Meandering Thought.

When I was younger, during a period of...shall we say.....career success, I was asked to join a union.

Now, you all know where I'm from; I'm from the land of Unions.  So, you'd think I would have a soft spot for an organization that would be looking out for my best interests, while taking just a small portion of my hard earned wages.

I didn't join the union; largely because I had found in that period of...shall we say....career success, that by taking the Union card, I would for all intents and purposes be cutting myself off of about two-thirds of the work I had just finished.....and I'd be paying for that right. 

It seemed.....shall we say....suicidal.

And, knowing myself as I do, I knew that I was not a unique entity.  There were a hundred or more in the Union just like me.  It didn't make sense to limit my job opportunities, and give myself extra competition, and pay for that opportunity.

After a while, I realized what the point of Unions were:  the object of a Union is to keep people OUT of the Union.

And then, I began to see that some of the people around me began to see the Union as some kind of Holy Grail.  And they thought I was crazy for NOT wanting to be in the Union.  And that, somehow, not being in the Union was like walking down LaFayette Blvd after dark with several thousand dollars taped to your clothing, singing, "I cannot run very fast, and I don't see no cops around, do dah, do dah".

Union=Happiness.  No Union=Death and Despair.

It's that attitude that keeps me from Organized Religion, as well.  When the billboards go up, stating that I'm going to Hell without some Church's blessing...well.

I carry my adornments 'pon my soul.  My Faith is not a flag to be flown, a statue on a mantelpiece to be cooed over and envied.  And RELIGION.....

in the words of Bertram Cates*:  "Religion is supposed to comfort people, not scare them to death."



Did you ever notice that I start out with one topic, and end with another? 

Can you imagine what it's like to LIVE in this SKULL?


*Bertram Cates is a fictional character, and the focus of the trail in INHERIT THE WIND.

Random thoughts in a really quiet office.

I understand that Leonard Stern, the creator of MAD LIBS, has passed away at the age of 88.
This makes me very (Adjective).

To the producers of HOUSE:  Two words to solve your problem at the exit of Lisa Edelstein:  JENNIFER MORRISON.

While a lot of the country is scorching, we didn't actually break 65 degrees yesterday.  This is not to be envied.  Remember, we had snow in May.

The Missouri River is not rising as quickly, or as far, as they anticipated.  Instead of rising to 21.6 feet (which would be around 6.5 feet over its usual level...and yes, that's about eight inches over my head) it's only going to rise to about 19.5 feet.  The dikes are in place and being monitored, but several hundred houses are already lost to it....and this is supposed to go on until July or August.  But they tell me that the snow melt in the Montana Rockies is almost halfway done.

Can you still use the word Dike to describe a levee?  Or, in the words of Robin Williams in GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM, "The river broke through a protective dike yesterday......what is a protective dike, anyway?  Is it a butch woman in flannel standing nearby, saying, "don't go near the river...stay away from there!"

Forgive the previous, if it offends.  Remember the words of Will Rogers:  "If there's no malice in your heart, there can be none in your jokes."

Has anybody, besides me, ever heard the soundtrack from a review called, UPSTAIRS AT ONEALS?  Apparently, it was Bebe Neuwirth's big break.  Some clever music.  For a four stool review.

Every job I've had in the last twenty years has provoked, at one time or another, the following phrase: "This really is a stupid f***ing way to make a living."

For the actors in the house:  How many of you have left a theatre after a performance and said to yourself, "you know something?  I really am good at this."?  I think I've done it twice.  Since 1980.  Once in the fall of 1984.  And once in summer of 1999.  Every other time, I thought to myself, "Huh.  They bought it."

One of my favorite bits from Mitch Hedberg is about him ordering a sandwich:
"I'd like a pastrami sandwich."
"What kind of bread?"
"Rye...no wait, banana...you got any banana bread?"
"No....what kind of cheese do you want on that?"
"Cottage."
"Get the f**k out! I'm not making you a pastrami sandwich and cottage cheese sandwich on banana bread!"

He goes on to say that he always orders the club sandwich, and he isn't even a member.

Goodnight, y'all.

The Hobby continues.

