I’ve taken a tiny bit of flack for my last few posts, and I promised to talk about my bowel movements, so I hate to disappoint you. Trust me, when I actually get to it, it will have been worth the wait.

But not today. I gotta tell you about the *FUNNIEST* play I saw last night. It was during an evening of one acts, and it was the smartest premise. You see, a supernatural character named “Snafu” is looking for a job, and she goes to a bar to interview with a man named “Mr. Mephisto”. And right away, I know what you’re thinking. Mr. Mephisto, unless I misremember my Greek lessons, sounds like he could be THE DEVIL!

Turns out you’re right, and “Snafu” is looking for some work. It is established that it’s the year 2000, and that’s done by the hanging of a sign at the back of the room that has the number “2000” on it. Does the devil have work for Snafu? You bet he does. In FLORIDA!

Wait a minute, you say. Florida? 2000? If I’m putting two and nothing together, they’re talking about the election!

But it gets even more fiendishly clever. The first part, where Snafu gets the job, takes about five minutes, although nothing more than the above actually happens. After a moment of black out, the sign is changed on the back wall to read “2004” and Snafu is back to talk to the Devil. Turns out, after “Enron, the Stock Market, the Middle East” her guilt is getting the best of her, and she can’t work for the devil any more. The devil says she has to, something else happens, and the play ends.

When I say “something else happens” I’m not protecting the ending, I just don’t know what it was.

Now, this is merely a shitty ass piece of theater. It’s so bad that I’m announcing how bad it is in this blog without making any attempt to hide it, and normally I switch genders or dates of plot points to throw off potential future employers. But this was a profoundly stupid piece of theater that all the people I agree with politically laughed their asses off at.

Here’s the kicker. My in-laws and my grandfather-in-law drove in from Long Island to watch the evening with me. Sitting next to me were two Republicans and one undecided voter. And they heard that leftists believe that the worst thing that has happened since 2000 was Enron. The devil was behind Enron and the Stock Market. Since 2000.

I wanted to die. Not because it gave them fuel for their Foxnews lives, not because they drove an hour each way to watch a play, on the insistence of their kids, and ended up being served up a turd and not because this is all the leverage that they need in disregarding the left. I wanted to die because it might have helped make up the mind of our grandfather, a life-long democrat. I don’t know if it did, but it might have.

So, when I desperately cling to the possibility of civility in political discussion, it goes double for the fire breathing choir preaching rhetoric. Preach to the choir as if there were unsaved souls at the window, that’s all I’m asking. Maybe downtown Manhattan is the wrong place to find rational discourse, but if that’s true then why do any of us go there?

Skip the next bit, it’s ranting. The above is the end of the official blog.

********

(((((I’m sorry, but did you understand that? The DEVIL is one of the CHARACTERS of this play, the time span is 2000-2004, and he says he’s behind *ENRON*. Fine, don’t mention the world trade center attacks, fine, but Jesus Christ, you aren’t gonna talk about any of the other global disasters? I don’t believe in the devil, I don’t believe in evil, but I understand what it is from a dramaturgical point of view. *ENRON*? That’s run of the mill greedy business guy stuff. What about Darfur? What about the starving millions in North Korea? Fucking ENRON?

And Snafu? The character? She had her shirt MISBUTTONED. That’s right. That’s how she embodied “Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.” She midbuttoned her shirt. The devil…

Oh my God. The devil. He had a goatie, right? Sure, of course he did. He’s the devil. Fine. But then, for some reason, when the time changed to 2004, he was wearing a ridiculous faux-punk leather jacket, with Purple Rain studs all over it and graffiti. What is better than this? What is better than him wearing a ridiculous leather jacket that is expressly *not* indicative of the time indicated by a sign on the back wall?

You’re gonna have to wait, because I’ll tell you what’s worse. What’s even worse is that they were blocked to wander, to “use the space” they would, during their own lines, pace back and forth, aimlessly, nervously, like neurotic tigers, across the small playing space. And then, during their own lines, they would stand stock still. They were like dancers, staring at their feet, lips moving as they count…

And, despite the fact that they had thirty seconds to load in and load out their set, they chose to bring out *multiple bottles* to indicate where the bar was, and then they made the bartender face *UPSTAGE*. When Mephisto comes in with his 1980s leather jacket on to indicate that it’s 2004, he orders a drink from behind the bar, where he and the bartender must talk over their shoulders in order for the audience to hear.

But what’s worse? What’s worse? Oh God, it’s almost precious. When the play was over and we went out in the lobby, the guy who played the devil WAS WEARING THE LEATHER JACKET IN HIS HEADSHOT. Sure, his face is also blurred because he’s blowing out a lungful of smoke, but the leather jacket that just made no sense in the play suddenly made sense.

When I was seven, I had a suede “country” vest with down on the inside and snaps. I wore it all the time. I loved it. My mom took it away from me to launder it once a month of so, and then I’d go back to wearing it. Little fat kid in short shorts, an OP shirt and a suede vest with snaps and I thought I was awesome.

I was ***SEVEN***!!!!!!!

I can just imagine this guy putting on this jacket and saying, “I… look… GREAT!” and then going to the director, “I have the best jacket for the second scene. Seriously, it looks so amazing. Perfect for the devil.”

I wished I was dead for about twenty eight reasons. It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life.)))))

I’m sorry for saying that Bush voters aren’t dumb. It turns out, almost all voters are dumb. this is actually kind of shocking. Here are the money quotes

A close look at five key domestic agenda items suggests that Tennesseans as a group hardly qualify as well-informed and ideologically consistent policy wonks. On four of the five issues, only about half of a given candidate’s supporters hold opinions consistent with those of the candidate.

