Eh, I haven't posted anything in EONS, this one's making the rounds, and it tickles me. So here goes...

1. YOUR SPY NAME (middle name and current street name):
Leigh Totten (or Leigh Totten Pond, if I want to be laughed out of the spy business)

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME (grandfather/mother on your dad's side and your favourite candy):
Gene Twix (sounds like something you'd do to try and manipulate the sex of an unborn child)

3. YOUR RAP NAME (first initial of first name and first 3,4 or 5 letters of your last name):
G-Ell (Which in addition to being uber-lame, sounds strangely similar to Superman's Dad)

4. YOUR GAMER TAG (a favourite color, a favourite animal)
Blue Coyote (which is, coincidentally enough, the name of a pub I frequent and yet never really made the connection before)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME (middle name, and city you were born in)
Leigh Medford (boring)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME (first three letters of your last name, last three letters of mother's maiden name, first three letters of your pet's name)
Elloodrus (I have nothing witty to add)

7. JEDI NAME (middle name spelled backwards, your mom's maiden name spelled backwards):
Hgiel Doowta (The "g", obviously, is silent)

8. PORN STAR NAME (first pet's name, the street you grew up on):
Rusty Nickerson (I'm pretty sure you can order a rusty nickerson at most good bars)

9. SUPERHERO NAME: ("The", your favourite colour and the automobile your dad drives)
The Blue Explorer (sounds like a depressed astronaut)

10. YOUR ACTION HERO NAME (first name of the main character in the last film you watched, last food you ate)
Max Pop (with Max Tart being a back-up porn name)

Note to Norv Turner, the San Diego Charges, all their fans, and any supposed NFL pundit who claims the blown call yesterday was "unacceptable".

Your team did nothing to even CAUSE the fumble. Yes, the ref blew the call, but had it stood it would have merely made you the LUCKIEST TEAM ON EARTH, considering the ball completely slipped out of Jay Cutler's hand without a single Charger so much as breathing on him.

You lost the game. Not because of a blown call, but because you gave up 39 points to a mediocre offense, including a touchdown AND two-point conversion with 20 seconds to go. Quit whining that one referee error was "unacceptable". You're coaching performance, Norv, was worse. As was the play of your defense.

Shut up and face facts: it was a gift you didn't deserve and the football gods saw to it that you didn't get it.

AUDITION NOTICE

second.
by Neal Utterback

A comedy of hope.

It's Christmas Eve in New York City, where a deadly blizzard threatens a decaying society, and where six lost souls cling desperately to the last vestiges of the American Dream. At the center of the storm, a mysterious man who may just be their last chance for redemption. Neal Utterback's "second." weaves three tales into one, setting in motion a comedic spiral where the only answers available are to questions of faith, and where belief may be all that matters.

Directed by Gordon Ellis
Produced by Kristen Hughes



Audition Dates: Sunday, September 21, 7PM & Monday, September 21, 7PM

Location: Abbott Theater, Joel's Way, 9 Spring Street, Waltham, MA 02454

Production Dates: November 7, 8, 14, 15, 20, 21 & 22 (evening), November 16 (matinee)

Auditions will consist of readings from the script. For further information please contact the director at gordon.ellis@yahoo.com


CAST OF CHARACTERS

JAKE – (male, 20's-50's) A thug with a brain. Under the right circumstances, he'd be considered a man of few words. These aren't the right circumstances. Instead he is a man of calculated patience who can and will be pushed to his breaking point. A noble soul in a backwards world, he's made peace with his role in the grand scheme, even if he's not happy about it.

DAVEY – (male, 20's-40's) Jake's partner in crime. Energetic, impetuous, and unfiltered. He's the kind of guy who's mouth is always working even when his brain isn't. He knows just enough to be dangerous, but doesn't have the steel to back it up. More trouble than he's worth in a world where trouble usually winds up dead.

VICK – (female, 20's-40's) A career-minded journalist with a taste for cynicism. She manages to balance an almost overwhelming self-confidence with a healthy dose of fear and anxiety. She'll stop at nothing to get the story, and to satisfy her own personal needs, but even in a world where she is queen, she knows she cannot survive alone.

LAUREN – (female, 20's-40's) Vick's partner. A successful surgeon who now finds herself at a crossroads. Having watched her mother make a slow decent into madness, Lauren is now desperately in search of answers to questions she never before dared ask. Emotionally exhausted but spiritually uplifted, she is awakening to a whole new world of possibilities.

T – (female, 20's) A high-end call-girl with a razor wit. T's stock and trade is sarcasm as a defense mechanism. A self-professed compulsive liar, she'll tell you whatever you want to hear, just so long as she doesn't have to listen to what you want to say. Sassy, brassy, and unafraid to put on a good show, at least until the going gets too real in her world of make believe.

JOHN – (male, 30's) A once successful scientist who now carries with him a dark secret, the burden of which threatens to crush him. Somewhat shy, he takes things at their face value, which only increases the degree of difficulty he faces in getting people to believe his story. A man who finds himself in a world he is no longer familiar with.

MAN – (male, 20's-30's) A character with one line of dialogue who is nonetheless on stage for the duration of the show and is at the heart of the story. To say more would be to say too much.

Maybe I'm just cranky lately. Lord knows entering the downside of my 30's hasn't been the most joyous of experiences. I'm no more or less out of shape than I have been for the past five years or so, but I'm starting to feel it more. It just takes more effort to get my body up and running when I need it. And I can certainly point to a great deal of personal dissatisfaction with myself lately, in terms of my production (both at work and elsewhere) and attitude towards others. So in the end, it might be a simple case of just bad juju and in time it will pass. Which I hope is the reason. Because if not, then there must be something seriously wrong with me to explain why I have sat awake the last two nights going over in my head the many reasons why I hated the new Indiana Jones movie.