It's that time of year again; time for your humble scribe to get involved with the Capitol Shakespeare again.

Last year was the first year I tried it; I had wanted to before that, but could never make the schedule work for me.  Last year was SHREW, and it was a lot of fun; it was the first time I had stepped onto the stage here in the Northern State, and the first time since my artistic sabbatical began in 2003.  There were a lot of people who had been there before, and for the most part, they made me most welcome.

The nights were fair and cool for July, and the audiences were generous in their laughter.  Then again, if you cannot get a laugh doing SHREW, then it's time to consider another hobby.

This year, it's ROMEO AND JULIET; a bit of a departure, for the first three 'seasons' were comedies.  For those of you familiar with the play OUTSIDE of the many motion picture interpretations, you know that right up until the first scene in the third act, it's a bright, shiny and funny play.

Side note:  The trick to playing it is to a) allow for the suddenness of love and b) always remember that Romeo is sure he's going to live.  You have to play the positive, otherwise it's a play that makes you want to tear your own eyes out, and then turn to the person to your left and tear their eyes out as well.

The director (a fine lady named Erin, who is probably the hardest working person I've met in the Northern State, and who seems to run the thing single-handedly) has given me a ton of leeway.  She took into consideration that I would be missing some rehearsals as I venture out of the country to assist my Father in seeing with his own eyes the very birthplace of the family name, and cast me anyway.  A small part; I come in from time to time to threaten people with death and occasionally banish somebody.  Lots of meat on that bone.  And she's letting me choreograph the various fights.

Tonight, we choreographed the first fight of the night; one guy bites his thumb, another guy takes exception, and suddenly we've got one guy wearing a basket for a hat, one guy getting clubbed with a log of wood, and one poor sap screaming as he's helicoptered around the stage on another guys shoulders....and Benvolio manages to not die when faced with Tybalt The Terminator.

Choreography is time consuming; and tiring.  You know everybody's moves, and are constantly demonstrating....you have to keep your energy up, so everybody else matches that energy.  And I'm almost 50, so I don't have the get-up-and-go that I used to.  But when it comes together......it just makes me smile.

Ear to ear.

I have an assist; the most generous and talented Austin, who will watch and fix and tinker and such in my absence.

It's going to be fun.

And that has made all the difference.....

There once was a girl, a long time ago.

And no, this doesn't end tragically. 

I won't use her real name; the name is a common one, and I don't want somebody reading this thinking that this song is about them.

We went to high school together; actually, we went to elementary school through high school together.  She lived in roughly the same neighborhood together, but we didn't really associate on a personal level.....

Except this one time.  I don't really know how it happened.  We were in this place, and sitting next to each other, talking.  The music changed, and then we were dancing.  The lights went low, and when two high school students are holding each other and the lights go down and the music is just right.....memorable things happen. 

Apparently.

From that day to this, the Bob Seger song, TURN THE PAGE, reminds me of her.

So, we liked each other well enough to connect at the lips.....but that's not what I'm thinking about today.

It was one winter night, sometime after that dance.  I was leaving the house to attend a gathering; it was a weekend, and that's what we did on weekends.....and headed up the road.  I can dimly recall a figure walking through the snow in the opposite direction I was going.  I didn't really notice other than a person in coat and a hat. 

It was her.  She'd had a tough day, and she was heading to my house, seeking my company.

Two ships passing in the night.

I occasionally wonder, when I'm sitting in an office in the middle of the night, about the crossroads, and the mystery of the road flirted with, but not taken.

Maybe I would have been more confident; maybe less lonely; maybe more social.

The illusion of those other roads can occasionally be comforting.

I should really plan these things beforehand.

When I was a younger man (but older than a young man), and was a junior professor at a college in Missouri, one of my constant friends was a fellow who served as a self-professed, 'lion tamer' in the elementary school in town.

The elementary school itself was on the east end of the small town, and if the levee didn't hinder the view, the students in his particular classroom would have a lovely look-see of the Mississippi River.

