I love my job! Creative Director of the Showcase Arts Foundation and Director of the Showcase Repertory Company – a dream come true.
Last night I sat in our little theater space watching everything we have all worked for come to fruition. It has been a little more than 3 years since I started this journey with the actors who stood on that stage last night. Some of them have been involved steadily from the get go, some , including my wife, came on slowly, even reluctantly. All of them have worked tirelessly to improve. All of them have taken workshops to the extreme, stretching their limits, letting go and learning, learning, learning.
The results are amazing.
I was brought to tears once again by actors who, not that long ago, were raw, unsure and unpolished. We are barely out of table readings on the play “Rabbit Hole” but already the sense that this will be the best thing we have ever brought to a stage is obvious. People need to see this play.
I have a personal connection to this play that everyone will, at some point in their lives, have with it as well. We have or will suffer grief. All of us! How do we deal with it? Can we let others deal with it in their own way or will we judge them? try to help them? try to force our way of dealing with it on them? or just let them be? Tough questions without easy answers.
I have read and directed a great many plays in my life. I will read a great many more and, hopefully get to direct many more amazing works. I doubt I will get to work with a play any much better written than this one and cast as perfectly.
Who knows? We have come so far and have raised the bar so high with this company. Who knows what else we will be able to do?
I, for one, am very excited to see into that future. What’s next? — Movies!
One Christmas, about 20 years ago, my father proudly announced that we would be having a traditional English Christmas that year, complete with fig pudding and a fattened goose. This would have come as no surprise if it were not for the fact that my father was Russian/Polish and my mother 100% Italian.
So he cooked a Goose – literally. And it was quite good so for many years to come he would, as often as possible, cook a goose, along with a turkey or a prime rib and my mother’s lasagna or ravioli and (what would Christmas be without it) the antipasto.
Again, this could be why I have to go to the gym 3 – 4 times a week now!
So – in honor of my Father’s screwy tradition, I am planning to cook a goose this year. I have no idea where to buy one, how to cook one or even if anyone but me will eat the damn thing, but I think, wherever the old man is, it’ll make him happy to know I gave it a shot. Tradition! I will, however, skip the fig pudding. That crap is nasty!!
Tomorrow I take Mary and Marie and we go to Mazzarro’s, the best Italian deli south of Hoboken.
We still have to have the ANTIPASTO! Geeeeez!
I was talking to my old friend Lisa today about life, religion, discrimination and … .stuff! A light-hearted conversation – right. She said something about the fact that she got out of bed every day and that was a good thing which reminded me of something that came to me yesterday.
We are all optimists – even the pessimists. Consider for a moment how much crap goes on in the world every day. Hurricanes, droughts, floods, natural disasters galore. Forget that! How about the travesties? - Apartheid, hunger, poverty, the unbelievably poor conditions in which so much of the world lives.
In America, we are worried about finances, loss of jobs. How will we tell our kids that we can’t get them much for Christmas? How will we make our bills? What if we lose our house? our job? People get sick. So many people have cancer one wonders what the heck we are doing to create that.
It’s hard. It’s fucking hard to get up every day and brush your teeth and go to work, assuming you have a job, to do all the things great and small that are required of us. But …. We do it. Just about all of us do it.
We get up! We get moving. We keep moving until that blessed time when we return home, the luckiest of us to our families, and we breath a sigh of relief, pet the dog, kiss the kids, read a book, watch the TV … hit the hay! Sleep .. if we can and ….
Do it all over again the next morning. We do the impossible every day – even the most pessimistic among us.
As Dory (from “Finding Nemo” – a film to live by) would say, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming”.
I followed a rabbit hole today into a series of videos from a local televangelist. In his, well produced, videos he espoused the hierarchy of the man over the woman as head of the household reflecting Christ over the followers as head of the church. “It isn’t about discrimination”, he said. “It’s about following the system”. He explained how women were not asked to be apostles and were not allowed to teach, or become pastors in their church because it did not follow God’s system.
Really? ! Perhaps someone should tell him about single moms, working women carrying households on their backs and the fact that it’s nearly 2010.
How did we get to this place where we have so, so, so many people blindly following homophobic, male dominating, fear mongering, reallllllly frightening people?
The answer is clear. It’s in the title of this posting. I think I am a pretty happy person, perhaps a lucky person. What I can’t envision is how many people are deeply unhappy, deeply afraid, tied so terribly into money and the things that money buys and most importantly can not, not even to save their souls ironically, think critically. I used to think that these people simply lacked intelligence. That may not be entirely true. I know people who are lawyers, doctors and successful business people who are “blind followers”.
It is fear. Fear that someone will figure out their secrets. Fear to live the life they really want to live. Fear that they will lose income if people who are “lesser” than they are - get something. So they blindly and rather foolishly do what they are told and vote how they are told by people who are collecting funds to become rich on the woes of the frightened and sad, in other words themselves.
These big pastors in the big mega churches with the fantastic video production companies are very, very happy that their “followers” are in fear, that they are unhappy and are willing to do anything not to lose anything else as they have already lost the most important thing there is .. they have lost themselves. These people Tithe!!
Years ago, when my parents were alive and teaching, there was a big movement to teach critical thinking. We need to embrace that movement again and teach kids to think critically. We need to encourage the examination of issues, the sensibilities of ideology thrust upon us as truth. When someone tells you that something is true, examine that truth. Think it through. Think about who this person is, what he is saying and if he is trying to sell you something you may not want or need to buy.
Who pays the bills in that mega church? – Those sad followers blinded by their own fear and sadness. I can’t believe in a God who thinks I am a lesser creature because I am who he made me to be. My God would want me to think it through with the brain he gave me.
