Recipe uncovered.

Sheila endorses the fruits of Amazon.com best selling author Rachel Ray's blueprints. And here is that meat ball sub recipe I couldn't find. Sheila found it and it turns out meat ball is two words. Huh. Maybe I could find other things I've been missing in Google searches by splitting up the words. Like it turns out "mymortalsoul" is not one word but three.

Meditating Weirdos

Sophocles and Sheila were the guests on Sunday. After dinner they accompanied me on a walk with Eliott. Soph told us that there is a Greek word for walk after dinner, but I don't remember what it is.

When we got to the dog park, just outside the park on the strip of grass was a group of three ladies dressed all in white wearing white blindfolds and they were chanting. It was sort of a strange scene, but even though we're in pastoral Brooklyn it's still New York City so not too weird. Sheila was obsessed with these chanters. She couldn't stop watching them, she went over and observed them for a minute while Eliott wrestled a pitbull and occasionally Sheila would try to win Soph and I over on the idea of going over to tackle the chanters. Just as we were leaving the dog park a group of teenagers roamed and a boy in their ranks went over and yelled some stuff and then kissed one of them on the cheek. The kiss makes it sound sweeter than it was because in most ways it was sort of creepy and misguided. The kid chuckled and ran off. The girls squealed in delight with his mischief and the chanters to their credit kept at it. Who are these witches of the dog park?

Yum. Spicy. Easy to make. And it will please guests from Seattle to Fort Greene.
Go here. And you know what? My pictures looks way more tasty than the Food Network picture.

Driggs Avenue #2 1/2 L

This is a view of the apartment beside our bed that Eliott is renting out. At first he was pissed about having to sign a year long lease, but now he's considering buying it. He also has this joke lately where he'll try to convince me that he has the Times delivered to his door every morning after I leave from work, but he's not fooling anyone because he can't read!

So this is what 3:30 looks like.

And we're back. The internet gossip ring says that there might be a sequel to the seminal 80's comedy 9 to 5. When it originally came out I would have been hard pressed to even know what the title meant, but now my friends I am living that glorious life. So many people at this job had told me how fast paced and stressful it would be and the first week or so it seemed like that might be the case and I hope I'm not damning myself to days like it in the future BUT for today people, it is pretty quiet around here.

Knock on the virtual wood for me.

You know things look good to me right now except for one thing and that is a pretty big thing. I'm not writing. Oh well here it is the playwright's blog where he talks about not writing. What else is new? I'm not writing even though I have two rough drafts of plays, because I'm feeling (again) a huge wave of disconnect from the theatre. I don't know how to cure that. And if the theatre isn't my future and we want to move to Southern California shouldn't we just do that now? Why knock around in Brooklyn for two years to study playwriting? But if I was going to do that I would want to sit down and write at least one spec script. Teleplay or screenplay. Do that first, sport before you proclaim yourself Mister Hollywood. But when I finally get down to writing what I want to write is the plays. My frustration comes in how impossible it seems lately to give those plays a life after a reading. And a good life. You've heard it all before.

I concluded the holiday weekend by taking the 6 year inside me to Revenge of the Sith and let me tell you although it's slightly better than the last two it's still like watching a multi-billion dollar play written by a junior high student and performed by high school hacks. I wish Lucas would digitally alter the dialogue on the re-release. Where have you gone, Han Solo? A nation cries out for you. Han Solo is supposedly returning though as Indy, another one of my childhood favorites, in a fourth movie and Sheila's brownstone was being scouted by a the project's location scout. But Sheila's landlord was having none of it. "Landlords. I hate these guys."

We figured it out.

Yesterday evening Herbert and I struck upon it. "Life is complicated."

This is the world's cutest Luncheonette on the corner of McCarren park. It's a perfectly preserved specimen of Old Brooklyn that's recently been turned into a place that serves $17 entrees. I was supposed to meet Hil there the other night for dinner, but when she found out the current prices she ran out of there giving them the "I need to get cash" excuse. They shouted back to her "We take cards!" to no avail. Hil was steaming and rightly so as this place should have stayed hot dogs and little keg cans of Heinkens. Ah, we always long for what isn't there anymore.

But this week the Luncheonette was used as a major location for the new Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Marky Mark and Matt Damon movie, The Departed. I didn't see any of these folks but I was amused to see craft services set up on Nassau Avenue. They had no exaggeration about 45 kinds of cereal set up. Craft services is always kind of gross. The only difference is that on bigger sets you have more option of the gross. There's probably some bad performances on film that can be directly attributed to the fact that an actor was waiting around for hours upon hours and right before action they made the grave mistake of having a dinner of a bowl of Lucky Charms combined with a bowl of Fruit Loops.

Another view.

Two blocks from Beantown.

I knew the movie was set in Boston, but I didn't know if this Luncheonette scene would be set there till I saw this in place of the usual Village Voice box. I think maybe it's a period piece too, because before they moved this blue box in front I spotted what I thought was a vaugely 80's headline on the Herald. The Riot in Red Square I think.

