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When it rains, it pours.
The summer begins in Burbank.
The play's the thing.
What's in Your Wallet?
Crazy.
One quick breath and I'm off.
And running.

hollywoodland

Saturday, May 27th

I promised a friend I'd see a play he was doing in Hollywood, and tonight was the night.  From my house in Manhattan Beach, it's only about 25 minutes to the heart of the Hollywood. The most famous section of Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Vine is a crowded artery pulsing with life and filth; sadness and extravagance. Much like the Sunset Strip, it is an area jammed with tourists eager to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood of their dreams.  Unfortunately, they are instead treated to a dichotomous clash of extravagance and poverty; a transparent facade of a city much more promising in the imagination than in reality.  Hundreds of pink, terrazo stars emblazoned in gold, with mostly long-forgotten names line this strip of storefronts, tourist traps and souvenir shops.  The street is bustling on a Saturday night, and nestled in the darkened doorways and the false glow of neon beacons are the Hollywood homeless, transients and freaks; weathered Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson impersonators, panhandlers and other sharks preying upon the dreamers.  It is something of a nightmare on a Saturday evening, and as I exited the 405 at Cahuenga, I could see the traffic backing up as the hordes of visitors, club junkies and cruisers lined up to jam Hollwood Boulevard with cars and chaos.  Mix in a few buses and more than a few pedestrians, and you've got yourself an odd combination of streetlife and traffic; tourists and locals.

Greg Pitts, an old friend from my days at the Groundlings (and perhaps most well known for his "Oh Face" in the Mike Judge cult classic Office Space), is performing for a limited run in a play written by Mark Goffman at the Stella Adler Theatre on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. For that reason, I found myself paying ten dollars to valet park down the block at 7:55 pm.  I handed the valet my keys and threaded my way through the crowds of people who never saw me.  I met up with another old friend at the show, and as we entered the small theatre on the second floor of a building on Hollywood and Highland, I perused the program.   Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper from Wonder Years) was one of the leads in the play, and I rather enjoyed having an excuse to watch a play that wasn't simply a workshop or showcase designed to get paying work for the actors. 

After the show, I congratulated Greg on a nice performance. It turns out he's only doing a couple of more weeks of the run, and he asked me if I had any interest in taking over the role for the last two weekends.  It's been too long since I've been onstage in a dramatic piece, and I told him I was very interested.  We said our goodbyes, and I walked back downstairs to Hollywood Boulevard and out past the Wax Museum.  Tourists and vagabonds crowded the star studded way, and music and bass pumped out of lowered Civics and blackened SUV's and rental cars.  I took my valet ticket out of my pocket, and handed it to a younger kid with a foreign accent working at the kiosk.  As we waited for my car, we talked briefly.  He told me that he recently moved here from France to attend school.  I asked him what he thought of LA.

"Well, I imagined big stars and big cars and movies and all that, but now that I'm here I see that none of it is real," he told me with a look in his eyes that was a strange mixture of disappointment and embarrassment.   I had the feeling he felt suckered by his imagination, and was coming to terms with the fact that the reality bore little resemblance.  He was only two months into being here, but he saw through it.  I imagined that parking cars for club patrons probably woke you up to the reality of Hollywood fairly quickly.

I continued the conversation: "You know, ten years ago this stretch of the boulevard was much worse."

He seemed interested to know more about the history of the neighborhood, and as I mostly made up the answers to questions I was pretty sure I knew the answers to, I hated the guy I was; the self-proclaimed expert on a region that I am not indigenous to; the guy who says things like: "It's better here now that they've re-gentrified it a bit."  I heard the words coming out of my mouth and tried to make them stop, but conversation poured out of me.  Some part of me wanted to be the expert to this French transplant, even if that meant guessing the date that the El Capitan Theatre was revamped or telling him how old the Hollywood Roosevelt was.  As I spun my web of "pretty sure these are truths," I looked around and saw three bedraggled tattoo parlors, an old Saturn four door maroon sedan with cheap spinning hubcaps, three drunk women in an Escalade wearing straps, and two gentlemen in an Infiniti revelling in the dankiness of their medicinal marijuana.   I recognized the orange prescription bottle the two guys were holding with the creative name of the strain of marijuana printed on an outside label. I imagine it to be something like: "Purple Power" or "Lemon Drop" or "First Lady."  They laughed as they passed the weed back and forth, each inhaling the aroma deeply.

