alcohol

Alcohol. It is not your friend. At least not in concert with hammers, glass bottles, and screwdrivers.

religion

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oh sweet jesus

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oh my

That is Audrey Hepburn barefoot in the kitchen. There is something incredibly enticing about this. In a wrong, wrong way.

clean my room

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kurt cobain

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well that settles that

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good to be a gangsta

'PC Load letter? What the fuck does that mean?'

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

last night

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Now this is a great idea. Almost as good as my idea for a phone app that works like an auto interlock system: the phone will allow you to do anything--except text or email or input txt on the web unless you can blow below a certain BAC. (Don't steal my idea. I know who you are.)

Despite lacking the breakthrough genius of my breathalyzer app, this app sounds pretty good too:

Delete multiple unwanted or embarrassing posts from your Facebook and Twitter accounts, including photos, comments, tweets, and direct messages. Available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Now if they only made it for other phones...

on the importance of being a grammar nazi

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delicious family with a side of dog.

transformers...

...robots in the sky...

Or something. Here's me transforming the other day. Yikes.

It begins.

What's wrong with your face, dude?

Well, that moustache made me think of Lemmy from Motorhead...

And then it all turned sorta gay...

And Hipster Hitler came for a visit...

 Hipster Hitler says, 'Invade Libya? Whatevs. I invaded Poland before anyone had heard of invading places.

 um...i don't know what is happening here.

 And all gone. Only madness remains. And you can't shave that away.

I said, shut up voices in my head. You can't tell me what to do. You're not my real dad.

3.21.11

Jose Zuniga and me. I'm the one leering demonically.

3.21.11

Just shaved my beard and head following my furry stint as psychiatrist Martin Dysart in ‘Equus.’ It’s strange how liberated and free and alive I feel today, and not just due to of the relief of getting rid of all that hair. I should be exhausted; it was an incredibly long week with much theatrical carousing--both standard and long-form--not to mention an added matinee on Saturday. But instead I was up at 8:30 a.m. which is utterly ridiculous. (I haven’t been up that early in a looooong time. It doesn’t count if you’re up all night.)

Instead, here I am, Monday morning, going to the store (it helps my motivation that I was out of coffee) doing laundry, accomplishing things, piecing my life back together after so many weeks of tearing up and down I-25, living out of my backpack. It’s spring, and I feel reborn in that anticipatory early-morning way, like when you’re a kid on the first nice Saturday morning of the year, and the whole weekend opens up before you as you leave the house after breakfast. You can smell summer coming even though there’s still a bit of a chill in the air; the cruel winter gods have been laid to rest for another year.

And goddammit, I want to ride my bicycle.

Of course, there is always a bittersweet sense of newfound freedom when a show ends, a feeling of sadness and simultaneous joy, and perhaps a dose of saudade, that nostalgic feeling of sweetness and loss.

But with this particular character, I feel somehow as if I was carrying around a lot more ennui and self-doubt and angst than I was even aware of. Dysart is such a sad, broken person, truly a man without any hope, suffering the quintessential 1970s existential crisis, an utterly lost soul.

Now, with any character, some of it gets on you. And some of you gets on them. Smarter people than I am say that you can’t play a character--not genuinely, not with true heart and spirit--without there being at least some sliver of that character already in your psyche, some part of you that you can relate to the character’s life and outlook.

And certainly I am no sunny optimist; I definitely go through dark times of doom and gloom, probably more so than many.

But this guy, this fucking Dysart guy, I realize today, rubbing the stubble on my head and watching the sun coming in the window, this guy drained me. Going to a place of despair--utter, bleak, impossible despair, completely desperate hopelessness--doing that every night took more out of me than I realized. The tears after the final show were cleansing somehow, a rebirth, appropriately on the first day of spring.

