There are two ways that art and artists are judged, their initial impact and their historical impact. We have become a world, over the last fifty years, where initial impact is hard to define because “buzz” has taken it’s place. If I were to say the names “Harrison Ford” or ” Tom Hanks” or “Dustin Hoffman”, you would either be thrilled or roll your eyes depending on what 6 to 18 month period we’re talking about over the last thirty years.

So, I look to the Beatles. Obviously, we are going to be talking about Lennon/McCartney/Harrison in two hundred years the same way we talk about Mozart now. They were a marketing magnet, four handsome and charming young men who were exotic, foreign and somehow still human, but we won’t remember the interviews or the exit from Candlestick Park or Bag-ism. People will still be studying their “aeolian cadences” and backwards looped caliopy music, along with the incredible simple elegance of “Across The Universe”, “I Will”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “She Said, She Said”.

But these were guys who wrote music, and you can’t judge them the same way you judge an actor. An actor has a job that is much smaller and more specific. I think I’ve quoted Jascha Heifetz here before when he said that he had no legacy because he had never composed.

(Sorry, one other of my favorite Heifetz quotes, “I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First, to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly, to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven”)

Heifetz is wrong about his legacy. His is the model that all young violinists look to when they are practicing. Not to make this about him, but he said something to the effect of, “If I don’t practice one day, I know it. If I don’t practice two days, the critics know it. If I don’t practice three days, the public knows it.” And his dilligence is what makes you saw away at your scales for hours every day, knowing you are gonna end up in the middle of the second violin section of the Witchita Symphony Orchestra, surviving on $15 an hour students and four nursed scotch-n-soda’s a day.

Actors are in the same boat, pushed on by the same dream. We take every single show we can, and many of us try “teaching”, what amounts to private coaching in whatever “technique” we’ve studied (man, the different techniques and staggering failures of most of them is subject for an entirely different blog), and we do this half because we hope some day to play Richard the Third, but mostly because we hope some day to live lives as actors.

Marlon Brando wasn’t that guy. I’m not saying he wasn’t diligent, by all accounts he was. And his acting, such as it is, is a good representation of a certain theory. But when are we gonna break down and just admit that it was mostly hype? Brando was gorgeous, but he wasn’t any better an actor than, say, Hugh Jackman. The fact that some people mention Brando in the same breath with Olivier is a crime.

Because that is where we mention him, as one of the three or four greatest actors ever. But his work never meant shit to me. Gene Hackman, Ellen Burstyn, Gena Rowlands, Dustin Hoffman (who I know is one of the other names mentioned), Emma Thompson and of course DeNiro have all meant way more to me than anything Brando did. Y’know what? Kevin frickin’ Bacon is a better actor and Nicole Kidman is basically just as good.

In fact, take away the bongo drums and the beat poet, man-from-the-streets bullshit, and Brando is essentially Nicole Kidman. A person of enormous and breath taking beauty who is willing to work as hard as humanly possible on their craft, but whose work will never mean that much to me. Give me Katherin Hepburn and Kevin Kline any day.

My point is this. When George Harrison died, we certainly mourned, but we didn’t recognize the way we should have. Brando was partly responsible for the art of acting being taken away from actors and being handed to models in Method class. The studios get the prettiest people they can and keep the edits short to hide their inability and they make people think Josh Hartnett and Jared Leto are actors. Brando paved the way for every pretty boy who mumbles, and he aint no hero of mine.

My wife comes from a line of women who have relentlessly prepared for the apocalypse. I could joke about it, except for the fact that since they are survivors of what damn near was an apocalypse for the Jews, the jokes quit being funny immediately. When I disagree with Jordana’s dad about politics, he smiles and, very kindly, reminds me that there is actually evil intent in nations, and I can’t really argue with him about it.

I come from a line of savages. My ancestors worked in the coalmines and probably smoked pipes when they weren’t breathing in black dust. I’m fairly certain that I would be considered middle age if I went back to visist my family in the 1700s. They were probably eating whatever food they could catch or pull out of the ground and lived to be almost 40. Jordana’s family probably had a modest income and a fully stocked larder.

But it’s simply racist to assume any kind of ethnic identity past a couple of decades, and the truth is that Jordana and I grew up in almost identical struggling middle class families. The comparative wealth that her parents and some members of my family enjoy only came into being once we were nearly out of the house, (if, in our cases, “out of the house” is something either of us has achieved, which is debatable) so we have to go by how the seventies and eighties affected our lives.

