Black Box Theater

Posted 1:03 PM by sean
I have a small part, it’s true, but the company is really good and it is nice to work with such established people again. With all of the theater and film work I have done since moving to New York, there has been a sense of desperation to it, a sort of energized, exciting desperation to be sure, but no-one really seems to be on safe footing.

The show is called ‘A Soldier’s Play’ by Charles Fuller, and the Black Spectrum theater is putting it on. I auditioned because I wanted to do a show with people that I normally wouldn’t get to spend time with, and sure enough Jamaica, Queens is not a place I normally hang out.

The cast is really extraordinary. When I came in and auditioned, I saw the gym and the basketball court and all the kids and it felt more like a rec center or a Mormon church than a theater, so I didn’t take it that seriously. But every single person in the cast is either quite good (and incredibly talented), or amazing (and incredibly talented). If you are ever wondering which of your fellow castmates is the slow one and you can’t decide, you better check yourself.

Instead of it being a community theater, it is a theater wholly embraced by the community. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis are presenting one show, and they are already starting to sell out the run. It’s a four hundred seat auditorium, nowhere near public transit, and they are selling out. Most of the cast is union, all of the facilities are top rate, and the talent that surrounds me at each rehearsal is incredible. This is not just a show that can get me warmed up for my next production and expand Gideon’s fan base. This is a show I would hope people would come see even if I wasn’t in it.

There are 12 men in this cast, and the only two women are the director and stage manager. The amazing thing is that, despite the fact that we are all loud and obnoxious theater people, the two ladies rule the roost with quiet dignity. Bette, the director, speaks just above a whisper, but she is so fantastically intelligent that we stop talking the second we see her mouth start to move.

There are small parts for three white actors, but we are in no way excluded from the ensemble as a whole. There is a sort of division, inately, between officers and enlisted men, but not between black and white. I go to the gym every day because I believe you should immerse yourself in situations where you are the below average person as much as possible, it’s the best way to expand yourself. And I wanted to join a black cast to expand myself as well. Stupid, it turns out, because these guys are just great actors, like me, and we are all just playing parts. It’s extremely gratifying.

Zooey

Posted 12:30 PM by sean
Zooey is a great cat. He is my sister’s cat for all intents and purposes, so when I try to claim he is my cat, you should know that I am lying. My sister has taken care of that cat and loved him completely, and in whatever passes for his mind, you should know that he thinks of Michelle only, and that Michelle celebrates this amazing animal as only an owner would do.

But, y’know… he is sort of my cat.

The last cat I actually owned was named Nike, after a pair of shoes I had just purchased. Nike can be seen in the picture of Kije and Michelle. Nike was awesome, but as he got older, he started spending more and more time out of the house, out kicking ass and fighting dogs and stuff.

A quick aside about Nike. He is The Cat from the musical my mom and I wrote called "The Electric Cat". If that sounds totally awesome and you want to hear more, feel free to send a check to Gideon Productions.

Anyway, when Nike died it coincided with yet another change of schools and another lost set of friends and girlfriends and the onset of my cat allergies. My mom and sister picked up this retarded Bill-The-Cat looking, rat-faced, homeless kitten, half to salve my broken heart and half because they knew it would make me crazy. I told them, flat out, I had no intention of spending any time with this ugly large headed cross-eyed cat, that I would not clean up after it, and it was not allowed in my room.

He immediately latched on to me and refused to leave my side. He would jump five feet in the air, even as a kitten, to sleep on my hive-ridden neck.

I mean, if you saw this cat a year ago, what you would see is a regular cat head perched atop a body that hovered right around twenty pounds, with a full gray and white lion’s mane of fur around his neck and long payos hanging from his stomach, but as a kitten he had short baby bird fur that always pointed sort of North-Northeast, and his head was far too large for his body. And he was cross-eyed. Completely. If cats actually put on Disney musicals, he would have been Quasimodo.

He loves people more than any other cat our family has owned. Michelle has kept him for years and years, and, most recently, decided to go ahead and change her life plans and get an apartment because he was stuck (with his buddy Fezzik) in a kennel. The only legacy I have is that somehow, Zooey is the only of Michelle’s animals that won’t hide the second someone comes in the room. But that was probably Michelle as well.

Zooey is dying as we speak. No-one is sure what he is dying of. He has dropped from almost twenty pounds to eight. But of course he purred through the tests, he purred through the prodding, he purred straight through his cries of pain when they took blood. This cat has been celebrated by friends of mine and friends of Michelle’s since I was in high school. I know if I called all of our combined ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, they wouldn’t give a crap about us, but they would all be really sad to hear that we are losing Zooey

new list

Posted 1:08 PM by sean
Duane Read can kiss my ass.

A month or so ago I was having an allergy attack that made it almost impossible to breath. Duane Read refused to sell me an inhaler. Then today I bought DR brand Ranitidine, and when I opened the factory sealed box, it was empty. I opened it just after leaving the store, so they wouldn’t honor any kind of refund.

Anyhoo, time to rehash my birthday list. Because I got cast in a show yesterday, Jordana took me out and bought me a new Discman to celebrate. I also got an ear-mic to use with my cellphone, and the Discman came with a full car thingie, so you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. I also got awesome headphones.

I mean, the CD player isn’t great, but it’s awesome for 50 bucks or whatever we spent on it.

So, new list.