However, I am not bitching, believe me. I am so happy I did this show. Craig and the entire cast were amazing; we all really functioned cohesively--seeming to be one unit, as an audience member said at a talkback. And my thanks go out to Zuni in particular, Jose Zuniga, who played Alan. He’s one of those fully committed, fully natural actors who--with such ease and grace you want to rip their heads off--raise the bar and force you to take your game to the next level. Go big or go home. And I think playing Dysart opposite him really brought out a lot of unexpected levels in not only my acting, but also in my own emotional life.

That is one of the secrets actors are reluctant to tell you: on some level we get to not only play these people on stage, we get to become them. And not just during the show or during the run, but afterward as well.

The obvious--and correct--answer for why people act is, of course, we’re attention whores. Any actor who says he is not an attention whore is, well, acting when he tells you that.

We’re the perpetual middle children of life, jumping desperately in front of our siblings, raising our voices to ridiculous levels in even the most staid setting. We’re the gabby, cackling douchebags at the next table in an otherwise quiet restaurant; we're the loud laughers at the funeral home. Of course we get off on the adrenaline rush of performing, and the attention, and the applause.

But the secret, other answer for why we act is you also get to take home parts of those characters. Things your characters learn--or at least things they should have learned--can teach you and inform you and carry forward in your own life, if you’re open to them.

Dysart’s angst and bitter disappointment with the world he created for himself will wash away. They are washing away already.

But his compassion I get to keep, at least as much of it as will fit in my desiccated, black soul. :D

If I could paraphrase Dysart here, he is essentially saying to Alan: We’re all fucked up, kiddo, the whole goddamn human race. I can’t tell you why we’re so fucked up, or why we’re here, or what kind of fucked-up, evil god would create such a fucked-up, evil species.

But I can tell you there is no ‘normal’ here. This bus don’t go to ‘normal,’ baby. We go to Wackville, and North Nutbar, and probably Crackton, but we don’t go to Normal.

And what’s important, what keeps us human, you and I, we outsiders, we the daring and the different and the weird and the free, and what disallows the machine to take away our souls is realizing this about our fellow humans: they’re all just as fucked up inside as we are.

In order to remain human we must fight, every day to feel compassion for our fellow humans. We must make a conscious effort to do so, even as we and they struggle to make some sense of this fucked-up world, even as angry and frustrated and hopeless as our fellow humans make us feel sometimes.

For if we do not, if we allow our hearts to shut down, then we become part of the machine ourselves. We become dead, eyeless cogs in this clunky, wheezing contraption, complicit not only in our own slow deaths but also in propping up this dying empire where we are told everyone is meant to be alone, wrapped up in the cold arms of the machine, where only things are meant to bring some hollow joy, things that the machine is only too happy to sell you, offering some short-term remedy for your pain and loneliness and your sense that you are the only one who is fucked up, a remedy that will quickly fade, until the next thing comes along and you buy that as well.

And so on.

Compassion is the gift Dysart has given me.

I hope I can hang onto it. I hope I am worthy of it.

And I hope in some small way I have given a form of that gift to you as well.

kjb

go cry 2

A few more from go cry emo kid. I don't know why these make me laugh so hard. Perhaps it's because my own soul is black like death and rot as well.

Sigh. Time to go cut myself again.

the apple experience

Love it. Now for an iPad 2 that also won't play flash vids. via.

yes, you are weird, but...

Frankly, I only ever like the weird ones. Normal people skeeve me out a little.

Same for stupid--or at least smart people who make stupid decisions. Those who always make the right, smart choices are usually really, really boring.

brit to american translations

Here's a handy-dandy brit-speak translator for people who might be coming to the final weekend of 'Equus.' Now get out of my slappy ham before I pull out me rooty tooty point and shooty. :)

meet mario s. thompson

We were somewhere outside the Forest of Illusion, on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...

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And to top off the reblogging of awesomeness, I give you the end of the internet. You have reached it, the apex of all of everything cool and awesome that can ever exist. You may cancel your net connection now, because there is nothing else to see here.