Many favor positions inconsistent with their candidate. Perhaps even more interestingly, sizable chunks of each candidate’s supporters favor positions held by the opposing camp.   And when quizzed about which candidates hold which positions on the five issues, Tennesseans score an average of only two right answers – about the same result one could get by merely guessing

Of course, the problem is that a lot of people are voting for Bush because they believe he will be better on the war. They might think that because they understand it’s a war he made up, and I can dig that. But the real war on terrorism obviously requires a better nuts and bolts man than Bush, and Kerry is nothing if not a nuts and bolts guy.

My brother Steve pointed out to me that Islam the religion has nothing to do with Islamic governments acting in their name. I disagree, strongly, but it is a point that needs to be made. We’re living in a Christian world, and it should be made clear that I do understand that Islam has basically the same inscrutable message of peace, forgiveness, miracle and wonder that all your major retarded world religions do, and I hold it in as much esteem as I hold Christianity, Judaism, Confuscionism, Tarot Card reading and Native American polytheism. Y’all are all retarded, just the same, in your love of God.

From now on, to make sure there is a distinction, I will refer not to Islam, but to the geoplotical islamic movement.

However, I think the next post will be about my love of adult moist ass-wipes, so it probably won’t come up any more.

I wanted to leave the last blog up for a couple days, but I think we’re pretty much done with it.

Here is what I wrote to a conservative friend who, after reading my last blog, began a discussion with me about *why*, after articulating the pro-Bush position so well, I would want to vote for Kerry. We’ve gone back and forth for a while, and here’s where we are. I have removed his writing because I didn’t ask his permission to use it, but I have included in parenthesis his ideas.

By the way, I’m voting for Kerry because I think everything I wrote in my last blog can be defeated with really basic logic and little free thinking. But I also know that taking that step is really scary when you feel the lives of your children and family are on the line.

************

You wrote (The comparison between radical Islam and Koresh, McVeigh doesn’t hold up).

I’m going point by point, so bear with me.

I agree that these two ideas. radical Islam and radical (for lack of a better word) Christianity, are manifested in two different ways. Radical Islam has given itself over to militaristic goals, to violence, and only the most disenfranchised radical Christians have.

But, the ideas are similar, chiefly, a belief that you specifically have been targeted by the rich and powerful people in the world to be disenfranchised. Most of the liturgical stuff is similar as well.

You wrote: (a claim that I avoid the logical conclusions that would lead to this war because they don’t fit my fancy.)

It’s hardly my fancy. There is a very long explanation as to why I think the way I do, and we can go into that if you press me on it, but trust me, it is not my fancy. The truth is, the hierarchical thinking that leads me where I am is lonely, painful, shitty stuff.

You wrote: (The war on terror should be called either World War III, or The War On Islam)

Ah. Well, now. This is a departure point, isn’t it? Because Bush has made it clear that this is *not* a war against Islam. And if you are going to say to me, “He has to say that, he’s the president.” then you’re assuming he is acting in your best interest even though he says he isn’t. I’m not saying that it’s a deal breaker, I’m just saying that puts you on pretty shaky ground.

I also need to point out that, while Saddam was an Arab and a Muslim, he never embraced his religion until shit started going south with the US, and most Arab Muslims think his embrace of the religion was entirely political. So, with no ties to Al Qaeda and with tenuous ties to Islam, isn’t this actually a war against Arabs?

You wrote: (the goal of the enemy is to reclaim a significant place on the world stage for classical Islam.)

I believe that they believe that that is their goal. I think their actual goal is to live with freedom and dignity.

I think when a Muslim man looks at his child, he wants a better life for that child than he had, but when he looks up from his child and he sees burkas and starvation and palaces and oil barons and dirt and thirst, and he feels like his life is a fucking structured ass-fest where nothing ever gets any better and where his life avoids natural law like the plague, he tries to find solace. He turns to God. And the spokespeople of God are telling him, “Your misery is caused by the US and the Jews. Israel hates you. The US hates you. Your desperation, your thirst and squalor, are because of a fight between two brother six thousand years ago. Blah, blah, blah, I’m crazy…” And the man thinks, “Man, I’m so fucking miserable, at least this will give me a sense of greater things in the world.” and he sends his child into a restaurant with a bomb so that his other children will live better lives.

People aren’t motivated by the destruction of another country. People want a frapuccino and a pretty girl to smile at them. And these guys will live their entire lives without that happening.

You blame Islam. I blame the administrative structures built by the Arab leaders in the Middle East. Change the civil rights and the distribution of wealth, and these people wouldn’t hate us.

You wrote: (Islam has turned into a shitty excuse for a religion, and then dared me to disagree.)

Dude.

You’re so contentious, sweetie.

I have absolutely no argument with what you wrote here. I could rhapsodize with no end describing the horrible human rights records of Arab countries. I think it denies human law, and I spoke yesterday about my disregard for multi-culturalism when it defies human law.

You wrote: (We should be oppposed to the ascendency of this savage mind-set and our survival depends on it.)

I disagree only with the last half of this. It is important for us to fight against unnatural governments, but more important is to fight it in a way that does away with the mind-set that gives rise to terrorist acts against this country.

However, if you truly do believe this, why are you not screaming for intervention in Darfur? The Muslim government there is killing non-muslims to the tune of about 6,000 a week. If 6,000 Jews were being killed a week, would you be more upset?

