Post number thirty-one, Thirty-Two.

Last week I turned thirty-two. The clock is running, boy-o.

When I heard these lyrics in a song at WICKED last week. They describe me to myself almost too well.

Dancing through life
Skimming the surface
Gliding where turf is smooth
Life's more painless
For the brainless
Why think too hard?
When it's so soothing
Dancing through life
No need to tough it
When you can sluff it off as I do
Nothing matters
But knowing nothing matters
It's just life
So keep dancing through

The question at this in-between moment is clear. If I’m not going to dance through life, what am I going to do instead?

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Post number thirty, The Kid.

For his high school graduation present, I brought my eighteen-year-old nephew to visit me in Los Angeles last week. His first trip to the smoggy urban sprawl, a lifetime away from the rural world we both grew up in. I planned to give him an unforgettable experience, and pulled out all the stops. I ran us both ragged for three days.

Thursday, I took him to the studio. As I showed him around, I remembered my first day working there, almost ten years ago, and the magical feeling of movies being made that permeates the air. Thursday night we went to the cast and crew screening of THE ISLAND at the Village Theater in Westwood, where we got a taste of Hollywood and met some of my friends. The movie sucked, and was deafeningly loud, but the atmosphere was exciting to a kid experiencing it for the first time.

Friday, we went to Magic Mountain. It was well over a hundred degrees there, and as a result the park was mostly empty. We rode all of the roller coasters with minimal waits in the sweltering heat, laughing and screaming. Sufficiently thrilled and sweaty messes, we then drove down to the Big A in Anaheim to see the Angels play the Yankees. Great seats, maybe fifteen rows behind the Yankees dugout. The people sitting next us caught a foul ball. In all the baseball games I’ve ever been to, I’ve never even been close to catching a ball. Great fun.

Saturday, we slept late---it was strange to feel vaguely parental, waking him at noon to start the day. We went and saw a matinee of WICKED at the Pantages Theater. I’d never been in that theater before, and we were both impressed with the ornate decoration of the theater, restored (some say too far) to garish movie palace glory. I liked the play more than he did---he’s more baseball than musical theater---and afterward we went in search of a good magic shop at which he wanted to pick up a few new tricks. As euphemistically dirty as that might sound, I mean it literally. Magic shop. Hocus pocus. Rabbits. Hats. Cards.

The magic shop was a trip. No customers but us, and at least five magicians sitting around, allegedly working, talking like a bad Mamet play about who was or is the greatest magician of all time. These guys were so engrossed in their conversation that they barely acknowledged our presence. When they did finally ask us if they could be of assistance, it was with barely concealed disdain for invading their space.

While we were browsing, another customer came in looking for the old linking rings trick. They wouldn’t sell it to him, because he was probably not ever going to have the skills necessary to perform it. Instead, he left with a more expensive automatic trick, his tail between his legs. During this bizarre display of salesmanship, their conversation turned to Frank Sinatra. Something I know a little about.

Magician Clerk A (MCA) asked Magician Clerk B (MCB) “Have you ever read Tom Wolfe’s essay ‘Frank Sinatra has a Cold’?”

When MCB said no, MCA went on an outraged rant---how could anyone be consideredd an expert on Sinatra without having read Wolfe’s brilliantly important essay…

I bit my tongue. It wasn’t Tom Wolfe, you retarded blowhard, it was Gay Talese. I didn’t say a word, and we left the shop almost empty handed, save the slice of bizarre Hollywood life experience.

Saturday night, we ate like kings at Benihana---a restaurant I used to love when I was younger. Sunday, we slept late again and I took him to the airport.

Rather than just dump the kid at the curb and make him fend for himself, I parked the car and went into the airport with him to help him get checked in safely. He seemed happy that I was helping him navigate LAX.

While we were checking him in, the attendant asked me for my ID. I gave it to her and she disappeared. When she came back, she’d printed me a pass to escort him through security to his gate. I thought it was a little weird, and so did the kid, but I thanked her and decided to walk him all the way to his gate.

In the security line, we were whisked to the front by a helpful lady. I still didn’t understand why, exactly, but I was glad to not have to wait in line. As we walked past everyone waiting for their turn to be scanned, the lady leading the way said, in a very loud voice over and over again, “Excuse me, this man is escorting his son. Let us through. Let this man and his son through, please.” It wasn’t until the third time she said it that I realized she was talking about the kid and I.

My birthday weekend, and I was being mistaken for the father of an eighteen year old. Instantly middle aged. Wow. It had never occurred to me before. I am not old enough to have a kid in college. But I am definitely old enough, had I started early, to have a teenager.

Yikes.

Reminder of my advancing age aside, the kid’s visit was unexpectedly rewarding for me. I got to experience LA again for the first time with him, feeling the wonder and promise of being on the cusp of college, on the brink of life. It was, as he said about ten thousand times, “awesome.”

Post number twenty-nine, Broadway Baby.