I was talking to Ian the other day, and I wondered aloud how the hell we ran out of oil for the boiler in England. Then it occurred to me that it happened not once, but *many* times. In one winter. The frickin’ *heater* *GAT NO HEAT*. We were children and no-one filled the heater. We all slept in one bed with a space heater pointed under the blankets. More examples:

1) I started using the oven in first Iowa, meaning I was less than seven. I remember cooking. I burned myself on the oven door when I was nine.

2) I started blowing off school in fourth grade. Often, I just came home. No-one seemed to notice or mind.

3) Our babysitters smoked pot with us. Of course, some of these pot smoking babysitters were brothers of ours, but still.

(I’m not done with this list, but MAN, I’m enjoying the emails that are currently spinning around in my family’s heads right now, HEHEHE)

4) Friends of ours were either dying or ending up in full body casts. Off the top of my head, I can name five people, close friends and babysitters, who died or who almost died.

5) We ate candy.

6) We played a game wherein the object was to jump off the stairs. Sounds simple right? Yeah, well, it was. You just kept jumping off the stairs until something happened. I ended up in a wheelchair.

7) I started drinking in Junior High. Everyone else I knew did as well.

8) We stole my dad’s car and drove around all night. He basically caught us, but didn’t really get all that mad. We were 13.

Okay, okay, enough. This whole list is mostly a joke, because I have a fucked up sense of humor. But the fact is, I rode my bike with no safety helmet from the time I learned how until I was in college and learned better. But, that was the 70s.

Jordana’s family had some of these things (I doubt they had bike helmets either)(in fact, it was only kids whose skulls hadn’t fully developed that wore bike helmets), but her parents were obsessed with making sure nothing bad happened to her, while mine were just trying to survive themselves.

So, there comes the debate. If I just toss my kids in the lake to teach them to swim, but Jordana’s got them wearing water wings (and sunblock)(and insect repellent)(and a snorkel)(and she dives in after them to make sure they don’t drown) which one of us is right? Will they learn to swim, or learn total dependence? Jordana is a million miles ahead of me in taking care of shit, she’s got her everyday and extraordinary emergencies dealt with before they happen. But she sometimes has a hard time letting go and enjoying stuff. I’ll be the life of the party, having a ball and making everyone laugh, only to find myself vomitting all night because I didn’t take even a moment to plan ahead.

My guess is that it’s our job to do it Jordana’s way, and it’ll be the theoretical kids job to take ridiculous chances. Plus, with the way I was raised, there will probably be lit candles in the nursery and unmarked bleach containers right next to the formula. And, if Jordana doesn’t remind me to take care of it, at least one winter, our heat will be turned off.

I found myself in the familiar position this weekend of defending hip-hop, although not nearly as familiar as it is to some people who have actually bought into the hip-hop lifestyle. I have actually gotten to the point now where I would rather listen to bad hip-hop than average pop music, I’m finding that pop music is saying less and less to me and I just cant’ stomach it.

The truth is, for a lot of my family and extended friends who don’t listen to hip-hop, there is nothing on the radio for them. It’s hard to learn to like rap music, you have to spend a few months getting what you’re listening for and for people in their thirties and forties, there really isn’t any point. Everyone in my family has a musical point where we intersect, we all tend to love jazz vocal standards, although my guess is that Ian and Kent vibrate the least in this circle. From there, we all kind of spiral off.

My Dad- loves the big boys. It’s actually from him that I get my love of hip-hop, although I’d never in a million years even try to play anything for him. He loves dynamic rhythmic beatings, he loves it when composers lay it down hard. Rite of Spring, baby, Eroica. It doesn’t need to be bombastic, that’s not what I mean, he loves the great arias as well, but not the Queen of the Night stuff as much. Gymnastics don’t mean as much to him as elegance and strength.

If he listened to hip-hop, he’d like it when people represent. He’d like Ghettomusick by Outkast, the fast switches from 4/4 to 12/8, the anti-melodic lines. He’s got Tchaikovsky, he doesn’t need Big Boi, but it’s also why he doesn’t listen to the radio.

My Mom- loves smart. Her own music is as smart as it is heart wrenching, and her love of word play is as keen as her love of melody. Her lyrics are informed on every possible level, there is never a forced meaning and there is also *never* a forced rhyme or a reversed verb-noun to get the rhyme. She is the ultimate improviser, always saying “yes, and?” at the end of a musical phrase. She loves the joke in fugues, she loves the rhythmic power of 60s guitar music, but she is demanding as hell of a higher thought applied to theory. She sweats her music like TS Eliott did his poetry.

