks?
So many socks!

So, I'm in a show (woo!).
Off Broadway (woohoo!)
With potential for serious exposure (Whooooaitaminute...)
Exposure is the operative, here, folks.
Fuzzy is going Mr. Natural for my off Broadway debut in blah blah, the point is that I had to explain this to my sweet, doting family.
Mom and dad are fine, they knew what they sere signing up for when I said 'I want to be an actor' and they said 'Ok'
But my extended family...
So I'm at a holiday party, standing in the only place anyone ever talks about anything of substance, The Kitchen.
Jesse (my deliriously talented young cousin who, by sheer force of will, I have tricked into being my friend) has dexterously dismembered the roast beast and we're all standing around, picking at the bones.
Someone asks me about how I'm enjoying the city, what I'm doing with myself and all that...and I am presented with a choice.
In the ever self-editing choose-your-own-adventure book of my life, I had two options. 
Do I say:
1. "Oh, I'm working retail and just got cast in a small beans musical with the potential for real growth and public response"
OR
2. "I got cast in a show where I'm gonna be naked allot!"

I don't know where my instincts for shameless self-promotion come from, but they suck and need to be improved.
Anyhow, so begins the cautiously bemused questioning of a group of people who love and know me well enough to want to be supportive, but still nervously giggle when I say something to the effect of 'c'mon guys, it's just a penis'
Apparently, it's never just a penis.
Unless it's Equus, or Quills or something like that.
Oh well, they laughed when I made a joke out of it, and in excited to share my NYC debut with my family.
And that's the real pisser; I think they might actually come see!  I've told everyone that we're double cast, so they can look at some other pale, malnourished man-boy waggle his tallywhacker for fun and profit, but that was met with a resounding No!  We wanna see You...which I received with mixed feelings, to be sure.
Any way you spin it (like a record baby) I had one of my best Christmas holidays, not because of all the cool stuff, but because I spent my time genuinely trying to invest in my family and I felt them investing back.
Counter investing.
Incesting?  Nah, that's weird.

Happy holidays, everyone!  Thanks for reading.

Frugality and Panic; Observations from Christmas Retail. And feelings.

Trendspotting was never a movie.
But Trainspotting was.

Trainspotting was about the lost generation of disenfranchised Scottish youth, lost in a shimmering pool of hedonism and heroin, doomed to drown in it's mirror bright refraction of life, like a tartan Narcissus in the Sky with Diamonds. 

Trendspotting would just be a bunch of half baked customer service reps, taking hits off of a bong shaped like a lectern and stoning all over human behavior around Holiday Season.

Allow me to explain.
If I've had any career other than theatre, then it's been in customer service and retail.
I'm good at people, so that's my business.  (What a shmucky thing to say, right?)
Anyhow.
Like any blogger worth his MacBook, I would presume to understand how people work because I have a liberal arts degree and a pedantic disposition, so herein I shall(!):

So, we have built this convention of 'The Time of Year for Giving' which has, in a genius of Edison-ian parallelism, produced 'The Time of Year of Getting'
These have, in turn, twisted 'Giving' to 'Buying' and 'Getting' to 'GIMME'
None of this is news, but bear with me.
The gift of giving has gone sour in the state of men-mark; married, middle aged men.
They enter my store (for it is always Mine while i work there.  Not in any any deliberate ego stroke, but it does help to feel at home in one's. work, no matter how frivolous), these shambling, briefecase bombardiers, braving this foreign land of fashion and feminine grooming... things, desperate to find some token of fealty; some sacrificial ornament to pay homage. 
Homage not to the partner they think they're buying for, but an unconscious obsequience to the pagan demands of Consumerism, The expectation of Tradition, Demonstration of Success, and Sparkly Shit.
But we mask it with words like Love, Commitment, Generosity, Festivity, and Sparkly Shit!
These men come in, desperate to buy some object, some fabrication of our cultures agreed upon standard of what beauty is, and throws HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS at me so that I may act as officiant to this ritual; he's handing me the mag-strip dagger to eviscerate his pocket book and spill it's gold-backed entrails straight into my bosses coffers...
And I'm...
I'm.
Going to let that particular rent settle.

Life is just too short.
I started this post on Wednesday; a hump day.
We all have them.
But Wednesday was a different day.

I am finishing this posy on Friday, December 14th, and that means that there is nothing I can say that has any value in the face of what has happened.  Human life has been sensibly wasted, and no one understands what it is that exists inside us that makes it happen.
But it keeps happening, and we have to mourn more senseless loss. 
Children. 
Children are a wonder of potential energy; a slow fuse firecracker of bright, colorful, wondrous Chaos. 
We celebrate what children represent in our old, more practiced lives, because their eyes see all of what is with a wonder that we've forgotten.
They remind us that even an old man can be exotic, new in the eyes of his infant grandchild, and that bananas are delicious and paper being torn is hilarious, and dentist appointments can end in drug induced hilarity as well as a tooth ache.
Children remind us how to celebrate the simplicities in our banal, everyday, humdrum lives by reminding us that
There is Nothing hum drum about life.
Life is a great swirling accident, and that those children came into our maelstrom world was magic, and magic must not go unappreciated. 
If you pray, then give thanks for the joy that those children brought into the lives they touched.
The rest of us, the lonely cynics, will do what we can to honor the lives of those children by loving where we can and thanking those who touch our lives in whatever ways we can.

I've chosen awkward, stilted words on the internet.
now I'm going to go call my mom.
Love

Bathroom bound bumpkins bouncing off bros...in pajamas, are coming down the stairs.

Sweet shit I've consumed far too many relaxing chemicals and i need to pee so 

GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY

Was all i could think as i tried to wade my way through the well groomed obstacle coarse of human road-blocks others might call bar goers.  

I am, i have been informed, too gentile for this city.

Ha. Ha.

I just don't feel like it's necessary for someone to line-backer their way through a crowd to get places in the indoors of this city...

though i do like the image of Hiring a line-backer and latching onto his back like some kind of mustachio'd lemur (isn't there some kind of simian who's mustache is so mighty it's revered as an Emperor?) to ride to my destination.

