And it is nearly noon.

There was a time in my life when I really tried to make sure I was well up and out of bed before noon. I had to, because if I didn’t try I would sleep until dinner and then be up all night. I don’t romanticize those times, those were bad times.

Here’s the thing that no-one knew about me and that I never knew about myself during my long tenure in and out of schools. I would rather be working. Yes, I am happy having fun and talking with my friends, sure. And I think I’m probably pretty fun to have at a party, I certainly make the best of it. But there is absolutely nothing that compares to sitting down with a script in front of me, or the “blank page” (although I was born during a time where pages had very little to do with it) and putting in the hours of work.

It was always said of me that I was an underacheiver, that I was lazy. For about two years during my schooling I was in a private school with small class sizes and teachers who, despite their hatred of me, were proud of being teachers and wanted to reach all of their students, even the ones they hated. I certainly didn’t succeed there, I had to take three of my finals again in 7th grade or they were going to hold me back, but by the middle of my second year I was actually thriving a bit. I found acting, I was playing in a string quartet that we put together outside of school, I was playing in a band… that kind of thing.

About five weeks before my report card was to come out, I realized I would make honor roll, so I went to my dad and said “Hey, if I make honor roll, will you buy me a guitar” and he laughed and said, “sure”. When I brouoght home my report card, he said, “Yeah, I just made that deal because I never thought you’d do it.” And that’s just the garden variety shit you have to go through as a kid, I tell that story mostly because it cracks me up, and mostly to show just how far my dad has come in the last twenty years.

But, the problem is that, almost in the same voice, he said, “You screwed up, Sean, because now we know you can do it. All these years you just weren’t trying.” And then when I switched schools and started failing again, the myth was in place. I was lazy, I wasn’t trying. Sure, my next school was Morristown High, were we had armed security guards and I was getting my ass kicked bi-weekly, but even I believed that I didn’t like to work. I started to embrace my own lies.

When I started at Citrus as a member of the Citrus Singers, I still had the chip on my shoulder, I was still a fuck-up, and I’m sure if you asked any of those people now, they would say that I tried to get away with as much as I could. But I learned just how much I love to work. It took me a couple of years, and by then the politics was so bad I had to leave, but I love getting up at 6 in the morning and going to rehearsal.

So. Today. I just woke up. I’ve been working on writing this musical, while at the same time starting rehearsals for a different company’s musical, while trying to meet with agents and send out headshots, while trying to manage a piece of property for our grandmother, while rehearsing four books worth of songs and scheduling the kids who are supposed to record them, while trying (and failing) to keep the house clean and get dinner on the table…

But I swear, I hate that I slept this late. I wish I had gotten up and started working. I needed the sleep, I slept almost 12 hours, you don’t do that if you’re lazy. But I love the work. I totally love it.

My friends had a baby over the weekend, by which I mean she spent the entire weekend in labor and then had a baby. I almost don’t know what to say about it. These are two of the greatest people I know, independent of being beautiful to one another. I’ve also known them almost since they started dating 12 years ago, so it’s exciting to be even on the periphery.

During rehearsal the other day, I had a run-in with one of the kids and I am so completely not used to disciplining anyone. In my world, kids either behave or they get fired. Sure, they don’t learn as much, but I am of the opinion that if you are pursuing art and you have no discipline and no taste for self motivation then you aren’t going to be successful anyway. Stopping a kid from pursuing art is better for them and for the world in the long run.

But in this instance, I had to discipline this kid. I couldn’t beleive how mad I got and how quickly. I don’t know what kind of father I’m going to be, but it’s good that I have some time to think it through.

I was just going through some of my old music files for the show I’m writing now and I came across several obtusely marked files. Things like “Coolness in D” and “12/8 thingie”. So I opened them and I came across two files that were the infant ideas of the title song we ended up writing for the show. It’s a song we’re all really proud of, the lyrics are great and the groove really works.

But I stumbled on the embryoes in two different files that ended up being married to one another and for some reason I found it really touching. These little ideas that actually aren’t anything alone, we nurtured them, we sorta gave them a chance. We’ve written a bunch of stuff for this show and I’ve come up with a *lot* of crap. I’ve written a lot of music that I never even showed my partners. But this little tune stuck in my craw and I married it to a different little piece of music and brought it out.

Again, I don’t know what kind of father I’ll be. I’m not sure if I will be overly angry – frustrated and violent, I just don’t know. I could be overly sentimental, keeping bad drawings in boxes for years and years. I wonder if I will look back on the smallest accomplishments and attach huge meaning to them the way I do to my own life.

In any case, to those of you just becoming fathers, good on ya. Keep a brave face and let me know what to do when you say, “stop doing that” and they, while still doing it, say, “I’m not doing that.” Let me know how to fix the crazy before I have to. I’d appreciate it.