If she listened to hip-hop, she’d like No Regrets by Aesop Rock. You’d have to explain to her that the rhymes are forced on purpose sometimes, like “Bidin’ My Time” by Ira Gershwin, but the spare strings and synth pads sneaking in and out with the layered lyrics, all the while telling the story of a single woman’s artistic pursuit, would fill her cup right up.

Kent- I’ll use his own quotes. One time he said he likes music that sounds like a dishwasher has been thrown down the basement stairs full of cutlery. Another time, he said he likes music that sounds like you’ve been sucked out the window of an airplane and went through the jet engine. He was much younger when he said these things. He seems to have taken this sensibility and married it now to melody, but he comes by it honestly. I think, while making incredible tracks of music noise, he heard my mom’s voice say “what’s next?”

Kent is hip-hop. I can’t point out anything I like that he hasn’t already heard.

Steve- likes drama. Steve is probably the best musician in the family, and the first one to be disenchanted with it. He hadn’t played violin in years when he grabbed mine and launched into the Bach Double, a piece I had struggled with for months, and played it like he was humming along with a tune in the car. It could be that the single voice of a single instrument never made enough tension for him, even multi-timbral instruments weren’t going to make the sweeping rhapsodies he heard in his head. Steve seems drawn to guys like Verdi and Thomas Newman more than Mozart. He actually has a lot in common with my Dad.

If Steve listened to Hip-hop, he’d like the entire Aquemini album by Outkast. I actually think their later stuff would be too poppy for him. He’d also like The Roots, anything by them.

Ian- The famous pop apologist. Ian taught me to love The Brandenburg concertos because he wouldn’t stop playing them, and then he’d turn around and make me listen to Utopia’s “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” when all I wanted to listen to was early Prince records. He has the same question in his head that comes from my mom when he makes music “Then what?”, which actually can be a hell of a ghost haunting your brain. After playing a song for him about fifteen years ago, he said “Why don’t you try writing in a different key” and I said, “This is just the song, I can capo it in any key” and I think we both realized we weren’t speaking eachother’s language. He was asking why I didn’t try harder, and I was wondering why he wanted it to be so hard. I sometimes wonder if I love his music because I’m hearing it through my fondness for him, or if I actually love it like he does.

If Ian listened to Hip-Hop, he’d like “Dooin It” by Common. It’s possible that the first words (mother fucker, move back…) might make him wonder what the hell I’m talking about, but actually, that whole album “Like Water For Chocolate” is all stuff he’d love. Sean Patrick dumped that on my hard drive for me, and it is the JAM.

Michelle- likes it woodsy and chunky and full of raisins and berries. This is a person who is genuinely touched to the heart by the sound of an acoustic guitar and two harmonic voices. She likes celebration, hates overt aggression, and likes the sound of ringing strings and air through brass. How do you tell a granola girl that scary black men with machines can speak to her?

The Roots. P.M. Dawn. There are a bunch of groups, new and old, that are wrapped in paisley and don’t use machines. More than that, though, Michelle could use a dose of anger in her music, and there are lots of ladies out there who are all about empowerment. If she heard the unedited version of “Work It” by Missy Eliott, I can assure you, she’d be smiling.

I don’t think any of this is going to happen. The truth is that if any of my family (except for Kent) heard these songs, they wouldn’t make it to their Ipod favorites, because it takes some inoculation, it takes some sitting in the choir listening to the sermons. It takes some getting used to. I’m grateful that friends like Mike and Ehren made me listen to stuff, Mike sometimes holding me hostage in his car until the song was over, not allowing any talking. I was converted pretty easily, but I’m also the dumbest, by a wide margin, guy in our family so getting me to drink the Kool-Aid is as hard as handing it to me.

I ought to write more.

I’m having some problems with my shoulder that are feeling more like actual problems than “faggotry”. I wish I could just go in to a doctor and have him start with one end and work his way all the way up and give me pills and stretches so everything would get fixed.

Of course, what would he do to fix my heart?

I sometimes get uncomfortable at parties where there seems to be people who can help your career. In fact, I become belicose pretty quick. I also seem to have a deep and abiding dislike for most people who share the exact same passions I do, and I’m not sure why. I can sit down across from someone who has a passion for producing and acting much like mine and realize I have *nothing* to say to them.