I need to become a bro-bender; subtly brushing aside the otherwise immovable mass of blood-hungry poon/pecker hounds who populate the much coveted, rarely appreciated (til you’re a resident of a city where such a thing as

                                                            ELBOW ROOM

 Well…dance floor

only exists in myth and fable)

Anyhow, that particularly harrowing bladder-venture was only a snapshot of an otherwise delightful evening out with my Dan-ppleganger. 

His name is of no importance (Hi, Brett), all you need know is that he is my auxiliary-double and shall be brought in only as a replacement in the event of my untimely death or dismemberment.

I’ve started collected books.

This is not a ‘beginning’ so much as a ‘picking up where we left off’ with a rather bibliophilic impulse to collect and rarely read the interesting and available.

I have a bookshelf of nerdy, well bound ambitions to prove it.

But that’s back in West Virginia.

So the cycle begins again; see book, covet book, purchase (or, in this case, and more to the eventual point, abscond with off the street) book, and then take book home to collect dust and guilty sidelong glances from my couch, where I am ever more invested in my love affair with X-Box and Internet hilarity.

BUT NOT N’MORE

I have a goal.

Or maybe a mission.

Perhaps a quest.

Quixotic though it may be, I’ve never been one to pass up a lively tilt with any kind of well-trod metaphor, so windmills and book reviews it is!

I am going to continue to pick up books on the street, and then I’m going to read them-

BEAR WITH ME-

And then, I’m going to write about them here.

I am not a literary scholar, as much as I wish I were, and I’m far from any kind of authority on the qualities that define a book as ‘worthwhile’ or ‘good’ or even ‘better than campfire kindling’ but I think this might be fun.

I’ll take a picture of where I got the book(with a fun note on the location, he said brazenly), be it table vendor, a deliberately laid out box on the side of the street, or the top of someone’s trash bin.

I’ll then read the damn thing.

And then I’ll talk about it.

On the Internet. 

To be mercilessly judged by all those with the credentials to do so.

And maybe I’ll make people laugh, too.

So, I need to get back to reading; I’ve got a small collection going already and a big ol’batch of the Bacchae to cram into my brainpan.

Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

A tangent.

Some of the best moments of my life seem to have felt, in retrospect, like tangents.

Or, something like a tangent...

A sidenote

An interlude

An addendum to the everyday movings i have through my life.
...

You know what i mean!

You've had these days; any kind of day, where for just a minute you're mind can be elsewhere because the task you're involved in is Simple. 

Going for a run.

Doing the dishes.

Walking getting home from work.

Walking in a residential neighborhood to or from the subway.
Getting groceries.
Any of these fit.

Thus far, and most recently, i have two very sweet city tangents i'd like to share, and then maybe i'll talk about the goddamn holidays.

So.
I have a confession to make.
I don't much like the Greeks-
PLAYS, people, Greek PLAYS-
and i never thought to really give them the chance.
Oh, sure, when my guidance counselor told me I had the reading comprehension of a college student (so much smoke up my ass it's a wonder i wasn't made of brick), you're damn right i got a copy of Homer's 'The Odyssey' and try to drudge my way through it.
And i did, and with gusto.
And then i put it down and never after that so much as touched a page of greek verse if i could help it.
I got spoiled doing Shakespeare!
More accessible themes and characters; a sense of goddamn humour i could understand; acting direction written into the text...a metric system that makes sense.
Go ahead, call me a fool and an uneducated surf and tell me that my analysis of whatever is etc.
I am only setting up all of this as a kind of prelude to an apology letter to the Greeks.
So, if you'll excuse me, i'm addressing them now.
Ahem
"Dear Greek Tragedy,
I am Sorry for spending so much of my life avoiding you.
I didn't know.
I had never read The Bacchae.
No one has ever forced me to sit down and actually Try to like you.
And, apparently, that's all it takes.
A little effort, and being cast in a student project centric to a scene out of the Bacchae where a guy shows up, tells the Chorus an immensely disturbing story about a woman tearing off her son's arm and parading his disembodied head around her home town like a trophy.
And then leaves.  The guy leaves.  I leave.
The Messenger just had a MISERABLE day, and he's getting right the hell out of town.
Thanks for waiting until I had the attention span to read a classic,
Love,
Dan

thanks, guys, i think i'm done now.

So, there it is; a new friend of mine(Maridee is her name), in the true spirit of sharing good when good can be shared, is bringing me in to do the messenger rhesus from The Bacchae for an in-class assignment over at Columbia.
And I couldn't be more pleased, but i could've sworn i was going somewhere else with this...
Tangents!
I was coming home from Maridee's apartment, walking a Bronx street i'd never seen before that evening, on my way back to the long ass subway ride that would later take me home, head abuzz (with a new language, a new tragic vocabulary, a new reason to celebrate being so goddamn ignorant that Everything is novel and exciting) when i see, discover, a dancing red on the side walk ahead of me.
The hell?
Looks like the smallest police lights i've ever seen, too close to the dirt.
Mouse police?
Wait, wasn't there a cadre of boistrious young men on a stoop not ten feet behind...oh, it's a lazer pointer.
They're fucking with me.
And, of course, I see that a decision must be made.
Do I, the grown ass man that i am, keep walking and teach these young men that teasing grown ups is inappropriate by simply ignoring them?
Or, do i (of course i do) take this opportunity to play, to encourage a harmlessly rambunctious approach to...
so i start dodging the lazer pointer.
and they chase me.
and i run.
and it was so goddamn fun.
that i almost regret leading them into a busy street to be run over by a toys'r'us truck.
sad coincidence, this close to the holidays...

Tangent  TWO(coming soon)!

Because why wouldn't I love it here.