None of the below applies to Ehren Gresehover.

Or to my Mom.

All right, get out your pens and pencils and a notebook. The following will be on the test, and if you do not pass the test, you *will* fail.

You can no longer make me wait for you.

From the age of five, I sat out in front of my school or my piano lesson waiting to be picked up. From the age of six, I sat in class waiting for the bell to ring. Since I became an actor, I have sat outside rooms waiting to audition, I have sat in dressing rooms hearing “half-hour” then “ten minutes” then “five minutes”, and between those two experiences, I sat by the phone waiting to hear if I had the part.

I have waited for countless hours, sitting in cars, sitting in lobbies, sitting outside restaurants. Every trip to the doctor, every trip to the DMV, every time more than three members of my family have a meal together, I am wearing my coat and standing outside, saying outloud to passersby, “What can they be doing? What can possibly be taking so long? When I was told the time for this to take place, right now was the time, nothing has changed, so why am I the only one standing here?

I was a caesarean baby. I wasn’t even *born* on my own schedule.

No longer. I can’t do anything about the waiting to hear if I have the part, I can’t change the doctor or the DMV. But so help me God, if we set up a time to do something, you either honor that time or I will walk the fuck away. From here on.

Let me be clear:

1. If we say, “I’ll be there some time after 11”, and you show up at 3:30, that’s totally fine. 3:30 is after 11. I can’t complain.

2. If I have to wait in line because there is no assigned time (the DMV) or because lives hang in the balance of your schedule (doctors) then I’ll wait.

3. If I invite you over to dinner, but I don’t assign a time, then I don’t expect you to be there at 7:00. Or 7:30. Because who knows what time “dinner time” is. Last night I had some people over, I wasn’t sure when anyone was coming, so I made food that would stay warm or that would be good re-heated.

4. You will still be late sometimes, and there are tons of reasons. But there is a difference between a reason and an excuse. If you were late because traffic is really bad at 5:30 PM, that’s a reason but it isn’t an excuse. You’re not *excused*, fucker. Leave earlier. If you’re supposed to be somewhere at 9 AM, you better account for the other people who are going the same place.

5. A perfectly reasonable explanation for why you are late is “I fucked up and didn’t plan my schedule well.” If you are late to for an appointment and you say this to me, I will like it a lot more than “I couldn’t find my keys”, or “today has just gotten out of hand”.

Even more important is this: When you don’t hold an appointment you have made with me, you are telling me that my time isn’t worth thinking about, that I have to be subservient to your schedule. If you are a doctor or a government agency, then you’re right. If you are a *FUCKING TALENT AGENT* then you are *FUCKING WRONG*.

Here is the standing rule. You get the same grace period as if we were meeting for a movie. If we’re going to see a 7 o’clock movie, we would meet at 6:40. The movie starts at 7 whether you’re there or not. So, from now on, if I have an appointment that is not met by twenty minutes past the appointment, I will leave.

I’m serious. Dinner? Movie? Play? Meeting with a talent agent who is going to try to get me work? Golf? Whatever it is, after twenty minutes, I’m leaving.

How do you stop me from doing this? It’s a two step process.

First, you call me, or you send out a nurse, or you send out your gay snotty-ass assistant to talk to me. Tell me where you are, what your revised schedule is. If we’re supposed to meet at 7, and you now know that I will leave at 7:20, then you have to call me *at seven*. If you show up at 7:15, I’ll deal with it, I made this twenty minute deal publicly. But if you call me at 7:20 and I’ve been standing in the cold for twenty minutes, I’m gonna leave anyway.

Second, you *APOLOGIZE* to me. Once our appointment is finally kept, don’t tell me that my time has been disregarded because your life is so fucking hard. If I set up an appointment with you five weeks ago, then your assistant called me to confirm last week, and then yesterday your assistant called back to move the meeting earlier by fifteen minutes, well, then your *FUCKING JOB ISN’T REALLY A FUCKING SURPRISE TO YOU, IS IT?” If you think to yourself, “I could fit in an hour to meet Sean for lunch” but you didn’t figure in 45 minutes on the subway, then you fucked up and you owe me an apology.

I have four careers going right now, which net me a total of about 11,000 dollars a year. I have something to do every single second I’m awake, and lately, I’ve had stuff to do when I should be sleeping. *RIGHT NOW* I have something to do that’s far more important than writing this blog.

But more important than that is my announcement. When it comes time for me to die, I am going to point out to my maker that I have months worth of hours coming to me from the back seats of cars and wooden lobby pews and piano teacher living rooms, but I don’t think anyone will honor the chits. In any case, I have as much time debt as I am willing to carry.

As a bonus, if I am ever more than ten minutes late, feel free to give me endless shit about it. Say whatever you want, harass me, call me a prick, but please, from now on, be on time.