Lets get a few things straight before I dive into exactly WHY I disliked the film so much. (There will be spoilers. I'll let you know when so you can bail out accordingly.) I'm a pretty average moviegoer. I'm not a film student. Regardless of how many behind-the-scenes making-of documentaries or DVD extras I see, I'm still completely absorbed into the world of most movies I see without stopping to think too much about the how and why it was made. Sure, I know special effects when I see them, but I usually tune that thought out when I'm watching. I'm also not a writer, so while I certainly know bad dialogue and lame plot contrivances when I see them, I'm not really in tune with the do's-and-don'ts of screenplay writing. So all of what I'm about to say should be taken with the understanding that I didn't go into the experience with a critical eye hoping to expose the flaws of the latest summer blockbuster.

Quite the contrary, in fact. I loved "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I've probably seen it front-to-back about 50 times in my life. It was the first movie I remember watching repeatedly when we first got cable TV. Like most people I was disappointed in "Temple of Doom", mainly because I didn't much care for the supporting characters and found the film on a whole to be too dark and not as much pure fun. But I was back on board with "The Last Crusade" and generally consider the series to be some of the best pure escapism in the history of movies. That being said I'm also not some twisted fanboy who has dissected every frame and memorized every reference. I *like* the movies. But that's about it.

All of which is important to keep in mind, because again, I went into it hoping for the best. "Wow, they made another Indiana Jones movie? Cool. This should be fun."

The problem started when I saw the trailer a few weeks ago. Something just looked… off. It didn't feel right. Based on such a small sample I began to fear that they had overdone the CGI and turned what was meant to be a gritty, throwback stunt-show into the computerized soup that most action films are today. But I held out hope that it was just my imagination. I didn't read any reviews beforehand and went into the movie totally cold outside of that brief trailer. I went in expecting to be whisked away to my youth, and came out feeling betrayed. So for the sake of my sanity (and the hope of some sleep tonight), I will now vent about all the things in the film that drove me crazy. Spoilers to follow.

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I haven't posted in a long while, in truth because it's impossible to type when you've got your fingers crossed like I have for the past month waiting for this day to come. But it's finally here.

NKOTB ARE GETTING BACK TOGETHER!!

Woh-oh woh-OH-oh, woh-oh-OH-OH! Woh-oh woh-OH-oh, THE RIGHT STUFF!

First Paula Abdul's comeback, now this! If Bobby and Whitney can get off that crack and pull their lives back together, all will be right with the world.

I've been quiet this week, mostly due to there not being much going on in my little micro-corner of the world. But even nothing is something, so here goes…

* Friday's snow-out lead to a lame night where I watched a couple of movies ("Fargo" & "House of Games") before heading out into the mess to clean off/move my car at 1 am so the plow guy could get up my driveway (and yes, I was in bed when the doorbell rang, thanks for asking). Thankfully I killed the time with a little text message volley before heading BACK out at 1:45 to move my car back up the hill, only to find they did a sloppy enough plowing job that I needed to shovel a chunk near my door. NOT good times.

* I found myself completely dumbfounded by the fact that Roger Ebert voted "House of Games" his favorite film of 1987. I went into it expecting to be completely turned inside out by the twists and turns it was going to take (as I'm usually slow to see them coming) and ended up seeing the end almost from the beginning and felt that most of what happened along the way was way too contrived to ever be real. Odd.

* I checked out "How I Learned To Drive" in Arlington on Saturday afternoon and walked away with the same opinion of most who had already seen it, namely that it was a good production (very cool visually), but I wondered what the point of doing it was. It didn't have much audience appeal (the bluehairs around me were NOT impressed), and I don't even think it had much of a lesson to share since the story was so specific to the characters. Sometimes I think people like to be edgy just for the sake of being edgy.

* The closing two performances of "Dinner For Several" were solid, with full houses both Saturday and Sunday. The closing matinee was one of those insider trainwrecks where all sorts of things were going wrong on stage but most of it went unnoticed by the audience. It didn't really hurt the show and provided us with some good fodder for the cast party and future get-togethers.

* Not too surprised by the Oscars (other than my inability to stay awake). Most everything fell into line the way I expected, with the French girl's Best Actress win being the only real shocker. Even that didn't surprise THAT much since from what few clips of seen of it, she looks brilliant. I think the shock factor was more about the expectation rather than the worthiness.

* Monday we struck the set, or should I say, we dismantled the set in such a way as to make it re-useable should we head to festival with the show, which at this point is somewhat up in the air. Afterwards myself and a couple of castmates headed out for drinks and were bombarded with the worst collection of karaoke non-talent I've ever had the misfortune of hearing. Those of you who have karaoke'd with me in the past can attest that I've seen some bad karaoke, so that should tell you how awful these people were. We probably should have got up there ourselves, as we would have instantly tripled the talent level. Truth be told, we just wanted to drink.

* Saw "There Will Be Blood" on Tuesday and I'm still in awe of Daniel Day Lewis' performance four days later. I rail against him quite a bit because he strikes me as being really pretentious about the craft, but I gotta give it up for his Daniel Plainview. The utter brilliance of what he did can't be overstated. On the page there is nothing to suggest much of a character, at least not in the sense that there appeared an obvious need to reinvent yourself as an actor. And yet Lewis created this man who was so convincing, so specific, so fully formed, that I sat there looking at him thinking, "it's Daniel Day Lewis… I can tell it's Daniel Day Lewis… but nowhere in any of what he is doing do I see anybody but Daniel Plainview". I'm not sure I can properly state how good he was. It's one thing to recreate a famous person from history and nail all their mannerisms and speech patterns. It's another thing entirely to create one from scratch and have it FEEL as if it had been someone famous. Breathtaking.

* Had dinner with defcon_1 on Tuesday after the film, then again with him and our old friend Mouth (joined later by his fiancé) on Wednesday. It was nice to catch up, given that I haven't spent any appreciable time with either one in months. At the same time, it was kind of sobering to realize it only takes about the span of one beer to get "caught up". That's gotta say something pretty damning about the excitement level of my life these days, or at least my ability to articulate it. Maybe both.

