I Don’t Know Much

[Super-Brett!]

First of all, before I introduce myself, I’d just like to say that over the years, Linda Ronstadt has recorded several songs with Aaron Neville.

And it’s always magic, isn’t it?

Sorry, that was part of another conversation I was having. I thought it was worth repeating.

So here’s the thing. In addition to studying improv at UCB, and having a quote-unquote real job in book publishing (when you say “quote-unquote,” do you actually put in the quotes, too? I’m not sure), I am also quite seriously working on a novel. So my fear in writing this journal is that it will end up sucking away all the time from my “quote-unquote” real writing. However, I’m bored right now, and don’t feel like working on something that involves paying attention to character or story or sentence structure.

And consequently…you’re the winner.

That means all of you, incidentally. Even the guy who’s eating a ham sandwich and masturbating. Yeah, I see you. (Weren’t you in my Level One? Weren't you the guy who started every scene with digging?)

Anyway, it seems to me that despite the fact that I’m just now learning to perform a Harold, and even simply how to competently enact a good, solid scene, I’ve probably got a lot to tell you about improvisational theory. The same, I’m sure, holds true for thermonuclear physics, so I’ll be throwing in a bit about that, as well, in addition to other advanced subjects I’m clearly not an expert on.

Occasionally, too, I will throw in some sex. Boob, for instance. Boob is a word that’s sometimes related to sex.

That got your attention, huh? Heh heh heh.

Now we’re all masturbating.

So just to kick things off, and to keep the conversation geared toward sex so I hold your attention while we’re still getting to know each other, let’s talk about physical comfort zones in scene-work.

Let’s say that you’re in a practice group, or in a class, and one of the guys—or one of the girls—is making one of the guys—or one of the girls—feel uncomfortable in their scenes. Maybe he keeps touching her on the…

…wait for it…

…boobs, or maybe he just keeps initiating sex-related scenes. Maybe it’s not a matter of actual touching, but just language. Or perhaps just a weird vibe the other person gets. And by the way, maybe they’re not a man and a woman. Maybe they’re both men, or both women. (Let’s all of us men reading this right now just concentrate on the phrase “maybe they’re both women” for a second. There. That was good. Ahhh.)

But anyway, how do you handle it? Do you inform the coach, so that he—or she—will be aware of the dynamic and say something subtle and gentle yet clear and forceful in class? Or does the one group member need to communicate their thoughts to the one making him—or her—uncomfortable? What would you do?

If this were happening in my class or practice group, I would get into the scene in a walk-on and start humping the person who’s making the other person feel uncomfortable. This way, that person will know what it feels like. And I’ll get to hump someone.

Boob.

Actually, my real thoughts are that people doing scenes together evoke a subtle, often unspoken contract with each other. They slowly progress with what they can do with and to each other in scenes and stay comfortable. If it’s a question of subtle boundaries that aren’t being respected, it’s the responsibility of the person being made uncomfortable to somehow clearly (yet gently) communicate their feelings to their partner. And if that doesn’t work, they should let their teacher (or coach) know, so that they can be aware of it, and maybe say something in class, giving the uncomfortable person an easy venue for clearly responding and saying how they feel.

It’s also everyone’s responsibility to be vigilantly aware of how what they’re doing or saying might be affecting their scene partners.

Isn’t that what scenes are about, anyway, at heart? Strong, clear—and sometimes subtle, and unspoken—communication?

That’s all I have to say right now. In my next entry, we’ll segue seamlessly into a discussion of either walk-ons, mayonnaise, or hydrogen peroxide, specifically in the service of determining which one tastes best on a ham sandwich, as well as how to put it out if it threatens to detonate. I will definitely relate this to improv in an extended metaphor of some sort.

So circling back to the beginning—much like in a well-performed Harold—I’d just like to say, as Aaron Neville once sang to Linda Ronstadt (did they actually have sex in real life, and is it just me who likes to wonder about that?), I don’t know much…

…but I know I love you.

But for the purposes of this journal, when I say “you,” I mean “improv.” (And certainly not the guy with the ham sandwich—that’s disgusting, dude! And why are you looking at my journal? Why don’t you go to a good porn site, or New York Magazine, or something?)

Until the Second Beat…

 

[Super-Brett!]

I'll Pick Up the Steak!

In case you want to picture me writing this, visualize a little mis en scene for yourself, I’ll tell you visually what we’re dealing with here. The heat doesn’t seem to be working quite right in my room -- wasn’t all last night, and I slept in my boxer shorts, sweat pants, blue wool Eddie Bauer socks with white stripes at their necks, and a Vassar sweatshirt that got substituted around 5 o’clock for a heavy brown turtleneck sweater I probably shouldn’t be sleeping in if I don’t want to shave off years from its precious sartorial lifespan. I even, once I got up to use the bathroom around 8, retrieved a hat from the closet, in case I broke out of my sleep-womb later, freezing keppe*, sans the will to journey back out to the living room. The rest of the apartment is fine, and the heat thingy does seem to be popping on every once in a while, so I don’t know what the problem is. I’ve called the super, and he and his brother and/or lover will be coming over later to hit me up for money. I mean, fix it.

So what I’m doing now -- after a morning spent in the living room first flipping between “Silk Stockings” and “State and Main,” then reading a few chapters of “Ratner’s Star” by Don Delillo, which I borrowed from my girlfriend’s apartment the other night -- is writing this journal entry in bed, under the covers, munching on a plate of onion rings I piggy-backed onto my roommate’s diner take-out order. (She got French toast, to which I respond politely, though un-enviously for the moment: yumma.) I made myself a hot cup of tea, the “flavor” of which I’m almost embarrassed to tell you: Celestial Seasonings Gingerbread Spice. It’s a seasonal offering from the tea company. Like Ben and Jerry’s Festivus ice cream. Or -- I saw this yesterday in the bodega near work, and it shakes me to my very foundations: Snapple Pie flavor ice tea, the slogan of which, plastered inscrutably on the bottle was, “Our crust is a must!” What does that mean??? Why would anyone want to drink anything with a crust? For god’s sake! Meanwhile, I don’t know how I ended up with this Gingerbread tea. Maybe I was drunk and it was on sale. I don’t think anyone bought it for me. I have no idea, quite honestly.

So that’s the set-up on stage here today. Normally I have my set designer work up a library for me, a private one in my residence, and I walk in wearing my green paisley smoking jacket, holding my pipe and puffing on it thoughtfully. I sit down in the armchair and talk into the computer (i.e. you, the audience) using voice recognition software.

Zo now, ve may, to begin.

I’ve heard from a loyal reader in response to my first entry, who was wondering how, exactly, I would suggest she communicate to someone in her practice group that his physicality with her in scenes is making her uncomfortable. It’s a tough question, and one that I shied away from because hell, I’m not a particularly experienced improviser, I’m just an astrophysicist. And not only that, I’m not even really an astrophysicist. I’m just a dude in a 3B improv class who’s…well…who’s a people person. I mean, I’m not, but I think it’s funny to say that.

Well, I would wonder aloud to her, if she were listening: if you’re in a practice group, ask the coach -- in front of the rest of the team -- that very question. Tell them that you’re asking because of a situation in a class you’re taking. Maybe mention that just in general, even though you’re a very physically-minded improviser yourself, this is a problem you sometimes come up against. And if you’re having this problem in a class, do it the other way around: say it’s in regard to someone in your practice group. Whatever. It’s akin to the old ruse of saying “a friend of mine” has a problem. But in this case, that friend is yourself, just in a different sphere of reality. Unless the other person’s a total idiot, he’ll become more aware of how he’s making everyone else feel, but not get all insecure and in his head, as they say, worrying that it’s him whose butt-wriggling is making you uncomfortable. But maybe he’ll realize he should tone down the butt-wriggling. And maybe if he’s not sure, he’ll be cool enough to ask if it’s too much.

Try that, I would say. Because it’s probably good to try these around-the-way communications first, before actually confronting him, no matter how gently. You do run the risk of making the other person uncomfortable.

But…if the situation ends up going on and on, and you find youself becoming miserabler and miserabler, you’ve got to speak to him. Because you do improv because you love it, presumably, and it’s something that makes you happy. And if someone, even unwittingly, starts threatening that, you’ve got to defend your happiness like John Wayne on the porch of your soul with a big-ass wild west rifle, yallin’, “Git outta here, ya pesky varmint!” Not that John Wayne ever said that, as far as I know. But he might have, and in this situation, he should have. He was The Duke, for god’s sakes. I really loved him in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Jimmy Stewart, too, of course. I’ll pick up the steak, he insisted in his lovable Jimmy Stewart stutter-voice. Everybody’s kill-crazy around here.