You get up in the morning and jump in the shower. While in the shower, you use the shampoo and conditioner that you have selected after a few years of trying different stuff, and you have found the right combination that will make your hair either lay a little more flat, or poof up a little bit more, or highlight the red, whatever. You use the shaving cream that cuts down on tears and rips, along with the newest multi-bladed razor for the same.

You make your coffee, or you buy it. You have found the coffee that gives you enough lift, and you go back to it every morning. Or you haven’t, and each morning you are trying to find that morning libation that will kick you into gear. You wear your sweater and trousers. Maybe it’s the clothes you really want, the ones you know fit well and make you feel good, maybe you’re lower on your laundry schedule, you’re a little uncomfortable. But your entire wardrobe is filled with things you thought were going to make a small difference, and a lot of those things do.

And then you go to work, you get your lunch, etc. Your lunch is maybe a salad. Maybe it’s a cheeseburger. WIth no bun. You’ve got some kind of idea of the things you are supposed to do when you eat, there is a *style* to your belt and shoes, a *style* to your sandwich and diet coke. There is a life*style*, based on a cavalcade of advertisements and your own back and forth with different products.

Again, no judgement, I’m not lording this from on high. So far, this is purely *human*. If you didn’t do all this, you’d be living in some Buddhist retreat or commune and, let’s be honest, those places would suck for people like you and me. We like the taste of shallots sweated in butter, we need shiny lights and toys, and *of course* we do. Anyone who thinks any different is living outside this awesome cool-ass world we’ve made.

But here’s where it starts sucking. You read “The Rules”. You read “He’s Just Not That Into You”. You watch Dr. Phil and you get control in a brand new way. We get control through self denial, self hatred, self abuse. You squeeze into those uncomfortable shoes, you wear a poncho, you spend an hour on your hair. But really, you talk about the miserable shoes, the humidity that frizzes your hair, the bulky poncho, the many ways that you are denying yourself or living with pain.

Who you are is based on what you eat, who you vote for, what you wear. We have lost our lives and replaced them with life*styles*.

The span of human history is spinning past you right now, but you have the new Fug-Boots. Those snuggly wuggly fug boots. Your people crossed oceans to forge new lives, and you’re all psyched because someone named their baby “Apple” and isn’t that hilarious and dumb. Your great great grandmother had seven children and buried five of them, and you’re pissed that you can’t afford the 40 gig Ipod to replace your 20 gig Ipod.

We hate ourselves for our softness and we turn to self-help books and self-help groups to revel in our self hatred. We swim in the worst of our tendencies. We grab a brownie and, while eating it, we say we are being “bad”. You are eating a thing, and, in an effort to have some sort of moral compass in our ridiculous lives, we say that the eating of it is “bad”.

I’ve often wondered what history will think of this time in America. We had a series of books growing up, history books, who’s spines were marked with titles like “The Age Of Invention” and “The Age Of Reason”. I have feeling this time will be called “The Age Of Theory”, when nothing we do is based in fact, or more, that there are no facts that we all agree on. Our country is painfully bifurcated, our cultures are all hardening, congealing like old pudding. I have a group of friends who say they will not *date* someone based on who they voted for. We are judging one another on the sets of theories we embrace, not on the content of our character.

Because the idea is that the theories are not fluid. Once you embrace something, it’s a sign of moral terpitude to leave it behind. If you need religion for a while, and then you don’t, it’s a sign that there is something weak about you. If you lose weight only to gain it back, then you have no will power. But, how can one group or one theory work for you for your whole life? Don’t you change? How can you read a book at 22 and have it mean the same thing to you at 35? And if it means less, why is that bad?

I have a friend who is a hardcore right winger, he’s really rude to me and he can be painfully one note in his conversations. Why is he my friend? I mean, he loves me. He’s respectful of my mind and my time. He will send me a gift because he is thinking of me and he knows what I like. He has a laugh that rivals almost anything you’ll ever hear, and he laughs and laughs at stuff, at smart stuff and at dumb stuff. He is a joy to be around. He voted for Bush and he honestly thinks the only good Arab is a dead Arab. And that is hard to swallow, hard to be around.

But you know what? If you voted against Bush, but you’re not very funny and you’re late to everything and you generally make the day worse by being there, then I don’t really care what your theories on life are. Fine, you’re a vegetarian and you are helping inner city youth, that doesn’t mean I should have to wait 45 minutes for dinner or, worse, be the one who makes all the jokes while you do all the laughing.

Your life theories don’t change the content of your character, and I don’t care how devout you are in religion or leftist causes or fashion or the cult of personality, if you start by holding the door for someone, forgiving someone else when they don’t, and not celebrating yourself for holding the door, you could save a coupla grand a year in self-help books and In-Style magazines and our country would be a lot better off.