After several minutes, my car appeared.  I handed the valet guy a handful of singles and immediately cut across two lanes of stop and go traffic to get off of the strip and into the bowels of Hollywood back streets.  My cellphone rang, and it was Mike, an old college friend.  He was on the way to a dance club on Santa Monica that used to be called "Giant."  Normally that would not interest me, but he was with Julie and Amy, two women from my college theatre department that I haven't seen since the mid-90s.  I got directions, and snaked my way through the darkened, trafficless side streets.

I pulled down Las Palmas and spotted the lights and the line of cars and the longer line of people waiting to get in.  I found a parking spot a couple of blocks away and wondered if my black sweatshirt and jeans would be appropriate club-wear these days.  I'm much more a dive bar guy, so getting dressed up to go dancing with a bunch of hipsters is pretty far off my map. 

"Fuck it," I thought as I locked my car and made my way up to the club formerly known as Giant.  Mike called again and told me it was twenty five bucks to get in, but that he was trying to find me a ticket that someone he knew had.  "That would be awesome," I told him.  I wasn't that psyched about paying $25 to get in, but I've spent $25 on worse things.  We agreed to meet at the front door. 

I joined the line of assorted club-goers waiting to go through the metal detector (which I am doubtful was even plugged in), and noticed a bouncer guarding the opening next to the line of people waiting.  I walked over to see if I could find Mike in case he had found my ticket, and the bouncer that looked like Ted Nugent crossed over to block my way.  He had a black shirt and a goatee, and I got the impression he'd seen Roadhouse one too many times.

"What's up buddy?" he asked me in an entirely confrontational way.

"Right boot," I replied.

"I'm sorry?" he asked me? 

He was oblivious to my Roadhouse reference, and as he started to say something else, I spotted Mike holding up a ticket. 

"I'm just getting a ticket from my friend there," I told him as I pointed over to Mike.  He looked back to see Mike waving at me.  I stepped back into the line of people waiting to be frisked and thanked the Swayze wanna-be for no particular reason.

Mike greeted me at the door and handed me the ticket.  We walked into the enormous dance club, and I wondered how they could have possibly renamed the club to anything BUT "Giant."  The place is HUGE.  The outdoor section was filled with people drinking, laughing and smoking.  It was a pretty cool vibe, I was shocked to find myself thinking, and the thumping and buzzing of the techno from inside was somehow inviting.  We walked into a room that was roughly the size of an airport hangar, and I looked around at the scene.  Hundreds of people bounced and jumped in the strobes of light on the dance floor, and women on perches swung hula hoops around them in thongs and go-go boots.  There were people wearing fur coats and tailored baseball uniforms and silver pants and a handsome woman in a thong walked on stilts directly in front of us.  I looked down at my ticket stub and noticed the new name of this place: "Circus." 

Perfect.

I spotted Amy and Julie and an unexpected friend, Melanie in the bar section of the Giant Circus and we hugged and talked and reminisced.  I tried to order a glass of wine, but the actress working behind the bar told me that "It's not that kind of a place."  I felt stupid for not realizing that Cabernet is not to be ordered at hip Hollywood clubs, but I enjoyed the sting of the horribly mixed Beefeater and tonic instead.

Julie and Mel and Mike went out to dance, while Amy and I caught up on the couch by the bar.  It was deafening, but we managed.  It was nice to talk to an old friend, although I was at a slight disadvantage.  She confessed to reading my weblog daily, and I found myself in the somewhat familiar position of knowing far less about her than she does of me.  We addressed that fact, and I lamented the fact that more of my old friends don't have blogs.

After an hour or so, Mike and Julie returned and I offered to drive them back to Santa Monica.  We said our goodbyes to Melanie and her friends and walked back to my car.  It was nice to be back with three old friends from college; three people who were there when I realized what it was I wanted to do with my life.  I look back on those college theatre days as some of the best days of my life, and anyone associated with them is a welcome reminder of a really important time to me.  I often wonder where I'd be now if I hadn't somehow landed in a big play in the second to last year of my five years at Keene State. 

Something tells me it wouldn't be on a side street in Hollywood, California walking with three old friends, thankful for all of the events that brought me here, and even more thankful that I still have friends from the beginning that were there when the whole thing began.

I pulled out of the parking spot next to the non-descript warehouse, and out of the glow of the streetlights of Hollywood towards the darkened road home. 

I'm so in again.