* In and around all the dinner and hanging out, I've plowed through a couple of other films thanks to the On Demand free movies section of my cable box.

- Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" was, to my mind, mostly crap. Apparently it caused quite a stir back in the day for it's excessive violence, in particular a pretty nasty rape scene. I wasn't so much bothered by the rape itself (which I realize sounds sick, but bear with me), as much as I was in the way it meant NOTHING to the climax of the film and really didn't serve any purpose other than to get us to hate the bad guys that much more, a completely unnecessary step given the way the plot played out. For that matter I found the whole structure of the film to be a mess, as it spends the first hour-plus setting up all this tension between Dustin Hoffman and this gang of rural English thugs, then has the final confrontation all centered around another character entirely. Basically, you could have had the same siege-like ending without any of the build-up they used because the ending had it's own motivation (albeit a flimsy one). As it is, the fact that he ended up killing the men who had raped his wife was nothing more than a coincidence considering he didn't even know it had occurred. I wasn't offended by the violence, I was offended by how poorly it was used.

- On the flip side, caught a little indy film called "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints" in which the violence was necessary and chilling and totally belonged. Which isn't to say it was all that violent a film, but what there was was used effectively. What really blew me away about the movie though – which is apparently a memoir of this guy's life growing up in Queens in the early 80's – was how they absolutely NAILED the rhythms of speech and life in general of teenagers. Or people for that matter. Everybody was constantly talking over each other, not really listening unless they wanted to, and the characters all spoke in fragmented thoughts and ideas. There was this total sense of aimlessness and frustration that permeated the whole film that made me think I was watching a documentary at times. Reminded me of the movie "Kids", which I actually THOUGHT was a documentary when I first stumbled upon it. Why more movies don't choose this dialogue approach I'll never know. Too many scripts, film and stage, rely on the "you speak a complete thought, I'll speak a complete thought" tennis match, when in life that is RARELY the way conversation occurs. Anyway, highly recommended if you can ever find it.

- At long last I checked out "Annie Hall" last night, after years of avoiding it for reasons that don't really exist. Basically, in my intellectual head I have an aversion to Woody Allen because I find the repetition of his neurotic character in damn near every film he makes to be tiresome. That being said, every time I actually bother to sit down and watch one of his movies I end up enjoying it immensely, and "Annie Hall" was no different. I can see now why some people think it's one of the funniest movies ever, even if I didn't start laughing until about ten minutes in. But once I did, damn, there was some genius stuff going on in that film. I may need to force myself to watch more of his work. Or I may not.

* Outside of a trip to Theater III to see "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" on Saturday night, I have ZERO commitment this weekend, which is both frightening and liberating. Given the amount of money I've spent the last few weeks on beer & food alone, I'm probably best off just chillin' at home, especially if I want to have any cash going into my vacation next week. Either way, it feels VERY odd to not be committed to any theater projects. I'm not sure I can last the next couple of months waiting for festival rehearsals to start. Time will tell.

Snow sucks.

Our show tonight has been cancelled thanks to the white crap currently floating down upon us. I am not happy.

Looks like its leftover chinese food and a movie for me tonight. Grrr.

Get enough theater people together and invariably the conversation will steer into the subject of film. Make it Oscar season and your odds are greatly increased. That's not to say theater people are any more likely to talk about movies than other folk, but we tend to be a more hyper-critical bunch given our collective understanding of acting from an inside perspective. Like a lot of my fellow thespians, I will often find myself in one of these Academy Award conversations uttering the following phrase: "I usually try and see all the movies which get nominated for Best Picture so I can make my own decision."

Really? "Usually"?

I'm not sure it qualifies as a blatant lie, but it is most certainly an untrue statement from the perspective that I hardly ever actually DO see all the Best Picture nominees, despite my desire to do so. Looking back over the last two decades when I was a pretty frequent moviegoer, I see that there exist only two years in which I've managed to eventually see all five nominees, and in neither case did I do the deed while the films were in the theater or before the ceremony had actually taken place. My point? I really should stop saying that I try to see them when I so clearly don't.

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Performing and auditioning are two different beasts. From almost the beginning of my acting career, I've been completely at ease when performing. I don't get butterflies. I don't feel uneasy or nauseous. If anything, there are times when I find I am *too* calm before a show and have to find artificial ways to amp myself up rather than risk a low-energy performance. Auditions, on the other hand, have generally been the bane of my theater existence. For whatever reason, I find that from the moment I walk into an audition until the moment I leave, my stomach is in knots and I have a difficult time maintaining a steady, normal breathing pattern. Some nights are worse than others, usually dependent on how badly I want the role and how many people in attendance I am familiar with. My best audition ever was the night I walked into Curtain Call Theater only casually knowing the director (and her playwright husband) and only mildly interested in the show (coming as it did in the aftermath of a failed audition that I *desperately* wanted). I cracked one out of the park that night; relaxed and unconcerned and auditioning like I was performing. It was a rare night.

Last night? Last night was on the other end of the spectrum. I *really* like the piece, and while I'm not quite at the level of "desperate" in my desire to do it, it's still one that I'm fired up about. Couple that with the fact that I have known and respected the director for years and yet was auditioning for her for the first time. And add to *that* the fact that I have worked with and consider friends every member of the audition committee (one of whom reads this stupid blog)… *and* that I knew another five or six guys who were also auditioning, and well… you can pretty much guess at my level of angst. I think I went to the bathroom three times in the first half-hour I was there. My nerves were shot.

It's because of all of those things that I find it somewhat strange that I feel as good about my audition as I do. Not good in the "I'm confident that I'm gonna get cast" way, but good in the "I read the way I hoped to and my state of physical and emotional unease wasn't a hindrance" way. It's the first audition I can ever remember where I felt the usual uncomfortableness and yet I didn't feel that it hurt what I was doing.

It was almost surreal.