Here’s some knowledge for you.

1) If you’re dating a guy and he doesn’t call as often as you like… that means one of 2.5 billion things. Because there are 2.5 billion guys in the world. I love my wife, but I forget to do stuff. I *married* my wife, but I forget to call her back sometimes. That, however, is *ME*.

2) If you are trying to lose weight, you should first figure out why. If it’s because there’s a little voice in your head that says that nothing you do is good enough, then maybe it isn’t weight that’s the problem. But, again, in America there are 280 million different reasons why people put on weight, and that little voice is not the same problem for everyone.

3) Chances are that your unhappiness is largely due to about twenty different reasons coming at you from all sides. Maybe it is that you are lazy and weak, but there are 280 million different possibilities for your unhappiness and there are no answers.

4) If you are having trouble finding a mate, it’s because of 150 million to the 150 millionth power reasons. You know how you can’t figure out why your best friend is dating that guy? You don’t know why those two people are getting married? It’s because you don’t know, you can’t know, there’s no guide or theory that will help you know. No-one can possibly understand the vagueries of the human heart.

We are living in an art-free culture, a culture that renounces magic and inspiration. Our comedy is ironic, our celebrities are a celebration of the flawed, our art is self-referential and self eating. From Team America to the White Canvas to Urinetown, we *comment* more than we produce, while the “inside joke” and “inside knowledge” take the place of actual life.

And the perpetuation of this theorizing is bad. Our generation is pissing their lives down the sink making art that won’t last past the most recent sets of cultural in-jokes, dating girls based on the height/weight ratio and dating guys based on their voting records. The cultural handcuffs are sitting in front of us and every day we shackle ourselves as if to go out of the house any other way would be tantamount to walking around naked. I am not suggesting that we disrespect the culture we are in, I am suggesting that we shift our concept of “fact” to where it rightly belongs, in “theory”, and we treat other’s theories with the same respect we want afforded us.

Because, I’m fairly sure, this blog will change a lot of people’s minds.

This Morning At The Bank

a play in two acts.

Act One

Several people are in line at a bank teller. There is one single male teller despite the bank’s ability to have four working, and despite the extra two women behind the teller wall eating breakfast sandwiches and talking. At the teller window is a young woman who is submitting her tip money from her nighttime waitressing job before she gets on the train to go in to City College where she is studying macroeconomics.

At the front of the line is Crazy Old Lady (COL) who is talking to Her Nephew (Nephew). The age difference means that she is likely his great Aunt. She is from the indiscriminate Old Country, he is indiscriminately a descendant from the Old Country, probably two generations removed. He is finished at the bank and is trying to leave, she is waiting in line. Behind them is Important Hispanic Man in Suit (Important Man), and behind him is me.

COL: Is very important for you…

Nephew: Yes, I know, Mammy.

COL: You have to say for to stay in school…

Nephew: Yes, I know, Mammy.

COL: Your cousin, he no want to stay in school, and he come to me and say “Mammy, I no for want to stay in school…”

Nephew: I know, Mammy.

COL: And when he say that, I, uh, I *hit* him (she strikes the air like a prize fighter)

Nephew: (laughing) Mammy… I don’t think you…

COL: I *hit* him in his nose. And I say, “You no go to school, I hit you in the nose!”

Nephew: Well, I don’t know if you know…

COL: And now? Look at him now.

Nephew: Donny?

(The waitress is now done at the teller and leaves. COL is next in line.)

COL: Yes, I tell Donny to stay in school and now…?

(There is a strange pause as Nephew waits to see if he is supposed to answer. COL‘s hands rise up as if she is holding a small pumpkin in front of her eyes and stares.

Nephew: (finally) Now… he’s a dentist?

(COL‘s hands come together on each of Nephew’s cheeks in something a little too soft for actual damage, but startling if it’s meant as affection.)

COL: Now he is a dentist.

Important Man: Excuse me…

COL: (to the important man) I’m going, I’m going. You should not rush an old woman.

Nephew: I’ve got to get to school, Mammy.

COL: Yes, you must get your high school diploma.

Nephew: (who is clearly about 22) Mammy, I’m almost done with college

COL: But the high school diploma is the *important* thing. You should get your diploma.

Nephew: Okay, Mammy…

Important Man: (muttering) Madre de Dios…

ACT TWO

We are now at the teller. There is still only one.

COL: Here you go.

(She slides her ATM card and a handwritten note under the glass. The teller holds up the note. It is a piece of notebook paper, more specifically, it is a piece of spiral bound notebook paper with the little tags still on the left side, more specifically, it is the bottom three inches of a piece of spiral bound notebook paper with the words “Four hundred dollars” written on it.)