You wrote: “This war is to destroy the mindest that gave rise to 9/11)

(Iraq? The only country in the middle east that *isn’t* a Muslim state? We supported Hussein when he came to power. He was our ally. Donald Rumsfeld himself went to Iraq and met with him. You’ve read 1984, how absurd that Hussein was fighting us *with our own weapons* in 1991. We funneled billions of dollars into his coffers, money that we now claim he was using to fund terrorists, although there is no proof of that. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is in bed with the Bush family, Iran developed nuclear weapons *while we were next door* and Lybia turned over its weapons programs *without being invaded*…)

Sorry. I’ll stop that. Let me get to the quote above.

I agree with you 100% that this is should be a war to destroy the civilization that gave rise to 9/11. But, it just doesn’t add up for me. I could have understood an invasion of Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. These countries had close ties, they created the mind-set that gave rise to 9/11. The only thing Saddam shares with Al Qaeda is the color of his skin.

We also have to look at our own culpability. Boy, right wingers really hate it when you say that. But we should.

You wrote: (a great comparison of the Japanese mindset before and after WW II.)

The comparison to Japan is great but it breaks down really quickly. Both wars began with attacks on America without warning. The attacks of September 11th are much more inhuman, in that they *targeted* civilians. Retaliation was necessary.

Pearl Harbor-

Japanese soldiers attacked the US on orders from their Japanese leaders, and they attacked in the name of Japan. We met this attack by attacking Japan with the full force of our military, eventually dropping bombs on their cities that wiped out hundreds of thousands of their people, finally cowing them into submission.

World Trade Center-

Predominantly Saudi citizens attacked the US on orders from Osama Bin Laden, who was a guest of the ruling government of Afghanistan, and they attacked in the name of Islam. We met this attack by launching a military strike on the secular government of Iraq with the smallest number of ground troops possible killing very few of the enemy (by comparison) and risking very few of our own soldiers. Peace in the country is impossible at this point, and the insurgency is now being joined by the very people we thought would welcome us with open arms.

Either we should kill these people, as you suggest, or we were liberating them. The latter doesn’t seem to be true. If Saddam was allowed to run in the election in Iraq, would he win?

You wrote: (Kerry thinks that the threat of a strong response to future crimes and bringing justice only to the guilty individuals is enough.)

He believes this because it is natural law. I believe it as well.

We believe, in our government, than man is basically a moral and natural animal, that, unless circumstances push a person, we will behave according to natural law. This means that a person can not be arrested until they have committed a crime, a person cannot be punished for expressing a view or for wanting something. A person has to commit a crime before they can be punished.

You wrote: (Bush, on the other hand, is a revolutionary thinker.)

I hope you will forgive what will feel like intimacy here, but I think you are the revolutionary thinker. Bush’s actions at this point might match yours, but his agenda is being set by the neo-cons who got him to run for president. I don’t buy this shit about him being ADD or dyslexic. I didn’t graduate from high school and you and I can have a conversation about this.

And everything I’ve written up to this point is less important than what I am about to say. Bush has supported your agenda so far, but what makes you think he will continue? If he is in a situation where he has to make a decision for himself on the safety of our country, don’t you worry that he might launch a missile at Saudi Arabia? You have read between the lines of his mistakes and found a foreign policy that supports your deepest fears about the world, but he’s never addressed this out loud and he doesn’t seem to be able to articulate any kind of strategy at all.

My feeling is that he wanted to attack Iraq because of his dad. After 9/11, he wanted to attack an Arab country, but not one that was actually Muslim. It’s possible that the neo-cons who are whispering in his earpiece are thinking exactly what you are saying, but they aren’t telling the American people that, and they aren’t telling you that.

You wrote: (Your thinking is too small in scale).

It’s really not. I think that you are splitting this conflict into “World War III” or “The War Against Islam”, as if it has nothing to do with the war everyone has been fighting since the beginning of last century. And that’s too small in scale. You refer to the cold war as a different time, and it isn’t. All of this started in the 80s, which was based on shit that happened in the 60s, which can be traced back and back and back.

As a Jew, watching a war against Arabs, you’ve got to see that this conflict isn’t nearly as small as Bush thinks it is. It’s global. And fighting the middle east ignores the Arab kids that live on my block, who think their president is killing Arabs because Christians hate Arabs. It’s easier to make that leap in logic than it is to connect Hussein to 9/11.

I’ll say this. The cost of thinking that fighting “Islam” is an answer is too great. I agree with you that we have to fight the conditions that fundamentalist Islam brings about, which are the same conditions that Hassidic women suffer through, that fundamentalist Christian women suffer through. We can fight for human rights , and we can fight poverty and desperation, but you can’t fight a religion. It’s never worked, it never will.

You wrote: (The war will escalate, not because of Bush, but because this is merely the beginning of an enormous war that we will win if people like Bush stay in power.)

And this will be a matter for history to decide. There is no way we can argue, you and I, today, that things will get worse or better depending on who does what. I believe they will sway back and forth, worse to better, but we will never not be a target until the fight is for freedom and equality for everyone.

I’m thankful that, for today, you and I are safe. And I am thankful to America for providing that safety.

My brother Steve has let us know his displeasure at the use of our blogs as public airing stations for the minutiae that fill our lives. He thinks they should be used only for the occasional fustian, mostly as a response to other people’s blogs.

So, instead of using his comments section, let me respond to Ian’s blog from today.

Senator Kerry is going to be my choice for President in the upcoming election, because he is a social liberal and he will fight to nominate a Supreme Court Justice who will put the rights of the individual in front of the rights of the nation, the church or corporate entities. Sure, it’s a narrow reason, but that’s why I’m voting for him.

Now.

