Years ago I took an acting class with a teacher that I still respect very much. I didn’t stop taking her class because of any unhappiness with it as much as I just reached a point where I felt I’d gotten as much out of it as I could. Plus, cute girls stopped joining.

I often wondered if one of the reasons the teacher enjoyed the class so much, other than the feeling of accomplishment she achieved and the money she made, was from watching us all participate in the heinous emotional exercises she invented and put us through. They usually had to do with sensitive, private matters in our lives that we would never normally want to express to a room full of near strangers, or even close friends for that matter, and having us act them out. She had this way of feeding on the perverse seed of self-indulgence that lies in every actor, nudging us on stage and drawing out our ugliest truths about ourselves and our lives. Before you knew it, class was over and you were walking to your car thinking, “Did I really just act out an improv scene about the time I wet my pants in the middle of science class because I was too shy to raise my hand? And was actually wetting my pants again really necessary? Why do I have to be so method?” And yet, I could never shake the idea that what I’d done had somehow made me a better actor. Why else would I feel so mortified?

One of the teacher’s most firmly held beliefs was that every man has deep, uncorrected emotional issues with his father. Thus, every six months or so she’d pull from her large pile of scripts a scene from the movie Five Easy Pieces starring Jack Nicholson, playing a former piano prodigy that, not surprisingly, has issues with his father. There’s a scene in the movie where he rolls his father’s wheelchair to the top of a hill in town. His father is literally speechless because he suffered a stroke and will most likely die soon. And then Jack confesses to him the feelings of inadequacy and remorse that he now realizes he’s felt all his life, and apologizes to him for being such a failure, and asks for his forgiveness for his leading a life that his father can only think must have been a waste. I know it well because I probably had to do it at least three times. The problem was, while her overall theory might be true for most men, I really don’t have unresolved issues with my dad. I’m able to love and respect him, know that he loves and respects me, and when necessary, simply regard him as a nice old man that I hang around with when I visit home, but not in a weird way because we’re related. So the Five Easy Pieces scene was never one easy piece for me.

The first couple or so times, I did reasonably well at finding some kind of emotional substitution or creating a detailed back story fitting enough to get me in the right kind of headspace in order to fulfill my teacher’s almost sinister fascination at seeing young people go through turmoil. The final time I was given the monologue, however, I just wasn’t able to totally commit. I’m not sure if it’s that I just wasn’t in the mood for such heaviness that day, or if I’d exhausted the depth I could achieve from that scene after the other times I’d done it, or maybe just the lack of cute girls in class that day that I felt the need to impress. As she instructed, I crouched down to an empty chair and delivered the lines, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than just say them with nothing behind it. When I finished, she was naturally a bit disappointed and asked me what the problem was. I explained that part of it was I was physically uncomfortable. She reminded me he was in a wheelchair, and I would have to crouch down to him for him to hear me. I suggested that I would probably sit and look up at him. On the ground, she asked? No, on a rock or a log I replied. She seemed strangely intent on the idea that I would have to crouch, and that there would be no rock or log near near my father’s wheelchair to sit on. My argument was, if this moment was so crucial in my life, and I took the time to wheel my father up a big fucking hill to tell him how badly I messed up my life, and these would be among the last words I ever said to him, I think I would make sure to roll him to a place on the hill where I could comfortably sit on a rock or a log instead of crouching down and losing all sensation in my feet before even getting to the part where I explain why I never stay in one place for very long. And maybe she was just in a bad mood that day, but she seemed to think that my reasoning was absolutely ridiculous. But seriously, what kind of hill doesn’t have some kind of rock or log lying around? Who in their right mind would CROUCH?!

I’ve come to think of myself more as a writer than an actor in the past few years, and I promise you this: If I ever write a scene involving a character opening his heart to another character in a wheelchair in any kind of exterior setting, the scene directions will in no uncertain terms have that character sitting on a rock or a log.

When I decided to devote my life to acting one Tuesday evening a long time ago at the dinner table when my mother asked me what I wanted to study at college, I think I recognized at the time it was probably not the wisest idea in terms of bettering my chances at having a fulfilling career, or a comfortable existence, or a happy life in general. It did seem to ensure that the future would always be interesting, and that was enough for me.