At 30,000 feet, I’m starting to get excited about the Broadway shows I’m going to see in the next few days. SPAMALOT and GLENGARY GLEN ROSS. Childhood nerd, adult sophisticate (a nerd all grown up is still a nerd). I truly love the theater. . .

I remember the first play I ever saw: a community college production of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES. I don’t remember how old I was, probably five or six, but I remember every detail of the show to this day. I ran straight home afterward, plopped myself down on the living room floor in front of Papa’s chair and described every facet to him as precisely as possible.

The story.
The actors.
The costumes.
The sets.
The music.
The lights.

Looking back, it was a pretty plain production, but I was hooked for life. Papa turned on his tape recorder at some point during my monolgue and recorded much of my breathless account of the show. I remember, even then, being irritated at hearing my own voice on tape.

Then there was the first play I was in…I can’t remember the name of it. It was set in England, A drama. A chamber piece. Set around the turn of the 19th Century. Obscure, and cheap to license.

I was young---ten or eleven---and had just one line. To give the play some English verisimilitude, I walked across the stage with a basket at the beginning of each act, screaming, "Chiiiiiiiiickweed. Chickweed for saaaaaaale!” at the top of my lungs.

I got big laughs.

It being a drama, mine were the only laughs in the show. Three acts, three times across the stage, each laugh bigger than the ones before it.

The director was surprised by the reaction at the first performance, but knew better than to cut the one obviously audience-pleasing part of the show. The rest of the cast, older high school kids, mocked my high-pitched chickweed sales pitch. Jealous bastards.

To this day, I don’t know if the audience’s laughter was mocking or mirth. I didn’t really care. The sounds of laughter coming out of the blackness was heroin.

(Although I still wish I knew what chickweed is, and why people in 19th Century London would want to buy some from a little kid…)

Later, in High School, our drama coach was an appropriately ancient man whose passion for the theater was equaled only by his passion for theatrics and brown liquor. Before the final performance of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, in which yours truly played a barely pubescent, diminutive and chubby version of sharpshooter/romantic lead Frank Butler, he gave a very short drunken pep talk to the cast.

“See this?” He asked as he picked up a tube of makeup.

“Greasepaint. Once you get it under your skin, you can never get it out.”

I wonder if he made it up, or stole it from a theater luminary.

I suppose it doesn’t matter. For me at least, it was and is reality. The moment when the house lights dim and the audience grows quiet still feels like Christmas morning to me.

In my dreams, I’m Bob Fosse, chain smoking and directing the newest Kander and Ebb show…I fantasize about aging into a distinguished looking stage character…At my most desperate, my escape fantasy involves moving to Queens and commuting to the city every afternoon to tear tickets and be nearer the action.

I don’t remember the first movie I ever saw.

But I love Hollywood.

And my accidental career.

For now.

Post number twenty-eight, Life Lessons.

I’m updating from the airplane on my way to New York City.

The usual excitement to be in my favorite city is tempered by the numb sadness of a relationship that didn’t work out.

The details are important but not for broadcast here.

Suffice it to say, I’m not proud of myself.

Anyway.

Learning a lot of life lessons lately. The two newest:

1) Telling the truth can hurt people. But not telling them can hurt them more in the long run.

2) Hurting people is really painful. But not as painful as being hurt.

Post number twenty-seven, Cue Ball.

I shaved my head.
Because I'm bad with styling gel.
Because it was falling out anyway.
Because sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown.
Because Rob told me I have a nicely shaped head, and since he's been cutting my hair for years, he ought to know.
Because it is fun to touch.
Because sometimes I feel like Bruce Willis.
Because it reminds me of something important.
Because I've secretly wanted to for a while.

Post number twenty-six, Independence Day.

Good friends, twenty-four hours of videogames, two bottles of Jameson, two large pizzas, three orders of garlic bread and an impressive number of Coors Lights later, I am here at the wrong end of an excellent lost weekend.

Tomorrow, back to work and OpAdon.

One step back, two steps forward.

I've been staring at the blinking cursor for fifteen minutes, trying to come up with a coy or at least vaguely witty set up to the point of this entry…something about Independence Day…about appreciating freedom…about making the most of liberty…about navel gazing and fireworks.

Fuck it. Let me get right to the point.

After a week of feeling relieved to be physically healthy, today I was finally able to crystallize the nagging emotion about unexercised talent, unlived dreams and unrequited entanglements into a single succinct sentence:

I need to stop kidding myself that I can be made complete by the admiration of others.

At work, at home, at play, even in this blog---everywhere I go, I unconsciously seek approval and validation like a drug. Nevermind that I can sing but don’t, that I can paint but don’t, I can write but don’t. Nevermind that I waste more time than I use. Just give me some applause and I’ll be able to trick myself into complacency for a little while longer.

I need to stop kidding myself that I can be made complete by the admiration of others.

Vive L’Honnêteté.