Hunter S. Thompson, John Cusack and Johnny Depp, along with a plastic lady of the night, cruising in a convertible.

Fuck yeah.

winning. charlie sheen is polling well

No, not in the way he usually does. Although, come to think of it, he is once again on top of a shameless, no-talent whore whose only talent is her willingness to do anything for money and who is even now fading into obscurity as a nation grows bored with the dead-behind-the-eyes vacuum that passes for her soul. via.

Public Policy polling found that among independent voters, Charlie Sheen holds a five-point lead over Sarah Palin in a hypothetical presidential race. Maybe there is hope for this country yet.

Winning. This is how it is done.

Introducing the iDad

Wow. Now daddy can stay at work forever and never come home at all, thanks to the iPad! This video ad for an app that allows parents to 'read to' their children remotely I suspect is meant to be touching and heart-warming. To me it seems unutterably sad.



And now, more parenting in the modern era: I give you 15 kids on leashes via buzzfeed. Here's a sample of this very effective and productive parenting tool.

god is a troll

Here's a couple of religion posts, in the wake of Glenn Beck saying from on high that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan could be the result of angry god. That god guy--what a prick.

Oh and Glenn Beck too. Maybe that's why they're so close.

low self-esteem, huh?

You always forget about your stupid face.

via, this is a webcomic called cyanide and happiness, found here.

go cry

I absolutely love these. Found here, a site which is endlessly hilarious. They are sort of based on those dreamy, whimsical, and of course, depressing as fuck postsecret posts. Enjoy.

Then go cry, you stupid emo kid. :)

hipster trap

Now we wait.

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charlie sheen's winning recipes

Charlie Sheen: winning television.

Leave it to the well-connected guys at funny or die to come up with this.

Remember: Charlie Sheen doesn't cook food--he wills it. And all green things must die.

Charlie Sheen's Winning Recipes from Charlie Sheen

before i die...

I love this piece. And I love that it's in New Orleans.

This artist (Candy Chang) stenciled the side of an abandoned building in her neighborhood and hung baskets of chalk there so people could fill in the blank, a brilliant idea in a perfect city for it--New Orleans is a place of constant re-invention of the self. But it is also a poignant reminder that that Self is finite.

I missed Fat Tuesday this year--or at least missed celebrating it properly (we were in Beaufort, S.C. yesterday, checking out the antebellum houses; not exactly Bourbon Street). But seeing this piece again reminds me that there is a plaintive, honest, straightforward truth to what on the surface might seem to be a hedonistic lifestyle in places like N.O.: you are going to die. Your days will not continue and continue, offering you a forever of 'Someday, I will...'

No. You will be gone and the things you only dreamed of doing but never actually did will disappear along with your memories and all the other stuff in your head. Gone.

I remember one of most weirdly sad things about being in my Mom's house after she died unexpectedly a few years back was her little notes to herself, her lists of things to do that will go forever undone: Wednesday, yoga class; go to the post office; grocery lists, things like that. And among those were mentions of an impending Christmas visit I was going to take there (she died in November, 2006). Of course, I did go; she just wasn't there anymore.

You are but a slight warmth to a brief, gentle breeze: ethereal and slight, a gossamer spiderweb that will be devoured in an instant by time, swallowed by the Great Nothing that is the universe. While you are alive, you might think this world is a place you fully occupy, someplace in which you spread out and consume with your gravity, a place that couldn't exist without you in it.

Guess again, Sunshine.

At any rate, the challenge is to be tactile, alive and in the moment without being full-on Hedonism Bot, but also to be aware and appreciative of how others are affected by us and what differences we can make in small ways in people's lives.

Before I die...

religion v the internet

Ha.

via reddit.

art

done and done.

saturn fly-by

Wow. This is incredible. It is a film made up of thousands of still photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it traveled to Saturn, flying through its rings and past one of its moons.


5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.