I think of that at times when I find myself in situations that, especially when taken out of context, are ones that very few people ever get to (or have to) experience. Changing clothes in a room full of other people also changing clothes, for instance. Or being a man with a full makeup job on his face. Trying to decide whether to tell Robert De Niro that he has a piece of spinach in his teeth. That last one never happened to me, but it could.

Some of the most surreal moments of my life have been while shooting scenes for some short film or while performing in some play or another. Just last weekend I had the unique and strangely enjoyable pleasure of getting to throw a handful of chocolate pudding with bits of corn in it at a wall in someone’s apartment. It was for a shot in a five-minute film that a friend of mine asked me to be in, and when they needed someone to hoist the pudding, I was the first one to raise my hand. How often does one get the chance to throw a handful of pudding at someone else’s wall? And to top it all off, I then got to watch other people clean it off. Look, here they are:



And then I got to do it again, because you never do anything just once in film.

Another of my most cherished memories of pure surrealism also came as a result of helping a friend who was shooting a short film, and strangely enough, it also involved chocolate pudding. My friend Keith attended a local film school a few years ago, and he came up with a very high concept idea for his class project. It’s a long story, and I don’t fully remember the reasons and I’m not really sure that I ever did to be honest, but one scene required me to be:

1) Standing on the helipad of the Jurassic Park 2 set at Universal Studios
2) Dressed in a kilt
3) Carrying a bag of golf clubs
4) Mixing a bowl of chocolate pudding that I had cradled in my arms
5) Screaming at the top of my lungs like I was really, really angry.

I was sick with a slight fever that day, which gave the whole thing that extra bit of a dreamlike haze. Not to mention the fact that from my place on the helipad, my view consisted of a giant fake iceberg in a big sunny field, and, beyond that, the house from Psycho. Trams full of people taking the Universal Studios tour kept going by, and I could barely make out the miniature faces of the stunned Midwesterners far below looking up at me as I furiously mixed the pudding, screaming in my kilt. Good times.

These beautiful and strange moments are unfortunately few and far between, but these and times like them are the reason that I’ve never regretted the decision I made back then, at a time in my life when I was far too young to realize the true consequences of such a decision. In a way, I believe that the only good time to decide what to do with your life is before you become aware of what’s at stake if you screw it all up.

Are you like me?

When you’re at someone else’s house, whether it be for a party with many people, or even if it’s just you and the host, and they offer you a drink and you accept, do you secretly wonder if the beverage they’ve just handed to you is poisoned? Not suspicion to the point where you’d pour it into a plant when they’re not looking or anything, but just a little question in the back of your mind.

And then of course, based on how well and how long you’ve known that person, your imagination has to try to support that possibility. Have they always had it in for you, and has your whole relationship up to this point always been a charade just to get you to this place of trust so they can off you? Or, if it’s someone you just met, are they somehow related to that fat kid you made fun of mercilessly in grade school? Wait…is this that kid?! No, that doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t poison me. If he really wanted revenge, he’d probably chain me to some table and force feed me liquefied fudge over the course of two years until I was obscenely obese, and then set me free. UNLESS…the drink is his way of knocking me out so he can get me on the table.

That’s why, when I have someone over to my place and I offer him or her a drink, I’m always sure to hand it to them and say, “It’s not poisoned.” It’s just common decency.

Talking to the dead is all the rage it seems. TV shows make it seem like all you have to do is somehow find a way to tune into some higher state of consciousness and suddenly there’ll be this long line of the deceased waiting to tell you where they’re buried. It’s not that easy though; believe me, I’ve been trying.

I tried to figure out the best way to go about achieving an open line of conversation with the life-deficient. I decided a good first step might be to talk to a dead thing, but one that occupied a lower life form before passing on. So I tried having a conversation with an old houseplant that had turned brown and withered. After a couple hours I decided it was pointless. The only really good thing I could think to ask it is if it could tell me how it died, and I already knew that anyway: I forgot to water it. It occurred to me that even if a dead plant could talk, it might be reluctant to want to talk to the person who was responsible for killing it. It probably thought I was being overly insensitive, basically saying, “Do you know that I’m the one that ended your inconsequential little existence? And I’d do it again, ficus.”

