Tuesday, February 28, 2006

On the last day of the run of the play, the actor listens to a song that he was partial to months ago when rehearsals began, and realizes once again just how long his life has been wrapped up in the most recent artistic endeavor, the most recent project participated in to fool his mind into feeling that he’s accomplishing something. He remembers that the first rehearsal was some time in the middle of last August, at the end of a summer in which he had found himself often wondering if his life had ever been more banal and directionless. Then with some hesitation he took the small part in a somewhat ridiculous production of an adaptation of a 1940’s film noir movie to the stage, and within months he was feeling better, something that occurred to him all at once one day in November.

The final performance, the last of about 60 or so, is naturally a bit anticlimactic. In a run that featured so many memorable minor and major disasters nightly, this one goes by without a hitch. The door on stage opens and closes the way it was supposed to, the lights and sound are on cue, no actors miss an entrance leaving their costars on stage stranded and fumbling for things to say to fill the silence, no drinking glasses or ashtrays are dropped in the dark during the many complex scene changes. The actor himself resists the urge to become hideously unprofessional and create practical jokes, as he did in one performance in December before the holiday break by putting Vaseline on the ear pieces of the prop telephones and on the doorknob of the aforementioned notoriously misbehaving stage door. Ah, yes, December. The normal excitement of the holidays was mingled with the comfort of being part of something he looked forward to every week, even if he and his castmates would never admit it. Supposedly serious, self-respecting actors would never admit to actually being gratified by the kind of fluff they had all found themselves forced to reenact four times a week. They could never bring themselves to say that some part of them actually thought it was quite a bit of fun, and that maybe the best part was simply getting to be with each other. Never, that is, until the last performance.

After curtain call, there are costumes for the 19 performers to be folded and sent off to dry cleaning, leaving the dressing room that had been only negotiable by ducking and constantly turning suddenly looking barren. The actor grabs the black shoes he took from his closet before the first dress rehearsal; the only part of his costume that belonged to him. They are thrown on the floor of the passenger side of his car. Champagne is popped and drank, food is laid out and eaten, and everyone involved begins to wonder after a while how long they’re supposed to stay around. What is too early to leave, constituting rudeness? What is too long to stay, suggesting being pathetic? The actor is in the last group to leave, with the members of the cast with whom he frequently went out for drinks on Friday nights after the show, suggesting patheticness, but within good company.

It’s a Sunday night, and the next day is work, just like every Monday. But it will be a Monday beginning a week that will have no ending, at least not one like he’s become used to. “What is an actor without an act?” he thinks. Will there be anything there the next morning to protect him from turning the disdain he feels for the simple, passionless workaday office drones on himself? Because that’s what an actor without an act is. He decides not to think about tomorrow.

When he finds a parking spot near his home, he gathers his belongings from within the car. Somehow he can’t bring himself to take his fancy shoes from the passenger side floor. He doesn’t want them to be back in their place in the closet just yet.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Ten years ago at this time I lived far away and worked in a coffeehouse owned by two guys named Joe. If either one of them had had any kind of sense of humor whatsoever, I would have gotten a lot of joy out of greeting them every morning by saying, “Hey Joe, hey Joe, want a cup of joe?” But I never did.

Looking back, it was a pretty great job for a guy fresh out of college to have. But like every job I ever had, I hated it at the time. And also like every job I’ve ever had, I pushed the limits of what I could get away with. You’d think that, on a slow day when I gave certain customers the opportunity to haggle with me for the price of their purchases, that they’d take me up on it and try to get a bargain. Not one ever did. Maybe the inherent problem with working in a coffeehouse is that you’re mostly serving people who haven’t had their caffeine fix yet. Maybe that explains the dire lack of any personality on their part. I never got a laugh once any time a patron would ask for a small Colombian and I’d say, “We have one in the back. He’s definitely very short but he’s a hard worker. He’ll serve you well.” I mean, that’s comedy gold. But maybe a suggestion of human slave trafficking just wasn’t something most people were completely comfortable with. Nor were they anywhere near being fine with the image I broached when they’d ask for a brownie.