Tis the season

Our friends Tina and Dave's invitation for their upcoming wedding. Quite nice. I'm prerty sure that's Tina's artwork. We're going to two weddings in Seattle in July. Our bank accounts are sad, but are hearts are happy to return and party with our friends.

Here's what parties look like at A.J. and Sara's...

during the winter. There's video of this that give you more insight but I can't host video.

My new profile picture.

There must be a more sophisticated way to assign it a URL with Hello but I don't know it.

What we were doing last Saturday...

We went to Sara and A.J's sushi rolling party. That's right this gorgeous spread isn't from any restaurant. This is the amazing results of total sushi rolling rookies who were drunk on saketinis. Not too shaby. I had seconds. Then I had thirds. Of the sushi and the saketinis. No just the sushi actually. Someone at the party had a third saketini and I'm sorry to say they are no longer with us.

Our hostess for the evening...

The beautiful Sara Juli. Who also proved to be a STERN but fair sushi rolling instructor. Guess who was named the weak link of sushi rolling? It wasn't Hil.
At the end of the evening I discovered that Sara had graduated college in 2000 and this was too much for my saketini addled brain to take. We had to go home to walk Eliott.

And introducing secret agent:

Jake Hooker. He likes his saketinis: dry. Here's a saketini recipe. But if you want to recreate our experience use vodka instead of gin and use ginger instead of an olive. Duh.
You know this was a fun party because The Goonies and Red Dawn came up in conversation.

This just in:

Announcing the newly crowned clown prince of the dog park!

The Last One Out? Turn out the lights.

Seems everyone is going out of town this weekend. To Berlin, to Providence, to their Broadway play, to Central Mass, and Hil will be in San Francisco. Me? I'll be where I've been all week: at home with the E-man watching cable shows on DVD and eating Little Buddies. It all reminds me of one spring break in college where I just decided to stay in Tempe for the week rather than try to do anything. I never had any killer spring breaks which is only a little tragic when you think I went to a party school like Arizona State University. In review:

Freshmen year: I remember hanging out with Jenn and Cat at their roommate's cousin's off campus apartment. I think we made margaritas one night. I remember walking back to my dorm room in the morning after the night and thinking, "I'm definitely constipated." I also think my sometime girlfriend at the time spent the night with me on the "couldn't have been too comfortable" single dorm mattress. In the morning she made a reference from When Harry Met Sally that I didn't recognize. It was about going home to clean the ahn irons. I don't even know how ahn is spelled. Here Google helped me find it(What I love about this link is that it's obvious that it's some crappy website that has nothing to do with the movie they just know it will generate hits to their crappy web site so they cut and pasted it from some fan site):

Sally Albright: You know, I'm so glad I never got involved with you. I just would have ended up being some woman you had to get up out of bed and leave at 3:00 in the morning and go clean your andirons, and you don't even have a fireplace, not that I would know this.

If it's not obvious I wasn't the one making any andirons type awkward jokes. I was just lying there wondering how I was going to get more fiber into my diet.

Sophomore year: This is fuzzy. I think maybe I had to stay in town to rehearse a play? Nothing is coming to me.

Junior year: Travis my roommate went to San Francisco. I felt this weird obligation to stay in town to host my old roommate's good friend Grady who was in town from LA for a scholarship or internship interview? I liked Grady, but he was only in town a night and then I was sitting around a lot. I always have periods of life where I'm doing that and frantically making lists in order to correct the situation . There was a guy calling me constantly to try to go camping with him and I knew I didn't want to go camping with this dude. Meanwhile, I was trying to get Vegh's alcoholic roommate to hang out with me more after our brief make out session, but she got cold feet once she found out I wasn't 21 yet. I would call and ask what they were doing and she would be like, "...um, eating Ben and Jerry's?" and I would be like, "Can I come over?" And she would be like, "Uh...Maybe not now." Later in the week I started dating B.

Senior year: I went to Seattle for the second time. I remembered being thrilled about finding the Printer's Devil brochure on FW's messy bedroom floor. It looked so LEGIT. Once B arrived we stayed over at Rodley's because Willis was in New York and B would have had heart attack if she had stayed at Mold Manor. Riding the #7 from Queen Anne to Capitol Hil and FW telling B he would never get a bus pass, because he always had change on his floor. The sense of pride I had that people were knocked out by the Rebar's production of King John and the Rep's Cider House Rules. The excitement that in a few short months this would be my life and these people with all this ambition and energy would be my new family.

I like the idea of hanging out this weekend and I can't recommend the new Dave Chapelle DVDs enough. That guy is so funny and more than that just incredibly talented. A true talent is someone who is fun to watch perform and that is him. I hope somehow, someway they manage to eek out the third season. Has anyone seen Half Baked? I'm curious if it's at all funny. Of course I have yet to see Friday or even the original Cheech and Chong movies so maybe I'm not the audience for these movies. I do find stoners funny though.

We hit a bump.