I had similar results trying to talk to a dead fly, a hamburger I was about to eat, and a frozen homeless guy I found behind my apartment building. It was all very disappointing. But then, a breakthrough. Last night I had a dream that felt so real that I’m inclined to believe that it wasn’t a dream at all. I woke to find a dead man standing at the foot of my bed, just the way the TV told me to imagine a dead person who wanted to talk to me would. In the dim light of my space heater, I could see that he was a tall, thin, sad looking man. With a stovepipe hat. I could barely believe it. I hit the medium jackpot. Not only did I succeed in making contact with a dead person, but it was a famous dead person: Our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln.

“Abe?” I said.

“Yes” he replied.

“Abraham Lincoln?” I clarified, just to make sure I wasn’t talking to some kind of dead Abe Lincoln impersonator, which I’m sure there were probably a lot of in the years after his death.

“It is I,” he replied, in true Abraham Lincoln fashion.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I need to tell you something from beyond the grave,” was his answer, chilling my bones.

“Of course,” I said, with baited breath. “Please, tell me what you need the world to know!”

He took a deep, mournful breath, looked in to my eyes, and said, “I was murdered.”

“Yes, yes!” I responded. “At Ford’s Theatre, while you were watching a play!”

He nodded and continued. “I know who shot me.”

“Yes, John Wilkes Booth! He shot you in the head, stabbed Henry Rathbone in the arm, and escaped!”

Mr. Lincoln’s eyebrows furrowed. “That’s correct,” he muttered.

“What about him?” I asked.

He took a deep breath and continued. “My death must be avenged.”

At this point I was a little confused. The only thing I could think to say was “Two weeks after you were killed, they found Booth in a barn and shot him when he tried to escape.”

Mr. Lincoln took this information in, looked down at his shoes for a moment, looked back up at me and said “Really?”

“Yes sir. Eight other conspirators were found and tried, and all eventually proven guilty and punished.”

Abe chewed on his lip a bit, and said “Oh. Okay.”

Then there was this really awkward moment where he kind of just stood there looking around and my room, and I sat in my bed thinking about how weird I felt being in my pajamas in front of a president. He raised his arm and smoothed his beard, itched his mole, finally looked back at me and said, “Well, thanks then.” And he was gone.

I like the 30’s. I’ve been in them for three years now and I have to say it’s a big relief after the 20’s, if only because I was able to let go of the nagging idea that anything means anything. It seems once you give up needing everything to mean something, the things that actually do mean something kind of mean more. The fourth decade on earth is also the first time one can appreciate just how simultaneously short and long life is. And it’s true what they say about time speeding up too. Not only does it speed up, but it also warps. For example, a lot of things that happened nine years ago seem further away than things that occurred in college and high school. You sort of stop seeing things linearly. Or maybe just I do. It’s completely possible I’m losing my mind.

The best thing to happen to me since I left the 20’s is that I no longer feel the need to apologize, to myself or anyone else, for having certain traits that I could never cop to before. I just let it all hang out. Not in a “hey-look-at-me” sort of way. That’s a teenager ploy. It’s more like a result of exhaustion, like I got too tired to carry around suitcases full of disguises. Maybe it would be different if I had any kind of quirks that were truly hideous, but the fact is, the process of accepting all of the things I’ve learned to deal with was pretty easy because all of them are very acceptable. I’d rather sleep than stay up late. I don’t like crowded, loud places, except for street fairs. I’d rather watch people than to talk to most of them (but the ones I like are the best reason to exist, and even the ones that annoy me are fascinating). That’s about it.

I’ve got this new thing I do that I’m totally into now. I light a candlestick and stare at it. It’s incredibly entertaining. The longer I stare, the more I drift away and think of the weirdest shit. The flame doesn’t tell me what to think or in what way I should think about it. It’s not a democrat or republican. It doesn’t nag me to save money. It’s not a fat, ugly flame married to a hot wife and have a laugh track for jokes that aren’t funny. I drift along on a directionless stream, which is impossible to do while sitting in front of a computer screen in a harshly lit office. If my 5-disc CD player is playing in its random function, naturally each song takes me back. Last night it was a mash-up of times and places: High School in 1989 with Elvis Costello, sophomore year of college in 1993 thanks to Robyn Hitchcock, 1994 courtesy of Kristin Hersh, feeling more at home in a new city and hopelessly in love with a hopeless girl in 2000, brought back to mind by the Eels. Like I said before, the order of things is lost somehow and the idea of time becomes abstract. 1989 felt no longer ago than 2000, maybe because each one is so equally unrelated to the now. Or maybe because I’m so utterly at peace with it all.