If your view of the Mississippi is limited to the views seen from St. Louis or Nawleans, then you're missing out; I have fond memories of the summers of the late eighties and early nineties, when we could finish a show at the local dinner theatre and make our way out to the other side of the levee to light a fire, have a tasty beverage or two, and pick at the guitars and sing old songs and laugh like no one was listening.  The river was fickle thing; it could be so shallow you could walk across it (such as the drought of '88, one of the hottest summers of my recollection) or high and huge (the summer of '93, where the bravery and tenacity of several thousand townsfolk kept the aforementioned levee from being overcome), but there was nothing so comfortable as sitting in the sand along the shore and listening to it simply slide by.....and wishing, just for a minute, you could be Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

That is not my point, alas.  It's merely a digression that my reading public has come to expect from the humble scribe.

My friend, Scott, the elementary school teacher, once asked his students a routine geography question:  "What river is that on the other side of the levee?"

They spoke as one.  "The Missouri!"

Scott had to explain that it was the Mississippi River, one of the longest rivers in the country.  They scoffed at him and his lack of knowledge.  How could THAT be the Mississippi River, if they lived in MISSOURI?  If they are, in fact, in MISSOURI, then that river must be the MISSOURI RIVER.

A lack of knowledge can always be supported by geographic pride, it seems.

I can remember Scott being somewhat tired after that incident; largely, because even though he won the argument (no matter how what you do, you cannot change the fact that that river was the Mississippi and NOT the Missouri), he knew, in his heart, that he didn't really change their minds, and that they left the classroom thinking he was a big fat liar.

That story came to mind this morning (and please remember that my morning begins at just about the time you're calling it a day) as I did a quick scan of the news websites, making sure my life was complicated by something that somebody did when I was sleeping, and I came across a story about a certain once and future politician who suggested that Paul Revere was warning the British by ringing bells and shouting that they weren't going to take our guns or our freedom.

Eventually, I'm going to get to the point when I'm not surprised anymore.  I had hoped it would have come by now.

Now, a while back, when this once and future politician claimed that the Health Care bill contained something called , "Death Panels"....I thought that surely a thinking person would never believe that kind of hokum and humbug.

Yup.  Surprise, surprise.

When asked a simple question about what kind of newspapers, magazines or websites she reads to keep up on current events, she couldn't name....a single one.  And she blamed the interviewer for throwing her a trick question.

Surely, nobody would buy that....oh, wait.  Head-shaking-inducing Surprise.

Combine this whole story with the recent studies that a large portion of the population of the United States feels that a college education is useless, and overpriced, and you'll see that we're on that path that Herbert George Wells wrote about back near the turn of the last century......the Eloi who caper and cavort with no cares, and the Morlock that eat them.

However, I do sleep well enough with the knowledge that my kind will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

So, I got that going for me.

Even the Four Horsemen need a guy with a shovel....

My office has had a catastrophic failure of the satellite dish.

I hate satellite television, by the way; it works fine when the sun is out, but God help you if it rains, sleets, or there is a wind of any kind. Or, if some idiot wants to repair the roof on which your satellite sits.

So, in order to stay connected, I am forced to listen to the radio.

AM radio.

I've been listening to a call-in show; and I'm scared.

There seem to be many, many people out there that are thinking, and in some cases, HOPING that these are the endtimes.

I have faith, friends and neighbors, even as I lack religion. I pray that there is something after this; for if I cannot see again all those that have gone before me, I am going to be very disappointed.

But I am a patient man. I can wait to see them.

And I don't think (read: I really hope) that they are in no hurry to see ME.

Sometimes, I feel that these people are not all that interested in being witness to the end of all things; they just want to be RIGHT. They want to stand on the precipice of paradise and be able to yell, "SEE? I TOLD YOU SO!!!"

My secret desire is that St. Peter punches them in the crotch. It they are right, and they have the nerve to rub it in my face at they enter the kingdom of Heaven as I attempt to make all nice-nice with the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, then I want them entering the kingdom of Heaven doubled over, groaning, with tears streaming from their eyes....

Yeah. I know.

I'm screwed.

Giddyup.

My Side of the Story

I have a lot of things running through the little grey cells this morning; and in the attempt to create some order out of the chaos that is the average day in the Historicranium has been.....futile.

So, as you well know, when words do not come, I go to song.