I'm registered in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

The above is the result of the code that Poker Stars requires entrants to paste into an entry or sidebar to play in the tourny. I'm glad to see they're doing it again. I played in it last year and didn't have much luck. This year, I think I'm a better player. Aw, who am I kidding? I'm still a donkey, but it should be fun anyway. Even if you suck at poker, you should play in the tourny. With a little luck, you could end up at the WSOP on a freeroll! Click the links for the details.

that time we went to Florida, the conclusion (pt. 11)

Today I did something I don't often do (and something I should perhaps do more often): I read some of my archives. As egotistical as that may sound, it was not out of vanity or a need to bask in my own words that I did so, but because I am selecting material for an upcoming live show that I am producing, with some of the best bloggers in Los Angeles reading some of their favorite blog entries. (More to come on that show soon, but if you live in or near L.A., mark June 16th on your calendar as a date not to miss.)

I've silenced a lot of old ghosts by extracting and sharing the stories I've told. In some cases, a blog entry becomes something of a funeral for a nagging memory. It is a sending off of something not quite finished; an old sore spot in need of closure finally given an ending. It seems that perspective can heal old wounds and old fears, as long as they are faced, examined and then released. Or at least, that's how it feels to me. Comedians often attack themselves first to avoid the scrutiny or criticism of others. It's a way to retain power. By calling out their own weaknesses first, they immunize themselves to the attacks of others. For me, that was something I learned at a young age. If I could beat others to the punch when it came to pointing out my own shortcomings or flaws, I could strip them all of their power to control me or make me feel small. To be able to say, "Yeah, I know I have Star Wars sneakers and I know they're lame!" before the mean kids did, gave me some defense. Back then, I was not strong enough to laugh off criticism. Even now, I am often afraid of being found out by others as just another scared kid trying to make something of himself. I guess by proclaiming that first in a public forum, the fear is lessened.

I started writing honestly to see if it would lead me anywhere. I wanted to get better as a writer and stop pretending to be someone else with words. As part of that, I took risks with subject matter and wrote things that scared me to say out loud. I opened myself up in ways I never do in real life, and it's still scary every time I hear an old friend surprise me with: "Hey, I've been reading your blog." It's easier to have a collective audience than it is to imagine specific people reading about my hangups and fears and revelations and failures. My tendency, when reacting to the news that an old friend is a reader, is to scoff at blogs and laugh it off and say that this is an excuse to keep me writing. The truth though, is that it's therapeutic for me. It releases old ghosts and exorcises those memories that have continually resurfaced throughout my life, desperate for a voice before they are forgotten. By making them real in words, I have something of a written memoir captured in fits and starts and "blog entries."

That is the unexpected perk.

Anyway, as I perused my archives, I was shocked to discover that I never finished my serial epic, "That Time We Went to Florida." SHOCKED I tell you! Why didn't someone alert me to the fact that I left so many of you in the lurch, forever stranding myself in a Ft. Lauderdale club called "Baja?" ;-) Fear not, faithful readers. The end is near. In fact. The end...

is here:

what price life

Perhaps you have yet to form an opinion about the war we are immersed in over in Iraq. It's understandable, really. It is so much easier to stay ignorant than it is to seek facts about unpleasant topics. Regardless of your political views or ingrained prejudices or carefully nurtured mindsets, I think it's important for each of us to have an intimate knowledge of what price it is our friends and family are paying in the deserts of Iraq. Strip off the protective jingoism of the "patriotic sense of duty," and remove the rhetoric preached by hundreds of pampered politicians over hundreds of years, and examine the war at its root: men, women, and children are dying every day in gruesome, horrifying ways. Is the ultimate result of our operation/government building going to justify the ends of untold lives? Will our arrogance and ignorance patch the shattered lives of the families decimated by corpses replacing the people they loved?

Watch Baghdad ER. Educate yourselves and know what it is that your country does in your name. Does it sit well with you?

bury the bug!

Okay, okay. Lots of you have asked me to push the bug into the archives, as it is a nasty ugly beast. I give you this picture of my daughter, who is already way more Hollwood than I am.

bug

Nothing like a jolt in the morning to wake you out of a zombiesque lugging of the garbage to the curb. This little fellow startled me with his uh, fucking weird-lookingness. I think it's a Jerusalem cricket, otherwise known as a potato bug. My google research tells me that it is a fairly docile bug, although "its jaws can inflict a painful bite." Yikes. Luckily, he wasn't in a biting mood when I hesitantly snapped this macro photo of him. I'll bet birds live for these things.