Imagine how much more we could see, how much closer we could get to Saturn and other planets and perhaps even star systems if we had put even a tenth of our defense budget since the end of the Cold War into exploring space. Seems like someone might have thought of that before we decided that choking the life out of this planet was going to be our chosen course.

Ah well. Surely Jeebus is on the way. I'm sure he's going to fix everything.
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3.7.11

12:55 am departure time and this is the way to travel. Strange time, though. But those of us who are used to strange--these strange hours, strange people, strange bursts of activity and strange acuity and awareness at any and all hours--we all seem somehow to fade to gray, to blend in with the scenery. A nod shared with an all-night worker and then they--and you too--disappear, fade into the gray of the carpet, diffuse into some mist that exists only in the in-between places.

Meanwhile the ghost people, those poor, confused, diurnal souls wander. They are clunking, aimless things these lost daytime people, clumsy, shell-shocked specters separate from themselves, separate from their very lives at the moment, in this echoing, tomb-like limbo. Most of them are not made for this hour, for this quiet. Their lives are spent, by choice or not, in thrall to the odious chatter of the television, the false-hearty cranking of The Noise of Commerce, the reassuring clang of sales, sales, sales. This is what passes for community in this shabby, fucked-up world we have created. But not on this night.

The lost ones pass through the marble vault of the terminal, footsteps echoing, swallowed up in the near-silence, their hopes perpetually dashed as they search with forlorn eyes for some sign of something to purchase, anything, some commercial life, someone to tell them what they ought to want, something to buy, some stray golden arch shining like a star in the east, some heretofore hidden green goddess adorning a secret steaming paper cup set aside just for them. Surely there must be some hardy shopkeeper offering even a surly nod along with severely overpriced foam and bad coffee. Some signal that the engine of mercantilism grinds ever onward.

It all seems so wrong to them; the airport is after all an entity designed to suck money from captive guests, a brilliant example of seamless, total integration, a demo of The City of the Future, perhaps, as imagined in the filthiest wet dreams of financiers and salesmen. Like an airport, Our New City will sit alone, disconnected from anything else, a blue plastic bubble dimpling out of the scorched brown earth that surrounds it, that ruined, wasted brown scar-land where nothing unmodified ever grows anymore. It will be a city where there will be no competition, because there will be nowhere else to go, literally nowhere else to go. Enjoy your three-dollar bottle of water, and have a nice day.

But back to the present: the overstaffed security guards even laugh and crack jokes, chatting amiably with their quivering, shoeless, terror-stricken charges about the various security faux pas they have committed, their liquid slips, their gel gaucheries, their naughty, sharp little tweezers, their four-ounce cremes. All is or can be forgiven in the loose, late hours, with time to chat and an extra moment to catch someone’s eye, and see them briefly as a fellow human, not a cog in the machine, or, conversely, another faceless unit in the unending mass of cattle passing through. At this rare, late hour, we and they briefly become people again, even in this cold, future world.

Until we and they slip again into gray, and we are, again, wandering, alone.

equus review

Paternal? How about creepy?

We got our Denver Post review out finally, and it looks pretty good overall. John Moore felt the staging of the horses seemed a little cramped due to space constraints (six guys in hooves and horse heads are bound to take up some room, so, yes.) But he really loved Zuni (Jose Zuniga) the tremendous actor who plays Alan:

And on the tiny Vintage Theatre stage, Zuniga is very much a boy. Gangly, gawky, not yet filled in. And performing a role that is intensely vulnerable — clothes on or off. He's awkward, emotional and fires off a cool, enigmatic glare that could freak you out for days. You know, like most 17-year-olds.

And I don't think I've ever had the word 'paternal' associated with the words 'Kurt Brighton' before. So I must be getting better at acting, haha:

That's due in large part to Zuniga and his warm chemistry with Kurt Brighton as Martin Dysart, the emotionally dead shrink who tries to unravel why Alan did it. As he coaxes Alan into opening up about the mutilation, Dysart battles his own strange feelings of envy — for Alan has experienced a kind of passion Dysart knows he never will.