In 1991, months after Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait, Senator Kerry not only voted against using the already assembled coalition to fight Saddam, but he was the vocal detractor trying to persuade his countrymen to “allow sanctions a chance to work”. Hussein had already marched into a neighboring country, after using chemical weapons on the Kurds in the north, he had been in Kuwait for months, and Kerry was fighting military action. He was a soldier in Vietnam and his number one priority is to make sure that each and every soldier is protected.

If you are worried about further attacks on US soil, and you should be, the knowledge that Kerry now says he would have built a vast global coalition to march in to Iraq, when he fought against that very same coalition when it was formed in 1991, should give you pause. He has been against every military action our country has taken since he limped out of Vietnam with shrapnel in his thigh.

All right, calm down, let me finish.

Neither candidate can prove that they can pay for some or even any of their domestic promises. So, for a lot of people that’s a wash. For me, Bush has already proven he doesn’t know how to run an economy and Kerry seems smarter, so the edge for me goes to Kerry. But if you think the economy is actually doing okay, considering we were attacked in America’s economic center, then maybe for you, the edge goes to Bush.

I would vote for Kerry, but I understand that these arguments are secondary to some people.

The issue to me is the fight for civil rights, always has been. Bush is pro-death penalty and anti-choice. But the problem is, Kerry now says he is in favor of the death penalty in certain situations, and he keeps talking about being Catholic, although he would never deny the right to choose. Also, there is no guarantee that any of the Supremes are going to retire or die in the next four years.

I would vote for Kerry, but I understand that this issue is secondary to some people.

The environment is going to hell, and Bush is firmly to be blamed for this. But in some people’s minds, air quality might give more inner city kids asthma, but terrorists are going to give them nuclear flu. I understand that Bush opened up Yellowstone to snowmobiles, and yes, I agree that this is bad. But if you don’t care about that, I can’t really blame you. I mean, honestly, I care only in the abstract, I’m never going to camp in fucking Yellowstone.

I would vote for Kerry, but I understand that this issue is secondary to some people.

I’m not going to cover every issue, but there are people who are intelligent conservatives that are worried because of their single issue, the defense of our nation. And although you can make an argument that Kerry will keep us safe, he doesn’t have the president’s record. Here’s Bush’s record: We were attacked at the beginning of his administration. So we attacked Afghanistan, kicked out the Taliban, then we attacked Iraq, kicked out Hussein, then Afghanistan had elections in October and Iraq will have elections in January.

And since Septmeber 11, we have not been attacked. Since we started the Bush Doctrine, we have not been attacked.

John Kerry says he would have built a multi-national coalition to bring down Iraq. The same one he voted against in 1991.

You simply cannot say that people with different priorities are stupid. I mean, you can say it, but it’s a stupid thing to say.

In the history of my political life I have never had a candidate that I wanted less to win office than Bush. Maybe Jesse Helms in North Carolina. Bush is the stupidest man I have ever seen hold public office, his southern anti-intellectualism, his hard-core Christianity, his inability to consider every option and his willingness to try war as a first resort make him one of the most dangerous men to hold the reins of this country.

I not only am voting against George Bush, but I argue against all the points I have made in this blog several times a day. I call my family and friends and talk to them about the candidates, I force them to admit that they don’t believe that the environment is in trouble, that they are willing to curtail their civil liberties in order to fight this new kind of war.

But these are not bad people making dumb decisions. You know who loves talk like that? Bush. He would *love* to read that people voting for him are dumb. It fits in to his “evil-doers” “with us or against us” talk. The fact is, the Bush administration is dividing the country, and the left is frickin’ *psyched* about it. Moveon.org compares Bush to Hitler and all the Lefties snap at the computer and holla “oh no he DI’INT”. And smart people who are worried about their children living in fear and dread, who feel like Bush has done what he needed to in order to keep us safe, turn from the comparison, turn from leftists telling them that their fear is “stupidity” and resolve themselves to go to the polls.

Public discourse has been lowered. Yes, it’s been lowered by Drudge and Fox. But we have a responsibility to remember that civility is the only path to civil rights, and that people’s minds can be changed. And we also have to remember that this struggle has been going on for over two hundred years, America has made enormous mistakes that have taken work to correct, but our country was founded on principles that will withstand abuse.

Unlike Spain and France and the U.K., our country is not an accident of location, unlike Pakistan and Israel, our country was not founded on ethnic or religious lines, unlike the USSR, our country was not founded on doctrines that we *hoped* were true. Our country was founded on ideals that are SELF-EVIDENT, the cornerstone of which is the idea that we all should vote and whoever gets the most votes gets to have their office for a little while. Smart people are voting for Bush, and they are making an educated decision, they just have different priorities than I, or my brother, have.

And, we’re making great hip-hop albums.

FELLAS

(yeah?)

FELLAS

(yeah?)

Grab your right nut, make your left one jealous!

Seriously. I’m not wasting time writing this blog, I’m actually writing the blog to stop me from procrastinating.

The Gideon Three are writing a musical. More like building one, which is what you have to do with a musical, and that is playing to all of our strengths and, in a way, all of our weaknesses. It’s both hard and easy, and both at exactly the same time.

Mac was downsized from his job, which hasn’t left him with a *ton* of free time, but it makes it easy for him to come over to the house 2 or 3 days a week and work from 10:30 or 11 until dinner. We sit in adjoining rooms and hammer out different parts of the show and shame each other into actually working. It’s been much harder on him than on me because the three of us have said over and over that we are trying to parody a specific kind of musical, and Mac is really focused on getting the tone just right.

What occurred to me yesterday while we were working is that the tone has to be just right, but that it also has to be a Mac Rogers play. We need to have a character, or two, possibly, who live just outside the world we’ve created for the play, so that the audience understands that the whole thing is a joke. Let me see if I can re-create what happened yesterday.