Absence really can make a heart grow fonder.
Yes, dear reader(s), I speak a kind of practiced, well tread truth.
I have been without my voice. I tried looking for it in work and teaching and travel but for all of that, I knew that I wasn't really settled until I was bellowing my brain into the vast, two way mirror of expression that is the blogosphere.
I cannot see myself unless someone is looking, and I cannot be honest to their view unless I can't see them, so here goes nothing.
Again.

In which we discuss:
Shameless (if slightly self-aware) use of tired sentiment to re-boot a pet project;
A retrospective on recent life happenings and what all I think pertinent;
The joys and terrors of transitioning into a metropolitan inevitability;
Why it is a transplant country bumpkin cannot help but love his new home;
The romance of want;
And, of course, feet... Or is it toes?

My hearts fondness for blathering about whatever I damn well please being the result of that catharsis' absence notwithstanding, I have missed this. I tried cooking and taking pictures, and may again, but I am not a photographer nor a cook.
Better or worse (much fucking worse) I identify as a writer.
I will keeping cooking and photographing, but they will always just be silly funtimes.
Whatever this is is, on some fundamental level, a necessity for me, so I'll share it with strangers to see if they like it.

Busy boy has been busy.
I was camping out with Shakespeare nerd-genius-babies for a summer which lead to teaching general-theatre-nerd-genius-babies, which gave way to pensive unemployment which lead to now; I'm a resident of the city I chose, about to start a job to pay the bills so I can live enough to make the career I choose.
This has all happened over the course of but a few fast months. So fast, I feel windswept and whiplash and worldly and weary and wacky and weirdly welcome.
Here.
The city.
My city. If you're asking anyone who lives here, I feel like they'll claim the place like an emperor of an ancient, well established dynasty.
A dynasty build on a heap of rat shit and exotic pornographies.
But how exotic they are.
How exotic everything seems to be here.
I make no show of being anything other than a doe eyed tourist, drinking this city's scummy cool aide like a man lost in a Dixie dry dessert of bible belts and buck hunting.
Some days I leave my apartment (and some days I don't. Some days I just hide behind my door and never leave. Desperate to conserve capitol and calories, I hibernate until I can begin my life as one of the gainfully employed) , and every minute I spend wandering these streets is a new adventure in why this place was the right decision.

Beauty lives here. Did you know that?
Of course this city is filthy.
Unrepentant. Unwashed. Ugly.
But in that is has found the grace of the Uncaring.
In Mellville's timeless classic Moby Dick (oh, christ, here we go), our narrator suggests that anything done 'cooly' is a thing done admirably.
This city is 'cool' in it's filth and depravity (scum and villainy, dear reader!) and for being so, it is beautiful.
That, and the people are impossible.
The architecture breathtaking.
The fashion questionable.
The food ravenous.
And the subway incomprehensible.
I'm lost in the pulsing, bilous bowels of a technorganic monster called a city, and I'm not sure if I'm a virus or just a persistent turd.

Persistent Turd; my next indie band.

Going to bed hungry is something new for me. I'm far from starving (calm down, mom), but I'm not the glutton I know myself capable of being.
But it's ok: I planned for this.
When I worked as a professional Summer Camp oddity, I was just as much the glutton I could be, and for so being, I put on my winter coat.
When I took happy advantage of my family's unquestioning hospitality, I was a more controlled kind of glutton, so I kept but grew no further my winter coat.
Winter has come, ye nerds of WinterFeels, and this summer son can smile for that I am layered thick enough to Revel in a tighter belt and a leaner cheek: it means I'm earning my place here.
If I can't walk into that audition room with some gleam of a starved, well honed attack dog, how will they ever respect my ruthlessness enough to want to pay me?
Maybe I'll just drink more coffee.

My feet hurt.
Not all the time.
Not until I come home.
Not until I let them tell me how terrible I've been to them.
So I'll sit on my little floor, turn on music, or maybe some Internet funnies, and GRIND MY SOUL until everything feels a little more balanced.
And then I lull myself to sleep with the sound of my neighbor-bar and my own steady, expectant breathing.
It's all still new enough that even a day fraught with fear and self doubt is made better for that, at time of writing, I am one of Three people on my subway train with either a computer, journal or phone (I blog on my phone. What, wanna fight about it?), all trying to capture something incredible about themselves to share with...
Someone.
Anyone.
Thanks for reading.
More soon.

Forcing a little perspective on the subway

Did i mention that i'm reading Moby Dick at the moment?

Well. That was fun.

We are home!

Well, truth be told, we've been home for a while now.

Two weeks into residence, and it comes to my attention that i've ignored this thing for a while.
And, as often happens when a thing like this 'comes to my attention', this realization has been on my mind rather persistently.

"Should i write in it?
Why not?
Well, i mean, i've ignored the thing for long enough, the peoples who read it are probably moved on to other blogs, so...
So?
So.  So, i guess i wouldn't expect to get any readers.
AhA!  i knew you were just a whore for the views!
No!  I really think i learned something this year!  I feel like i've undergone some drastic, life altering epiphany...and...and-
And you want people to read it.
Maybe.
So?
So."

So.
I have, y'know.
Mind altering epiphanies going cheap this year, apparently, cause if i'm having one it's either cause i'm a person pre-disposed to landmark mind-altering epiphanies with some attempt at synthesizing my recent life's experience into a "very special episode of Blossom" style 'what have we learned' segment
...
or this just happens to everybody and i'm just trying to share mine with you folks.

Anyhow.

It's about the Job, mostly.
And that is that, quite simply, it has become the job.
I have recently neglected my time on this blog because, for just a minute there, i forgot to look beyond what i did for a living as anything more than that.
Being an actor has become a de facto; and now i need to start being other things.
(Like a grown up?)
((Shut up, brain.))
I mean to say that, this job has been an incredible experience for me because it has given me the Experience of trying out this whole working actor thing and
it's great, and i want more of it, and now that i know that i am, in some sense, capable of it and want to pursue it as a means of making my living...
i guess i can get my shit together, now.

I'm moving to NYC in August.
Before that, i'll be working as a counselor for the American Shakespeare Theatre Camp.
Both of these things excite the hell out of me.