That was a beautiful scene, that one in the restaurant where Jimmy Stewart's wearing the apron trying to prevent a gunfight.

I don’t know much, but I do know that.


* "Keppe" is Yiddish for "head."

 

[Super-Brett!]

Open and Shut Windows

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to the loyal readers who wrote in, concerned for my well-being following my previous column, which spoke of my travails regarding the absence of heat in my bedroom. (No lame jokes, please -- there is plenty of heat, believe you me, in that respect. Oh yippee-i-yay, yahoo.) Anyway, after a long, frigid evening, followed by the good part of an afternoon exiled to my living room which felt perfectly toasty, I finally got the super to come and take a look, at which point it turned out, to my great embarrassment that, um, well, my window was simply, er, um…wide open.

But wait! Don't judge me yet! It was from the top! I never open the window from the top! How did that happen? I never even thought to look there because, well, how could I not have noticed that already if it had simply been open the whole time? My room is always totally hot! (Hubba hubba, like I said.) The only thing I can think in retrospect is that the windows were put in so shoddily that the one in my bedroom had just gradually sunk down somehow, opening ever so slightly more and more, simply due to the effects of gravity.

I still felt like an idiot, obviously. And you can't really say anything to make it better in that awful moment with the super. You just keep repeating things like, "How did that happen?" and "I feel like such an idiot!" and tip him and recognize that he probably thinks you're some incredibly stupid, spoiled rich kid, and, you know, honor that, and just feel happy that your room is warm again.

Aaaah.

There's a wonderful metaphor in all of that, I'll bet, about things quietly happening (or not happening) in scenes, or in your work as an improviser as a whole over the course of time, until some aspect has become so cold or problematic in some way, that you finally realize that there's a problem. That something is missing. That one of the windows has come open. Keep that thought in your head. I'm going to try and work it in.

Right now, though, I'm going to talk about what's been on my mind, lately, in terms of improv. Namely, memory.

Since getting started with learning long-form, I've recognized that memory is a crucial aspect that I can't ignore -- that really, I need to work on. Which is ironic, since, much like my instructor was telling me in class the other day, to a certain extent my getting into improv rather than traditional acting was motivated by my fear of learning lines. I acted a lot in college, and high school, and I'm pretty sure I'll pursue it more in the future, and take an acting class. I always manage to pull through, with the memorization, when acting in plays. And I love "straight" acting. But I do have a high stress level about the line learning. It's like that Christopher Durang play,
The Actor's Nightmare, where the main character is suddenly told, with no warning, "You're on in five minutes!" And the play he seems to be in keeps changing. (I think he actually gets decapitated at the end.)

Improv can be nerve-wracking too, I guess, because you want to do a good job. But once you're fairly competent at it, it seems to me, you're not really going to embarrass yourself. Maybe you won't find the game, or end up with something funny…but as long as you play it real, as they say, then you'll be presenting the audience with a true-seeming scene. And no one is ever going to complain about that.

Forgetting your lines in a play, though? Awful. (I actually did mess up once, in college, when I had a pretty big role in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Great play to read, hard play to direct. So many of the lines are simply long, rambling philosophical monologues that my skipping a section probably wasn't even noticed by the audience -- but it made us skip over some other people's moments in the play, which I felt even worse about.)

The thing is, as I've been surprised to discover, improv relies greatly on the actor's memory. It's a different type of memory, sure, and one that's probably more helpful in real life, if you become proficient at it, than simply memorizing long passages of dialogue. Our improv instructors talk about building up certain muscles, and memory is a huge part of that. You've got to remember the ideas that come out of your opening so that you can hit them in your scenes, even if the people in the scene before you take the one you were most inspired by. You've got to remember what was said in the first few lines of a scene, several moments later, before you've nailed that game and pinned it down, because that's where the game usually comes from. (I'm noticing I have a problem with this -- I hear the line that the game's probably going to arise from, I can identify it as it's happening, but even just a couple moments later, I get lost in the next few details, running off on a different track, only to be reminded of the crucial moment when getting notes.) Plus, you've got to hold on to those individual moments in your scenes, those pauses you took that were noticeable, the way you looked at your scene partner at one point that got a laugh, perhaps, so that you can repeat it in some parallel way in your second beats.

I've gotten better with this as I've moved from Level One to Level Two, to having a regular practice group, to Levels Three and Three-B. I'm starting to feel those muscles strengthening, lately, in small ways, after the many months of scene-work. I find myself able to remember the suggestion, now, and several of the different ideas from an opening, even if we're doing a loose A to C in class and not even winding back to some of them the way you're supposed to several times. And I can manage to remember the names of my classmates pretty immediately, even if I only know a couple of them starting off, something I never could have done when starting out. This'll help me at parties, too, and with What's-Her-Name, who I'm dating.

But I'm beginning to feel that I shouldn't simply be waiting for my memory muscles to become stronger, just by showing up for class and practice twice a week. I need to buy a book, or a CD, with specific exercises for memorization skills. I might as well be listening to a cheesy self-help memory CD on the elliptical cross-trainer Mc-runny-thingy at the gym, rather than that second untitled Weezer album again. I want to be working out on my brain, so that I don't have to be thinking so hard when I do my improv. I want to have the structures in place, subconsciously, so I can let the fun stuff just happen. And I want it to happen now, not two years from now. I want to take control.

In fact, I want to remember right at this moment that I set up that whole window metaphor thingy at the beginning, without having to go re-read it like I just did. Maybe if I'd stored it in my memory better, I could have more effortlessly worked that idea in now, rather than having to do it next time.

I don't know much about cheesy self-help CDs, but I do know that.

 

[Super-Brett!]

I Want a Pony

I haven't updated this journal in a while (it's been a few weeks) because I had told myself I would only post when I had written at least another ten pages of the novel I'm working on. I'm in the midst of a bit of a revamp, which is going well, but since my last post I've been doing what I consider mainly editorial work on the opening couple sections rather than generating new, rough pages. Therefore, no improv journal for Brett. However, what I've been doing:

a) has been valid work that needed doing; and

b) did involve the generation of new copy within the sections that already existed -- it just wasn't as satisfying in terms of my being able to say, "I've written five pages today!" because that's not what it was really about.

But anyway, I'm pretty much ready to get back into the process of actually adding to the story, and I've decided to go ahead and post now as a way of marking that. It's like I'm peeing at the root of this big metaphorical tree from which the intangible paper of this electronic journal springs forth, yearning to be etched upon, runny with sap.

(I'm runny with sap. That last sentence is no indication of what my novel is like, thank god. Back to my point.)

Since last I posted, I had felt myself going through a -- wait. Hold on.

Okay. Just wanted to put some music on. I'm listening to Garbage's third album (I think it's their third), Beautiful Garbage. Not as seamlessly fun, in my opinion, as 2.0, but worth grabbing for a couple bucks on Half.com. Well, yeah. So back to it.

Since last I posted, I felt myself going through a weird, somewhat negative period in regard to improv. I wasn't that thrilled with my work, and though on a conscious level I was cognizant of the fact that I shouldn't blame others for their participation in our shared, imperfect scenes, I still couldn't help feel some sense of frustration at times, and found myself getting a little catty (what's the masculine version of that word?) about some of the people I play with who have specific weaknesses. (As we all do, myself included.) As I wrote in my last post, I started to become fixated on the idea of really working on my memory skills, since I found myself hearing the starting pistol of the game in a scene, running past it into various other details, and then promptly forgetting where I was. It was like the birds had eaten the breadcrumbs Gretel and I had left on the forest floor. Of our. Scene. Work. (Shut. Up. Brett.)

In the last week or so, though, I find myself snapping out of it, getting more positive. I don't know why, but I'm suddenly more optimistic about my own and others' abilities, and -- though I can't yet depend on my ability to do it each time -- I feel I'm on the cusp of being able to attack that first strange moment in a scene and develop a proper game out of it. I've been happier, in general, with the scenes I've done in the last couple weeks. I don't know what snapped me out of my slightly blah period, but I also had a moment of epiphany (epiph! epiph! epiph!) that even though I feel like I've been doing this for a long time now, the fact is, it's only been less than a year. And I have developed as an improviser. I'm just not where I need to be yet. But that'll come. I'll get there.