*****

Mac: GOD! I can’t fucking get started on this scene.

(one hour, fifteen minute pause)

Mac (storming into the office): Okay, what is visible from Liberty Island?

(One hour of google searching pause)

Mac: Do they have an anchor?

Sean: What, on the boat?

Mac: Yeah, do they have an anchor on the boat?

Sean: I don’t think so. I think they just tie the boat up.

********

During all of this, I’ve been writing music. I’ve employed both methods discussed here , along with a little bit of Scott Bullocks method of adding notes, so there is a fair amount of bibbling and scribbling while Mac writes in the other room. I don’t really know what he’s doing in there. But what we ended up with was the following gem from a longer scene. (Sachs, Swallows and Captain are all members of the coast guard that have just landed in New York.)

******

SACHS: Oh captain, let me give the order, oh please please please let me give the order just this one time?

CAPTAIN: Oh, very well, Seaman Sachs.

SACHS: DROP ANCHOR!

(The others move tentatively as if to obey.)

SWALLOWS (aside, to the captain): Where’s – we have an anchor?

CAPTAIN (completely straight): No.

********

(The parentheticals are mine…)

And that’s what the show needs. In the world of the play, these idiot coast guard members are running around wrecking shit right and left, so we need the captain to remind the audience that the writers are in on the joke. It’s a fine line.

So, I’m writing this blog because I just spent forty minutes trying to locate a file I wrote yesterday and played for Jordana last night and now has *vanished* from the computer. I’m writing a blog so I don’t go sit in another room and read a book or watch tv or repeatedly slam my hand in a car door.

Writing music is painfully time consuming, even if you have everything in your head and you’re just trying to fill in notes and make rhythms work. This particular piece of music came to me in a very stream of consciousness way, and I really don’t remember how it went. For years I’ve been dumping memorized stuff out of my head the second I didn’t need it any more, and now I did it for a piece that I actually need.

FUCK. It’s maddening. It was a bass line and a melody line and just an indication of a chord part.

You know what? I think I’m sorta remembering it now.

Um.

Excuse me.

I’ve written two blogs in the last week, neither of which were posted. And not for the reasons you might suspect. They were not posted because I found them either boring or offensive to me, the irony being that normally I’m either boring or offensive to other people and I don’t bother to edit myself then.

Post one: Long diatribe about dealing with political hostilities in America today, about how we have got to find a way to be loving and respectful. We’re basically in a civil war in the US, brother against brother stuff, and someone is going to be elected president in November and when that happens we have to find a way to deal with it. Ya-fucking-awn.

Post two: I drag myself over the coals for a missed opportunity from 1991 when I could have spent six months with a friend in Africa making a difference and instead I stayed here and learned how to tapdance. That friend died in 1993, and I didn’t speak to him for the almost two years after I turned down his offer. Boo-fucking-hoo. I’ll rake myself over the coals in the privacy of my own bedroom, thank you, you really don’t want to see it.

Here are some other things I can’t write about fully.

One: either you think our country has made several collosal mistakes over the last three years, or you think that to do anything other than what we’ve done would have been a collosal mistake. We have a war and a debt, we have a Supreme Court seat (or three) and we have redefined our civil liberties and the phrases “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forest”. If you’re undecided, then spend thirty seconds not being a jack-ass contrarian and make a decision, you douche.

Two: I’m not the perfect actor for every single show, I know that. But when you are producing theater at a certain level, it’s a pretty gutsy move not to cast me. In the world of non-professional theater, it’s hard to find a professional actor my age, with my abilities. I’m not saying you make a mistake when you don’t hire me, I’m saying you are being really brave in trying to make a play on this level without me.

Three: I really enjoy writing for the theater, I really enjoy producing for the theater, and I really enjoy acting in the theater. I also like being with my friends and golf. Almost everything else is a pain in the ass.

Four: Of my family, I’m all that’s left in New York. And that is sometimes lonely. I hate the phone, I really, really fucking hate, more than I can describe, hate the phone. I hate it when it rings, I hate calling people on it, I hate voice mail, I hate everything about it. It feels masturbatory and intrusive and indulgent and… and it’s just uncomfortable holding a goddam phone at my head so I can hear precious words from my sister or dad or friends in LA when I just fucking wish they would move the hell back to New York and I could make a meal and have a glass of mother fucking wine with them instead of listening to the bells and whistles and static and breaking up that happens at the other end.

And why the hell should I stop what I’m doing just to answer the phone? God. I miss everyone, all the time. Sitting at home working on music, I always wish my mom and Mac and Jordana were here. But the phone rings and for the first thirty seconds I’m just sitting there thinking, “this is *nothing* like having people here. This is… this is exactly like having the disembodied voice of someone I *wish* was here being piped through a tiny speaker that makes their voice sound like it’s coming from Marvin the Android (especially when it’s my mom and she’s depressed).” I always calm down and enjoy the conversation after about ten seconds, but I also feel like I’m blowing a bubble, like I have to keep exhaling to make this thing keep happening…

Okay, maybe that thing I can talk about a little.

The point is, right now I’m actually getting stuff done and the things I’m worried about are so much larger than I can express that I feel a bit of shame keeping a blog. Six thousand people are dying a week in the Sudan, and I wrote a blog about how it made me feel, then I punched myself in the nose and deleted it. I didn’t go to Africa when I could have, I’m not going now, I chose to be a fucking actor, so, really, any struggle (however small) is a struggle I have earned by self indulgence and apathy.