I look forward to having a crack at being a long term, full time educator.
I am grateful as all hell that i'll have a chance to do it in the company of a herd of young people who are, presumably, really happy to be there, too.
I hope that, between acting as a chaperone spliced in with equal parts R.A. and truant officer, i will also have the opportunity to learn about the upcoming collegiate generation, learn something about my craft, and maybe even broaden a few minds and educate a couple others.

The city is, well, is my attempt to dive headfirst into this world; i will go there and live in a city alive with potential (and rats) and try to find some part of it i can fit into (like rats and mice can fit in tight places because of flexible...everythings).
I will call this great urban expanse my home and from there i will try to keep doing this acting thing.
I'll go and do as many auditions as can fit in a life that needs to also allow for gainful employ, sleep, eating, and possibly an hour of video games every other week.
I can do this.

Or at least i can try.

I love doing this sort of thing, writing into a word processor and then throwing it into the vast and churning sea of such attempts at human connection as is our internet, so i'll put something together throughout the coming months to talk about this or that...

But this is the thing.
I have done enough of this year to say  that i have been on tour, i have learned how to be better, and how to be enough.
I can live in a troupe of twelve people and survive the social microcosm that that becomes.
I loved this and will do something like it again.
And soon.

I hope.

Ramblings from an Audio Book

I love Stephen King.

Yup, i'm one of those.

Maybe because i read his work as a kid (early high-school counts as 'a kid' right?) and he has become one of the standards of fantastical narrative i have jostling around my fur-laden brainpan, but whatever the reasons are, various and soundry that they be, i i know that i love the man's work.

What of it i know, that is. 

I read enough (The Stand, Carrie, Shining, Salem's Lot, and others) that when i discovered the first volume of the culminating opus that is his Dark Tower story, The Gunslinger, it's called, i was already so commited to his style of writing that the fantastical setting and apocalyptic tone of the novel…well it sucked me right it.

Before that i had been filling my head with the high flying epics of pulp Fantasy and young adult sci-fi: i went from young adult D&D adaptations to the heart wrenching danse macabre of Mr. King's nightmare brain with nary a Dean Koontz transition period to be found.

I started with Thinner, moved on to Carrie and then dove straight into the unabridged copy of The Stand. 

That's the trap with becoming a fan of a famous novelist after he/she/they have achieved their fame; the re-prints, the un-abridgements, the marginalia of a prolific author's career becomes available and begins to muddy a dedicated reader's experience of what is Good with what is Available.

Harry Potter fans may know what i mean with all the journals and side project bullcrap that blossomed up around the original content like so many terdy mushrooms (says the presumptuous prick who never bothered reading them) but i only mention this as a semi-segway into my point; Stephen King worked for me as well as he did for various reasons, but not the least of which was an introduction into the Continuity of his work.

Most stories that i'd read as a kid were all multi-volume series.  

As a fun introduction into the geeky pulp that influenced my reading childhood, here's a list! 

(in no particular order cause who can remember that far back)

The Dragonlance Quadrilogy (with an embarassing array of the aforementioned fringe contributions to the continuity)

The Dark Elf Trilogy (the retroactive prequel to the Icewind Dale Trilogy)

The Dark Sword Trilogy

The Death Gate Novels

The Discworld Series

Dealing With/Talking With/'Doing Something to' Dragons series

The Earthsea Novels

The Ender Novels

The Alvin Maker Novels

The Narnia Books

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy five part Trilogy

Harry Potter

…

Yeah, that's about the tip of that little iceberg.

Anyway, i only list off all this bookshelf pissing contest content to contextualize where i was coming from as a reader; i Craved the continuity of a multi-installment series because it's what i knew, it's what i know.  

I'll rarely read in a one-off novel what i can read in a series.

Game of Thrones, anyone?

So, when i was skimming through a used book store and found a near mint-condition copy of a thesis paper styled Deconstruction of The Dark Tower's relationship to king's standing body of work…

Well, needless to say, i was like a kid in a horrific candy store.

At this point i'd engrossed myself in a modest crossection of Mr. King's work while also absorbing whatever 'Tower works were available

If i hadn't already been an enthusiastic lover of the books, i would've become one quick enough with the presentation of a mystery adventurer's opportunity to scour his canon for references and suggestions of relationship with the Tower.

Except i didn't.

I finished the tower books my sophmore year of college, nearly wept at the conclusion, was baffled at the Coda, and then stopped.

I listened to a couple audio books as much for the quality as performance over the next couple years, but after the crescendo of publication Mr. King put out around the conclusion of his 'Tower series 

(seriously, he let out the 4th book in '97 and didn't put out number the Fifth until '03 at which point he released the 6th and 7th Both in '04; man was Workin it in the early aught-ies)

i think i just needed a break.

And now i'm back.

Yes, that's right, you read through all of that to hear me talk about 'It'

The Pronoun that would be King.

I bring up the far-reaching wierdness of King's canon because what my investment in it has done is made the reading (or, in this case, listening to) of 'It' the fun cross-section/dissection i'd always hoped to have.

Suddenly, i'm getting references that i might not have got, perhaps even expereincing thematic and motificated (shut up, i make up words) prototypes of images that appear in the Tower itself.

Certainly, we get an introduction to a character that gets something of a cameo in the latter pages of the final (well, it was the final, until recently; it looks like he's crapping out another book this year.  Yes, i will read it.  No, i'm not happy about it.) book.

But then the cynicism shows up, and i'm not sure how much of that series wasn't just self-referential pandering and lip service! 

So i listen, i geek a the words i recognize and the allusions being made to the conventions that i know will soon receive more definition in books to come, and i just wait for jake to read the damn books.

Oh, by the way, Jake and i are listening to the audio of It together.

That's all.

Story over.

now, get back to your life and let me think of something of substance to write about.

Quick, make a run for it while it still looks like vacation!