I am aware that though I always feel like going to see some improv when I'm available, I do run the risk of O.D.-ing on it if I go too often. I haven't been to Harold Night as much as usual lately, but I caught Gausas and Dorff at UCB last Saturday, saw a friend's student performance at The PIT (Movie structure, which I'm not crazy about, though my friend was wonderful as always), and have plans to see The Mosaic this Friday. Man am I thirsting for some specifically relationship-oriented stuff. I love the Harold as a structure, and haven't yet seen a concept in action that I think works as well as that of "finding the game," but I thirst for seeing and using the game technique in scenes that are more emotional at core, and are really genuinely about the relationship. Not just as a tool in service to the game or to the Harold, but just for itself, more deeply felt than what we tend to see at Harold Night.

Not, and I repeat, not that I don't love what we see on Tuesday nights. But there's room for both. I love all sorts of movies, you know? And I don't mean it like "good" movies and "bad" movies -- I mean Truffaut and Fellini. I mean Hal Ashby and Spielberg. And Wes Anderson. And Michael Bay and James Cameron, and whoever the fuck directed Torque, even. It just depends on my mood. It's all good. Honestly.

Okay, maybe not Michael Bay. But I did see Torque and loved it for what it was.

I want to see more motorcycles in scenes. And characters that could be played by Ice Cube. And CGI and explosions and orange leather jumpsuits.

Man I hate people who drive cars. (Rather than motorcycles.)

Sorry. I lost a little time there.

Dorff and Gausas were amazing. Everything about their show was just…elegant. The way they took their time. And made connections not just for laughs, but to reveal something. Another layer. They get the concept of the game, and they use it, but they're not slaves to it. They wield it like a tool, but it's only one of the tools in their toolbox. And sometimes they're not hammering or sawing at a plank, but simply painting it, or sanding it. Maybe even adding some enamel. (This is brought to you by the guy with the tree-sap metaphor seen previously.) But back to their show. The way they used the stage to move into new scenes, and the way they had their light person soften things to create a sense of pacing. Everything. It was just beautiful and inspiring. I want to be able to play like that, and while I still feel psyched, like I was saying before, to go into a scene and just attack that first weird thing, and find the game, I feel equally inspired to take control of a scene in the slower, more quietly confident way that Dorff and Gausas did, taking their time, finding a not so obvious but oh so right rhythm, investigating the space between their characters, and between the words and what's being said.

Man, I wish I had all the time in the world to see shows and practice. Oh well.

While I'm at it, I also wish I had a pony. And the ability to have sex with any woman I want. And not just sex, but a strong, meaningful relationship.

In addition to my girlfriend.

Or maybe in a parallel universe. One where ponies take care of themselves.

I haven't thought this thing through yet.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Public Service Announcement, or Dating a Rock Chick

My main point in updating today is to warn you all against a new breed of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. You may see a package of French Vanilla ones and be intrigued, but don’t do it. My girlfriend had them at her apartment, and I was left trying to decide what kind of medicine they reminded me of. She felt the same way, though it took her a moment more. I was the one who opened the bag, so I got a minute to smell them first. She just dug right in and crunched away, then took a moment to realize that they had a weird mintish after-taste. I don’t think it was mint, though. I think it was the taste of the devil, and it Rorschachized into whatever you don’t like. She doesn’t like mint, so that’s what it was for her. For me, maybe it was baby aspirin or penicillin or something. Truly disgusting.

I just got back to my apartment from my two-day-long Valentine’s-fest, which I certainly don’t mean to brag about. This is the first year in a long while that I’ve been dating someone at the right time to hit both this holiday and New Year’s. I feel I deserved it, dammit, but so, I’m sure, do many of you. So next year, as they say, in Jerusalem. (Not that you’d necessarily want to go to Jerusalem right now. It’s dangerous there.)

Speaking of dangerous, we had the misfortune to catch the breaking news about the carbon monoxide poisoning at a building near me in Murray Hill. I know the TV news is excessive and, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for, inflammatory, or whatever: but they actually showed close-up footage of a woman clearly being told that people she knew were dead, and her immediately breaking down and yelling, “No-o-o!” I feel like punching out whatever news director made the decision to show that. Seriously, I feel like beating the fucking crap out of him. That’s so upsetting. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’m suddenly obsessed with the idea of my girlfriend being a rock-star. She’s not. She’s a therapist (the head-shrinky kind) and up until a month ago she worked at a non-profit organization where she did good deeds and kept very sick people from killing themselves and put herself in danger and stuff. But they kept promoting her and putting her in charge of stuff even though she’s young because she’s so brilliant, etc. and she got to like her job less and less. So she’s going to be going to law school, after which she’s going to go back to doing amazing things and helping people. (She finally had an epiphany of inspiration about the decision to do this while helping out a sick friend of hers recently in a legal-like way during an emergency that’s too involved to get into right now. But the point is, she’s smart as a whip and tough when she has to be and a supporter of the downtrodden, and she’ll use her law powers for good.)

But back to my point. Her basic personality is very punk rock, in a way, and up until recently that was really sort of her persona in terms of clothing, but I pretty much missed that. We’ve known each other for about two years, have become very close friends in the last year, and just started dating a couple months ago. At the moment, she very naturally passes for a perfectly-conceived New York, Jewish, glasses-wearing intellectual. And she looks great like that. But she was wearing a black tank-top the other night, and she’s got a couple tattoos on her arm and her back, and she just really has a tough rock chick kinda vibe when she wants to, a la Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or someone like that. (Probably more retro than that, really, but I can't think of who.)

And looking at her in that black sleeveless t-shirt last night, with her tatoos and her unpretentious pretty face, I suddenly realized how appealing an idea that is to me: to be a well-known, published writer, and be dating a kick-ass, well-known rock chick. That would be damn cool. I mean, the idea of me being a successful author and dating a hip, funny attorney is cool, too, but I have to say I like the idea of dating a rock chick. Why do I never meet any? I know all these literary, publishing types, which is both appropriate and helpful, but not enough musicians. PM me, someone. Not that I’m looking to get out of my relationship. I’ll keep her for now. She can read a little bit of music but she’s never played an instrument, and can’t sing. She swears she’s tone-deaf. But yeah, she wishes she were in a band, too, but is never going to be.

And that’s okay.

We both left her place around quarter of nine this morning, since she goes to therapy herself once a week, and apparently President's Day didn't mess with that. That was good, though, since it gave me a reason to come home and have most of the day for writing. I just had some pancakes, though I’m trying to stay off the carbs in general. But I don't often crave pancakes, and I believe in listening to cravings. They were good, and now I've been fed.

I’m going to try and get some work done on the novel now, starting with my jotting down a few notes in the groovy journal thing She gave me for V-Day. It’s got a cloth cover with a crazy 1960s-looking, vibrant-colored design, like Greg Brady’s disco attic room. I gots ta get some writing done, though. The literary agent who is nice enough to take me out to lunch and read my stuff and tell me to keep going with it is expecting something soon, since I’d finally told her to just give me a date where I had to get stuff in to her. She told me a week from this coming Friday, which immediately struck me as like: “Well, couldn’t I have that weekend, too? Just to look things over a little longer?” But no. Things is due when they is due.

Which reminds me: I gotta get to the library and return those books. I’m bad about that.

Anyway. Just wanted to warn you about the cookies.

P.S.: I was just about to post this when I got a phone call from my improv buddy Baby D., who writes the Horny Girl journal. (Not to be confused with the "Put Something in My Vagina, Stat" journal which may or may not be an intermittently funny parody of it.) She's an aspiring novelist like me, and has actually been working on her project full-time, making just enough money to support herself through tutoring. (She used to teach at a well-known New York private school.) Anyway, she just informed me of some amazing news, which is that the extremely high-powered literary agent she showed her stuff to didn't just send her a nice letter outlining some suggestions, which would have been nice enough in itself, but got on the phone with her and said he wants it! She just needs to fix the ending up a bit, and then he's going to sell it! THIS IS AMAZING. What I'd read of her novel was really, really good, but being in book publishing, I know how hard it is to accomplish this, and I expected she'd have a little bit more of a challenge before these kind of fireworks exploded for her, simply because the most deserving people seem to usually have to go through a lot more bullshit. But she does deserve to be famous and successful, and this is just the beginning of that happening, and I'm both jealous and ecstatic simultaneously, and the fireworks are already going off. So put that in your vagina, STAT.

Way to go, Baby. Now I just have to catch up.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Gay Stormtrooper Choreography

This past Tuesday night, I went to my first rehearsal of a play I’m in. I’m 30, and haven’t really pursued the acting thing other than improv since coming to the city. I had put together a theatrical resume a few years ago, consisting of mostly college stuff, and gotten a headshot, but hadn’t really pursued it, deciding to focus more on my writing. That’s worked out, so far, since I’m now at the point where I’ve sold a couple articles to Time Out New York and had a humor column for a while that started at a website I worked at and later got picked up by a print magazine. That led to my developing a relationship with an agent who would love to sell my novel once I actually finish it.