I've noticed that Lucy is beginning to develop an aversion to spiders. Now, although I'm not the hugest fan of spiders (especially the hairy, meaty ones), I've made a conscious effort to pretend indifference around her. I don't want her to inherit my irrational fear of things hundreds of times smaller than me. The other night, she saw a spider in her bed. We tried to get her to then sleep in the spider infested bed, but for some reason she balked.

"But it's a NICE spider Lucy!"

"Okay," she said happily.

"Are you ready to go to sleep in your bed now?" I asked.

"NO WAY!" she told me as she climbed into our bed.

I couldn't really argue with her. If I saw a spider in my bed, I'd be sleeping in a protective film for weeks.

And let me tell you something:

Harmless or not, if I ever happened to climb into bed with a Jerusalem Bug, you'd hear my little girl screams from wherever you are. I'm not proud of it, but look at that thing! It's the grossest bug I've ever seen in my life.

"But he's a NICE bug."

Yeah right, Daddy. Nice bug, my ass.

ROCK IT

I've been fairly lax about posting lately, but all is well. Actually, exciting things are afoot.

In addition to those mysterious exciting things, I start another job on Monday. It's another reality show, and I have been hired as the Senior Story Producer. Cool.

In addition, I have set my mind to do something I've always secretly wanted to do. I suppose I'll leave it on that cryptic note.

Oh, and remember that gal (who used to blog a lot more) named Jessica Stover? She is a go-getter. She is driven. She wrote a book and then asked a bunch of people to help her promote it. She asked me to wear a toga, snakeprint leggings, and a long red wig and then (inexplicably) made me a Klingon (sans makeup, pero con Batleth). What am I talking about? It's the "trailer" for her book.

SEE IT.

ROCK IT.

and then it hit me...

Bethany wrote:

"Paralysis? It happens when we want something so bad we could piss it in a fairly long letter to ourselves. When we see the world in shades of green after catching wind of others successes. And it is when there is a chance that we just might succeed at something totally out of our comfort zone or that we have dreamed about OUR ENTIRE LIVES."

Thank you Bethany.  You have, as some would say, NAILED it.

The Lost Blogs

You know how I lament and hem and haw and whine about not being motivated and then I spin words endlessly about how I could do this one thing if I could just, and if the time was right, and the planets aligned, and why doesn't anyone do all the work for me so I don't have to expend energy to possibly fail?

Yeah, it's good stuff.  Wishing you were doing work and then mewling in a weblog about the fact that there is no fruit for no labor.  That's me.

Well, then there's Paul Davidson.  Paul is a writer (and occasional TV producer and some other stuff), blogger, and really good guy (trust me, I once stole everything in his guest house.)  It's unclear as to whether his blog is a support system and promotional tool for his writing career or merely a way for him to blow off steam with clever, non-angsty posts about stuff that's lighthearted and fun and often times, odd.  Okay, loony.  Fine, he's a crazy person.  Still, he's an exceptional writer (and he's one of those annoying "prolific" writers, who churns out more content than Stephen King on speed.)

Paul has a new book out today.  It's called "The Lost Blogs," and it's a book that makes you think to yourself, "SHITBALLS, I should have thought of that."  This from The World Organization of Manuscript Preservation:

The Lost Blogs: From Jesus to Jim Morrison contains hundreds of unearthed artifacts written by history’s most infamous personalities and has been tirelessly compiled and edited by W.O.M.P. scholar and historian, Paul Davidson. Thousands of years and archeological man-hours in the making, The Lost Blogs will finally put to rest the debate over whether or not well-known historical icons actually did take advantage of ancient blogging technologies. The W.O.M.P. welcomes you to take the first step in discovering the stunning historical truths we were never meant to uncover.

Brilliant.  I have not yet read Paul's book, but I intend to buy it.  After I buy it, I intend to read it.  After I read it, I intend to plagiarize it and try to sell it under a new title like:

"Blogs: UNEARTHED!"

or

"XXXBLOGS: TOO HOT FOR TV"

or

"Passion Island"

Titles are key, they say.  Anyway, Paul is getting tons of press coverage on this book, so he'll be far too busy doing whirlwind press junkets to notice my scheme.

I'm a big supporter of bloggers who get themselves published.  I like to show my support by buying the books of the people that actually succeed.  It's good for us all to show those pesky publishers that bloggers sell books.  Buy his.  If you think about it, you're really kind of helping yourself!

And then when I re-release it as "Passion Island," buy mine.  Oh, if only I could find the time...(and if this were a standard Nickerson unlost blog, I'd segue into some long-winded rant with a side of whine, whine, whine and mope.)