I also tend to have more disrespect for decorum than most artistic people I know. I don’t feel things as keenly, or rather am pretty unaware of how keenly other people feel things, so I generally say something to alienate someone. Which is nice.

I said, what would he do to fix my heart?

Spiderman Two was just fine, but I’d like to go to no more movies in fucking Queens. The burroughs are starting to weigh on me. I don’t want kids around me anymore. Little kids are fine, but I don’t want to have to put up with assholes like me. If 34 year old me could see 16 year old me, I’d hope I’d kick my ass, and I mean it the other way. It’d be cool to punch myself in the face and watch 18 year old scars appear under my eyes.

My Ipod brings me great joy. More joy than a doctor would, I believe.

Okay. Lame update, I know, but I’ll post more tomorrow, seriously.

I’ve had a problem ever since I was a little kid. Sometimes I get so mad that I actually have a fit. When I was a teenager, these fits would last for two or three minutes, me just clenched fists and curled legs snarling in a corner. When I was a kid, they would last indefinitely. It might even be why one of my teacher’s thought I was epileptic.

But here’s the thing, I was pretty much in control of them. I mean, I have these fits because it feels so much better to have them than to not have them. I’m not epileptic, although it would be awesome to be epileptic because then I could be, y’know, shakespearean and everything.

I took Jordana’s computer in to be fixed. The first place wanted fuckloads of money, so I took it to the Apple store, made an appointment for three hours later, then sat and waited for 45 minutes after the appointment time, making me an hour late for a meeting with Mac. I went back to pick it up today.

They fixed the computer’s plug, and they told me to make sure it was working. I needed an address and phone number anyway, so I tried to load “livingartsnyc.com” only to discover that the N, the Y and the H weren’t working. Good thing I checked, they brought it in the back and fixed it.

I brought it home and now, Jordana says the Shift key doesn’t work.

So, let me get this straight. I got the *PLUG* fixed, and because I only sampled a *lot* of the letters, but didn’t actually try to use *ALL* of them, I didn’t find out what the problem was? A PROBLEM I DIDN”T FUCKING HAVE WHEN I BROUGHT THE MACHINE IN IN THE FIRST PLACE?!!

It’s like bringing a suit in to get it pressed, and getting it back with all the buttons ripped off. No, it isn’t, it’s stupider than that. You can see buttons on a suit getting ripped during normal shit. It’s like getting the plug fixed on your computer and then finding out the buttons on the other side of the computer don’t work. It’s that stupid. It’s fucking stupid beyond comparison.

When Jordana told me, my whole body locked up. I’m too old to do it now the way I used to, my temper tantrums now are just, y’know, this blog. And you see how often I don’t write. But she told me and I managed to walk out of the room before my whole upper body locked up for about thirty seconds. I have little fingernail half moons in my hand and I totally threw my back out.

And maybe that’s what it is. As men, we get older and we just don’t have the flexibility and muscle tone to react the same way we did when we were fifteen. We *feel* all the same ways, we just don’t have the strength to carry out most of our plans.

You know what the apple store should do? They should fix it for free? Yeah, they should. But more than that. Since I had to wait so long, and since carrying around the goddam laptop on the mother fucking subway is such a pain in the ass, they should drive out here to my house and pick up the computer and bring it back to apple and fix it, and quickly, and then they should come back and pay me for the time it took for me to wait in line in their fucking store. Even $25 an hour is fine. By my count, I paid them $105 for the part, but I had a total of four hours of waiting, so they should drive their i-asses out to my house, fix my computer, and give me $95.

Bitches.

There are times, regardless of what I said in my last post, where auditioning feels exactly right. When I went in to read for City Of Angels, I told the music director that I knew the score really well, I just needed to make sure I had the words right, so he let me read over his shoulder. He later told me that he knew I was sight-reading, and that it was such a relief to know he wouldn’t have to drag another idiot actor through a score that hard. That was one of those auditions.

I almost always claim to know the score. For some reason it impresses people better than sight reading, mostly because the director and casting director think you’ve done a ton of research on the role.

Since I’ve been in New York, I’ve done almost nothing but premieres. In fact, now that I think about it, everything I’ve done except for A Soldier’s Play has been the first time anyone’s done these plays. Which is cool.