Teller: You’d… you’d like to withdraw four hundred dollars?

COL: (leaning on the counter and looking out the window) Please.

Teller:Do you have your account number?

COL:I do it with the card. I give you the number, it is 5579.

Teller: Ma’am, I’m not supposed to have this card or your number.

COL:I’s okay, you are working for the bank.

Teller:(sliding the card back to her) Why don’t you swipe the card in the reader and then punch in your number.

(COL spends a little time getting her glasses on. They are on a small beaded rope hanging from her neck, but she first looks for them in her purse. She gets the glasses on and slides the card back to the teller.)

Teller: No, ma’am, you slide the card in the reader and then punch in…

COL: Yes, I know, that is what I am doing here…

(she snatches the card and swipes it, punches in her number and then puts her card away back into her bra, which is located under her jacket, in her sweater and shirt, and only accessable from the waist. This requires her to bend over a bit, for the sake of modesty, and fish around up under her clothes. The teller waits. I would not say patiently.)

Teller:So, four hundred dollars from your account?

COL: Yes.

Teller:You know, you could get this money from the machines out front…

COL: OH! Those *machines* are just terrible.

(She turns fully to the line of people waiting at the bank)

COL:TERRIBLE!

(She turns back)

COL:Those machines are always putting in the numbers wrong. I have all the numbers for everything, all up in my head. And the machine say, “you are not that much money in your account” and I ask for the money I know is there. My daughter come with me and say, “You don’t use machines any more, you go inside.”… The machines have the numbers wrong and they don’t get the right numbers.

Teller:Well, the number you just entered is the only number you need.

COL:But you cannot get money out.

Teller: Oh, sure you…

COL:NO, you cannot get money out.

Teller: But, you would get money the exact same way you are right now, except that on the screen…

COL: You should be able to put in card, enter your number, then ask for money and they give it to you. It should be that easy, but the machines no work, so I come inside.

(Everyone realizes that the ATM is actually *exactly* this easy. The machine does *exactly* what one would want it to, and, for a brief moment, we forget that we have been waiting far too long in this line and revel in the idea that they invented a nearly flawless machine to do exactly what one would need it to that is available 24 hours a day, conveniently located and completely user friendly. The teller has decided to give up and get this woman out of the bank.)

Teller: How would you like your $400?

COL: I need $175 in fives and the rest in twenties.

(pause)

Important Man: (muttering in Spanish. By inflection alone, it sounds like he’s saying “Dude, just give her $180 in fives and the rest in twenties”)

Teller:(staring at the woman) I’ll give you eleven twenties and the rest in fives, hows that?

COL:You are banker, you do it however you like.

CURTAIN

Yeah, there’s probably a better ending, but after that, she just took her money and left. It’s like this every single day here. You hear people saying, “I wish that fucking kid would watch his language”. You hear, “every time I see another rat in the subway, I buy another cat.” You hear, “You aint mad at me playing the lotto, you’re mad because I aint never won.” It’s a city of one liners. No wonder we’ve got the best writers in the world.

What you should be thankful for

1) I make you laugh all the time, and you are almost always really boring. C’mon, you know it’s true. Sure, I laugh a lot when you talk, but I have this thing, this unfortunate thing, that makes me laugh a little bit more depending on how not funny you are. I’m goddam hilarious, and I don’t really get paid back very much.

2) I’m a really good cook. Sometimes I make stuff that isn’t great, but even then I’m probably better than you are. And you eat my food all the damn time, at least you have over the last few years. Think about it. At, say, ten dollars an hour, how much do you owe me for the time I cook?

3) I give some really good advice. Sage. Motherfucking *sage* advice. That’s what I give. And what do you give me? Trouble.

4) Shit happens when I’m around. Trouble is caused, excitement ensues. Oh, sure, maybe not as much now as back in the day, but you know that a part of you gets nervous when shit starts being talked because you just *know* I’m gonna jump in the center of it and get all *redefining inappropriate*. You’re right, I cut my mohawk off, but you know the mohawk is living on just under my scalp, ready to piss some people off.

5) I will physically get in the way if shit starts going down. I’ve been hit in the face more times than I can count, chances are you haven’t really. I’ll jump in front. I’ll take it. My face is no great loss anyway.

6) I bring it with this blog. I’ll write to support plural marriage, I’m the only one on Ron Artest’s side. I don’t fill a blog with stuff unless it’s good stuff. Oh, sure, you actually write your blog, but you don’t bring it. I bring it.

7) I’m the perfect wingman. Take me with you, I’ll talk to any girl. What do I have to lose? No, I probably won’t show up to stuff that interferes with my life of going to sleep within ten minutes of getting tired and playing golf any day the weather is good, but if you find me sitting next to you at a bar and you want to have, say, sexual intercourse with someone, let me know. I’ll buttress your ass right in there.