But I missed acting. In the last year I’d gotten the chance to act in a corporate video that was being produced at the company I work at. (I’m at a business book publisher that’s part of a larger organization that does corporate seminars and training: it’s not as exciting as being at a more glamorous trade publisher and dealing with fiction, but I’m now left with a lot more time and energy to work on my novel, and I’m working for a good friend of mine who was also my boss at the website.)

The corporate video I appeared in, which incorporated a lot of improv and was really fun to do, led to my having a small part in a film the director was working on. So those were a couple more things to put on my resume.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail she’d gotten about auditions for this play being done by a group that does both improv and written material. They’d had great success with their previous work, and were casting for the new one, which was a science fiction parody.

This didn’t sound promising to me: I love science fiction -- in fact, my first editorial job was at a famous science fiction publisher – but the chances of a science fiction parody being funny or original struck me as a long shot. However, the fact that they were holding auditions at an improv theater and the way that I had informally heard about it encouraged me to go for it. (I didn’t feel quite ready to read some random listing in Backstage and show up with a bunch of experienced actors who already have union memberships and agents and stuff.) The audition was early Saturday morning, and knowing that one of my improv buddies had to be around at the same time as I did for a class later that afternoon, I convinced her to join me. At the very least, it would be a good experience, and I’d get to hang out with her afterwards. She was my carrot on a stick, which is an image she’d probably get a kick out of.

I didn’t have enough time to memorize anything, so I decided to use something I had for a while thought would be a splendid theatrical monologue: a section out of the preface to Strunk and White’s classic grammar handbook, The Elements of Style. (The preface is by E.B. White, talking about having William Strunk as his teacher, and how the older man used to lean over his desk, grab his lapels, and emphatically command, “Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”) The audition went okay, and it was nice having a friend there.

We both got called back, and the second experience was even nicer, since they had all the actors making up an audience so we wouldn’t be dryly reading in front of two or three people what turned out to my surprise to be incredibly funny material.

Disappointedly, they didn’t have my friend do much, though in my opinion, she did a fantastic job: she has an amazing presence, and that spark of intelligence that’s necessary even if you’re playing a “dumb” character. Who knows, they may have been looking for another physical type. (In my opinion as a red-blooded American man, she’s H-O-T-T, hot, by the way, so it’s not that she wasn’t good looking enough.) They had me read for a whole bunch of scenes, though I got the feeling they were thinking of me for one specific part, which I probably wasn’t the right physical type for. I did think I had a shot, though.

We ended up both getting offered parts in the Company, meaning, basically, we’d be extras, with the opportunity to have funny bits throughout the show.

My first reaction, I have to admit, was one of indignation: I didn’t even get a slightly more fleshed out minor part? Who did they think did better than me? What the hell? And how could they not take my friend, who’s amazing? At the same time, deep in my gut, I knew that the “right” answer was: “Take the part. Arrive at every rehearsal with incredible enthusiasm. Show up at rehearsals you don’t even have to be at. Get every bit you can. Be a team player. You might make your part in this into something bigger than you expect, and even if not, you’ll meet people and learn things, have something to add to your resume, and it might even increase your chances of having a bigger part in the director’s next play.”

In short, as they say in improv class, do it in the service of The Harold.

But man, was my ego bruised. I had to think about it for a day or two. Sure, I hadn’t actually done any theater since college, but I’m a good comedic performer. And hell, normally I’d be insecure after not getting a part, and assume I’d embarrassed myself. I probably would have even walked out of the audition not even feeling so great to begin with. But I knew my callback was good -- I’d heard the "audience" response! I killed! And, um, my friend said I was good!

So I took a step back and let the question marinate. (A word which has been ruined, in this context, by its use in that Kissing Jessica Stein movie – I’ll have you know I’d been using the word “marinate” to mean “stew-it-over-in-my-head” long before that film came out, and now people are going to assume I’m just dorkily quoting that movie.)

When the smoke cleared (there’s usually smoke when I’m thinking, I don’t know why), my friend had turned the part down. Her head wasn’t in the right place to essentially Be a Cog. (That’s a famous number from the Borg version of an old Cole Porter show, by the way.) And I think that’s valid. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself in righteous indignation to retain some sense of self-worth. Good for her.

But for whatever reason, I happened to be in the right mindset to be humble and just provide support for others. Like being that seventh person who spends the Harold just doing small walk-ons, maybe not even leading the group games, but helping the others define their scenes more and just waiting till the next show to be the one who gets time on stage.

I also remembered how my willingness to stand around for a while, and cancel plans in order to show up an extra day on the set of that indie film I was in, led to my having a teeny bit more of a part. There’s something about me that likes that idea of putting in an enormous amount of time and energy when starting out, just to get the smallest bit of forward momentum. In itself, it doesn’t seem to make sense to put all that effort into something for what looks like a small result. But eventually it adds up, and there aren’t too many other ways to do it. And right now I was in the right frame of mind to handle that.

I couldn’t make the first rehearsal I was supposed to be at because I had my practice group -- I’d made it clear I couldn’t do Wednesday nights -- so this past Tuesday I trekked down to NYU, where the director had snagged us some space to rehearse in. There was lots of security, so we were instructed to say we were there for a “campus media reps meeting.” Keeping with the spirit of the play, if that didn’t work I figured I could just go for the “these are not the droids you’re looking for” defense. But that didn’t turn out to be necessary.

Rehearsal, which that night consisted of the other actors in the Company (about six of us), was a blast. I was immediately glad I’d accepted, and felt valued by the director and the other players. The whole show is being done as a large collaborative process, where our input is constantly being utilized in order to enhance an already really funny script. Around 8:45 I called my roommate, also an improviser, and told him we were going till 10 and that I couldn’t make it to Harold Night. As it turned out, though, we got out at 9:15, and thinking I’d hopefully just be able to make it, I quickly grabbed a cab and hauled ass over teakettle to UCB. Settling in, I looked across the audience and saw that another one of the actors from the show had done the same. At intermission, we told each other we’d have to share a cab the next time.

Friday night I met more of the cast, and the rehearsal was once again a delight. Challenging, but fun -- we were choreographing a gay storm-trooper march, so how stressed out can you be? A bunch of us went drinking afterwards, and I’d already say there are at least a couple people I could easily become friends with.

I'd like to think I made a good choice.

But if I don’t get a starring role in the next thing I try out for, I’m going to throw a fucking tantrum.

I mean it.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Okay, I know I said I was only going to make entries every time I finished another ten pages of my novel, but this is just a quickie. I suddenly feel the incredible need to point out how gross-looking Harold Bloom is. You'll see his picture on the second page of this New York Magazine article:

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9932/

I wouldn't normally point out someone's physical grossness, but he's apparently kind of gross inside, too. So that makes it okay.

Also, I read his Shakespeare book a while ago, and think he's kind of a hack.

Boo yah! Take that, old man!

It looks like he's about to say, "Bring me Solo."

 

[Super-Brett!]

I’m partly writing this now simply because I see my friend Baby D just updated her Horny Girl journal, and I like the idea of them appearing right next to each other. Maybe some day we can have a Be Continued from mine into hers, or vice versa, like back in the day when they’d have a Diff’rent Strokes episode lead into Silver Spoons, and Arnold and Ricky would go on an adventure together. Corporate and creative synergy, working together, in a sexy, special way.

I take some pride in the fact that last night I went to see The Magnificent Ambersons at Film Forum rather than watching the Oscars. Some day I’ll get it together to have Tivo or something and tape it and watch the good parts, like Billy Crystal hosting or Bill Murray or whatever, but really, I don’t give a shit. It’s all political nonsense, anyway.

Before heading off to the movie, I arranged to meet a friend of mine -- someone I’m not such good friends with, lately, because she’s constantly negative, and difficult -- and go see a friend of hers do a Level One performance. It was his first show, and I didn’t realize going in that he had in fact been inspired to take a class after going with her to see one of my own class shows. So that felt special. He was pretty good, too -- easily one of the best performers there, from what I could tell -- though I’m not going to enter that special place in Hell reserved for 3-Bers who witness a Level One performance and actually critique it. But he was extremely good at not asking questions, noticeably so. I told him this later, at McManus, and he said, “Well, but I was really trying not to.” Yeah, dude, but a lot of people try not to -- it’s still hard!