I went in and auditioned for a new musical two or three days ago, and it’s one of those situations you really don’t dare ask for because it’s just so wonderful. The playwright is great, the music director/composer is great, the hall is really nice and they’re doing the whole thing with no cues, no sets, no costume changes, so the whole mess is just gonna *happen*, us actors doing material that I actually love. When I went in and auditioned, it was like seeing old friends, except that I’ve never met these people before. So, it was perfect, and they just called and officially offered me the role.

The role is that of a spoiled Mayor/CEO who’s not a bad guy but his heart is in the wrong place. He’s obnoxious and larger than life. For those three of you who’ve followed my so-called career over the last four years, it’s Mayor Poppy/ CEO of Buzz Cola and Paul Kelleher’s Boss all roled into one.

I’ve got another show this summer, but rehearsals start about a week after this show closes, so it sorta works out perfectly. On top of that, Gideon Productions had one of the best meetings of our existence last night where we broke down the structure of our new show, coming next year, called “Fleet Week”. It’s a musical featuring the coast guard, the navy, the city of New York, Ed Koch and The Statue of Liberty. Seriously, she’s one of the characters.

If I could make five dollars an hour for the time I spend working on my career, I’d be a millionaire, but in lieu of that, I’ll take rehearsal as payment.

I am a huge fan of reality TV.

“Which shows do you like best?” I hear you cry out.

Almost any reality show is fine with me. I like the discovery channel and I like the science channel. And PBS almost always has something awesome on it. My favorite channel though is the food network. I actually find myself really liking or really not liking the hosts of these shows based on…

“Wait a minute, those aren’t reality shows”, you say.

Why aren’t they reality shows?

“Those are just shows about people doing stuff and not playing characters… Okay, wait, I know that sounds exactly like The Amazing Race, but seriously, you know the difference.”

No, I don’t actually.

“I mean, The Swan? The Swan is a reality show”

Right, The Swan is on Fox or something, and MTV has “I Want A Famous Face”, which I guess counts as reality, and then the Science Channel has an *identical* show called “Surgery Success” or something and the Discover/Health channel basically shows nothing but cosmetic surgery.

“What about The Real World? That’s a bullshit reality show.”

Which is identical to “Frontier House” on PBS… You don’t actually know what you’re talking about, do you?

“You’re right, Sean. I’m so frickin stupid. Crap.”

Here’s what I don’t want to see on TV. I don’t want to see the insides of a person. That’s why I can’t handle the surgery shows. It makes me wish I wasn’t watching TV. I don’t want to see famous people doing stuff that they aren’t famous for. So, that cuts out basically everything on the E! Channel, which I wish I could block on my cable box. I’m not a big fan of either special effects or badly written characters suffering for no other reason than to increase “Drama”, so the former cuts out *every* sci-fi thing on TV and the later cuts out almost all night time drama. Even The West Wing is punishing its characters just for living, and I’m not enjoying it.

So, I end up watching almost nothing but documentaries and movies. I don’t watch the prime time reality shows because they have bad writing and characters suffering purely for Drama. American Idol was fun to watch because I watch it with a group of people who know less about music than I do and they hang on my every word, other than that it makes me feel like I’m at an audition, which is the single worst feeling I’ve had other than finding love notes written to my ex-wife by someone else.

Actually, even that had a certain possible vindication involved, auditions are like tooth surgery with no pain killers on teeth that are still healthy.

People say they don’t like reality shows, but there’s something more specific they don’t like. Every reality show has something for someone. I personally like the idea of The Swan, that they would take normal people with unfortunate looks and change their lives by shaping their appearance. There’s something so Jane Goodall about that, mimicking the monkeys to be accepted. I couldn’t watch it because I knew they were gonna put a camera up someone’s nose and that makes me sick, but I still thought it was a cool idea.

The Simple Life? Unless these girls are going down on each other, then it’s celebrities doing stuff they aren’t famous for.

Did you know that on the E! Channel, there is a show called “Celebrities Uncensored”, a show where they broadcast video shot of celebrities trying to be left alone while they walk through airports and leave restaurants? It’s a show that purchases and broadcasts video of famous people being hassled. The Guinness Book Of World Records stopped featuring records that were dangerous or stupid because people had begun to be really unsafe trying to get in to the book, but the E! Channel not only found an outlet for this hideous behavior, it created a culture for these people, the ones who spend their lives provoking famous people and videotaping it, wherein they could become rich themselves.