That being said, read up on Darfur. Google search “Sudan, Darfur, Chad”, except without the quotes, and read about what is going on. North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. are all “threats” to the US, but in Sudan, the Muslim government is killing black people because they are black, and two million more will die unless the world does something about it.

And I hate talking on the phone. That’s my opinion on the phone. I hate my cell phone.

I’ve not really had grandparents for most of my life. I remember my Dad’s Dad dying when I was about five, and I was really upset about that. He was incredibly nice to me, for some reason, which is strange because he was an extremely cruel man according to legend. I didn’t know my Mom’s Dad or my Dad’s Mom. My Mom’s Mom, the one we called Grandma, was the only grandparent I knew.

(As an aside, I know people need nicknames for the different sets of grandparents, but *MAN* I’m glad we never had any of that “Nanaboo” or “Gobly-Wobly” kind of names for our grandparents. Whenever I heard that, it felt like that American Patrician habit of giving people the most insulting names. Multi-millionaire heirs would be named “Scootsey” or something, and it would freak me out, growing up. We just had “grandma” and a lot of dead people.)

So, now I have grandma, Jordana’s Paternal Grandmother, and Grandpa, Jordana’s Maternal Grandfather, if you can follow the math of that. They both deserve their own blogs, but I’m not doing that right now. I just want to tell a quick story.

Grandpa was a naval Lieutenant in WWII, and he went around the world twice. He wears his service in the same way he wears his Jewishness, as a constant source of his own amusement. Everything in his life is a joke. Not to say he’s a merry old soul. Hardly. He’s about as sardonic and ironic as you can imagine. He makes extensive jokes about his years spent as a young woman in the military, he’s not above a tragic over-reaching pun, and his whole life is spent waving off people who try to tell him nice things. Jordana will say, “I love you Grandpa,” and he’ll say, “What do you know? You’re just a kid…”

This is also a guy born of the depression, who has never rubbed two nickles together for fear that it might lower the value of either coin.

He’s 85 or so years old. I don’t know, maybe 80. And he is still living on his own, doing his own shit. But the important thing to know is that he could give a shit what you think, and everything to him is a joke.

So. He is going about his daily business, walking from one place to another to do his errands, and he realizes that the cup of coffee and bran muffin he had is starting to make him feel a little anxious. He realizes he probably should find a bathroom, so he does what any red-blooded American would do, he goes to McDonald’s.

He takes care of his business in the bathroom and realizes that there is no toilet paper, no paper towels, no kleenex, nothing. To hear him tell the story really makes the story, but he essentially sat there for a minute or two wondering what to do. Then he recalled his days in France and noticed the low-lying sink next to him. He did what any red-blooded American would do. He half sat in the sink and shot water up his backside until he felt pretty clean.

He turned the water off and noticed that not only is there no toilet paper, but, again, there is also no paper towels. Nothing. When pressed what he did, he said, “I dried off with four dollar bills.” but absolutely nobody believed that. He wouldn’t have dried off with four dimes, if it meant losing the forty cents. So he said “what do you think I did?” and Jordana’s mom said, “You used the hot air hand dryer?” and Grandpa’s eyes got really big, he pointed at Lorna and said, “Were you there? I don’t remember seeing you!”

Sorry. I had nothing to blog about today, and this story cracked me up.

I am auditioning for Measure for Measure by George W. Shakespeare tomorrow, and I find myself in an interesting exercise. You take a passage of lines in Shakespeare’s text, and you convert it to your own words. The idea is to a) figure out what the hell you’re talking about and b) to show that the bard never wasted a word. You will never be able to translate him and use less words, he was that economical.

One of the sides (parts of the script chosen by the casting directors to prepare for an audition) is a scene where the Duke is talking to a prisoner. The prisoner has just told the Duke that he is praying for clemency, and that all he has to live on is hope or death. The Duke tells him to choose death over hope.

Here’s the passage, with my translations

******

Be absolute for death; either death or life

Shall thereby be the sweeter.

(If you are probably going to be killed in the morning, it would be best to decide that death is what you want. If you manage to survive, awesome. If you get killed, then you’ll be getting what you want.)

Reason thus with life:

(Yeah, I know, you can’t really choose death. Okay, then think about life in the following way. Address the idea of “life” and say:)

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep:

(If life is taken from me, I’ve lost something that only fools would put too much stock in.)

a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,

Hourly afflict:

(Life is no more than the wind that comes out of you, and that weak-ass wind is affected by every single little disturbance in nature. Anything that happens from the farthest point in the sky to where you stand now can shift that breath off course, every single minute of every single day…)

merely, thou art death’s fool;

For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun

And yet runn’st toward him still.

(“Life” is, by definition, just postponing the inevitable. You’re gonna die, death knows it. Every day that you delay death you are still spending one more day getting closer to it. In this way, choosing life is betraying the choice you will have to make one day anyway, you may as well choose it now.)

Thou art not noble;

For all the accommodations that thou bear’st

Are nursed by baseness.

(“Life” is actually just a collection of the lowest acts that we are capable of. All of the higher aspects to being a man are actually in defiance of the urges that life pushes us towards.)

Thou’rt by no means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm.

(There is no bravery in continuing to live, this tenuous ridiculous existence that pales in the face of lying in our eventual crypt. Being alive, acting in fear of death, is cowardly.)

Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st

Thy death, which is no more.

(Your whole life, you’re tired. The act of living is exhausting and the only time you aren’t exhausted is when you sleep, something that you do all the time and wish you could do more of. Which is weird because death is no more than eternal peaceful rest, and you are terrified of that.)

Thou art not thyself;

For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains

That issue out of dust.