I guess it’s about time that I tell the story of the graffiti.

I’ve only gone “tagging” once in my life. And I barely consider what I did to be graffiti. I don’t want to go as far as saying it was art, but well, others have used that term. For whatever it’s worth (and I realize how sad this sounds, but I have to say it’s true), my greatest contribution to the world may very well be something I did with a can of spray paint during the summer of 1992.

The story begins earlier than that, however. The location: a stretch of well traveled freeway known as Route 51, in western Pennsylvania, near the city of Pittsburgh. On a certain part of that four-lane highway lined with dreary warehouses, billboards covered in soot advertising plumbers and three-day blinds, and the usual convenience store every fifty yards, the roadway went under a train trestle. The train trestle was held up but a big cement wall that faced the westbound traffic, and that wall couldn’t have been a more perfect palate for an enterprising young hoodlum to create some kind of message for thousands to see every day. You’re probably thinking this is where I come into the picture, but you’re wrong. I was probably just hitting puberty when someone decided to make their way to that cement wall in the middle of some dark night and express something they felt could no longer be bottled in. On the dawn of the next day, sometime in the mid 80’s, morning commuters on their way downtown from the suburbs were greeted with this message:

Kill Satan
Free Larouche

“Larouche” apparently was referring to Lyndon LaRouche, an economist who sought the office of the President of the United States five times in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. “Satan” was referring to the devil, who currently holds the office of President of the United States. (Buh-dum-bum.) Ol’ Lyndon spent time in jail for reasons that are very confusing to me and, depending on what website you visit, his incarceration for federal crimes is either one of the greatest examples of political railroading in history, or very justified. It’s not important. Nor is the fact that he was married to a woman named Helga. What is important is that that graffiti managed to stay in the very high-profile spot for a strangely long time. It became part of the city’s consciousness, in a way, though I doubt a single person bothered to talk about it, or even really give much thought to it at all. It was just another billboard, advertising something no one really wanted.

I remember seeing it every time my father took me to a Pirates baseball game in Three Rivers Stadium. For me, getting to go downtown was a really cool thing, so things like graffiti that made political statements were really really cool. I remember asking my dad who “Larouche” was and he said “Some nut.” That’s probably what most Pittsburghers thought. Except for that one guy who wanted to kill Satan by letting him out of jail.

Anyway, I don’t know how in the world I came up with the idea, but once I did, I knew it was one of those things that I simply had to do. I’ll just skip the whole lead up to the event, but one night my friend Mike and I very nervously went to that wall at three in the morning with our own can of spray paint and, while he was the lookout for police cars (it’s amazing how much traffic there is on a major artery even at three a.m., by the way), I made an adjustment. And the next morning, the workday commuters found that a little detail of their unconscious lives had been changed to this:

Things to do today:
1. Buy milk
2. Kill Satan
3. Free Larouche

If the reason why the original graffiti was able to stay on the wall so long was because it was so innocuous and easily ignored, it should follow that the reason the new and improved graffiti lasted less than a year was because it was the talk of the town. The graffiti was famous. For years afterward, when I was actually able to convince people that I was the one behind the alteration, I became instantly legendary in their eyes. It was talked about at parties. It was mentioned in the weekly papers. A woman named Jan Beatty published a poem about it. I just Googled the words “buy milk”, “kill satan” and larouche and fourteen links came up, pretty good considering the graffiti existed a few years before the internet and blogs were a big deal.

Not only is the graffiti long gone, but the wall itself was razed and the new and improved trestle is being held up by a structure that wouldn’t function nearly as well as message board. I can’t even say why what I did was so funny to myself and others. There’s a kind of post-modernism to it that makes it indefinable in some way. Was it an anti-political statement? Was it making fun of the original tagger? Was it simply the idea that some weirdo would actually take the time to deface a defacement? Maybe it was a statement about graffiti in general. I don’t know.

Last weekend I had a dream that Ellen Degeneres applied for a job, and she listed Al Franken as a reference. And when the place she applied to tried to call Al, they must have misdialed and got me instead. I really wanted Ellen to get that job, so I did an imitation of Al Franken and gushed about how wonderful Ellen was and how much she would add to their company, whatever it was.

Weird.