I could barely watch the first seven guys get up and do their monologues, shifting in my seat and rubbing my eyes and forehead ad nausea just so I wouldn't have to focus on them. And yet the moment I started to speak my monologue it all went away. I wasn't self-conscious, the knots came untied, my breathing was relaxed and slow. For whatever reason the four or so minutes that usually turn me inside out became just like another performance and I felt as at ease with what I was doing as I would had I been rehearsing the scene for months (as opposed to the ten minutes I gave it beforehand). Of course the moment I returned to my seat it all flooded back, and that's the way the rest of the night went: queasy discomfort during the other auditions and calm enjoyment during my own.

In a strange way, the whole thing ties back to that ride home from festival almost two years ago. Earlier in the evening I had won an award for Best Actor at the festival, and I remember that drive home for the incredible feeling of relief it brought me. For years I had felt that I was a solid (if not damn good) actor, but I had simultaneously been unsure if anybody else held that opinion. It's hard to put any weight in the compliments of friends or even strangers, because they're not likely to tell you that you weren't any good. If they didn't like your performance, they usually just won't mention it, which is how it should be. And while winning an award doesn't necessarily translate into something being the unequivocal "best", what I does (at least, I found) is confirm that it is good. Which is all I ever really needed to know.

The direct result is that I've been confident in my acting ever since. I have my good days and my bad days, my good shows and my bad shows. But what I don't ever do is imagine I'm making a fool of myself. In the two years that have passed since then, I haven't really had a "high stakes" audition until last night. As it is, I've only had a handful of auditions period, and with one exception I didn't particularly care if I got cast, so the self-imposed pressure to do well was light, if existent at all. And the one time I did care, the were so many mitigating circumstances going in that my actual audition didn't seem to carry the weight it ordinarily would. (Which is bullshit, I realize, but it effected my mentality at rate). Last night was the first time I can say that the effect of having that confidence made a noticeable difference. I got up there, I did my thing, making choices that I was perfectly willing to live or die by, and then I let it go.

I'm not sure what happens from here. My suspicion as I type this is that I'll be getting a consolation call sometime in the next 24 hours telling me "close, but no cigar". I've learned to trust that feeling because more often than not I'm right. But in the end it doesn't really matter, because while not getting cast would be a disappointment, the experience of auditioning was an important one for me. And in the end, that's all life is. Experiences.

Let's get random!

- Tooling up the highway on the way to work this morning, I'm doing about 75 when some yuppie in a Beamer comes screaming up behind me. I slide over to let him pass, and he goes whipping by me. Five minutes later I pass him as he's pulled over by a Statie. Now THAT'S a good way to start your morning.

- Strange how times and tastes change over the years. Last night I watched the movie "Marty", which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1955 *and* the Palme d'Or at Cannes (one of only two films in history to have won both). Other than really enjoying Ernest Borgnine's performance (which netted him Best Actor), I can't really say I found anything particularly "Best Picture" worthy about the film. It was cute, but oh so very simple. Was it just a weak year for films, or was there something groundbreaking about it that went over my head because I'm not a film technique historian? Curious.

- Live Band Karaoke was quite the good time. It was a little nerve-wracking because while they give you a lyric sheet, you still have to know WHEN to sing. With just a drummer and guitarist, you're obviously not getting the full orchestration and it makes it a tad difficult to know where you come in. But the two guys who ran it were quite good and very helpful when people were singing, jumping in when someone got lost. If I ever find myself in Walpole on Wednesday night again, I wouldn't hesitate to drop in. Of course, that begs the question, what the hell would I be doing in Walpole on a Wednesday night?

- Pitchers and catchers have officially reported. Patriots who?

- Since defcon_1 has banned me from participating in his little poll, here are my answers: 4,2,3,5,1,2,6,1,3,7. Makes sense to me.

- I have an audition on Monday. My odds of getting cast are slim (just from a numbers standpoint). Beyond that, I don't see anything else on the horizon I would audition for, which means - *gasp* - I may not be involved in a show for the next two months! I'm honestly not sure how to feel about this. March could wind up being a looooong month.

- It's kind-of/sort-of come to my attention lately that I'm the kind of person most people like to have around in a group setting, but don't really think of when it comes to one-on-one time. Which I suppose makes sense when I consider that I don't do much reaching out on my own. By my own choosing, I live a life that just free floats from one thing to another. What an odd feeling to realize, "you know, I haven't done anything to make myself essential to somebody else".

- I saw "No Country For Old Men" a couple weeks back and my opinions of it probably fall into line with a lot of casual moviegoers: I enjoyed it, thought it was filmed beautifully and really well acted, but I found the story kind of frustrating. Not so much for the ending itself (I don't require ribbons & bows on my movies), but more in the way the info was parceled out. I read some reviews after the fact and I think I can say I now "get it", but it was frustrating when I left the theater that night thinking, "I missed something".

- Robert Mitchum. Now there was a manly man. I swear my testosterone count spiked just watching one of his films the other day.

- I haven't bothered to read the actual article (and don't care to), but this Yahoo feature tease made me crack up. "Jada Pinkett Smith describes the moment she realized Will Smith was right for her." Hmmm. Let's see. He was young, handsome, successful, charming, and by all accounts a grounded, nice guy. Yeah, wonder what she ever saw in him.

- After a relatively boring week (three nights of nuthin'), I'm itching for the show tonight. I don't think I'm ever happier than that period when I get to the theater the night of a performance until I climb into my car to go home. Between my pre-show warm-up, the actual performance, and the post-show social time, I just get off on theater.

- In re-reading some of my older Journal posts this week I've come to this conclusion: DAMN, I'm narcissistic and needy!

- No, I have no idea why I titled this post the way I did.

I was funny on Saturday night.

I don't mean the show. Actually, I *was* funny in the show. It's a funny show after all. But that's sort of a given. I meant afterwards. At the restaurant. I was funny then. Kicking back, beer in hand, amazingly relaxed in a situation where I'm usually anything but. I should explain.