This requires a calm, measured and even paternal performance, which Brighton (an occasional freelance theater reviewer for The Denver Post) delivers with a strong hand and soothing voice, often speaking in withdrawn whispers that could drown out shouts.

John also had kind words for the rest of the cast as well, indicating to me (if you read between the lines) that he felt that overall the show was pretty top-notch. I had a conversation with some people who saw the show last week who said something like (I paraphrase) 'There was no one person who took you out of it, who seemed out of place.' I think this sentiment is echoed here:

Bond gets strong supporting turns from Theresa Dwyer Reid as Dysart's confidante, a forceful Libby Rife as Alan's don't-blame-me mum, and the two competing objects of Alan's intense sexual desire — Caitlin Tomlinson as the first girl to show a sexual interest in him; and Zach Stowell as a man-horse called Nugget.

I'm very proud of this show, and I've been overwhelmed by the response people are having to it. The response feels honest, emotionally exposed and raw. You can do a few shows and start to get a feel for when people are gushing over the show, or if they're 'gushing' over it, and in this case, it feels like an genuine, gut-level response without pretense or trickery.

What I mean is that in responding to theatre, whether it is in your seat without saying a word, or in talking with the cast afterward requires the use of very different muscles than most of us are familiar with employing. If it's done right, it is visceral, real, threatening and raw-edged with emotion. You can crap all over a Matt Damon film without any real fear that he will hear your opinion. But when you see a play, your feelings are on your face, and in your heart and hard to hide.

And when you speak with actors afterward, you'd better be a damn good actor yourself if you think you're going to fool them.

I don't feel like anyone has felt the need to try to fool us with this show. Hope you get a chance to come and see it!

Also, here is David Marlowe's (Life on Capitol Hill and Out Front) review:

Equus

Vintage Theatre (2/18 – 3/20)

Craig Bond directs Vintage Theatre’s production of “Equus” with the eye of a poet and the touch of the master. Under his astute direction Bond has not only cast the show well, he has brought in Jonathan Scott-McKean to embellish the production with the genius of his lighting and sound designs.

Peggy Morgan-Stenmark’s set design uses every inch of the stage. Her work provides an imaginative labyrinth that is as practical to the actor as it is aesthetically pleasing to those in attendance.

Jose Zuniga is outstanding as Alan Strang, the young man who has committed a hideous crime. Zuniga’s performance is of the stunning variety. Zuniga does more than get under our neural fingernails. This young artist is a force of nature. Kurt Brighton does some fine work in his performing of the role of Dysart, the psychiatrist who takes on this case. Theresa Dwyer Reid is brilliant as magistrate Hester, Dysart’s colleague and good friend. The studied performance this actor gives moves fluidly from the urgency of soliciting Dysart’s help with the Strang case to one of staunch support as the psychiatrist slips more and more into despair. Libby Rife plays Alan’s mother Dora, a woman who has replaced the sex in her marriage with religiosity. Andy Hankins plays Frank, Alan’s sexually frustrated father. Caitlin Tomlinson portrays Jill. Roger L. Simon is Mr. Dalton, the owner of the stables at which Strang works. Preston Lee Britton, Addison Parker, Stephen Paulding, Nathan Raymond, Zach Shotwell and Jim Wills portray the horses. I have been told that the gorgeous metallic horse heads came from California and the hooves from Texas.

Vintage Theatre is showing us that we needn’t go to Broadway for outstanding serious drama. We can have our souls shredded by the breathtaking artistry over at Seventeenth Avenue and Vine Street. Vintage Theatre has run for the roses and landed right smack dab in the winning circle! And yes … there is nudity and adult subject matter. Any lover of serious dramatic theatre must see this show.

Not to be missed!!!!!!

but she's so fun to take to dinner

Ya gotta watch out for those midwest girls. Iowa, especially.
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reading, bitches

prolly via reddit.