The road rolls under our treads and i am in the far back of a half-empty blue van, trying to piece together a thought coherent enough that it's worth sharing, all the while my head spins with sights and sounds, sweets and sours; the sweat of a sun-bathed swelter i cannot help but pine for, the kiss of saltwater on my eyes and lips, the rememberance of a whirlygig of lights and music and people and laughter that i think is called Austin...

Phew, here we go…

In which we will discuss(and in no particular order): falling in love with the wrong ocean; a city built around a celebration of the weird; ignoring our physical necessaries for the sake of our psychic ones; and remembering who we are by imagining who we might be.

For those of you who know me only through the ASC, I think i have presented myself mostly as a West Virginian country boy by way of the Baltimore/DC area.  This is true; i was bred in WV and studied there for most of my life.  My family lives in Shepherdstown.  It is a quaint hippy meccha nestled in the Shennandoah valley, coming butt up to Harpers Ferry, which plays host to the meeting of the Patomac and Shennandoah, making it a historically bustly area.  An adventerous soul, bound for adventure of a historic kind, could walk a paddle boat down to the banks of the Potomac from Shepherd University's downtown campus, and row their way all the way past the Ferry and straight on to DC, all the while followed by a tow path that follows the same route.

It's old.

It's quaint.

I love it.

It's mine.

I am not, however, from this place.

I was born in San Diego, California, and lived the first nine years of my life there.

This does not identify me as a true californian, i acknowledge this.  

To be so, i would've needed more intellectually formative years spent there; my identity is that of a hippy weirdo who grew up working at Wal-Mart one summer and an organic farm hand the next.

However, being born so near the beach, and being borne there so often by my lovingly indulgent parents, has made me a Beach Baby.  

I remember loving the history of California classes and trips we took as youngsters; visiting old adobe relics tucked inside the thriving historic districts of the less gentrified parts of southern california and eating their foods, enjoying their music, experiencing then what i would no doubt now identify as cheap recreation-theatre…some of the best memories of my childhood involve eating stone ground tortillas and breathing the smell of recently woven blankets sweating sweet stinks of sheep and natural dyes while holding hands with my Field Trip Buddy.

But, it is that great, fire-rimmed Pacific that lives most in my memory.

I remember my childhood as a series of jaunts in between the time i got to spend dancing across the hot sand, burning and suffering until my toes finally had a chance to rest in the mirky brown swill of water that constitutes a wave's dying reach for the shore.  I can still smell the smell (oh, and how much i do remember the smell) of seaweed and salty air, of the sand itself, of sunscreen and (when necessary) the aloe vera balm for when the sunscreen failed.  

I was not then, nor am I now, an adventurer of the highest regard, but i Owned the sea when i got my little buddha belly up on my boogie board and flew down the froth and bubble of a wave, a ride, a roller coaster rocket that was for this moment only and when it fell, either back into the water if i'd caught a wave that was deep enough, or tumbling onto the cushioned concrete of wet beach sand, i would run back, trying to find the next ride, the next inexplicable mountain of salty blue that would carry me on it's back until it, too, would waste itself on the sand for my pleasure.

Truly, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing quite like the beauty of a day like that.

I tell you all of this, dredge up all these old dusty thoughts, because i got to be with the beach again.

I had spent most of our time at Daytona sleeping off the hilarious volume of debauchery that had constituted our time in Austin (more on That, anon) and had, therefore, completely missed any chance to go to the beach for a proper visit.

A proper visit, of course, involving sun screen, floppy hats, beach blankets and towels, possibly an umbrella, definitely a cooler, and, without a doubt, every intention of swimming.

So, there we are; i've just used the last of my food vouchers at our host university's convenience store to stock up on the food stuffs that will (and, at time of writing, has) feed me for the duration of my time on the road.  

I'm walking back from the conveniently located convenience store with Mr. Mahler, so much food in tow that i'm using that time honored trick of holding the hem of my shirt in both hands and putting everything in my little poly-cotton basket, all the while treating passers by with a scandalous view of my belly button, and he gets a text from the P-Earls that they'd like blue keys so that they may visit the beach.

"Oh, my god, the beach…Ask 'em if i can come!"

"What?"

"Just…tell them that they can have their private time on the beach and i'll walk in the opposite direction and they can text me when they're…ready to leave"

at this, Jake rheufully does as i ask and i am becoming giddy.

It's now a matter of dropping off all of my perishables (all but my king-sized drumstick ice cream cone) and then hopping in the van.

I am practically bouncing all the way there.  

i've brought my phone, my headphones for ambiance; i am ready for a foggy night walk along the edge of Florida's atlantic beach.

The P-Earls are gracious enough to have me along on their walk, so i spend the time i thought might've been filled with quiet, ruminating introspection (accompanied by appropriate music, of course) engaged in the lovely conversation of friends on the beach.

And then i couldn't take it anymore; shirt off, trunks (which i wore all day) on: let's do this.

I am appropriately attired and off like a shot.  

Pounding the pavement hard wet packed sand, i'm running like a man on fire; low water, ankle deep, shin deep(now i'm doing that flappy, high stepping run that's always a treat to watch lifeguards-in training practice), Waist deep.

DIVE!

And, for just a second, i'm a kid again.

I feel the rush and churning of the tide in my ears and i can taste (yes, oh yes, thank the stars, this i can Taste) the salt of the water on my lips…and then i hear, in the back of my id-addled mind, the casual mentioning of all the jellyfish on the beach that Rick and Bridgette had seen earlier that day, and how we had talked about on our drive down here that, well, Technically Man 'o Wars are more like mobile choral than jellyfish…and then i remember that i'm a coward.

RUN!!

The walk back was cold, and flavored by that inexplicable stickyness of salt-water all over my goose-pimpled, parchment white nerd-flesh…but dear, sweet, merciful Anybody…i need to get back to the beach.

I need to get back to the Pacific.

Well, then… This journal, by the way, has been an amazing venue for me to just take a moment and examine things i would otherwise have no reason to think over: it wasn't until i was scouring my mind for things to talk about that i realized how present the beach had been in my thoughts.  

how much i wanted to talk about it. 

 here.  

with you silly people.  

so, thank you for that.