So it was also an interesting night, in that it was (perhaps embarrassingly) my first time at McManus. I’ve decided over the past week that this is ridiculous. It’s not that I’ve been building a big thing out of it, but I do admit I have been a little bit intimidated to go there, since it’s such a UCB scene. I would have gone earlier, but whenever I’ve known people heading there after class, I’ve already had other plans. Anyway, it never worked out before, but now I’ve been, and that’s dealt with. (Hardly anyone else was there aside from the Level One kids, what with Asscat and all.) Billy actually had us do a “McManus Harold” the other day for our last class, so it was just serendipity. The stars were aligned.

Tonight I skipped a rehearsal I didn’t need to be at, technically (but which I’d planned on going to) and allowed myself some relative down time, eyeballing some manuscript pages I’m about to send in, and eating Chinese food and watching Jaws.

Oh, damn -- I see that someone else updated their journal before I could finish this. So I’m not next to Baby D, as I had planned. Sheesh.

I can’t get next to you, Babe.

 

[Super-Brett!]

The Gelatinous Egg

I've been cranky lately. I'm not getting enough sleep, have overextended myself with various things, and find myself precariously close to crying at the sight of empty orange juice containers. ("It was all so full of Vitamin C, and then suddenly…gone!")

I know I'm just exhausted, and it's exaggerating how everything seems. I'm normally Mr. Warm, Happy Guy, and I've been whining incessantly and feeling frustrated with not getting enough notes from one of my improv instructors. (Someone I happen to really like.) I've become Mr. Negative Guy in the last couple weeks, and I'm all for letting your feelings out rather than suppressing them, but I think I should maybe think about…well, not necessarily suppressing them, but just trying not to think so hard about everything for a little while. I don't want to lash out and mess up certain structures in my life that are, for the most part, good.

So I'm going to take it out here.

Martha Stewart got found guilty. Good. On the one hand, I happen to think insider trading is the fault of the person on the inside, not on the outside -- but she's not supposed to be a very nice person, and I'm in a bad mood, so here's to Martha getting made someone's bitch in white collar women's prison. (My girlfriend happens to be a big fan of women's prison movies, in case you’re interested.)

On the plus side, I just started reading Katherine Neville's novel The Eight, and I'm in love with it. It came out a while ago (maybe ten years ago, almost?) and I've had it sitting around for a long time, but I finally just picked it up and got into it. It's so awesome, one of those rare occurrences of a good, fun, fast read for smart people. Or at least for people who aren't complete and utter idiots. (I don't mean to knock anyone's taste, but The Da Vinci Code is so awful I can't even stoop to criticize it.) The Eight is sort of the good version of The Da Vinci Code. It goes back and forth from present day (or rather, the 1970s), and the 1790s, during the time of the French Revolution. There's a spooky, mystical chess set, and freemasons, and all kinds of crazy shit and intrigue. Some idiot reviewer provided the catchy endorsement that it's a feminist Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I think they just said that because it has a female protagonist. Which does not make it feminist. Dumbass.

So that's actually nice. I feel better just talking about that. It seems so simple, but it's not all the time that you find yourself reading a book that you're really into, and on a certain level, it just makes your life a lot better. It really does. RIFF. (Reading is Ffun.)

Did I get that acronym right? Weren't there two Fs in that?

Apparently while I'm at a rehearsal tonight, my girlfriend is going with one of her female friends to buy a vibrator. Which seems a fun girl kind of thing to do, though I have to admit when she told me this on the phone a few minutes ago, I had the generic, stupid guy reaction of, "But what do you need that for? You have me now!"

And then we both laughed and laughed.

Well, at least it's not a situation where she suddenly had the urge to get one: she's always had one, and the current one died, so she has to replace it. Apparently it's some sort of gelatinous egg.

I'm amused just saying that.

I then kidded around with her, as I always do, about what she was then going to…you know…"do" with her girlfriend afterwards. I love the whole typical guy fantasy assumption that since girls are more physically comfortable with each other, they might reasonably start fooling around at any moment when no one else is around. I mean, I realize it's stupid, but it still makes a certain kind of sense to me. Like, just in a sisterly way, they might give each other a back rub, and then put the batteries into the new vibrator just to see if it works, and…well, of course they wouldn't go so far as to have sex, but there might end up being some giggling and touching. Maybe a kiss.

Excuse me.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Bastard Ted Debut

I was going to try and take a nap just now so I’d be fresh for later this evening when my improv team Bastard Ted makes its 15-minute debut at School Night, but my brain just wasn’t quite letting me sink into it.

I’m not really nervous about it. I went to School Night last week, and it seemed to be an incredibly supportive audience. So whatever. We’re an insanely talented group as individuals, I think -- I’m not talking about me, but the guys and gals I play with -- but I’m sure we have far to go in terms of putting together a cohesive show. Hopefully we’ll all be relaxed enough to go and just have fun out there, and the audience will dig that. If nothing else, it’ll be a learning experience. Even in the worst case scenario, and we really suck tonight, I know it’ll make us better. And I think eventually we truly will be really good.

In case any of you are reading this in the next few hours and are thinking of checking it out, let me just say this: we’re starting our set with a modern dance sequence.

Bounce with me.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Bastard Ted Debut, Post-Show Recap

Well, it’s the morning after, and I can say I feel okay about Bastard Ted’s big 15-minute debut. It was really nice of School Night to let us be a part of the show.

And anyway, I’m pretty sure we didn’t suck! I mean, I was genuinely, sincerely ready for the possibility of just out-and-out crash and burning, just awkward silence from the audience, and ready to be positive about it and learn from it. But that didn’t happen. The School Night crowd, I’ve noticed, tends to be generous and encouraging, God love ‘em, but even so, they seemed pretty sincerely enthusiastic. We have a long way to go to get to where we want to be, but that felt great for a first time. I’m looking forward to rehearsal tomorrow night, and having Shannon tell us what we did wrong. (No, she’ll give us positive but instructive notes.) It cracked her up last night when we asked her to give us a camp counselor style pep talk before the show. My roommate Gary, who’s also in Bastard Ted, is a huge summer camp person, and still has a large crowd of friends from being a camper and counselor over the years. He offered to do the pep talk in Shannon’s stead, but she came through. I’d still like to hear Gary’s version, though.

Even without the show, it was a fun, special evening over all. Getting ready to walk across town to meet the rest of the gang at that new diner a block up from the theater (D’Ag’s? Is that what it’s called?), I started fake freaking out because I couldn’t find my paperback copy of Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, a favorite book of mine which I’m currently re-reading. I wanted to have it in my bag as a good luck totem, since one of the final scenes is the unhappy young professor hero getting stinking drunk and embarrassing himself in the middle of giving an academic lecture, thus ruining his career but hopefully improving his life. It’s a hysterical book. Anyway, that scene seemed potentially fitting for the evening ahead of us, and I thought I might find some comfort in it.

“Where the hell is that book? I just had it with me! Do I ask for that much? I mean, how much do I ask for? Just to have one stinking book?! I deserve this! I keep my room clean!” This was being said while throwing around a whole host of clothing and backpacks and mail around on my unmade bed. “Oh, there it is. Out in the living room.”

Gary and I proceeded to do really bad, fake neurotic Woody Allen-esque accents as we gathered our things and left the apartment.

It was gorgeous out (the calm before the snow, I guess), and we arrived to find Monique smoking and a few more of us inside. Several of the gang were sick, and drinking various types of tea with honey, staunchly ready to go on. Our very nice waiter -- there’s always one male waiter wearing a knit hat in there -- put up with us and listened to the end of a funny anecdote about one of us falling completely over sideways on her bike while stationary on the sidewalk earlier that day, and how the friend whom she’d just waved hello to failed to even comment on it. The waiter then allowed me to put together my own unofficial french toast arrangement (bananas and strawberries rather than various melons, and bacon) and even listened politely to my request to rename the entrée for myself for the next twenty minutes. Later on, when Becky was trying to get his attention, I tried convincing her that his nickname was Hatsy in a vain attempt to get her to yell to him across the room, but she’s too canny. She wouldn’t go for it.

Thankfully, we didn’t talk too much about improv, and I was just left with the feeling that I love being with these people, improv team or not. It was already a nice evening.