So, don’t hold your scorn for “Road Rules” or whatever. These people are retarded and they want to be famous and they tried to get on these shows. Think about Sean Penn in “Sweet and Lowdown” or “Dead Man Walking”, think of his talent and ability and the harrowing he went through to make the characters he’s made, and now realize that there is a TV show dedicated to kicking the door open while he’s taking a crap and filming it.

“God, you’re right. I can’t believe how stupid I am. I think I’ll go turn the TV off and read a book… I just love John Grisham, don’t you?”

When I was twenty, I was cast as the lead in a musical called “No, No, Nannette”, a title that still brings my brother Ian to he knees with laughter and which would probably send my friend Ehren running from the room. Two interesting facts about this musical; One, it gave the world the song “Tea For Two” and Two, it was produced by the guy who owned the Red Sox and in order to produce it he traded away Babe Ruth for cash to the Yankees, thus cursing his baseball team for ever.

At least, I think it was the Red Sox.

Anyway, the show has a lot of tap dancing in it, and for some unknown reason I got the tap lead. The theater where we were doing the show was a 1500 seat proscenium stage with an hydraulic pit and 36 fly lines. It was the most beautiful theater I have ever performed in, easily 120 feet from wing to wing, easily 40 feet from the floor to the proscenium arch, catwalks a hundred feet in the air, and an old hardwood floor which made no noise but had just a touch of give.

I had three or so tap solos, and I really couldn’t do them very well. I was good enough that I understood the language, but I just couldn’t really pull them off. So, every day, at about one, I would go in through the scene shop and talk to the guys building shit in there. From there I could sneak into the dressing rooms and from the dressing rooms I could sneak on to the stage.

I would close my eyes in the dressing room and feel my way to the stage door. Not for drama, although I wasn’t beyond doing shit for drama even when noone was there- I was that kind of twenty year old- but so my eyes would dilate completely. Once I got on the stage, more often than not the only light was from the exit signs that lined the audience, and the drop off the front of the stage was about eight feet. Even worse would be the drop into the pit, about thirty feet when it was down.

If I walked on to the stage with my eyes closed, when I opened them I could see pretty well. I would change in to my tap shoes and start doing the steps, really slowly. For four or five weeks, every day, when everyone else went to lunch and did homework or whatever it is that normal people do, I spent four hours on the stage dancing in almost complete darkness and silence. I only left when I needed dinner.

It’s no wonder I was about 50 pounds lighter then than I am now.

Yesterday there were two moments while watching TV. “Elaine Stritch at The Liberty” was playing on HBO, and she talked about starting rehearsals for “Company”, and I just about lost it. To have been there, then. To have been in that cast, to have been able to be with Sondheim and Hal Prince, to have been there when American musicals were something other than clever and snotty.

And then, on ESPN, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James were being interviewed in a show called “Two On Two”. They were asked who would win if they were all playing in their prime and the answers fell apart into shit talking and goofing around, but then Magic said, “You know what? The game would never end. If the four of us were in here playing the game of basketball, as long as we got food brought in and could sleep every now and then, the game would never end. We’d just keep playing.”

And that’s what it is. Do I want to audition for stuff? No. Do I like the business side of the business? No. But if it was just me and the people I work with in a theater making plays for the rest of my life, if I had enough to eat and could sleep every now and then, I’d never leave. I’d never cook another dinner, I’d never go to another bar, I’d never turn on a TV.

And sometimes it feels like I could do it, I could make a life for myself. I know my eyes are closed, and I know most of the time I’m not even in the dressing room yet, I’m still in the scene shop, but I think I’m feeling my way, and sometimes it feels like I might have found the stage door. And I’m just putting it out there, if given the chance, I won’t leave. If I find the door and I make it inside, I’ll starve before I leave again.

Okay, pull up a chair. Talking about the abortion debate is preaching to the choir and it always is, so don’t read any of this. You already made up your mind, there’s no point, but I’m doing this anyway because if there’s anything I hate more than someone stomping on my civil liberties it’s using my time well. If you don’t want to deal with too much ranting, jump straight to point eleven. Try to skip the stuff in bold right above it if you can.

Point One: Sexual release is one of the things we are here on this planet to do. Snack, Nap, Poop, Pee and Procreate, that’s the top of Mazlo’s triangle. Or the bottom. I never remember. Maybe it wasn’t Mazlo. Anyway, for some reason People Who Believe In God want to make these things weird. Pooping, eating and orgasming are the things that feel best in this world, and we’ve tried desperately to attach moral implications to the ways we deal with each of these things. If you take these three ideas you could make an entire career as a stand-up, talking about this stuff as if it were taboo. Because we are all infants.