(There is no “life”, pre se. The thing that you think of as life is actually just a mass of synapses and atoms that you’ve collected and control for a few years before the inevitable destruction arives and you have to let all those particles go back to the cosmos.)

Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,

And what thou hast, forget’st.

(There is no peace in existence. Every day is a struggle to deal with the shit you’ve already got and to try to get more shit. You don’t even know what all shit you already *have* and yet you think by going out and getting *more* shit, somehow that will make you happy. And it never does.)

Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,

After the moon.

(Every single day, life seems to be something different. There is no consistency in existence, it changes and shifts and splinters the same way that the moon is always in a different aspect and a different place in the sky.)

If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear’s thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee.

(You can’t take it with you where you’re going, and you are going there. It doesn’t matter how much wealth or stuff you amass, you’re gonna lose it once you get to where you’re going. Plus, the more stuff you think you have, the more relationships you have to manage, the more you share your life and others share their lives with you, the harder it is to make the journey.)

Friend hast thou none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,

The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner.

(Look, even if you think there is some kind of good in life because you share it with the people you love, I’ve got news for you. Even your frickin’ *kids* are gonna be old and miserable and die one day. If you leave your fortune and your stores of happiness to your friends, if you leave it to your offspring, there will be a day when they will be laid up with horrible pain and sores and they’re gonna moan and turn over and say, “Christ, I wish I was just fucking *dead*.”)

(There is an alternate view of these words which is “even your kids are hoping you’ll die soon” and that may be closer to the text, but I’m not playing it that way.)

Thou hast nor youth nor age,

But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,

Dreaming on both;

(You can’t ascribe any happiness to being alive and young, or alive and old, because the fact is whichever one you are, you are always wishing you had the other in a half-alive daze.)

for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld;

(When you are a kid, you’re broke and you have to rely on the old people to provide for you, the whole time knowing that a) you’re gonna become old one day and b) when you get old it’s gonna suck.)

and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant.

(So now you’re old, you have the money and prestige and power you had to beg for when you were a kid, but now you’ve totally lost your sex drive, you don’t care about the people in your life, you have no energy or vitality and you look like shit, so what difference does it make that you have all this awesome stuff?)

What’s yet in this

That bears the name of life?

(Seriously, how does it make any sense to choose anything else? There’s nothing worth chosing in being alive.)

Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.

(And still, people don’t realize all the ways that I just described life as a thousand times worse than death. We walk around terrified of the one thing that can bring us any kind of peace and rest. It’s only in death that everything that is currently wrong with our lives can be made right.)

****

And when you do a Shakespeare play, or at least when I do, you translate every goddam line like that. It’s actually sometimes a good idea to do with any play. Subtext, y’know, it’s that chewy nougat center of the text.

My mom is suffering through a trip to Utah. She grew up a mormon, but has always been a political liberal in her heart so, regardless of her feelings about Jesus (or rather, because of them) she has a hard time being around the mormons any more. It’s a tough job, believing yourself to be a rational person and being surrounded by religious zealots.

About ten years ago, when we were all still in college (or pretending to be) an arts professional of some kind came to speak at Carolina, to meet with the up and coming professionals. For some reason, the only two people who met with this dude were my best man Mac and my best wo-man Jordana. They joke about the meeting (he told Jordana to part her hair down the middle- y’know, for career success) but one thing that the guy said to Mac stayed with him and has haunted our conversations ever since. He said, “people don’t buy intellectually. They buy emotionally and then justify the purchase intellectually.”

And that’s where we are with politics, religion and science. Do you go to church once a week? Then you are going to find a way to justify the war in Iraq. Because you are voting for the guy who says Jesus is his favorite philosopher. Do you never go to church? Then you are going to be against the war in Iraq. Because you are voting for the guy that will protect our civil rights regardless of theoretical moral imperatives.

But none of that has anything to do with the war in Iraq. Going to war in Iraq with little regard for the fiscal fall out to the United States is a *liberal* action. It is the *left* that has always raised their voices against imperialist governements, against tyrants who trample on the human rights of their people. We bitched and screamed during the 90s because Clinton wouldn’t stop the bloodshed in Africa and Southern Europe.

(Don’t fucking start with me, Iraq is a retarded war. Iraq should have been 17th on our list of countries to invade. We all know it, I’m not supporting the war. This war, I believe, will prove to be the undoing of America as a superpower, like when England tried to fight the French and the Americans at the same time in the 18teens. I love America, the idea, the points upon which our country was founded, and this war is going to prove to be the end of our great experiment. It won’t happen overnight, but we are fucked, and it’s because of this war. So don’t get all up in my face, that’s not my point.)

The real problem we have is that Bush attacked the muslims because he believed God told him to, and to avenge his father. It’s all wonderful and Shakespearean, but those of us who don’t believe that God speaks to people are outraged and terrified. If this man believes that the end of days is approaching, what’s to stop him from making irrational decisions? If this man thinks that Jesus is coming back soon, he’s going to act like there aren’t another 250 thousand years before our planet gets too close to the sun for comfort. And we’re horrified because we feel that Bush may not even be aware that our planet is round, let alone getting closer to the sun. And I’m pretty sure we’re wrong about that, Bush knows a lot more than we give him credit for.

Now, I’ve got almost no common ground with Bush. It’s weird, they’ve picked a guy to be president with whom I have *nothing* politically in common. His father was pro-choice and not terribly religious, Reagan was, y’know, in SAG, but this guy I don’t think I could have a conversation with him. I don’t understand the way his mind works, I don’t understand why he says the things he does, I don’t understand or agree with a single action he has taken since becoming president.