We went in, warmed up in that creepy back hallway, and got ready to go on. It turned out that the person responsible for bringing the opening music didn’t have the CD in her bag (she was one of the sickies, so it was forgiven), but luckily enough had some River-Dancey Irish music that worked okay. We had sort of a schticky thing we’d worked out for after we get the suggestion, where we sort of mime putting it in a filing cabinet or something and then kick it shut (you had to be there), and that wasn’t something I thought worked as well as it might have. But the scenes flowed alright, and I was damn proud of us. I ended up personally doing mostly support stuff, but that was okay, since I feel I can be a little domineering sometimes anyway. It was more important that we do well as a group, and I think we did. Afterwards, we met Shit Storm, who after their set had announced to the crowd that there was a “Win a Date with Shit Storm!” Contest. I loved the way the audience reacted, with a light smattering of applause to the idea, which then perfectly, comically trailed off. It’s like the whole place was involved in a bit. (Their applause a few seconds earlier for Shit Storm’s show, by the way, was whole-hearted.)

It’s snowing outside now! I’m in a good mood, and working at home. I’d say it’s another glass of orange juice for me, a few minutes away from the desk, and then on to the writing. (I’ve also got the Danger Mouse 'Piggies' version of Change Clothes playing right now, which could probably put a smile on a dead person. Doesn’t it just make you feel like you’re a happy little elf running around with a basket full of candy?)

Thanks, School Night.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Brainstorming

Some early morning inspiration:

TV Idea: Solid Gould. Starring Elliot Gould and the Solid Gould Dancers.

Movie Idea, high concept. Robo-spierre. Swept up in the dark intrigues of the French Revolution, a well-known public accuser is torn apart by the Mob and guillotined, then reconstructed by a brilliant scientist using cybernetics. Reborn as a half-machine, half-member of the Estates General, he's out for justice…and vengeance.

(Who's a French Peter Weller type? Could we get the Scottish guy from Timeline? He's Scottish. Can he do other accents?)

 

[Super-Brett!]

We Make Holes in Teeth

Forgive me if anything I say in this entry is stupid: at the moment I’m waiting for my regular dentist to return from his vacation on Thursday to deal with the fact that I apparently have a cavity that’s become infected and will probably need root canal. I had some pain over the weekend -- perhaps affecting my opinion of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie I’d been looking forward to seeing since coming across the trailer online months ago -- and got an appointment to see a doctor today who’s covering for my regular guy. He put me on antibiotics and prescribed some Vicadin, though I’m not really in pain now, just wonky and worn out from having the infection. (Sorry, I’m rambling.)

Anyway, it was a pretty full weekend. Rehearsal for a play I have a tiny part in Friday night, and a squandered Saturday afternoon when I should have been writing but was instead smearing Anbesol in my mouth. Met my girlfriend and another friend of ours for the movie, much of which I liked but left me feeling a little cold. (I wanted to know more about some of the characters, for one thing. And I wasn’t truly compelled by the love story, which in a way was sort of the point, maybe.) Later on, we were supposed to go see Les San Cullottes, a fun band that pretends to be a 1960s French pop group, replete with bad accents and wacky clothes, but I didn’t feel up to it. Instead, the three of us went to Barnes and Noble, where Shorty -- I’m gonna refer to her as Shorty for now on, I just decided -- searched for a Bridge book (Bridge, the game) to get her grandfather for his 90th birthday. She called her grandmother to ask if he already had the one she was looking at, but instead of just checking, her grandmom asked him directly, which in my view hilariously defeated the purpose of having someone “on the inside.” She put her on hold, then reported back a minute later, “He says only to buy it if it’s under $5.95.”

We screwed around for a few minutes in the kids’ section, then went to get a drink at The Thirsty Scholar, where we know the bartender. Shorty fended off a lonely guy sitting near us, making sure to get just a wee bit kissy with me to let him know we were together, despite her general dislike for PDA. (The guy was nice, actually -- he was sitting there by himself reading the newspaper and making lame jokes.) Then we went to get burgers at Around the Clock, sort of a cheap, cheesy NYU student hangout I have a soft spot for.

Sunday I had another play rehearsal at 9 A.M. (does someone want to tell me why I’ve been averaging 6 to 9 hours a week for the last month working out choreography literally for two scenes in a show I’m basically an extra in?), then rushed over to my Delaney class immediately afterward at 12, which was like a burst of sunshine. A bunch of us went to McManus, which was nice since after having missed the first class due to a minor family emergency, I worried that I’d missed out on getting to know my classmates.

And…weekend.

I kind of wish I could take a sick day just to lie in bed and read, but I’m not so bad that I can’t manage to get through work if I have to tomorrow, and I’m relatively certain I’ll have to miss some time toward the end of this week and probably afterward, once my dentist gets back and I have to actually go deal with this. Plus, I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of in the office, though thankfully, not too mentally taxing, just back-and-forth kind of stuff. On the other hand (what is this, the third or fourth hand?), I have the ability to work at home once a week or so and my boss is awesome – so maybe he can e-mail me something and cover for me if I wake up feeling crappy.

You know what crappy rhymes with, it just occurred to me?

Nappy.

Also, pappy.

These are all funny words, comedy people.

(No, I haven’t taken a Vicadin yet.)

Okay, so just to add a positive spin, I’m actually feeling awesome about improv right now. I feel like I’m doing relatively good work in class, and have some specific things to work on. (It’s all such a juggling act between game and setting and everything else, till you build up all those separate cognitive muscles.) I’ve been trying for about a month just to work in a moment in a scene where I go to my character’s philosophy, and finally feel like I did that in one of my scenes in class this week. So now I have to keep working that just to get used to it as an option, and remember to hone in on the first weird thing, which I generally tend to notice then somehow let slip by anyway. Plus, my coach has noticed that I’m getting too self-consciously “funny” lately, so I have to watch for that.

But I’m getting too yappy -- maybe I’ll take a nappy.

And…journal.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Eternal Sunshine, and Our New Team Name

So here’s why I didn’t like Eternal Sunshine. We barely found out anything about either of the two main characters. All we had, for the most part, was their external behavior, and in both cases, their external behavior was annoying. (He was mumbly, she was obnoxious/crazy.) I still would have been fine with those externalizations if we’d just known a little more.

I did like certain concepts the more I thought about them -- the scene where the house is falling apart, the part where he’s a little boy under the table, the moment at the end where they come to a realization about their relationship -- but my appreciation came only after I supplied a bit more heft to those filmic moments in my mind. (Did I just use the word “filmic”?!) Theatrically, they didn’t quite play for me for some reason. There was just something missing.

Oh, and the subplot, enjoyable though it was, had little to actually do with the relationship between the two main characters, or what was going on with them. The plot threads never truly connected.

I’ve read a couple reviews and heard a couple reactions from people I respect who shared my blah reaction to this film, so that makes me feel a little better. Especially when confronted with people making deranged comments like, “If you don’t like this movie, you’re a soulless shadow-morph.”

I am not a soulless shadow-morph!

I’m still in the process of relaxing from my general overwhelming business, which is gradually tapering off. The whole tooth thing, combined with how busy I’ve been at work (which is only the case a few times a year) threw me off of my novel writing schedule for a bit. I’d been doing really well, though, and I’ll hopefully jump back into it this coming week. My continued exhaustion probably had something to do with what was only my first or second real argument with my girlfriend, which ridiculously involved our plans to see Hellboy.

Um, yeah. (It got worked out. But now I have different plans to see it with someone else tomorrow night. Do I invite her along now? Why am I an ass?)

My team abruptly decided to change its name from Bastard Ted to Genious, which I’m sort of blechhh on, but that’s not such a big deal, I realize. (This didn’t stop me from acting just a little bit like an ass. Why can’t I stop myself from acting like an ass with the stuff I most care about lately?)

We’ve got four gigs this month, one of which is tonight, if you want to come check us out. I’ll post a thing on the appropriate thingy thing.

I’m going to go back to sleep now. (I woke up too early.) So nighty-night. Well, not really.

Morny-morn.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Give Me Some Sugar, Baby

I've discovered, on the rare occasion that I decide I want coffee on my way in to work in the morning, that there's no particularly good place to get some on my way to the subway.

Normally this doesn't matter, since I usually wait to drink it at work. But sometimes, just sometimes, I'm tired, and it's cold out, and I want to freakin' have a hot cup of coffee in my hand as I walk across town from 3rd Avenue to the NR.

Yesterday, my roommate and I walked out at the same time, which normally doesn't happen. Heading in the same direction, we marched together down 27th Street. After a moment he complained, "These shoes still hurt. Dammit."

"What did you have done to them?"