Point Two: Legislation concerning the above three things is a waste of time. Drug addicts are addicted to drugs because they light up the same part of the brain that the three above things light up. You might think there are people in the world who are controlling their sexual urges, but they are *LYING TO YOU*. They aren’t. Don’t come and tell me you have your shit under control, you’re a fucking liar. You cannot control the sexuality of your constituency. You can’t control your own sexuality. Priests can’t and neither can you.

Point Three: You don’t have to have sex in order to have an orgasm. You don’t have to stop the sexual act in order to keep abortion and overpopulation under control. But unless you are willing to support a *massive* overhaul of the public school system wherein we teach masturbation, oral and digital intercourse techniques, and long exhaustive lessons about the best way of pleasing your partner without intercourse, but you still want people not to have abortions, then you are an ass. If you want to stop abortions, then teach kids as young as twelve about different options you have sexually. Who am I kidding, take a lesson yourself. I can’t believe how many women I’ve been with who think I know something special when I’m just doing the standard stuff. And women have no idea how much fun sex can be because they’ve spent their entire lives with sticks up their collective asses.

Your kids are going to have sex at a younger age than you did. You better start talking, and you better find some options. Telling them not to isn’t going to work.

Point Four: You cannot be a Republican or a Libertarian and be Anti-Choice. You also can’t be a Catholic and Pro-choice. See, these words mean something. It’s very fashionable nowadays to claim you are a libertarian, because people are incredibly stupid and they feel like it’s a clever thing to say. It’s like saying you’re a Republican like George Bush, or a liberal like Clinton. None of these things make sense

Republicans support a smaller government. It’s the lynchpin of their philosophy. Libertarians believe the same only more so. Legislating abortion is a call for larger, more intrusive government.

Point Five: There is much debate about the beginning of life, but if you say it’s the egg dividing, then my mom unwittingly killed six of her children when she miscarried. And your logic does extend that far, she needs to be held responsible for the health of her uterus which, once detected, was fixed and she was able to have three children after the miscarriages. (She could have found out before the miscarriages, not doing so was just lazy, right? I mean, certainly lazier than the four minute mistake you make when you say “I just want to feel you inside me, just for a second” when you’re sixteen.)

Or was that God’s choice? Those six “babies” who “died” as “multicellular non-cognitive growths”. Because if it was, then the miracle of her last three children was directly in opposition to God, which means my life was begun in direct opposition to your God. I can live with that.

Point Six: If you were pro-choice when you were in your twenties, but now that you are married with children you are pro-life, I have news for you. You’re still pro-choice. There is a difference between being pro-choice and being a person who has abortions. You changed your mind. This is America, for the love of God, and that is what being Pro-Choice is. It is retaining the right to do what you want with your mind and body.

Point Seven: The quote “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born”, which has been attributed to Ronald Reagan, should be followed with, “I’ve noticed that every man who is anti-choice has no possibility of being pregnant.” Jesus, the circular logic of the hopeless mystic. People who say, “there must be a creator, or we wouldn’t be here to even ask the question…” make me want to cancel my subscription.

People who are born to parents that hate them and abuse them and grow up to be serial rapists can be put to death by the state, but if a woman gets pregnant, she can’t say “Man, I already hate having this kid, I want to just stop this before it gets out of hand” shouldn’t be allowed to make that decision? Are you retarded?

Point Eight: People don’t want to have their babies. Most of them do, but not everyone. Look at the world, and think about time. Think about how long the world has been here, how long it will continue to be here. Think about how hard and unhappy just being alive is. Think about the years you have been here, the years you have to go, the long miserable slag toward ill health and mental degredation that you have waiting for you, and then after you die, how long will the world continue on and on, with your life long forgotten, your ancestors lives just dust on someone’s mantle with pictures of more people who don’t matter.

You weren’t aborted, and neither was anyone else who was here. If someone doesn’t want to bring another god forsaken life on to this planet, why the *hell* do you want to *make* them have that child? Where do you live, what are the circumstances of your life, that you think “Y’know what we need? More fucking *people*!” Spend a week riding the subway in New York at rush hour, and I guarantee you, you’ll be thinking, “yeah, I’m pretty much okay with *all* of these people not having kids.”

Point Nine: Don’t talk to me about adoption. Okay, you’re a middle class white girl and you’re pregnant. God doesn’t want you to have an abortion, right? He wants you to have this child and put it up for adoption so another couple who can’t have children can raise it. Because you’ve figured out god’s plan.