Generally, I don't like going to parties where I don't know more than at least half the crowd (give or take, depending on size). I'm awful at making small talk with strangers in large part because I don't like talking about myself in a general sense. Where I'm from, what I do for a living, that sort of thing. I'm also not much into politics or the weather or any other humdrum subject that usually comes up when people of different backgrounds congregate for lightweight conversation. I went to an X-Mas party a year ago where I ended up knowing three people, two of which were hosting and had no time to spend occupying my attention, and a third who had attached herself at the hip to one of the first two. I gutted it out for about two hours, almost all of which was spent sitting in a chair in the corner, people watching. Thankfully as an actor I can do a prolonged amount of people watching and find the time not completely wasted, as it's the best form of character research you can ever do, even when you don't have a character to research at the time. But after a while and a few aborted conversations to nowhere, it gets to be tiring. So I try to avoid placing myself in those situations.

The same basic principal applies to small groups of people within larger groups of people where I *do* know a bunch of them. I'm usually not the kind of guy who can "work the room" unless I know everybody in it. Over the last few years I've forced myself to give it a try during some of the large theater festivals I've attended. The banquet at Nationals a few years back was one such time. The results were mixed. I was slightly more at ease because I had the theater stuff to fall back on. It was a good conversation starter and it allowed for some interesting dialogue to take place. Never 100% comfortable, I was at least willing to give it a try.

But back to Saturday.

We of course had a large contingent of people who headed out for dinner after the show had finished, winding up at TGI Friday's for the second night in a row. I guess they remembered us from the night before because not only were they ready for us (admittedly, we called ahead), but they said, "the back room's all yours so do what you want with it". We did. Now those of you know me well are probably thinking to yourself, "ummm… dumbass, you're ALWAYS relaxed (and usually funny) when we're a large group taking over a restaurant", and you'd be right. Well, not the dumbass part. I'm more of a smartass, as I'm sure you'll agree. But that's not what I'm really referring to. What I'm referring to is the small group of friends of one of my castmates who had joined us in the big room and set up shot at a group of tables of their own. Now normally I would have stayed in my seat, commiserated with cast and crewmates, and not given this small subgroup a second thought. They're not MY friends, so what do I care. But I happened to notice one of my other castmates as he wondered over to say hello to this other party and I was struck by the thought, "you know, they *were* kind enough to come see the show… I should probably at least say 'thanks'". So I got up, strolled over, and plopped myself down at the head of their table.

I thanked them for coming, and they responded by telling me how much they liked the show. Again I thanked them, but insisted I hadn't come over just to have my ass kissed, at which point one guy piped up with, "oh good, because I thought you stunk". And just like that… I was in.

With the sarcasm card now on the table, the floodgates opened and I spent the better part of the next fifteen minutes exchanging barbs and stories with six complete strangers. Names became a popular subject (I was challenged to remember all of theirs). I learned that it's "LEE-ah" and not "LAY-ah", although Ugly Sweater Andy and I agreed that they look more like cinnamon rolls than hamburger buns and really, bringing up the Princess when you introduced yourself only muddied the issue when you pronounced it different anyway. Everyone agreed that the name Gordon Clapp was just all-around unfortunate, even if we couldn't remember where it came from (Law & Order, as it turns out – thank you, Colleen). The food eventually arrived and I moved back to my own table, vowing to return later and get all their names right (which I did).

Sliding back into my seat I was greeted with the comment, "I feel like I should give you a standing ovation after that performance". "Indeed", I told my compatriot, "I feel like I just did a fifteen minute stand-up routine". It immediately reminded me of my friend Topher's (second) wedding from a number of years ago where, having apparently grown tired of rehashing the same tired stories with friends from the high school days, I turned my attention to my friend's boss and his wife. After an hour-and-a-half of me just riffing on anything and everything I could think of, and getting laughs at every turn, the guy turned to his wife and said, "we should invite this guy to parties… he'd kill". Ahh, if only it was that simple.

I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand why I am the way I am. Why I can radiate confidence in certain situations and why I damn near swallow my own tongue in others. I'm also not sure it particularly matters. I tend to think that all my neurotic tendencies (or more importantly, my awareness of them) have made me a more effective actor over the years, so they're good to have, even if they don't always pop up at the most opportune times.

In the meantime it felt good to be funny on Saturday night.

So as a bit of a follow-up to yesterday's post, it has occurred to me that this is also just about the one year anniversary of my joining Facebook, which really seems to slam home the fact that February is my "climbing out of hibernation" month. Since I don't want to blow my streak, I'm thinking I need to join something new this year. What should it be, My Space or Scientology? Hmmm… decisions, decisions.

I've also gotta say, after a year at it, I think I've finally got a handle on Facebook to the degree that I can see it's usefulness. The first couple of months it was a waste of bandwidth that seemed to serve no real function for me. I had a couple of friends linked, and every now and then out of sheer boredom I'd post something on their wall or poke them. But really, it wasn't worth having at that point. Then about three months in a couple of other people linked to me and then my friend list kinda boomed, at which point I started getting inundated with all sorts of silly requests. I was bitten by werewolves, hounded by pirates, asked to rate people on any number of superficial categories, and just generally bombarded with various random applications. I found myself sending drinks to people on a daily basis, not because I had some important message I needed to convey, but because I had this sick desire to increase my various drink options. Looking back, it was all rather sad, but then again so is sitting at my desk in the late afternoon with nothing to do, so I guess for a time it served a purpose.

Over the last month or two the furor has died down, as most of us who participated in that mad frenzy of useless application tossing have mellowed. I've managed to delete most of the completely useless "tools" (I mean really… what use do I have for a virtual fish tank?) and streamlined my profile so that all that's left is stuff that serves an actual function, even if said function is for my general amusement. I've also discovered that there are in fact a few things that the damn thing is actually quite good for. Pimping shows is a hell of a lot more effective when you can simply create an event, send it out to everyone, and then not worry about it. I always hated putting email pimps together because I don't really update my email address book all that often and invariably I'd have to deal with a handful of bouncebacks, followed by responses by people telling me whether or not they planned on making it. Much like Evite, with the Facebook Event they can just click "yes", "no" or "maybe" and perhaps leave a comment without filling up my email inbox. Probably not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's something.