He'd had them stretched last week. I'd warned him not to go into the cobbler asking them to stretch his shoes, since that probably wasn't the answer. He swears he didn't, he let them come up with that strategy on their own. But I don't totally buy it. I think he went in there wanting them to stretch his shoes. Maybe just as an unspoken, subconscious agenda they may have picked up on. Anyway, they still hurt, so he took them back in for them to try something else. "I think they narrowed the tongue or something. I don't know." We both glanced down at his feet, and I wondered if he was going to be in pain all the way through Passover dinner that night at his family's out on Long Island. He said, as though reading my mind, "I've got another pair in my bag, just in case."

"But those are ballet slippers."

"What, I'm graceful," he retorted.

We were heading up Third Avenue now, and I complained about the coffee situation.

"Stop in there," he suggested. "I want to get some juice."

I'd been into this new place on the corner twice for coffee, and had regretted it both times. The first time, the man working there took so incredibly long with the only other customer in the store that I actually walked out without coffee. (Given, I was probably a bit tired and cranky if I was going for the coffee pre-subway, but even so, I am really not the type of person who does that.) The second time, I realized a minute after leaving the store that the coffee wasn't warm enough. Like, enough for me to notice. I don't even like it that hot.

My roommate, after happily explaining to me that he has a well-established tradition of giving the guy the absurdly wrong amount of money each morning ("It'll be, like, $2.50, and I'll hand him three dollars and nineteen cents."), walked in and provoked an immediate volley of dialogue, confirming his claim of friendly rapport. I asked for a large coffee with skim milk and sugar while my roommate went to the back. "How many sugars?" the man asked me.

I have to say, I really prefer it when they just put in whatever obscene amount of sugar they want. I like my coffee nice and sweet, and not too dark, and I prefer to relinquish my control, since in order to get it as sweet as I like it, they have to presumably put in about eighteen times more than I would ever feel justified in putting in myself. Two," I said, fighting against my inclination to more moderately say one and then get stuck with a not-sweet-enough cup of coffee.

After a moment, the man rambunctiously plopped the large container of skim milk right down in front of me on the counter. "It does nothing!" he exclaimed. "It is always still too dark with the skim! No matter how much I give! I let you pour in! Not me!"

What…the….fuck.

"I don't know if I can handle this responsibility," I joked, sort of.

"You're making him pour in his own milk?" My roommate had come to the front of the store with his juice.

"I don't know how much would normally get put in," I pleaded.

"He doesn't have the information he needs!" my buddy claimed in my defense.

"It is always too dark with the skim! I let you pour in!"

"Okay." I poured in a healthy amount.

"It is still going to be too dark!" he joyously exclaimed.

I felt like I was on the Price is Right. "Oh," I said. "All right." I poured in a bit more, paid, and we left.

A block later I realized it was really cold. Had I put so much milk in that that was the reason? In a large cup of coffee? It couldn't have helped, but I'm pretty sure that the coffee just isn't that hot in there. And that there's a reason there are never many customers.

"He was giving you more control," my friend insisted.

"You know, he really wasn't," I strenuously disagreed (as Kevin Pollock does in A Few Good Men.) "It's like my dentist telling me to go in and perform my own root canal. (Or my roommate telling the cobbler how to make his shoes more comfortable.) "I mean, what am I paying these people for?" I continued, asking rhetorically. "Their skill."

We walked a bit more together, then he got on the 6 and I continued on to the NR. I kept thinking about the guy behind the counter in that large, clean-looking, empty bodega, a big, nervous smile on his face, bounding around energetically, waiting for someone to walk in, and not understanding why no one likes his coffee.

 

[Super-Brett!]

Fur Story

What can you say about an 8-year-old Shetland Sheepdog who died?

That his name was Gatsby. That he looked like a smaller, cuter version of Lassie. That I spoke to him on the phone. That his favorite song was It's Not Unusual. That he was the great-great nephew of my last dog, Merlin. That he should have lived several more years, easily. That he was my furry little brother. That I adored him.

I went home last Tuesday night after my mom called to tell me that the vet said he wasn't getting any better and that we should take him to get an ultrasound. He'd suffered a sudden, extreme case of pancreatitis. Striding into the waiting room the next day, the radiologist bluntly told us that he had a 5% chance to live, and suggested we rush him to the veterinary center at U. Penn, which is basically like the Mayo Clinic for animals.

Not that Gatz was an animal.

His decline over the next two days, despite the best efforts of a smart, sensitive doctor who looked like he was about 12, complete with a pubescent-looking peach fuzz excuse of a moustache, made me think of a morbidly funny line from a short story I once read by Will Self: "Cancer tore through her body as if it were late for an important meeting with a lot of other successful diseases." Gatsby grew worse over the next two days. Every major organ was affected. There was nothing left for them to do.

Even after being put on a number of different painkillers, he was still obviously suffering. Given oxygen and breathing with great difficulty, he struggled valiantly to lift his head in response to the falsely cheerful announcements, "Gatsby…it's your Mommeee!" and, "Hey, Gatz -- your big brother Brett is here!" Did he know why he was in such a strange, uncomfortable place? Did he think we had just abandoned him? I worry that he did -- though I'll bet he realized that we wouldn't do that.

We held him in our lap as the doctor prepared everything, and when I asked him metaphorically, doing my best not to cry, "Gatsby, do you want to go for a ride?" his eyes grew enormously wide, filled with impossible, exaggerated hope. We had come to take him away, he must have thought. We were there to rescue him.

I'm sorry to be so maudlin. What a horrible, disgusting week.

My sweet, furry guy.

We're not particularly religious, though in the past year my mom has taken to lighting the candles again on Friday nights. I didn't expect her to do this anymore. Not after what had just happened. I expected her to break down and become hysterical now that it was over.

She stood at the dining room table, her face lit up in the crevice of shadow created by the flickering lights, and closed her eyes in silent prayer. I stood there next to her for what must have been two to three minutes at least. Finally, she lifted her head.

"I just yelled at God," she said.

Bye, Gatz.

 

[Super-Brett!]

New Term for "Group Mind"

My girlfriend just alerted me to the existence of the phrase “folie et deux” from her Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s a French term meaning “shared psychotic episode.”

I think this is a great new way of making reference to “group mind.”

It’s funny how often the concept of the shared psychotic episode has come up in regard to our relationship.

But isn’t that what all the best romantic relationships are?

 

[Super-Brett!]

Despite the fact that I don't especially feel much has gone on since I last checked in, a quick, perfunctory brain scan of random, rapid-fire images seems rife with CGI-enhanced, dynamic, Technicolor drama:

1. Walking to work from the subway last week, a few blocks up from Times Square, a somewhat frail-looking, elderly woman, surrounded on either side by a modest posse of slightly younger, spryer old men, walks toward me across the street, takes a lurching, slow-mo mis-step, and then, before anyone can do anything about it…bitch goes down! (I actually take no delight in this fairly awful occurrence, but I do love using that phrase, "Bitch goes down!" I think I heard it in a movie once.) I pick up her glasses, which are unbroken, and her two gallant, elderly suitors take her firmly but gently by the arms, and rush her to the sidewalk, where with the help of an outside fruit and produce-watching Bodega-Boy, they call for an ambulance. Just in case, I hear them say together. I'm fairly confident in reporting she was going to be all right, but -- and this is kind of upsetting to hear, so be warned -- I think she landed on her teeth. Double, triple, ouch. I was unnerved, as they raised her up, to see some heavy drops of blood parading along the sidewalk in front of me, balloon-thick dollops parachuting in from above. In my own defense as a sensitive guy who was nonetheless fascinated by this literally pedestrian moment of drama, I'm proud to say I not only then walked an entire block out of my way afterwards, so lost in thought and concern and freak-out, but also that it wasn't until regaining my composure and realizing I had to turn back that I suddenly glanced down at myself, vainly screeching silently in my head as a true, unfaze-ably self-absorbed New Yorker, "Oh my god! Did she get blood on me? Is my shirt okay? Did she bloody my pants up???" But I was okay…thank God.