8) I am willing to be fat and fart simply for your amusement. Maintaining this weight is a lot of work, and eating the right amount of beef and spice in order to create gastrointestinal distress without actually hurting myself is a fine balancing act. I do this for you.

9) I am inspiring both in my work ethic and in my constant failure. It’s fun to watch my life as I furiously spin my wheels like a palsied spastic on a treadmill. I wake every morning at 7:30 and you can use that as a source of inspiration, however I also never accomplish anything, and you can use that as a comparative analysis to feel better about yourself. If you sleep till noon, you can always say, “Yeah, but if I got up at 7:30, I’d just be a tired loser like Sean.”

10) I make love to you the way you like it. Real fast at the beginning and then the low slow asphyxiation section followed by the pre-orgasmic crying binge, culminating in the depressing anal foot fetish. I can take one look at you and know what you need, and you know it, too. You can see it in my eyes.

So, there’s more, but one more thing you can thank me for is my willingness to let certain things go unsaid. I’m not sure how much, but, yeah, from where I’m sitting, you owe me.

I am beyond tired and yet I can’t seem to stop whittling music out of my computer. It doesn’t feel like inspiraton, certainly, but there is something sort of other-wordly about writing music when it works really well. I use Finale and it is such a great program that I firmly believe I would be unable to write as quickly as I need to without it. If I don’t write in a manic flat out sprint then I don’t get my ideas down fast enough to be able to re-play them. I think I have not really written music before now simply because my computer skills and the software had not yet converged to allow me to. Every song I’ve written on guitar has slipped from my mind before I even decided on a theme.

What has been interesting to me is the fact that the systems put in place for the writing down of music are really here to help you. Every single teacher I had (bunch of fucking bastards they were) made it seem as if there was an incredibly difficult minotaur filled maze that you had to drag yourself through before you could make music, and it simply isn’t true. Rock and Roll stars have been proving for years that it’s far more magic and intuition than it is scholarship.

Of course I say that and it might be because it comes really easy to me. I’ve read music since long before I read words and I am always surprised when people can’t. It seems pretty intuitive to me.

But all the writing of it down requires is a little basic math and about ten hours of practice. The creation of music doesn’t require shit but an ear. And sometimes not even that. Mac, who is co-writing this musical with me, will come in the room with a sheet of paper and squawk some perfectly respectable melody line at me, and I copy it down note for note and add chords. The tune and the flow of the line are totally inspired, totally inate to him, and they are just as good or, frankly, better than anything I’ve come up with after hours of noodling.

Jordana will just start singing. She just fucking starts singing, words and all, off the top of her head. She writes music like I did when I was eight on the crapper, before I had any hang-ups about making, y’know, mixolydian cadences. I could tell you what a Dorian scale is, but I can’t possibly tell you why it’s useful.

What’s interesting is that it’s the lyrics that I’ve had to press Jordana and Mac on, both people who are verbal gymnasts. Lyrics are actually terrifically non-verbal, in a way, because you have to say something not just within an exact number of beats, but also up to the exact number of beats. I could sum up this blog in two sentences (and I’m sure you wish I would at this point) or I could write a book about this subject, but could I use *exactly* thirty two syllables? With each syllable falling at the exact right stress moment? And make it rhyme? And sound like normal speech?

Some lyric advice-

1) Don’t end a sentence with a verb. “Up on your fence you’re sitting” is a stupid sentence, and you are obviously just trying to rhyme it with something like “Shitting”.

2) Don’t keep adding modifiers until you get the number of syllables. “It seems to me, I think I might be getting too old” is bad, when what you mean is “I think I’m getting old”. If you are going to make someone listen to your music, treat every single second of their time as precious. I’m not kidding, if you’ve run out of stuff to say, then stop singing.

That actually should be a mantra for all plays. If you’ve already said it once, don’t say it again, and if you say it and it isn’t a whole play, then no amount of repeating will make it better.

3) Alliteration is fun, but hard consanant alliteration is bad. “Chuckie checked his checkered coat” is a fun like, but when you sing it, you aspirate every ‘ch’ and ‘k’ sound and you run out of air.

4) Land your emphasis where it fits musically. If you say “My opinon is based on fact” that’s great, unless the music fits it so that you sing “my *o*pinion is based *on* facts”. This is the hardest rule but the most important, unless you’re writing rock songs, and then it could be funny.

5) If a rhyme is too good it will make people laugh, no matter what you are saying. Consider the master, Ira Gershwin-

“IThere were chills up my spine

And some thrills I can’t define.

What a break, for heaven’s sake,

How long has this been going on?”