END PART ONE!!!

Decorum on the Internet? Not by a Longshot.

So, I have forgotten myself.

I am not just a dude with a job, i am a representative of a company that has given me a job i Love.

And i have done ill by that company.

And I am sorry for that.

In my past couple posts i have taken the breadth of my conversation  into the unsavory world of disparaging the facilities made available to us and taking my impotent actor-brat rage at not being as well received as i would have liked by our audiences out on the internet.

This is unbecoming a professional, and i really want to be one of those.
This is also just a general a dick move, and i definitely don't want to be one of those.

i have removed one post from the feed of my blog altogether and edited the other; i'll keep untouched copies for my own records (and as a reminder of where our heads can go when we're over-caffinated and feeling sassy) and i will endeavor from here out to do better by my employer, and you my wonderful, gracious, loving reader-type-peoples by not, as i said, being a dick.

Again, i am sorry if i have offended anyone
 (except the grammar gurus and spelling snobs; if you folks want to make things better, then get involved in your local school board and make sure dummies like me don't make it this far without a solid appreciation for what the hell a participle is)
and I am confident that my silly little stories could not, and will not, belittle the reputation of such an extraordinary institution as the American Shakespeare Center.
We all know that actors with blogs will come and go, but our love for these classical works and the companies that can share with us these works in such an extraordinary way...that is a love that will well survive the petty yammerings of some guy yelling ineffectively into the great, cacophonous conversation that is the internet.
Probably survive the guy himself.

That's right folks, apologies for professional misconduct and contemplations of mortality are but a sampling of all you can find here at the Malapropcast!


Stick with me, folks, we're going to Austin next, and i hear they've got hippies there...

Recollections from a Laundromat

Ohboy, I am backlogged.

Here comes a long one, folks.

Last time we spoke, i was complaining about a high school of artsy kids who didnt appreciate our work as much as i would have liked and it hurt my feelings so i talked about it on the interwebs.

A blogger nerd venting his feelings on the vast, anonymous expanse of the internet?  NO.

Anyhow.

Our egos have since been sufficiently bolstered that i feel as if i can pull my tail out from between my legs and start trying this writing thing again.

That, and i've finally sobered up.

KIDDING!

Let's get down to business...

Herein we shall discuss: Vocal fatigue, the joys and trials of 'long term' residence, the snobbery of 4G, how Pandora has served as a form of cheap therapy, and why it is I want to become a better actor.

Vocal fatigue is a occupational hazard for any actor.  Even the obsessively healthy actors who drink just enough tea and warmup for 30-45 minutes before every show are periodically victim to the dreaded Vocal Fry.

I am, by the way, not the best.  I should get better.  Obviously.

I bring the pesky bugger up because I did, just recently, fall under the raspy shadow of vocal fatigue.  

I hate the feeling of vocal impotence for a few reasons but the most pressing is that it's my job to speak and speak so that i can be heard, so not being able to do the fundamental function of my job is infuriating.  Also, and less to my professional credit, i love to sing.  I sing in the shower, i sing as i walk.  I love it.  That i get to include it in the landscape of my professional life is a great joy, and i am persistently surprised and pleased that i make sufficiently pleasant sounds with my face that i am allowed to do so.  

Unless i've got vocal fry.  

And then i just sound like shit.  

And that feels terrible.

Perhaps it's a byproduct of my laziness, mayhap a side effect of being allergic to Any quantity of dusty particulate in my breathing environment (which makes living in hotel rooms a fun exercise in congestive inevitability) or maybe, just maybe, I am patient zero to some sort of nasal nastiness that is making a slow but steady crawl across the troupe.

Here's hoping I'm just allergic to the world.

Murray State University was a hell of a place.

A warm, friendly community of students and professors never made us feel like anything but honored guests.  'Honored' sounds a little more feudal than i'm going for, but suffice to say, these folks made every effort to accomodate us and inspire in us a feeling of welcome and friendship.

Denice and Stephanie held a dance workshop and the local dance club put a piece together to present to them.

Let me repeat: These folks Choreographed an entire dance BEFORE we got into town, just so they could engage with their teachers on a deeper level.  Wow.

I helped Patrick conduct a fight workshop that came after a 30 minute demonstration from the local Fencing club.  A club that, i might gleefully add, was gracious enough to make their gear and facilities available to the ASC troopers on campus so that i could play with swords!  I got to fence again for the first time since i left WVU and, despite how miserable i've become (or always were and am just now self-aware enough to acknowledge) i want to play again!

I walked away from that place with more friends than when i walked in, and i a very pleased to report that Murray, Kentucky has a thriving community of all the best kinds of nerds.

The community, combined with a dining situation that could be conservatively described as generous and honestly called something like 'The Freshman Fifteen in Five Days or Less' made our time in Kentucky an honest hoot'n'holler.  I hope to soon have an excuse to see the friends i made there, until then, i look forward to continuing the internet rediculousness we have already taken up.

Now, all of this said, there is something truly arduous about a week run of 10am Midsummer performances.

I think i have, here and in my life abroad, stated time and again just how much i Love this job.  I love what i do, i love the people with whom i do it.  

But sweet Jeebus, do i loathe high school matinees.  

It's not just the early call (which, i recognize, is not terribly early at all; but c'mon, i didn't get into theatre because i'm a morning person), a morning through which i cannot sleep is compensated when i get to perform in front of people who Want to see what i'm showing them.  A high school matinee, in front of auditoriums of high school students, all of whom are living high school lives with high school brains…i remember those brains.  

Shudder.

Even in my most enthusiastic (and if you've met me for any length of time, you know i bring a certain fervor to most everything i do) days of high school, i was hard pressed to keep my ass in a seat and my head in the game for a two hour performance of Anything.  

"Hey Dan, the Cheer Squad is doing a dramatization of the highlights of the Marquis De Sade's canon of work in the gymnasium, wanna come?"

"Hell yeah!  How long's it run?"

"What?  Um, i dunno, hour and half, two hours?"