The place was called Stonewall Coffeehouse. Every couple days or so I’d actually have a customer ask me about the name, and I’d have to find some way to gracefully tell them that it was probably because of the giant stone wall holding up the ceiling. I usually failed at the grace part. So sometimes I’d say it was named after the famous U.S. general. But I slowly started to realize that most of the people that ventured the question were effeminate men that would smirk and ask it as if they were actually inquiring what kind of underwear I preferred to wear. When I told them the answer, whichever answer I chose at the time, they always seemed deflated. I later learned that the Stonewall Riots in San Francisco in the late 60’s were a watershed event for gay rights in America, and all those men were either very interested in buying their java from a gay-friendly café, or hitting on me, or both. Or maybe they were just really stupid and honestly didn’t notice the giant wall of stone holding up the ceiling. Or maybe they were a big fan of General Stonewall Jackson.

I worked at Stonewall at the height of my addiction phase, and it ended up costing me my job. There were other factors involved, but no recovering addict should try to make excuses for his weaknesses. One of the Joe’s told me to take out the garbage, and I couldn’t tear myself away from the thing that controlled me long enough to follow his orders. I had to get that crossword puzzle done, and until I did the rest of the world would just have to wait. That’s the way I thought back then, and it was a sad state to be in. I was doing up to three or four puzzles a day. They were always so easy to obtain. Without leaving the café I had access to as many as I could handle just from the newspapers delivered everyday. Before I knew it an hour had passed by and the notoriously hotheaded Joe saw that what he’d asked hadn’t been done, and had the other Joe dismiss me at the end of my shift. Naturally there was some “Joe, can’t you talk to Joe? Joe is just impetuous Joe! You know that Joe! Right Joe?” Then both of us got confused and I decided to accept it.


Stonewall Coffeehouse isn’t there anymore. I think I heard that one of the Joe’s stole a bunch of money and ran off with it. If they never found him it’s probably because the police could never keep straight who it was that they were supposed to be looking for. I’ve kicked my crossword habit, with some difficulty. And I no longer work in the service industry, which is probably the best thing for everyone.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Friday, February 10, 2006

With the brouhaha going on over the whole James Frey A Million Little Pieces thing, I just thought that it might behoove me to clear up something about the things I write in this blog. I’ll just say right now, right up front, that very little of what I write in this thing is true. Or at least, some of it is based on truth but that I greatly exaggerate.

The best example of this is the entry I wrote on January 23rd of this year. I’d say the only element of that entire entry that has any factual basis at all is the part where I say I have trouble finding parking around my apartment building, and even that was exaggerated. More often than not, I get lucky with a spot that’s not only very convenient, but also well shaded. I mentioned in that entry that I favor cartoons to the news, which was an outright lie. I can’t even bring myself to watch The Simpsons anymore, though that probably has more to do with the decline in its quality more than anything. The part about not liking eggs is kind of true, though I can’t say that I never eat them, as I asserted. Finally, I’ve never seen the movie Flight Plan. While I don’t feel particularly guilty about lying about it, I do feel really bad about not seeing it yet because someone I know is in it, and I hear she’s really good.

That’s an example of only one entry, and as I scroll through the rest of this blog, so many other little falsehoods and fabrications that I created in order to make my life appear more interesting than it is jump out at me. So, I have to go on record as saying that I wouldn’t call this blog a memoir. I don’t want Oprah coming after me. Think of it more like one of those books that you found in the fiction section of the bookstore, filled with so much detail far beyond the writer’s natural talent and with the unmistakable scent of self-indulgence about it, giving you the feeling that the author based the events on actual events and people in his or her own life, but didn’t feel like getting permission from all those people to use their likenesses so they just changed some names and a few details and called it made-up. Except I didn’t change any names. Mikey is real, god bless him.


Now that that’s all settled, I’m going to draw some pictures of Mohammed on a pogo stick now. Watch for those illustrations later.

Friday, February 03, 2006

On November 9th, 2005 I wrote an entry about a man that I see with startling regularity around town. He’s an apish looking man that walks constantly. Since I wrote that entry, I’ve probably seen him about five more times or so. Today when I saw him, I had the presence of mind to get my camera phone out and take a picture. And here it is.



Unfortunately, it’s not the best picture. I was definitely planning on taking more, but he disappeared. It was really weird.

