The Catherine Tate Show, Ep. 102

10:00 mins in.

Reasearch

I just tried to watch an episode of SNL for sketch writing class.

I made it through two sketches.

It ended part-way through the third in a litany of variations of the F-bomb.

Where is The State when you need it?

Where, indeed.

Cataract

I am having one of those moments where I wish I was sleepy because I can neither focus nor find something with which to busy myself.

I signed up for a sketch comedy writing class that has homework due Monday. One day I will understand what it is about having to do something that causes me to be incapable of doing it.

Perhaps it is the motorcycle. I DESPERATELY wish Pokey was running. I have needed motorized therapy for about 3 weeks now.

I Am That Dude

that, when a woman asks him for a quarter and is told "God bless you" then asked why somebody replied "I don't believe in God" when she offered the same blessing goes on to have that whole conversation about receiving the blessing someone offers you and the religious zeal of Athiests.

You know what sucks?

Crying in an audition and not even getting a callback.


That shit SUCKS...


and is probably kind of embarrassing.


Getting naked...all for naught.


The comparison of the audition process to the love process continues, unabated.

I guess, when you spend more than a month

kind of obsessing over someone who you have NO idea WHY you are,

it takes more than deleting some texts, "un-friending"


(eyeroll)


and a night of sleep to be done with the issue.

Hell hath no fury

like that person who jocks HARD

until they get what they want

and then could not care less

whether you exist.


They leave you


scrambling

and clutching

for a shred

of attention.

I am starting to hate that Shange & Parks ever became widely read in playwriting school.

PLAYWRIGHTS, USE %%$&&%# COMMON SENTENCE AND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE AND PUNCTUATION SO WE KNOW WHAT THE -%$%%!!! YOU ARE TRYING TO SAY INSTEAD OF TRYING TO WRITE THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO SOUND.
 
Or add a guide to your script we what your misguided @$$ed attempt was meant to accomplish...

I have no idea where these came from

Such are the perils of the communal laundry facility.

Edit:

upon going downstairs to wash last night, there were some thong unders left on the floor.

Thong unders that were so slight as to appear more as strap of some sort rather than something meant to cover "something".

I still don't get the prevalence of thongs. It seems like air flow would feel better, but my bits and/or pieces are not so arranged. 

Use It vs. Lose it

I sort of feel like I don't know how to act anymore.

The same fire doesn't feel like it's there.

I am as excited reading a piece, but putting the words in my mouth feels....

(shrugz)

Maybe it's just been a long time.

Maybe it just takes an old engine longer to turn over.

Maybe I just need to get off this keyboard and fight with this script
some more.

Byrne & Barnes - Love You Out Of Your Mind

Life is like working on cars or bikes

You learn from messing up.

You get excited and try things without the necessary tools.

You put things off that you are afraid to try,

And then you finally do it, figure out how you are supposed to do it...

and wish you'd tried it all a long time ago.

I am currently sitting in Ripley Grier reading a play for an audition that I hoped wouldn't turn into my life.

In two pages it absolutely has.

I guess I should keep reading. Maybe there's an answer at the end.

  

Sticker Shock

  This past Sunday I headed into the city to see a 2pm show and possibly drop in on a Tony party.

When I bounded from the boat, down into the station and onto the 1 train, I sat across from a gentleman wearing this sticker.

 

As a "performing artist" trying to remain alive and knowing several others who consider themselves to be the same, it resonated with me.

I had just had an experience where I asked to take a picture of someones bag and they said no. Since, however, I learn nothing from any past experience EVER, I asked again in this case instead of just going with the stealth cellphone shot. I was rewarded by being told I could have the sticker itself.

(word? gimme.)

He then volunteered that he got it from an art fair not far from the ferry. The artsy types out on the island are mostly concentrated in the area near the ferry and I've seen people with tables out with their wares before: visual art.

After I accepted the sticker and placed it smoothly and firmly upon my own shirt, it occurred to me that the intended meaning was different from the way I read it. I read it as "artists existing/subsisting as artists". Coming from visual arts/handcrafts fair, it occurred to me the more literal meaning: support artists who are still ALIVE.

Still a sentiment I could get with and still open enough to interpretation to fit my more specific needs, I thought it would be a nice sentiment since I would spend at least part of the day at a show and another part of the day among people in them/trying to get in them.