Those are simple to the point and they break your heart. Compared to-

“I’m bidin’ my time,

‘Cause that’s the kind of guy I’m

While other folks get dizzy, I stay busy

Bidin’ my time”

It isn’t that the point of the last one is hilarious, the rhymes are just so outrageous that it makes you smile. Between the three of us, we came up with this-

“then in undergrad, I dreamed of Chad,

The defensive back supreme

So I stuffed a sock down in my jock

And tried out for the team

He tackled me in practice,

He said I could take a hit.

But his girlfriend Anne came from the bland

Sorority I quit…”

The context is too bizzarre to explain, but I like it because the rhymes are just enough to make you smile, the internal rhymes all line up, there are no verbs at the ends of phrases and the verse reads the way people actually talk. The overall idea of the song was mine, the actual lyrics are largely Jordana’s, and the edits and refiguring were all three of us, I don’t know who should get credit for any of this. It took us about an hour to come up with these few lines.

Some of the stuff is just easy as pie. Mac sang a song “The Seven C’s” (The coast guard call to arms) and for the chorus I haven’t altered even a rhythm of what he stood and sang at me last week. I even made a suggestion and he sat down for an hour and gave me five versions of what I asked him about.

I don’t know. Maybe all of this will suck and won’t be nearly as funny to other people as it is to us. I’m writing a song right now that our male hero sings about his dead boyfriend, who is actually a woman and not dead and, it turns out, tied up and gagged and sitting next to him.

It’s possible that it won’t work at all.

Before I got mind-wanderingly sick, I made those appointments to go in and see commercial agents and, despite the fact that when THursday rolled around I wasn’t really feeling that much better, I went in to the city yesterday and held the meetings.

First was Tracy at Abrams. I was immediately blown away by the fact that meeting with agents in New York is entirely different from meeting with agents in LA, although it would take me most of the day to figure out how different. Abrams Artists has one floor on a building in Chelsea, and it is populated with men and women, young and old, of different ethnicities and, frankly, weights. In Los Angeles, you become an agent when you have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are completely free of acting talent and that you are great to have at a party. In this building, it looked like a professional organization.

Tracy brough me in to her office and I was knocked out by the view. 30 floors up facing New Jersey, I could damn near see my old house in Morristown.

She loved my headshots and then talked to me for a while about my life as an actor. She asked me where I am from, and what some of my skills are, what shows I had done, etc. I pulled out every fucking name I could think of. I was dropping names like I was wearing mittens. It was wierd that none of that meant anything to her, she knew some of the names, didn’t know others, didn’t give a shit.

She asked me how I knew Debbie Brown, and I said we had been friends for years but that I wasn’t sure how we met. No, I had never read for her, I have to guess she saw me in something years ago. It’s the only thing close to a lie I told the whole time, and I’m sure when she checks she’ll catch me on it. Truth is, Debbie is my friend Steve’s cousin, and she just likes me as a dude.

I was too sick to wonder if it was going badly, but I have to guess it wasn’t going great now that I look back on it. My resume looked like I had spent very little time in front of a camera, which is true, and although I am SAG, it was obvious that I had a group of people supporting me in theory and none of them (except for Jace) had come through in practice. Every name I dropped made it sound like I was cool, but since none of those names were on my resume, it also made me sound like I wasn’t a good actor.

She asked me why I had waited until I was in my mid-thirties to push for a career as an actor. I said that in my mid-twenties I was making a go of it in LA and I was married to a minor Soap actress and when our marriage fell apart, I spent a few years drinking, I moved to New York, I watched the towers fall and I licked my wounds. I mean, I said it better than that, but that’s the sum total. And then I said, “after the election last Tuesday, I realized that I had to make a difference in my life.”

She hooked right up with that. The election has been a disaster for New York intellectuals, actually intellectuals anywhere. Anyone who can think clearly has been crushed by the staggering stupidity of an electorate who votes against their own self interests. Tracy is Jewish, and I let it be known immediately that half my family is, and we talked for some time about the few Jews we know who voted in line with southern anti-semites, voted in favor of an escalating sense of desparation in the Middle East, and voted that way because they thought they were helping Israel.

We had found common ground. She asked me about acting.

I’ve written about it here before, I don’t know if I was quite as rhapsodic, but you probably know what I said. We were in there for an hour and a half, talking about the practice, the art, the patience, the beauty. You know what I said, read other entries from this blog, it’s practically all I talk about.

I told her I had been cast in an Adam LeFevre play several years ago (technically true), and she told me about how he got the Best Buy gig. Apparently, it was to go to another actor, but this other actor was an LA type who threw a fit about stuff, and they immediately replaced him with this New York playwright. It’s no wonder you see Larry Pine hocking stuff, it’s huge money and people outside of New York don’t recognize him.