I was trying to act nonchalant while photographing him, but that got a little screwed up. I forgot that I had turned up the ringer on my phone to maximum volume last night, so that when I took the picture, the little camera sound effect was REALLY loud. I doubted that he had any inkling that I was taking his photo, but he slowed down at a bank of public phones and began checking each of their coin return slots for change. This saddened me because one of my pretend scenarios for the walking ape-man was that he was incredibly wealthy and just really liked walking a lot. I guess he still could be, but he’d have to be one really eccentric rich guy if he had a thing for finding loose change.

Anyway, I went ahead of him on the sidewalk as he searched the phones. I figured this might be the perfect way to get a shot of him from the front. I turned the volume of my phone down and slowed down, planning on pretending to talk on my phone and snap another picture as he passed by me. But as I put the phone to my ear and casually turned sideways, I snuck a peek down the street to find that he was no longer in sight. He was gone. I would have been more disappointed if I wasn’t so sure that I’d run into him again in the next couple weeks.

As I gave up and continued walking, new scenarios began to form in my mind. Maybe he did hear my camera snap his photo, and he didn’t want to take the chance that someone was taking his picture. Maybe he’s in hiding. Maybe he’s a mob informant that had to go into eyewitness protection. I did remark in my last entry about him that he does look very Guido-ish. If that’s the case, I’d really like to tell him that he’s not keeping a very low profile. I’m not even really looking for the guy and I see him EVERY WEEK.

More updates to come.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

A woman I work for just told me that she destroyed her cell phone by crying into it. Her tears went into the phone and fried the board. She said she was kind of glad because she’d been wanting to get a new Razor for a while anyway. There’s a metaphor in here somewhere, but I’m just not sure what it is right now.

On the subject of cell phones, I rarely answer mine. I much prefer hearing someone’s succinct voicemail to actually conversing with him or her. And when I call someone, I often find myself thinking that I’d really rather be able to leave a voicemail instead of actually having them answer. Again, there’s probably a world of meaning in that, but I don’t feel like figuring it out right this moment.

I like to change the ringtone on my phone every three or four months or so. I had three different rings last year. I never download; I just pick one from the noises that came with the phone. A couple days ago I was picking my new one and I came across the ring that I used at the beginning of last year through the late spring. It’s funny how even a short little sound can bring back such a vivid feeling, like sense memory. Songs do that of course, but even just that tone sent me thinking back to a year ago and the bittersweet feeling of hope and the shame I felt for feeling hope every time I heard that sound. The split second between hearing the ring and bringing the screen to my eyes to see who it was that was calling me was constantly filled with those conflicting emotions, followed by more elation/disappointment when the caller was revealed, depending on who it was. There was only one word I ever wanted to see on the screen: “Her.” Sometimes it wasn’t “her.” Sometimes it said “parents.” As much as I love them, that was a bummer. Or it would be any of my friends; still not much better. I always wanted it to be “her.” And when it was, part of me still wished it wasn’t. It was never her calling to tell me the things I wanted to hear. It was her calling to tell me about her day, or to ask me for something, or just to say hi. But that was all, and though I knew even then that I wanted too much for too much more, as soon as I hung up with her I immediately began waiting to hear that sound again.

So I changed the ringtone. Something a little more pleasant sounding. And I decided not to answer anymore when she called, just let her go to voicemail with the others. I actually followed through on that promise every now and then, too. But not always, and when I did of course I always called her back almost immediately. I always got her voicemail.

By the time I changed it again, months later, it was partly a ritual in my mind of moving on and moving forward, now that she rarely called at all. That new ring isn’t one I now associate with a flash of elation or even excitement or a shade of embarrassed hopefulness. It’s just a sound. And not one I even heard that often actually. By that point everyone I knew got sick of always getting forwarded to voicemail I guess.

This week when I decided it was time for a change again, I scrolled pretty far down the list for a totally different one, and it turns out my phone has some pretty elaborate, delightfully cheesy dance-music sounding rhythms, so I chose one of those. I’ve been called a few times this week, and the sound of it is so peppy and energized that I have to say it honestly makes me happy to hear it. And I answer the phone more now than I used to, no matter who’s calling. I guess I could say that I’ve set the tone for the new year. Lame, I know.

She still does call every now and then. But she’s not “her” anymore.