2. Later that same day, around 4 in the afternoon, I notice an e-mail from the CEO's assistant, saying he was calling an emergency meeting for the entire organization. The office is quiet that day, and wondering if we're all getting laid off, I rush down with a couple of other people to the 6th floor conference room. It appears that a woman whose name and face I'm thankfully unable to place has been hit by a car right outside our office on Broadway, just as she's strolling back from lunch. She's not dead…yet, it's basically explained to us, though it sounds like that might change soon. (We find out the next day that it did.) Her daughter is being contacted, etc. We all shuffle out of the room…

3. Feeling I have blood on my hands, and that maybe I shouldn't personally even go out of the house again, I leave my apartment around 10pm to meet up with a couple of friends I've bullied into joining me for an 11 o'clock concert by a musician named Langhorne Slim. It's someone I once hilariously saw open up for the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. Sort of a faux-blues thing by a slender white guy with a funky be-bop hat and a way with the catchy melody. I'd even had to resort to shameless name-calling, deeming one of the chicks I invited "a chump" to get her to agree to come out, since she was teaching a class early the next morning. So my other pal and I get there -- it's in the East Village, some scum-hole on Avenue C -- and the wench-frau greeting woman in the entrance tells us it's six bucks to get in. "Just for the music," she vaguely clarifies, possibly indicating that if we were to go pretend to be at the bar actively not listening, it would be free. But not really. "The musician's e-mail said it was free," I claim honestly. Langhorne's easily worth 6 George Washing-Blings, but psychologically since she wasn't expecting it, my money-conscious pal is hesitant to pay. We meet up with my other friend, and go get some soup and alcohol together at 7A. (Or was it Sidewalk?) Teachy-Chick thoroughly enjoys the cream of carrot soup, which I also try, concurring that it's yummy, and then calls me the next day to tell me she had eaten too late and had to call in sick to her class with a stomach ache. Chump. It turns out that the bar wasn't going to be charging for Langhorne, but the previous band went long. Why can't people communicate? At least no one got hurt.

4. I'm working at home the next day, and catch a bit of Dawson's, as well as Hugh Jackman on The View, transparently trying to inoffensively get across that he doesn't care if people think he's gay, even though he's really not, he insists several times to Barbara Walters and Crew, as though his people haven't specifically advised the producers to have them bring the topic up. (Which reminds me: my mom wants to go see The Boy from Oz when she comes in for her birthday, a show I have recently taken to referring to simply as The Gay Jackman.)

So that all happened in the space of a couple days. And I thought there was nothing to tell you. Silly me. I'm fascinating. Really. Bitch goes down!

 

[Super-Brett!]

I'm updating this freakin' thing yet again.

I know I know I know.

Enough, Brett!

But I'm bored and not feeling like doing anything creatively productive.

And once again, you're the winners.

First of all, I'd like to point out that in New York Magazine's list of sexiest New Yorkers (which I've been "flipping" through online throughout the day, as opposed to actually physically masturbating while sitting here in the office, though clearly it's the mental equivalent), the winner of the Sexiest Socialite category is a woman named Lillian Wang von Stauffenberg. What a fabulous, outrageously rich person kind of name. I'd just like to say to anyone listening who has a ton of money and wants my advice, Why bother being rich and not have a freakin' wonderfully, absurdly ridiculous name? If you don't have one yet, go get one, wealthy girlfriend! Live a little! Brava, Ms. von Stauffenberg!

(Sorry. Ms. Wang von Stauffenberg.)

Next up, I saw on CNN's website yesterday that a U. Penn professor, while horseback riding, found the bones of a previously undiscovered dinosaur. It has a long neck, a whip-like tail and a mysterious extra hole in its skull. Most awesomely, though, it's been named Suuwassea emilieae, after a Crow Indian word meaning "ancient thunder" and for the late Philadelphia socialite Emilie deHellebrath, who apparently funded a lot of digs. How much do we all love that there is now a dinosaur named after a Philadelphia socialite? Brava, Ms. DeHellebrath! (Have you met Ms. Wang von Stauffenberg? Charmed, I'm sure! Ladies.)

Speaking of socialites, I joined a friend from college last night for a classical music recital benefit thingy at the Cosmopolitan Club. At one point, the lady who was hosting it-- she would come over and whisper stuff to us after introducing each act from the podium nearby -- remarked how much she always enjoys seeing 4-hand piano works, and I came this close to telling her how it always makes me think of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck battling it out. (I should have, but I'd had a glass of wine and couldn't quickly decide if that would be too zonky a thing to say.)

Anyway, I hadn't gone to hear anything classical in quite a while -- I'd realized at some point that to some extent I enjoy the idea of going more than the actual experience of hearing classical music, since let's face it, I'm basically sort of a barbarian -- but last night's program was really very enjoyable. I found myself thinking about improv in terms of the different things we all bring to our groups. (Don't worry -- this is actually quite obvious so you won't have to concentrate too hard.) We've all got our different instruments, and it's a lot of fun to hear them played together! (See? I wasn't being modest.) Let's hear a little 1930s Heiter Villa-Lobos piece on the bassoon and the flute. Then maybe let's watch an improvised scene featuring the straight guy, basically toned down and entering the stage at a point of neutrality, and that girl who always does the giant baby character with the Hispanic accent. Edit, and get a scene between the high energy dude with the really grounded chick who takes some time between thoughts, and adds some needed tension. Throw in a little baritone saxophone and a monologue. I don't know. I do know it was interesting to see how the musicians, playing along with someone on a different instrument, brought new things out of themselves by virtue of the collaboration. We could probably all use to work on building up in ourselves the traits others have which we admire, but we should also be sure not to lost the confidence and comfortableness of just doing our thing. Just something to think about.

At any rate, aside from my repeatedly yelling, "Drop it like it's hot!" and "Free-style!" in the middle of various woodwind pieces, I think the evening went well.

 

[Super-Brett!]

My boss, and friend, Matt said something kind of intelligent this morning. "You know what the great thing about Lunchables is?" he said. "They took a noun -- lunch -- made it an adjective -- lunchable -- and then added on an S, thus turning it back into a noun again."

Ah, Matt. I have this thing where if one of my friends hasn't met another one of my friends, I will always assume that I have to add the reference "my friend" to their name when mentioning them, no matter how many times I've mentioned them before. "I know who Matt is!" they might say. Except in the case of Matt, I had gotten into the habit of saying "my boss and friend," which became in the ridiculing retorts of my annoyed friends who of course had been paying attention to me the first three hundred times, "Your boss and lover? What? WE KNOW WHO HE IS AT THIS POINT!!!" Point taken.

You gotz ta just jump in and assume familiarity sometimes, and if they can't follow at first, all will probably become clear after another few seconds. Good improv lesson, too, probably.

Speaking of applying every freakin' thing to improv, I've been in the process of jumping back into my novel, which has actually been going pretty well. I'm finding, though, as I ease back into it after a couple months off (my work schedule is incredibly relaxed about 8 months of the year, conservatively speaking, so I have nothing to complain about), that my system seems to be to write it out in rough form, and then, when going back to it eventually, subtract. It's emotionally, and psychologically, a little hard until you get into it. There's not really anything wrong with any of it, I find, and it hurts a little to edit out details I find interesting. But in looking at it after some time away, and knowing what kind of book I'm trying to write, it becomes clear that certain sections are just taking too long. A 38-page prologue? No. Another hundred pages -- filled with activity, yes, but not necessarily activity or dialogue needed right then, that can't be put away and used later -- to get to what a Hollywood screenwriter would call the first turning point? Uh-uh. So I had to re-arrange. Compress. Trim off the fat. And rather than feeling like going backwards (fewer pages), it feels good, because it's beginning to read even more like a real book. And it just feels smoother when reading it.

It's kind of amazing that what I'm doing now, after months of work on a particular story, having had plenty of time to think about it, is exactly what good improv forces us to do immediately, as we lay it out. Get to the point. Cut to the chase. Don't be coy. And you can feel it on stage, in an even more immediate way than you do in print. Attack that freakin' game. Or relationship. Or whatever you want to call it, that stone, or gem, in the belly of your scene. What an awesome point to get to when you find you can efficiently do that. Wow. What an amazing art form we're all desperately struggling with. How astounding that there are those who get to the point that they can do it, and at least make it look effortless. I'm in awe of them, but also feel optimistic that if I work with the right people, and continue the same commitment, I'll get to that place myself. Maybe that's arrogant or egotistical, but how else can you work on the craft and enjoy it, unless you somehow convince yourself that what you want to accomplish is attainable? The bottom line is, no matter what the end result, this…hobby of mine, to use the most modest, pedestrian word I can think of to describe its place in my life, has enriched my whole existence in ways I could barely even begin to describe, making me think of everything else differently, and adding to the whole fabric and texture of everything else I encounter. I'm gonna commit with all my heart. And try my best. Worst case scenario? I look back and call it a great, great hobby.

You just gotta play it like Pacman. Casually, sitting at your computer sometimes, just enjoying the beep-beep-beep of yellow-mouthy progress, often trying your best, sometimes just keeping the joystick warm, never worrying about winning the videogame championship.

Oop! Bonus point. Strawberry.

Yum.