Fine. Who am I to say? I mean, who the fuck are you to say, but, fine. That’s God’s plan. He made that couple in Dulluth *barren* so you could have your idiot, conceived-in-the-back-seat-of-a-Buick, white kid be adopted and raised a corn fed existence.

So my question is this. Why are there so many unwanted babies of color? Why are crack babies of color allowed to die unadopted? Oh, I see, now God works in mysterious ways, right? The orphanages are full of babies all over the third world and Europe, but God wants *YOU* to have your *MIDDLE CLASS WHITE KID*? Fuck you. I can tell you my feelings about this particular abortion, not only should that kid not be born, but the abortion is one generation too late.

Point Ten: John the baptist was twenty years older than Jesus. So don’t pull the mother of Jesus and the mother of John meeting each other in the old testament when they were both pregnant and the frickin’ zygotes recognizing each other. It’s why it’s called the Apocrapha. The sin of Onan was not spilling his seed upon the ground, it was disobeying his parents. Sodomites were not wiped off the earth for rogering, they were wiped off for not extending a welcome to strangers. And the laws concerning sexuality in the old testament are about *ownership*.

Jesus never said anything about abortion. He did however say that divorce should be punishable by death. That was Jesus, not Moses. Jesus. Good Time, Full of love, new testament Jesus never said one word against abortion, but did call for divorcees to be put to death.

The old testament does say that Adam became man when he breathed his first breath. Nothing about the idea of Adam was considered Adam until he breathed.

Okay? SO READ YOUR FUCKING BIBLE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Point Eleven: Okay, here’s the deal. No-one is pro-abortion. No-one thinks that stopping a pregnancy once it has begun is a fantastic, fun, celebrated idea. But there are lots of things that are hard, lots of choices we have to make for the sake of our future that we do celebrate. No-one wants to work a shitty job while they are trying to graduate from college, but we celebrate that as a hard decision that is ultimately for the best.

Some pregnancies are unwanted. Some married couples with good incomes don’t have the time or the love to give to a child. Most of all, the birthing and raising of children should be the most sober and solemn responsibility we enter in to as people, and if there is any doubt at all, people should be allowed to not be parents. It isn’t laziness that impregnates people, sometimes it’s absent mindedness, sometimes it’s callousness, and you know what? Sometimes two people try to get pregnant and then do and realize they made a mistake.

It happens in a second, or, if you’d rather count the entire sexual act, in an afternoon. You overslept for class once, or you forgot your homework at home. You even once did badly in an assignment at work or at school. Maybe you forgot someone’s birthday once. All of these mistakes take the same mental slip as not taking a pill or using a condom that is too old or just letting your natural, overbearing urges get the better of you for five minutes. That feeling you get in the morning when your alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button? That’s nothing compared to a 17 year old in the throws of one of his first sexual encounters.

Unless you feel like you have lived a life without mistakes, you have to allow others the right to clean up after themselves. It isn’t your baby, it isn’t your body and it isn’t your decision, nor is it your right. Take all of the time you currently spend railing against abortion and spend it on trying to make your own life better. Your old buddy Jesus wouldn’t have thrown the first stone, so you need to back off.

This program came on my computer, and the reviews of it have been raves. Seriously, it won’t make you a musician, but if you have ever sat with music recording equipment before, in five minutes you’ll be making songs.

In fact, it seems to be largely designed for people who *aren’t* musicians, which is awesome. But I have music written in Finale and I can’t seem to import them into GB no matter how much I try. It’s pretty easy to export music created in GB into Finale so you can have lead sheets and whole scores, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to go in reverse.

My friend Melissa is a really gifted songwriter and she has asked me to work with her on her music. She wants to get it recorded and published and everything, she’s thinking about royalties, and I think I can at least pilot her away from obvious disaster. I’ve also been offerred a show in the Fringe being produced by 23 year olds, one of whom is a beautiful girl, and my extremely good looking ex-wife wants to produce a screenplay I’ve written.

Too bad it still feels like I *DON’T HAVE A JOB*. For not having a job, I sure have a lot of fucking bullshit I have to deal with.

Also, the plug on Jordana’s computer is now broken and won’t charge her battery. She’s got more computing power than that used by NASA to launch Voyager, but the plug won’t work anymore. $250 to fix it.

I need to shower both before and after the gym on days like this.