Alas, I'm out of time, and this is a plug entry.  Not a rebel song.

Huh?

Lost Blogs.

two and a half

My daughter has started telling us "No Way!" when she hears something she doesn't like

"Lucy, you want to go to school?"

"NO WAY."

"Lucy, are you ready for the tubby?"

"NO WAY."

"Lucy, want Daddy to play you a song on the guitar?"

"NO WAY!"

(I'm not sure why she always answers that last one with such ardor.)

She is an incredibly intelligent young child who does not miss a single detail in all of the things that happen within her day.  She's memorized most of her books (after hearing them read to her countless times), and she is engaging in conversations and learning new words daily.  Most heart warming to me is that she is a kind child, with a seemingly limitless capacity for concern and sensitivity; two of my favorite things about her.   I have a hard time remembering the days when she couldn't walk (let alone run and shout and scream and squeal).  I always knew that friends and strangers were telling the truth when they told us to savor each day (mostly because it was such unanimous advice), but it's still shocking to see firsthand how fast it really is. 

So to those of my friends about to have babies (you know who you are), and to my blogger pals who recently had babies (Tina, Eve), I'll give you the advice I remind myself every day to adhere to:

Savor every moment.  Each is more valuable than everything else.  We know this, I know. 

I picked her up from school last week, and she spotted me as I opened the door.

"Daddy!  Daddy!" she screamed.  She ran, with arms wide open, to greet me.  "Daddy's here!" she told everyone in the room.  She hugged me, looked up into my face and asked, "Did you have fun today?"  I laughed and told her, "I DID have fun today.  Did you have fun today?"  She smiled and jumped up an down.  "YEAH!  I played with all the kids!" she told me excitedly.  "Wow!  That does sound fun.  Are you ready to go?" I asked her.  She turned back to the classroom of kids and two teachers and shouted, "Bye bye, everybody!" 

(That means yes.) 

We walked out of the room towards the car.  She held my hand as we walked, and I looked down at her.  I never used to know what it meant when people said they loved their kids so much, it hurt.  I get it now.  Instead of lamenting the curse of passing time, and the futility of trying to cling to the best moments in our lives, I lived right then.  I walked with her, holding her hand and talking to her about her day, and wishing for nothing else in life but to be in that very exact moment.

It's a love that hurts, to be sure. 

In the best possible way.

words

Hope does not spring eternal. It is, at best, an Artesian well: a great and deep reserve, but still only a reserve. Use it sparingly, and never as a substitute for action. -MM

Magazine Man has a great post today. He shares an old "Credo" he wrote when he was a nineteen year old pup. The quote above struck me the most.

still

I was sitting here trying to figure out what to write this afternoon, when I decided to read some other blogs for inspiration.  I could write about the gloomy weather here today, and the mood it tends to evoke, but Liz did a perfect job of describing the sense of self-doubt and escaping time that we all tend to feel here in a city known mostly for its dreamers.

As I wait for another producing job in reality television to begin in the coming month, I've found myself with all the free time I always imagined I could use to write that book/start that spec/pen that screenplay/create something awesome.  I am paralyzed by laziness.

I've discovered that I have a million plans and no courage to choose one; a million ideas and no patience to hone one; a million "I could do better than {x}'s" with no drive to prove it and I wonder how people motivate themselves.  I wonder how they escape from a fear of failure or a fear of wasted time and look one day ahead instead of three or four behind, or a thousand into the future.  I wonder mostly if there is a way to start somewhere and stick to it until the end, without bailing out before I ever take it anywhere that matters.

Sertich took me back to improv after a long time away and I felt home again, in spite of the rust.  Is it possible that we all have bigger plans for ourselves than the world cares to cough up?  Or is that just another excuse I make to keep myself safely paralyzed? 

And still the pack runs.  And still I give chase. 

And still I hope, in the greyish white gloom of another spring in Los Angeles.

City of Dreamers.

performancing

I'm playing around with a Firefox extension called "Performancing."  It's a neat little tool that allows me to drag and drop things from within my browser right into a blog entry.  This is mostly a test to see what it looks like if I drag a chunk of a page with links and graphics and different font sizes:

Performancing » Overview

More Previews »

Performancing 1.2, by Jed Brown, Nick Wilson, released on Apr 21, 2006

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits
right in your Firefox browse and lets you post to your blog easily. You
can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be
browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.