The other cool side-effect is that I'm starting to get in touch with people who I haven't heard from since high school (junior high, really). I don't imagine I'm going to suddenly become all buddy-buddy with people who I haven't seen since the days when pimples were my biggest concern, but it's interesting to hear what they're up to and how their lives have turned out. As a "connecting tool", I hafta say, it's pretty cool.

By the end of this week, I will have officially had this Live Journal account for two years. It's had it's ups and downs over that time, my periods of inactivity usually coinciding with those stretches in my life where I've felt particularly unmotivated or borderline depressed. I recently spent some time looking back on all the entries I've made and came to the conclusion that while each post is telling in it's own way, the ones about my friends, my fears and my acting are the ones that make the most interesting reading. This is not surprising given they are probably the only three subjects upon which I can be considered an expert. If nothing else I've proven I know jack all about football.

Another somewhat disturbing thing I noticed was that in both years I went into a period of inactivity in the months directly leading into and out of the holiday season. I find it disturbing only because it represents what is clearly a pattern, although to be fair its not a particularly surprising one. I'm not a big fan of "the holidays" for any number of reasons, not the least of which is I don't have much in the way of family in the area to share them with. I'm also not a fan of the cold, and winter weather seems to have the same effect on me as it does on most people. Namely – it brings me down. I tend not to write much when I'm down, at least not when I'm down for a prolonged stretch. Looking back I see quite a few posts on here that, if looked at as stand alone entries, would paint a picture of a guy who was in a deep depression. But ironically, it's in those posts that I generally was as far from depressed as could be. When I'm truly feeling down and out of it, I don't generate the desire to share anything. When I'm feeling upbeat or at least comfortable in life, I tend to get introspective, and sometimes introspective can read as "miserable". At least that's how I see it. Others may disagree.

Which brings me to today. While not significant in any earth shattering way, today is at the very least the first day in some time that I've decided to actually DO something about my recent and relative anti-social behavior. I've dropped some emails to people I haven't spoken to often enough since Thanksgiving rolled around. I've reached out to a few others on Facebook for whatever reason. Hell, I'm posting this, which is my first non-show pimp entry since back in November. I've had isolated days these past few months where I've felt energized and ready to "bust out" as it were, but the feeling hasn't sustained. That's more or less changed over the last week or two. Gearing up for opening night of "Dinner For Several" has been a big part of that, as has the end of the football season (despite it's heart-crushing outcome. If I were honest with myself I'd admit that I care just a wee bit too much about the fortunes of those forty-nine guys in shoulder pads down Foxboro way. Thank goodness for me I'm not honest with myself.) Spring, while not necessarily close, is on the horizon. I've got a trip to Ft. Myers and spring training to look forward to, and before too long we'll most likely be plowing back into Complete Works for the third (and one would assume, final) time as we attempt to take it to Festival. All of which are more than enough reasons to help me crack this cocoon of isolation I've been living in.

There is of course something else, but I'm not really ready to share that just yet.

It's a bit off the beaten path for most of you, but for those willing to travel a few extra miles for some good laughs, my latest theatrical extravaganza goes up this weekend down in Walpole. It's another fabulous script from local playwright John Shanahan, who also wrote "One Before 40" which I did a couple years back. It's the perfect show for those of you who can't get enough of watching me be completely ineffectual around women!

The Walpole Footlighters present:
DINNER FOR SEVERAL
by John Shanahan

All Carter Sullivan wanted to do was make a quiet dinner for his date. So how did he end up cooking for her, her roommate, his ex-girlfriend, his roommate, and his roommate's friend? A funny look at love and relationships and the foolish things we do for them.

Starring Jim Gross, Colleen Lavery, Gordon Ellis, Toni Ruscio, Robin Gabrielli, Shannon Lillian Hogan, and Christine Grudinskas

Directed by Stacey Shanahan

Production dates:
February 8, 9, 15, 16, 22 & 23 @ 8PM
February 17 & 24 @ 2PM

Tickets and directions can be found here: http://www.footlighters.com/

Hope to see you there!

Gordie

I know what you're thinking… "Why, it's been WEEKS since Gordie sent me an email shamelessly begging for people to come see his latest show. I wonder what he's up to now?"

WELL WONDER NO MORE!!!

That's right! I'm back and begger than ever (?), and just in time to ease the impending holiday strain with Jack Neary's charming and funny, holiday comedy, "First Night". Sadly, you won't get to see me in a giant purple Teletubby outfit this time, but what you will get to see is perhaps my greatest acting challenge yet, as I attempt to convince you – the audience – that I am somehow not secretly in love with the beautiful and talented Jennifer McCartney-Williams! Why if I can pull that off… I'LL DESERVE AN ACADEMY AWARD!!

Per usual, details can be found at http://www.acmetheater.com/index.asp. The show opens next Friday, November 16th, and runs for four – count 'em FOUR weekends! That includes Thanksgiving weekend! What could be a better escape from those annoying relatives than a trip to the theater to see none other than yours truly?!?!

CAN I GET AN AMEN?!

Happy Holidays!

Gordie

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, and in truth I haven't really had much to say. Life has been very good lately. The new place is settling in and is a TREMENDOUS upgrade over the Postage Stamp, but I imagine there's only so many stories you folks can read about my new (*used) recliner before going mad. Work is, as it always is, enough of a daily distraction to keep me from feeling completely useless, but is not particularly stressful lately either. "First Night" is moving along, although the compressed rehearsal schedule has got me feeling a little uneasy about my ability to "get there". Despite my feelings that the character and I are very similar, it's written in such a way that there's a lot more I need to figure out than I had initially expected. Which is a good thing, except that I'm spending so much energy on getting the lines down right now that I'm now nervous about my acting, something I usually take for granted. But it's not condition critical or anything. Just kinda there.