But I come by that with a shitload of reading. (Sometimes, knowing I’m an idiot works to my advantage, I have to do research or I’ll be stuck there with my pants around my ankles). I don’t agree with half of what Kerry wants to do, but I’ve also accepted that I’m an artist living in New York, married to a Jew, who played golf all day on Monday. I’m not a regular guy, and I have to accept that the country shouldn’t bow to my will. I can’t expect the full fiscal weight of the government would go toward creating lasting pieces of art at the expense of large corporations. I’ll vote that way, but I know I’m in the minority.

I’m just trying to think before I buy. Don’t call the president an idiot just because he believes that Jesus told him to invade Iraq. Almost everyone in America believes that God has talked to someone, and even those who don’t, do believe in some kind of higher power that is helping them, leading them. Call him an idiot because he believes a war in Iraq will bring peace to America, which is stunningly wrong-headed. Never in history has this been true, and our President made his decision long before he had enough information to even make a guess.

All I’m asking is, are you saying he’s an idiot because of the Jesus thing, or because of the bad policy thing? On the other hand, are you supporting the tax cuts and the war because you think they really have improved our lives, or is it because you think this man loves the same man you do? Or more, I’m not asking that question, I’m saying that it’s an important distinction. It’s important to cast our vote intellectually before we let ourselves justify it emotionally. When someone challenges you on your position, listen to what they’re saying and then go do some research. It’s got to be better than dismissing it out of hand, and it’s the only chance we have of stopping the impending destruction of America.

My family are a bunch of jerks, or so the conventional wisdom goes. We’re all a gaggle of self interested, self obsessed navel gazers who feel massively entitled and who overestimate not only our talent and intelligence, but also the value of our opinions. We are the kind of people who put other people down in order to feel better about ourselves and we do strut around stinking of moral certainty. In short, because we are best in small doses, we see ourselves as Saffron, the most sought after and expensive spice, when actually we are probably more like chili powder, stinging and acrid in large amounts.

I should just end the blog right here.

The truth has no similarity to the fantasy, though. It is true that the five of us kids have a certain identity that a lot of other family’s don’t. We definitely see ourselves as offspring from a single source in a way that almost none of my other friends do. Which is strange, considering we don’t share all the same biological parents, but we are definitely attached to each other. We are all in our thirties and forties, and yet we still try to spend Christmas morning opening presents in someone’s living room together.

Pathetic, really.

Now, here’s the truth…

Michelle is one of the most maternal and non-confrontational people I have ever known. She gathers people to her now in the same way she used to collect wounded souls even as a small child. She has actually given so much of herself during her life so often, that her reserves are starting to run out. It is physically impossible for her to stop caring about you, even if you’re a jerk, sometimes especially if you’re a jerk. If I were to go into a battle, Michelle, above any guy I know, is who I would take. And I mean an actual battle, a physical battle with guns and knives. Because I know Michelle would make the most humane decision at any moment, and I know she would never, never, never quit. She would die trying to carry me out of the jungle, she wouldn’t know it was time to cut her losses. She has stayed at jobs and with fellas that weren’t worth ten seconds of her time, but she did it because she cannot find a way to not care about the outcome.

Ian is best known for his constant womanizing, which is hilarious. Sure, he spent about ten years trying to get girls to like him, but that’s ignoring the first 22 years when he was so completely bent sideways by his responsibilities to the people around him that he couldn’t bring himself to even *kiss* a girl for fear of what it all might mean. Ian was a hopeless poet growing up, savaged by the ignorance and small mindedness of his grade school and junior high. It was Ian that told me, point blank, about how important it is to listen to people, to find common ground, and it was that lesson, more than anything else, that made me an actor. His life now is somewhat luxurious, but his casualness and so-called dilletantism has been earned with decades of loneliness and panic that he was keeping from everyone except whomever happened to share a bedroom with him in high school.

Steve has embraced his own curmudgeon-ness, doing his damnedest to try to reinforce the worst you might think of him. He *loves* being seen as the grouch. If I call him, he checks his caller ID, answers the phone without speaking, waits for me to say, “um, hello?” before saying, “you called me, whadyawant?” And he does this because he doesn’t want it widely broadcast that he is actually a manic crusader for the happiness of the people he cares about. When I was living a life of quiet desperation (who am I kidding, it was the loudest “quiet desperation” you’ve ever heard) it was Steve who would pay for stuff for me and ignore me when I thanked him. Our whole lives, it was always Steve who gave the best presents, who would remember Birthdays, who would listen to a problem and then find a solution and enact it without discussion. Steve has led the hardest life of anyone in my family, the most plagued by bad luck and circumstance, and he’s always responded with generosity and kindness that the world has yet to pay him back with.

Kent has always been a sort of gentle giant, but in order to understand fully his grace in this world, you have to look to his kids. He has two teenage sons, both of whom adore him and consider him a friend. I had a lot of friends growing up who thought their dads were their buddies, but these were always pushover jackass dads, the ones who would buy us pot. On the subway, Kent said to Sean Patrick, “Dude, get your fucking head out of your ass.” and Sean said, “that’s okay, I’ll stand.” and Kent chuckled. I just about died. It’s hard work, being a dad nowadays. I suppose it always has been, but right now it seems particularly tough, and if you met Sean Patrick and Lucas, you would think Kent was a genius. To me, he’s always been the guy I could be if I got really lucky, happily married, music coming out of my basement and an example of level headed spirituality and intelligent kindness for my kids.

But, other than that, we’re pretty much assholes. And, if you get on the wrong side of any one of us, you’ll have all five of us pricks giving you shit.