"Oh, something shiny!"

and then i'm out.

So, i get it.  It's morning, you're young, and some dude in puffy pants is trying to get you to pay attention to him while he waxes philosophical from the perspective of a mythical equivalent to queen Elizabeth's exasperation with her relationship to public appearances…i get it.  

But c'mon, man!  Put your phone away!  She'll call you in an hour.

Anyhow.

We're back on the road. 

As i write this, i'm sitting in the backseat of our blue van with my lap desk and a cup of not-nearly-strong-enough hotel coffee, sleepily trying to line up my thoughts into some kind of readable narrative (how'm i doing?).  all the while, i find myself trying to take mini brain breaks and check in, not with a novel or any kind of hard-copy periodical, but with the INTERNET. 

And, invariably, i am slave to the available wireless coverage of my cell phone provider.  

So, as i have recently come into the future-space-world of 4G, i am actually given an opportunity to turn down my nose at places who do not offer that service.  Not that i do turn down my nose, nono, but it does present a new, fascinating addition to the world of techno-snobbery that i can enter a delightful new town, one with rolling hills and a charming historic district, a booming economy and a community so eco-friendly it's host to one of Al Gore's summer homes and, unless they've got the right number of Gs i think i'm in some kind of quaint, backwoods hamlet.

I embarrass myself when i admit these things to you, People of the Internet, but i do not think i am alone in this snobbery.  

I signed onto this whole 'internet' thing because it felt like, and still feels like, the future.  It feels like i am participating in an incredible jump in human socialization and communication and, for as pervasive as it has become in our lives, and for as involved as people can become in their online personae, i do believe that we are at the Beginning of a great cultural and technological revolution.

THAT SAID...

Those of you who carry a space-phone, i challenge you: when next you find yourself making any kind of interstate road-adventure, see how you feel when you watch your wireless coverage diminish and then disappear.  You're not sad, nor even angry, you just feel some part of your plugged in brain (your IP id?) air an exasperated 'Meehhhhhh' and then you have to try to engage with the people Next to you.  

And that hardly feels like the future at all, does it?

Just a couple more here, folks, and then i'm done…

I have had, in recent months, ample opportunity to languish in my own depressive torpors.  i'll turn on something morose and discordant and walk around Staunton (or whatever town we find ourselves haunting) letting my feet wander while my mind wallows.  

In fact, i have a habit of letting my music determine my mood.  i sync my iPod while i am in one mood and then i leave it in that configuration for weeks, walking, exercising and doing all else with the same soundtrack i might have needed only once and then only because i was in the midst of a particularly enthusiastic mope.

For this reason, i have found a great solace in the wide world of the music genome project.  

It must have been around the time when i got my fancy ass new phone and tried out the Pandora app.  By plugging in one of my favorite party bands (The Cat Empire.  Try them, they will make you smile, even if it's while you're changing the channel) i have been immersed in the celebratory world of whatever the hell it is Pandora thinks is related to the styles, sounds, and suggestions of this Aussie-Ska-Jazz-Latin-Reggae-Indie wonder.  

And, because of this, i'm in a damn chipper place.

It has been brought to my attention that i present a rather chipper personae in most situations, which is nice to hear, since i know that i am not always IN a happy place.  No one is, i am not unique in this.

But i have, recently, been in a more genuinely happy place, and i cannot help but think that scrubbing my brain with the sounds of celebration have helped in this.

Now, to the whole point of this thing: the acting.

Whenever i talk about this gig i try to find a chance to mention the fact that, because i am an apprentice, i am approaching this as a continuation of my education and training as an actor; like this whole thing is some sort of free ride scholarship in the craft of being a working professional.  

And i like it that way.

I'm learning how to be a grown up (in a manner of speaking)

I'm learning how to sustain a role for a period so extended it's downright daunting to thin about.

I'm learning how to peacefully coexist with a group of my peers and contemporaries and to persistently present the product we've been paid to perform.

I'm also learning about what i want from this work.

I went into this industry (and how industrious 'tis) because i love the job; i love learning a character, learning their language, and trying to become an honest representation of an author's imagination.  

It's exiting, and liberating, and hugely gratifying to know that i have satisfied my own exhibitionists impulses while (we hope) entertaining the imaginations of strangers.

And, now that i've been doing this same shtick for a while, i want to get Better at it.

I work with a group of true professionals; men and women who honor their craft by giving everything they have to give to every moment of what they do (unless we're hungover, then fuck it.  KIDDING!).  All of them have something that i value in a performer, something i want to learn from watching and take unto myself; here we have vocal production and a stage intensity that stops my heart in it's cage; there a spontaneity and capacity for creative approach to tried forms that manages to make some of the oldest words still spoken new, and alive, and fun.  

Craft, practice, diligence, excellence.

And i want it.  

I enjoy performing when i do it, but i truly feel as if i am being granted the greatest opportunity to learn from watching and then to try what i have seen.  

And then i will go back to school, i will put myself into a situation where my objective is more about self-mastery than the creation of any particular product; where i can let myself flush out this impulse for self-examination, use it to it's extreme, and then make it a recourse in my tool-kit and not the central focus of my daily life.

I'm tired of over thinking myself, and i'm ready to start living again.

…

Damn, got a little intense there for a second.

Thanks for reading, guys.  If you'll excuse me, there is a rolling landscape of american countryside to ignore; the internet calls to me!

…crap, no service.

Lynchburg, VA to Greensboro, NC from a Villa in Roanoke.

In which we discuss  the physical rigors of a job that makes me sit down in a car for hours at a go, the familial existence of a travelling troupe, the theraputic nature of various physical activities like exercise and hot baths, and how a city(town?  large hamlet?) beset with hills and stairways can satisfy every expectation one might have for a touring theatre gig.

First; the job.

it's good to be back to work.  I love the rush of doing a show i know and i trust with people whom i know and trust.  The couple of shows we have done thusfar have only served to re-enforce my confidence in this group and the quality of work we are capable of doing consistently and under a myriad of circumstances.