The Sox World Series run took a lot out of me, between the excessively late nights and just the overall emotional pull. I'm far too invested in the local sports teams, a fact which nearly crippled my childhood and has lead to me needing to constantly remind myself that it's "only a game" over the years. For the most part I've got a handle on it, but things like the baseball playoffs generally are a test of my will. I was also pretty much a zombie this past Sunday waiting for the Pats-Colts game, the anticipation threatening to paralyze me. Those are the moments when living alone are very dangerous, because it's so easy to just kill the day doing nothing but watching TV because there's no one around to say, "hey loser… put some clothes on and interact with the world, would ya!"

Been sort of chewing over something in my mind for the last couple of weeks which may or may not eventually become something noteworthy, but for the time being I'm keeping it to myself. I made a somewhat cryptic reference to it on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, which of course prompted a couple of people to try and pry it out of me. To date I've remained steadfast in my secrecy. Sometimes it's fun just to have something that's yours and yours alone.

While basking in the glow of the Sox magnificent triumph over the Indians and the Patriots absolutely RIDICULOUS blowout of the Dolphins, I spent the morning pondering a few things which quite frankly, are blowing my mind.


* Thru seven games, Tom Brady has thrown 27 touchdown passes to 2 interceptions. In three post-season starts, Josh Beckett has 26 strikouts to 1 walk. Eerie.


* Tom Brady is currently on pace to not only break, but OBLITERATE the NFL single-season records for completion percentage (Brady: 73.8, record: 70.6), passing touchdowns (Brady 61, record: 49), and passer rating (Brady: 137.9, record: 121.1).


* Brady has been an absolute model of consistentcy over his career. In six seasons as a full-time starter (with one of those seasons being only 14 starts), he has put up almost identical numbers each season, regardless of the team's fortunes or the quality of talent he had surrounding him. Consider the following:

His his single-season completion percentage has been within FOUR percentage points each season (low of 60.2, high of 63.9). Even allowing for a drop-off, he will most likely finish 2007 in the vicinity of SIX percentage points higher than his career BEST (or about 7 1/2 higher than his career agerage).

His touchdown totals (in the five seasons in which he started a full 16 games) were never more than a difference of 5 (low 23, high 28). Barring something unforseen, he will eclipse his career high in week 8 – HALF A SEASON – and finish with a total that is roughly DOUBLE his career average.

His passer rating has never fluctuated more than 7 points (low 85.7, high 92.6). He should finish this year about 25 points higher than his previous best.

Also, in six seasons he has thrown 12 interceptions 3 times and 14 interceptions 3 times. At his current pace he'll throw 5, and in reality probably won't throw more than 8 or 9.

Which is just incredibly scary when you think that coming into the season he was already considered a can't-miss Hall-of-Famer. Yikes.


* All you really need to know about the emotional roller coaster that every Red Sox fan rides can be seen in the following:

Red Sox playoff series since 1999

2003 vs Oakland – went the distance (won)
2003 vs New York – went the distance (lost)
2004 vs Anaheim – sweep (won)
2004 vs New York – went the distance (won)
2004 vs St. Louis – sweep (won)
2005 vs Chicago – sweep (lost)
2007 vs Anaheim – sweep (won)
2007 vs Cleveland – went the distance (won)

Think about that: of the last 8 playoff series the Sox have played, four ended in clean sweeps, four went the full compliment of games. There were none of those emotionally easy series where one team dominates but the other team saves face with a win or two. Everything was either the ultimate high (sweep and win), the ultimate low (sweep and lose), or the ultimate heart-attack (winner-take-all final game).

The frightening follow-up is that ever since Aaron Bleeping Boone hit the walk-off homer to end the 2003 ALCS, the Sox have done the following in the playoffs:

won 3 games
lost 3 games
won 8 games
lost 3 games
won 4 games
lost 3 games
won 3 games

Yup. That's what it's like being a Red Sox fan. Up and down, but never in the middle.

I have completely lost faith in the idea that humanity will not eventually consume itself due to a moronic adherence to bureaucracy coupled with an overwhelming lack of common sense or restraint. And I blame this lack of faith on Ellen Degeneres.

By now you've all heard the story. She adopted a dog from some animal shelter, took it home where it failed to play nicely with her cats (despite apparent training), and eventually gave it to a friend with a couple of small daughters. Some time later, the animal shelter, upon hearing this, went to the house with the two young girls and reclaimed the dog, citing that Degeneres violated her adoption contract by not notifying them when she gave the dog away. The little girls cried, Ellen went on national TV and did the same, some of her fans sent death threats to the animal shelter, and within 48 hours the entire sordid saga had become "news".

Four things about this story trouble me deeply (five if you count the amount of time and energy I've wasted contemplating and now blogging about it).

1) Degeneres not being smart enough to read the fuckin' contract she signed when she adopted the dog.

2) The fact that the shelter just went and yanked the dog away from what was by all accounts a loving environment merely because someone didn't follow protocol.

3) That Degeneres abused her fame by using her TV show as a platform to throw the agency under a bus, leading to ill-informed idiots like me to make snap judgments without having all the facts.

4) The complete tools who sent DEATH THREATS to an ANIMAL SHELTER because they "made my favorite TV host cry".

Yup. We're heading in the shitter, folks.

Look, on the one hand I can sympathize with each party here (well, not the death threat people… they're just stupid). Maybe reading every little nuance of the adoption contract wasn't something a lot of people do, since the way contracts read in this day and age you can't understand the point of half of it anyway. But once she was INFORMED that she was wrong in how she handled it, she should have taken on the responsibility of solving the problem without playing on the sympathy of a national TV audience. I don't doubt that she was truly bothered by the way things went down, but reasonable or not, she WAS in the wrong. Own up to your mistake and fix it. Don't cry about it just because you happen to have a platform where you can get away with airing your side of the story without being rebutted.