It’s been an acting kind of day. Ahhhhhh. I had my “Acting Like a Pro” class this morning with 5 great students who laughed and cried and, I hope, learned a lot about how to use acting techniques and apply them to sales presentations. Moreover, we all learned a lot more about each other and that was a good thing.
My parents were both teachers and loved their profession. They wanted me to love it too and now … I think I do. I have fought becoming a teacher my whole life and yet I think it is really what I am. I had a blast today and can’t wait for the next class. I admit I could teach this subject every day.
Tonight we go to New Port Richey to their wonderful library and hope that lots of folks come out to see “Doubt”. The play is amazing, the cast fantastic and the people in NPR surprisingly hip and into theater. We can’t wait.
It’s a great day here in my corner of the world.
Beth and I don’t have any family here but we have great friends. We have them over for lots of occasions and we get invited to do many and sundry things from beach excursions to all day movie fests at the Dow’s. However, on major holidays like Thanksgiving, sometimes, it’s just us. People have families and big dinners planned and we …well, we don’t.
Thanksgiving is a time for turkey, stuffing, potatoes, veggies, gravy .. I’m making myself sick and hungry simultaneously … and overeating.
OR…. The awesome Turducken at Kelly’s. We chose the Turducken. What the heck is that you ask? It’s turkey, duck and chicken silly, rolled into one big ball with corn stuffing and sliced up and served up with mashed potatoes, squash, cranberry orange relish and lima beans in white gravy that even I will eat.
We started our meal with the butternut squash soup then on to Kelly’s house salad (I had the peanut vinagarete), warm bread and of course the Turducken. For dessert we had the chocolate cheesecake with the ginger pears, decaf coffee and a barrel … to roll us out of the place.
I miss the leftovers of which I have none except a little of the chocolate cheesecake (I ran out of steam there) but I have to say I didn’t miss cleaning up and having so much food that I will wind up throwing half of it out or trying to make some awful turkey leftover concoction with. My mother made what was arguably the world’s worst turkey chowmein every year at the tail end of the leftovers of the 25 lb bird she insisted upon cooking.No one ate this bird on Thanksgiving due to the antipasto followed by the lasagna served before the poor bird hit the table. And you wonder why I am fat!
It isn’t the old days… which I miss. It’s the new days which are not the same but are not worse by any means.
I am thankful .. to Beth and Kelly’s … and for all the amazing things I have in my amazing life.
I went to see the movie 2012 with two of my buddies, Jason and Jay last night. Needless to say, the effects were amazing but the storyline .. not so much. Riddle me this. If all the communications all over the world were basically out how does someone get a cell phone call from a guy about to be swallowed up by the biggest tsunami ever?
Jay was so disturbed by the movie that on the way home he quizzed us on possible places to live that might not be under water in the next 20 years. Jason told him the fine details of “An Inconvenient Truth” and now the kid thinks we are all going to hell in a hand basket.
Maybe we are.
Global warming, health care, border fences, George Bush, Dick Cheney, gay marriage … on and on and on. We get sick of topics and we dismiss them. It’s what humans do. We are easily overprocessed. We hear something so many times that we simply stop hearing it. Case in points our parents/mothers/wives/husbands/significant others.
Is Global Warming true? If so, it is inconvenient. Mr Gore is right about that. We can sit through a ridiculous movie about the majority of the world being swallowed up by tidal waves and devastation and go home, get a good night sleep and forget the whole thing.
So .. we’ll see if the Mayans were right. In a couple of years, if we are all still here and nothing has happened, we will go on with our lives and think the whole thing is a bunch of hooey. Remember y2k?
I think if the world is going to end it’ll come when we least expect it, while we are out getting the free refill on our extra large popcorn.
I am back to blogging and will be posting regularly. Look for interesting things in this space. More soon.
Lil
I am so sad to write that the Sadie girl is no more. Taylor is an only dog now. I am sad beyond words but I am glad that she didn’t suffer more and that we had the chance to take her to the beach last Sunday. She got to walk in the water (the only Golden I ever met who could not swim lol) and we sat on the beach with her between my knees and snuggled. She got a good bath in her favorite soap and all in all seemed to be feeling pretty good. I will always have that memory. I will always miss my beach buddy, my best girl, the sweetest dog that ever lived. She was never the alpha dog and she didn’t care. She just wanted to loved and to be wherever I was. Loyal, loyal loyal right to the end.
I had four wonderful dogs. Now I have one wonderful dog and my Beth, my champion. We’re still a family …just a little smaller one.
Sadie is not feeling well. For those of you that do not know, Sadie is my nearly thirteen year old Golden Retriever. Tomorrow we go to the Vet and see Dr. Matthews. He is a good guy but I can’t say this will be a happy visit. Sadie isn’t eating and I am not happy. Granted I am Italian and not eating is a big thing to us but in this case I am worried my big golden red swimming buddy isn’t going to be around too much longer.
She isn’t altogether feeling bad in that she follows me around the house and still runs to the door to bark at incoming people and she went to the dog beach on Sunday where we plodded through the water like usual. Sadie is the only golden that does not actually swim. Her tail is still wagging but she is a little listless and most of all …. she is not eating.
So I am scared. In a series of losses, Dad, Sudz, Maddison … Beth’s hair … I am not ready for another loss.
But Beth is better and getting better and better and Sadie, whether she lives another year or another week, has had a good life and she is my bud. She is loved and I am too. All in all, I guess I can’t complain. I just hope for the best but brace for the worst. I have become a pro at bracing.
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