Speaking of circumstances, let's talk about how our troupe has become, in the words of the man himself, EuGenius Douglas, 'The walking Infirm.'
We've got back injuries, spontaneous stomach-yuck(a medical term i read on the internet), and a general feeling of 'oy' coming from the aches and soreness-es of a coming back to a not un-rigorous style of work.  It's not so much that our job is, as a whole, extraordinarily strenuous...well, mine isn't.

Maybe i shouldn't speak for the troupe, here.

Actually, now that i'm thinking about it, everyone else is fighting and flopping and flipping all over the stage while i'm sitting in back doing push-ups, and playing on a slide whistle.
And a slapstick.
Perhaps the use of a actual slapstick in my work environment has encouraged my already natural predilection for shtick...yeah, let's go with that.

Anyway.

We be hurt'n and aching, but the solidarity of this group is a huge comfort.
Not growing up as anything less than a hyper-indulged only child of a loving pair of 60's era breeders, i am not one that is able to aptly judge the classic 'sibling' dynamic.  Now, i know that what i'm getting here is Not it, but it's the closest i've come since college when i was living in a man house of manly mannishness.
And the years i spent in that Man-Heap-House were some of the best of my life.
So, you might imagine how much I'm enjoying being back with my road family.

Exercise has taken an interesting place in my life of late.
Due to a series of very difficult personal decisions i made recently, i have been feeling all the solitude and social deprivations of touring life a little harder than i did for a solid chunk of last tour.

My sudden singularity notwithstanding, i am a man-child subject to all the image issues, mood swings and self-indulgent introspections one might expect from a pox-ridden teenager (my apologies to all pox-ridden teens; often the zits will go away, but the crazies rarely do), so the use of such mood regulating activities as the high heart rate of aerobics and the deep muscle stimulation of lifting have done well to quell the tide of...well, of silliness.

It's silliness, folks, that keeps us down in the mouth.
Hormones and life events and i'll be slave to neither.

Lynchburg did for me something i wasn't sure if i should continue to hope for; i felt welcomed to that place in a way i'd not had all tour.  Which is not to say that i'd ever felt directly un-welcome anywhere else, but the experience of trudging the steps and hillocks of Lynchburg, VA after dark and then again after a yoga class (by the way, Whoever this Bikram fellah is, he is an evil, abusive genius and i want more of it) the next morning left me feeling like a much appreciated visitor.

I went to a bar that was quiet and met a bartender who was not.
We shared dinner and conversation and drinks with the whole wait staff and i felt like someone worth having a conversation with.

This is a post long overdue, but i'm glad to have started up again.

Thanks for reading, guys.

A Sendoff in Black

Good morning, everyone!

It's approximately 1:30am on Friday; the 20th of January.

Throughout our time on this old planet of ours (oh, by the way, broad-stroke 'Fundamental Human Truths' segment, incoming) we are given opportunities to take note of landmark life-events and share them or, conversely, to let them flow over us and out of our lives, like so much wind between the ears.

Allow me to let you in on one of which i've taken note.

Before today, before tonight, even, i had yet to see a Renaissance Season Production at the ASC.

This evening, i had my Ren-Cherry popped for me by a hunch-backed, limp legged, limp-Armed sociopath.
His name was Richard.
And he was a real charmer.

I've seen a couple productions of ol Triple Dick in my time as a student and a film-lover (thank you, yet again, Sir Ian, for reminding us just how much better you are when you're evil...I'm looking at you, Magneto), and i've even had the chance to play in one myself as Sir Catesby.  Good ol' Catesby.  Ol' Bill Catesby.  Sounds kinda like Bill Cosby, but with brass knuckles instead of a refreshing jell-o treat...if you don't get that reference, go see the show.  Brass knuckles: never not a good idea....

Anyhow.

I mention my passing familiarity with the script (and it is only that; I was and still am only passing familiar with anything more than the overall plot, and even then do i sometimes get a little wobbly...honestly, if you haven't been investing in these characters for the past 2-5 bloody plays, it's hard to keep track of everyone and why they hate everyone else...except for Margaret.  She's pretty clear.) to illustrate my gleefully ignorant place of mind during my pre-show sit down.

Allow me to talk it out

"oh, cool!  i get to see a show that i remember just enough of to know i like it, performed by people whose work i know i'm fond of, and i'm just about to start touring again, so i'll have something to write about on my blog!  Maybe i'll even see some material i want to use for auditions/hypothetical scene work for my hypothetical post-graduate education!  I'm really going to enjoy this show!"

To be clear, all of those things happened.  Because of my experience as an audience member, I look forward to returning to this text with a renewed interest in the characters and their circumstances, all together due to  the quality performances i saw this evening.  And that it's a great play.

But that's nothing i didn't expect.

What caught me off guard was a realization that came after everything else.  Came after the show.  Came after i walked home and warmed my face in the soft glow of my laptop screen.  It's a simple thing, really, but it caught me:

Those people directed themselves.
In a week.

I just watched what was, for all intents and purposes, a Professional student-production of Richard III.

What a triumph of love for this media.

Sure, it's a job, and it pays, so there's something pragmatic in taking a gig like this; it feeds and houses and pays the bills.  All the necessaries.

But so does hanging dry-wall.  So does working a desk.  And those are, in certain ways, (ways that i think make what we do such an exiting challenge for people who are seeking it) much easier.

These people, these madcaps of the medium, are doing THIS as their new years resolution.

Thank you, everyone at the Ren-Season for a great show.  See you next week.

P.S. If you're reading this, i thank you.
P.P.S. tune in again...at a yet undetermined time, for more ramblings about theatre, life on the road, and what it is to be an aspiring theatre professional in this yet fresh 2012.  Oh, and i might talk about things like Politics, social issues, spiritual journeys, and the joyful miss-happery of my personal life.
P.P.P.S. Spoiler Alert: The boat sinks and she marries some other guy.  And then Leo makes the same movie a few times before being in the Great Gatsby.  Is anyone exited for that?  Should i go back and try reading it?