- Still Carolina shorts, I definitely need those. They are impossible to replace.
- A new digital camera, because I don’t think Steve will get me one unless I get him drunk first. He’s mad because he bought me a camera and I haven’t sent him a picture of Jordana naked yet.
- CDs or a bag would be nice. I want a bag that I can take to the gym, but will also double as an overnight bag that will fit a computer. I always end up taking two bags on a plane, and that’s just dumb.
- If you were going to get me a cool ass palm pilot, but then decided not to when you found out I didn’t lose mine, feel free to go ahead and get it for me. I will love you more if you buy me cool stuff, and less if you don’t. That’s how I work.
- New New Balance Running shoes. I tried running today in other shoes, and I finally just gave up.
- Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I am about forty pages from the end, and it got stole.
- Double Stuff Oreos. Still missing.

I got cast in a show wherein I am one of three white guys. I will be performing at the Black Spectrum Performing Arts Center in Jamaica. I am, in a word, psyched. I am going to get to hang out with people that I would never have gotten a chance to before this. I have a bunch of auditions this week, but when they called I cancelled everything and told them I would do it. It might suck, my part might be small, but I will probably not get this chance again.

Jordana and I continued to celebrate well into the night last night. I mean, not all that well into the night. We celebrated for what I would consider to be a good while for a man my age who has not been, y'know, celebrating a lot lately. And since I am not really in the habit of celebrating myself, it was nice to be celebrated so aggressively by someone else.

My pool... of presents!

Posted 12:55 PM by sean
Kansas lost to Syracuse last night. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, when it comes to my pool. Even my poor sweet dead dog didn’t win anything.

So, here is what you can get me for my birthday. Everything I lost in my bag. Including

- really comfortable Carolina blue shorts that I work out in, light enough to not suck but heavy enough so they don’t bunch up while I am running. (Actually these would be impossible to replace)

- my brand new New Balance tennis shoes, perfect for running, actually gave me a couple of extra miles that I couldn’t get out of my old shoes.

- A discman. Preferably one with the speakers that boom right into the back of your skull.

- A bunch of mix cds and regular cds with music that makes you feel nice and other music that makes you angry and want to dance.

- A bag.

- Those knee braces that help isolate your knee but not the expensive ones (unless you want to get me the expensive ones, I won’t complain).

- A digital camera, unless my phone call to Steve Alexander (wherein I said, "Hey, get me a new digital camera you asshole") works.

- Cool slingback headphones that you can wear regardless of your hat.

- Random medicines that help alleviate pain and allergies.

And, although I didn’t lose it with the bag, I also lost an earpiece for my phone, a CD converter for my discman, and a bunch of double stuff oreos. The oreos were lost when I set the tupperware on the roof and then drove off, so I wouldn’t consider those compensatory, just, y’know, nice and yummy.

One More Bag Stolen

Posted 12:12 PM by sean
Children need to be prepared for the world, the world does not need to be child-proofed. That has always been my assertion, and I stand by that. People always claim that shit will be dangerous if it gets in the hands of children, to which I would argue that the same shit is dangerous in the hands of adult morons, which would describe 40% of the people I meet. I think all the legal ages should be dropped to 12. Hell, I lost my virginity at 13, got drunk for the first time a year earlier, got high when I was 14 and read "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "A Catcher In The Rye" in that same year. Everything since then has been downhill.

Despite my claim that we need to be prepared for the rigors of the world instead of sheltered from them, I also find nothing as disgusting as blaming the victim. When something cruel or terrible happens to someone, you have to be absolutely sure you understand what ‘negligence’ is. If you get hit by a car because you walk out in to the street focusing only on opening a roll of Wacky Wafers (this happened to me) then you are surely asking to be hit by a car.

Because a street has a use, that use is to facilitate the speed of cars. It isn’t for the opening of candy. I feel bad for little Sean, that he was hit by a car and never told anyone for fear that he would be in trouble. Had he reported it, the response would have been ‘What did you expect? You should not have been opening candy in the road!’ followed by a possible grounding or worse, years of mockery about not being able to walk down the road. The information, to avoid being hit, now learned far better than anyone could have told him, yet still repeated back to him as a sort of post-emptive parenting, would have been as bad as being hit.

Yesterday Jordana’s car was broken in to. It wasn’t jimmied or anything, someone took a rock and bashed in the window. We were parked on a freeway overpass with a constant stream of traffic two blocks from the Symphony hall and performing arts center, and in line with maybe two hundred other cars. We were on the overpass with cars on the freeway streaming underneath us. My bag was on the floor of the back seat tucked behind the passenger seat and my friend Matt threw his leather coat over my bag

The car had been rifled, the trunk and glovebox opened, and my bag and the coat were both taken. Matt and I lost a lot of stuff inside the coat and bag, including my digital camera and his brand new cell phone. As we studied the street, we saw it was littered with casualties, little graveyards of glass where other cars had been hit at other times over the years, with one brand new pile of glass three car lengths up the street from two minutes before or two minutes after ours.

When I called my mom, she said ‘Well, you should have known not to park in Baltimore. That place is terrible for crime.’ My only reply was, ‘Well, since I was going to Baltimore, the only real choice I had was to park in Baltimore.’ Jordana’s parents don’t want to file an insurance report because their premiums will go up and they will be forced to pay for a mistake they believe we made.

We were robbed, which is much worse than the suspicion now hanging around us that we could have avoided being robbed had we been more vigilant somehow. But we did not "get" our stuff stolen, we did not "have" our stuff stolen. The person who broke in to the car stole our stuff. We parked it in a busy place, we locked the car, we put our stuff on the floor, but even had we not, they went through the trunk via the back seat. The cop said that people hit cars without alarms, they will break your window to steal a quarter off the seat, and he told us not to feel like it was our fault.

I am nothing if not vigilant, especially now. I watch every single person walking by, I always have. After my dad left, when I was fifteen, I spent 12 years sleeping with a weapon next to the bed because I knew I was the only thing between whatever was out there and my sister or mom or family. But there is nothing more we could have done to prevent the break in, and I refuse to allow anyone to describe this as my negligence.