As for the agency, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't just knock on the door of this unsuspecting family unannounced, rip the puppy from a crying girl's arms, and march off like Stormtroopers. But then again, I work in this country, and I've experienced first-hand how completely CLUELESS a lot of corporations and organizations conduct business, so I can't rule the idea out that they were in fact totally soulless in their operation. At the very least they should have realized they were dealing with a celebrity with GOBS of money and handled the situation better. They probably could have weaseled a nice donation out of the deal without all the negative press if they'd just shown a little common sense and said, "you know what, the dog's not in danger, this is probably for the best".

The entire event is best described as a "misunderstanding". Yes, some rules were broken, but the intent on both sides was to give a little dog a nice and loving home. This isn't one of those issues were people are going to be divided because they can't agree on what the best end-place for the dog is, like some twisted divorce settlement. It's a simple case of the bigger dick theory at work, where everybody's clinging to their little patch of power because to give it up and admit defeat isn't manly, and despite what the tears may lead you to believe, everybody involved wants to feel manly. Sadly, it's the wrong kind of manly. The money-grubbing, power-hungry, "I'm the boss" kind of manly that leads to things like slavery, rape, and oh, I dunno… WAR! It's not the good kind of manly that means accepting blame, standing up for what is right (as opposed to "what you want") and a willingness to settle things calmly and rationally. My dad may not have taught me much, but he at least taught me that.

In the end, I just feel bad for the dog.

Patrick Crayton of the Dallas Cowboys is a moron. After losing to the Patriots by a 48-27 score on Sunday, Crayton told the media on Tuesday:

"Offensively, they are the real deal. I'm not going to lie about that. Defensively, I can tell you no, they're not. They're not (that good) at all. The only time they stopped us is when we had penalties. If that's stopping us, it is what it is. Defensively, they are not the real deal."

Because I'm obsessive about shit like this, I now present you the following:

Dallas Cowboys offense vs. New England Patriots defense, drive by drive

1ST DRIVE: 3 plays, 0 net yards, 0 penalties – PUNT

2ND DRIVE: 3 plays, -12 net yards, 0 penalties – PUNT

3RD DRIVE: 3 plays, 4 net yards, 0 penalties – PUNT

4TH DRIVE: 11 plays, 64 net yards, 1 off. penalties (-10 yds), 1 def pen (15 yds) – FIELD GOAL

5TH DRIVE: 11 plays, 84 net yards, 3 off. penalties (-20 yds), 0 def pen – TOUCHDOWN

6TH DRIVE: 7 plays, 74 net yards, 0 penalties – TOUCHDOWN

7TH DRIVE: 3 plays, -8 net yards, 1 off. penalty (-10 yards) – PUNT

8TH DRIVE: 6 plays, 18 net yards, 2 off. penalties (-13 yards) – PUNT

9TH DRIVE: 4 plays, 18 net yards, 0 penalties – FIELD GOAL

10th DRIVE: 1 play, 1 net yard, 0 penalties – INTERCEPTION

Crayton was quoted as saying "The only time they stopped us is when we had penalties". Yet on their first three drives of the game the Cowboys failed to make a first down and were forced to punt. In none of those three drives was either team penalized. On their next three drives, in which they were penalized 4 times for 30 yards (while the Pats gave back 15 yards on a penalty of their own), they actually moved the ball and scored two touchdowns and a field goal. Following that were the ONLY TWO DRIVES during the entire game (out of 10, mind you) where the Cowboys were "stopped" in which they actually accrued penalty yardage. They were then essentially stopped on their next drive (getting only one first down) but managed a field goal because a long kickoff return gave them the ball at the Pats *23*. Their last "drive" was all of 1 play, which was picked off.

The final tally: 10 drives, 6 of which were definitive "stops" by the Patriots, only 2 of which had Dallas penalty yardage as part of the equation. The Pats also shut Dallas down inside the red zone on two more occasions, forcing field goals, again without the benefit of a penalty yardage advantage.

Athletes shouldn't talk. Seriously.

In theory, my life is back to normal as of this week. I'm all moved into the new apartment, I'm back at work, and TunaSpeare is over. But it begs the question, what exactly is "normal"?

Looking at it closely, my day-to-day state of mind is about as settled as it's going to be. Being on vacation is always disorienting, so being back in the office is at the very lease a grounding point. I can check my email, surf my standard websites to feel somewhat updated on the world, and get on a rhythmic feeding schedule. I guess that qualifies as "normal".

Then there's the new place (heretofore dubbed "The WoofCave"). Being there is still kinda odd, but I'm settled in enough that it's at the very least feeling permanent. Ever since about mid-June when I began the all-out search for a new place to call home, I've felt very unsettled. For that matter ever since I moved into the Postage Stamp back in August of '04 I've felt kinda transient. So having a solid location where I can hang my hat, set up shop, and just generally unpack all the shit that is my life and dig in, is comforting. I no longer feel like a hermit.

So what of life beyond all that? Rehearsals for my next project, "First Night", have (slowly) begun, but that in and of itself is "normal", at least for me. NOT being involved in a show is when things feel strange. Looking at my schedule I see that the next thirty-five days provide no less than the following:

8 standard rehearsals for "First Night"
1 all-day tech rehearsal for "First Night"
3 dress rehearsals for "First Night"
2 performances of "First Night"
2 potential auditions for the February show slots
2 nights of auditions for Acme New Works
1 Acme "special event"
4 shows I'm required to see as part of my EMACT responsibilities
4 shows I want to see because good friends are prominently involved
2 Halloween parties
1 wedding for a co-worker
2 days of warehouse inventory at work
1 Pats-Colts game that is "Must See TV"

Somewhere in that mess I'll manage to squeeze in a few "dinner with friends" and other assorted last-minute get-togethers, all while trying to follow the Red Sox race to the World Series. And people wonder why I don't date.

As someone once said, "I've got my country's five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wife to murder, Gilder to frame for it… I'M SWAMPED!"