I said, “I’ve done two shows at the Access Theater on Broadway, three blocks south of Canal. It’s four flights up, four long long flights of stairs up, and I went up and down those stairs in the middle of the summer four or five times a day for weeks. Then I did it the next summer. When I got my residual check from Law And Order, I was stunned. I’m used to working my ass off for car-fare.”

All of that should be familiar to anyone reading this blog. She said she would start submitting me tomorrow, she made an appointment for the “on-camera guys”, and she agreed to put a cover letter from another agent at the agency if I found anything in the breakdowns that I thought I’d be good for. She said, “guys are like Gold around here, especially a guy your age with your look. You have a little weight on you, which is fantastic, and your height and your look and your talent… it’s all good.” I could lose a little weight… “I would be *really* careful about losing any weight,” she said.

I’m not in L.A. any more.

I told her that I had a meeting at Paradigm, and she said, “that would probably be with Doug, right?” Um, yeah. “Doug is the best, send him my love.”

Oh. Okay.

I mean, she does know that he’s another commercial agent, right? I was totally confused. In LA, agents didn’t want you, didn’t want you, didn’t want you and then *BANG* they want you to sign an exclussive agreement with them. I actually *signed* with each of the agents I had in LA, which is amazing since none of them got me anything.

I actually stood there for a while and then said, “so, should I, um, I’ve got…” and she said, “I set you up with the on-camera people, right?” and I sorta nodded and she said, “so, we’ll start sending you out soon!” and shook my hand.

I left and called, y’know, everyone I could think of. Tessa called me back. She said it sounded like they were “freelancing” me, where they were gonna try to get you work but other agents could try the same thing. She was concerned that I was careful signing with too many people, because I could get double submitted. Neither of us know what the “on-camera” people are, but I figure I’ll find out at my appointment, which is in the middle of December.

I had a little lunch with Jordana. She said, “you have a special look that you reserve for Rice Krispy Treats.” My guess is that it’s the same look she gets from me when she’s changing after a shower, but maybe there is an extra special way my face sets when I see a Rice Krispy Treat. I like them a lot.

I met with Doug at Paradigm, and, although it took us a little while of staring at each other, we eventually really hit it off. I told him I met with Tracy and he gave me a big smile. These people are obviously really fond of each other. He took my headshot and resume and asked me if there was anything on there I wanted to brag about. “Actually, making the call and meeting with agents is about the most impressive thing I’ve done lately” I told him. He laughed.

He had heard of Suicide/Joke. Go figure. I told him that I hadn’t asked anyone to come because early in the rehearsal process, I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be anything. “I knew it was gonna bea vehicle for me, but I didn’t want everyone to sit through the rest of the show.” He said, “Any chance you can get people to see you in something, you really should,” and I said, “Yeah, but there’s always another show. The show I’m doing now is never gonna be, y’know, the *last show ever*, so I figure I should let people know only when it’s gonna be great.”

This blew him away. He said he would start sending me out. Tomorrow.

I was like, “I’m embarassed about this, but I have no idea how this works.” Here’s what he told me.

There are about 10 or 12 really good commerical agents in New York. I now have two of them. In a perfect world, I would have all of them working for me. For a coupla years, or at least until I really started firing with one of them. At that point, maybe I will decide to stick it out with just one, but until then, it’s good for the agency to have me on their rolls because, frankly, they want to be associated with good actors who have a good work ethic.

Doug said he would work with Tracy to get me work, and that it’s good for either of them for me to be getting commercials. He said it was capricious as hell. “Twelve people will be making the decision, and if you are everyone’s third choice, you’ll probably get it.” He and Tracy would both submit me, without any problem from one another. Fucking awesome.

And then he, like Tracy before him, warned me not to lose weight.

What did I do right? Well, I took Jace’s advice and figured they were either going to like me for me, or they wouldn’t. I was totally myself, in fact I wasn’t even me at my most charming, I was just the boring incredibly sick, on cold medicine me. Fortunately, I’ve gotten to an age where “me” is pretty well set and I’m okay with “me”.

I spent years trying to be cool and sexy, years spent wondering if I could compete with the cool dumb guys I was hanging out with. All those years I spent doing my hair, and I spent a lot of time doing it. Even when I grew my hair long and didn’t wash it, that was my own private rebelion against the world. My life, for years was like the Dada poems on light poles in France. The Dadaists thought they were undoing poetry, that the citizenry would be up in arms. The French just ignored it.

Doug, the last agent, said that he thought it was important for actors to take a month here and there, to do some artistic work. Take a show in Cleveland, tour with a one-person show, do something artistically satisfying. I said, “I’ve been an actor for fifteen years and I’ve never gotten a job through an agent. I’ve been doing downtown theater for four years, and I’ve been brilliant in front of twelve like minded downtown artists. If I need to make art in the future, I’ll be able to, and I’ll let you know. For now, I want to make some goddam money.”