After the exchange with him, I decided to switch to the 3 train at Chambers.

At 14th Street a young woman with short locks, a backpack and folder hopped onto the train. I was standing in the doorway opposite of where she came in, and she immediately smiled at me. At the time I thought it may have been a bit of the common recognition that happens among those of locked hair. Then, once I saw she was busking, I thought it may have just come from that bit of openness that comes with salesmanship.

For a second, I thought she may have been just riding the train and in a rare (for the city) good mood. Then she opened a folder and began impassioned exhortation for support for her artistic endeavors. She showed examples of her visual art and explained that she has kids and was trying to support herself and her family via her art.

This is not particularly uncommon. Well, it's not AT ALL uncommon on the subway.

There was, however, a performative aspect to it that caught my attention. It seemed to be, if not written,  a rehearsed piece that specifically referenced common means of avoiding giving attention to train buskers (" put down your book and LISTEN to me) and intrigued me enough to lift an earphone off so I could hear it (and maybe so she would know somebody was listening).

I will now add that I am EXPERT at ignoring train performances and have a particular, high standard for what I will pay attention to. I am willing to give you attention - but I need you to have PRACTICED YOUR SH!T and have some understanding of theatricality.

(I mean YOU breakdancers/hat dancers/singers)

What also struck me about her was that on the outside of her folder, I could see the info for her GoFundMe account. Again, different from the average and more in line with the people I know rather than just another person hustling on the subway.

As she finished, I pulled out my wallet to give her a dollar. I also had the idea to give her my card - I think as form of solidarity. Or maybe to say, "hey, I take you seriously,".

She came over, I handed it to her, she thanked me adding, "that's what I'm talking about. Can I give you a hug? You 'bout to make me cry up in here.".

This time I could plainly tell she was referencing the sticker...

And I thought it might just be about adding a little more to the presentation, but I gave her a hug anyway.

And it was a real, firm hug.

And when we released, she did have tears running down her cheeks.

I said something encouraging, wishing I could come up with something more poignant. I suddenly glanced out of the doors to check the stop when they opened and backed out onto the platform.

I regret not asking her name.

People in my building have recently found out that I'm an actor (due to a certain NY Lottery commercial). Sometimes...I guess even often, when people hear you are an actor, they will compare their "normal" job to it. They way this happens varies, but the insinuation is that they have a "real" job; they would love to get to do an "easy" job like yours.

Living as an artist is hard enough. Trying to live off of your art is even harder.

It is real. It is not easy.

And no one (including artists) seems to understand just how integral artists are.

At some point I will likely come here and wax long about my views on how poorly artists contextualize the tangible, literal, pragmatic importance of what they do.


For now, just this:

support living artists.

edit: while walking along 6th ave last week, I saw her heading west (yes, among the 8 million people in Manhattan any given day). Her name is Sha. This is her GoFundMe

syntax

I have decided to forego expletives for the next 7daya

we shall see ds it goes...

Alas,

I am festooned with feet fickle,

with cartoonish ephemerality,

stereo-typic of cartoonish women;

so do I declare:



all the Puma's are being returned.




Whirlwinds just don't feel right when they're not colored black.

Dear Internet,

Please, go back to being boring and interesting...

instead of entertaining, titillating, eroticizing, polarizing, incentivizing, ad-generating...

(etc.)

Signed,

That kid who used to get nothing done getting lost in you that now gets nothing out of getting lost because of you.

Supplication

 (one day, a hurt man looked up and said)

"Dear God,
 The Truth,
 What-Is-And-Has-Been-And-Will-Be:

 I once asked you to make me a healer;

 Now I am asking you to send me one.

 Amin"



 (amin)

The Monkey

I just realized, after setting my Neuro Sequencer app for "dream state", that I dreamed about Gizmo last night.

The brain was heavy and my little feelings have been hurt, so I needed a to go for a good dream. I think I do better today.

Sometimes I miss Gizmo.

I need a girlfriend.

There. I said it.

"I am a human being,

I consider nothing that is human alien to me."

Terence

Chappelle & Angelou

"courage, the most important of all virtues. Because, without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently."

Maya Angelou