Hil and I had been eagerly awaiting the next season of Six Feet Under to be released on DVD. For some reason HBO is super stingy with the SFU and staggers the DVDs two seasons behind the current season that's running on HBO. Finally it was released and the first three episodes were really humming. There's something so satisfying about returning to characters you've watched grow. It's one of the things that television can actually succeed at. Well, the fourth episode is a bit of a clunker. You're thinking they can't miss and then the air gets let out of the tires at the first rest stop. But I have faith we'll fix this flat and keep going. Hil and I both know a character dies in this season but we don't know how. Don't tell us!

Update: A peek at Amazon reveals the fourth season will be released in August. A day after my birthday. That's not a birthday hint, because I prefer to rent. But I am excited. But you know what? There's going to be so many spoilers leaked by then about the final season that's about to start right now. Especially now that I have access to free copies of Entertainment Weekly. Life without cable is tough.

Get out. Yuppie.

This is the kind of thing that might be more effective if I had a larger audience. Still, it's something I would like to do in the future so I'm going to begin.

My friend Chris Caniglia is part of a great improv group Big Black Car. They've been nominated for these awards for Emerging Comedy in New York. Who is behind these awards? Young comics is a pretty good guess. Anyway, why not take tonight to go check out Big Black Car and then vote for them here? You can Tivo, American Idol, yuppie.

Pictures of Me

Some people are embarrassed by old memories of who they were. Sam Shepard has a great line in his introduction to his early plays about how they strike him as old photographs in that they can be embarrassing at times but still are a true reflection of his youth.

So, someday this might embarrass me, but for now I want to continue my shameless linking of my old crap for a larger audience. A larger audience of you, Sheila. And Hil I'm going to write Hil right now and let her in on this.

And thanks to Shane, for me being my first poster. A generous gesture. Please check out Shane's blog, it's a great read.

Dog's Life times two or Ferris Bueller Strikes Back

I was somewhat in a panic yesterday, because by the end of the day I had accepted two auditions. The first one I almost turned down. It was the first commercial my agent offered me that seemed to actually give me the option to turn it down. It shoots in Israel and it has a $2,000 buy out which means you get paid that for the shoot, the run, and everything. That's it. Still $2,000 could go towards paying these plane tickets to our friends weddings in Seattle this summer I thought. But I forgot about tax, my agent's commission, and taking the time off from this job I just started. Hmmmm. It's funny these auditions. You sit around for years working day jobs and rehearsing at night and just praying for that moment when you could land just ONE commercial. Just ONE the young actors in Seattle shout. "Jim Chestnutt made $50,000 in one year from a Smucker's national! I could live on that for two years!" Well I landed one last year and it did nicely(not as nice as this famed Smucker's commercial) but I also got married that year and went on a honeymoon. It's gone my friends. And that was almost two years ago and since then I've had a host of callbacks but no more bookings. And you're juggling, you're a servant to two masters: the dayjob's consistent but dull master and then the commercial's sexy and rich master who is constantly having you hustle with only the vague possibility of spending a night or two in his rich house. Oh, the petty trials of actor. This is the point where people will say (with relish because someone at some point told them)"No one told you to be an actor."(or writer, or poet, or dancer, or Jack in the Box boy.) Still the strain of the juggling can be stressful. The other audition is more legit and it's for Degree and it's at the casting company for the production house that shot the one commercial I booked. But at the end of the day. Finally I was like, "Well, I have to do them and if the day job won't let me do them or it's a big deal I can proceed from there."

I came in this morning and sent out my "I'll be gone from these times to these times today" email. Then one of the managers asking me if I was interviewing. Someone had to right? So I let the "I'm an actor" out of the bag. This cat can go over a number of different ways. A lot of people are supportive. I would say the majority are and they're like, "Okay, cool, I like the idea of that, go do that, I'm glad you're not a career secretary..." And then there's a small percentage that are like, "Hmmmm...I need you here."(It hardly needs to be pointed out that these people are always the kind that DON'T need you there. They just like the ownership.) Anyway, this gentleman was cool about it and encouraged me to look for work here. To apply. I'm working for a number of people here so somebody else might feel differently but for now, Ferris rides again.

Another thing read by an audience of one (okay, two.)

This blog isn't the only thing that only Sheila seemed to read. I also wrote an article about one of my favorite playwrights Rinne Groff and it was in the Brooklyn Rail and NO ONE read it. Oh my god, this blog should be taken away from me. But before you go, please read the article.

Not so late breaking update: My wife also read it. And she LOVED it.

A view of McCarren park. Somewhere in there a man is making bacon on a open flame and soon the man will be rewarded by making a mint from yuppies without the salaries of yuppies.

Discovered!

Ah, the net. I thought I would be able to post to this for a long time before anybody I knew found it. Hil doesn't even know about it yet. But that was a little naive wasn't it? Who googles themselves more than theatre people? I know because I'm incredibly guilty of this narcissistic crime. The sad thing is that sometimes it isn't so much narcissism rather most of the time it comes for me at periods of incredible patheticness like a mind numbing temp job or a bout of unemployment and I'm looking to the computer to validate my existence. And if you're anything like me you're hoping one morning you google yourself and you find that overnight someone, someplace has crowned you the new voice of theatre or someone from your past is praising you for being an amazing force in their life even now and that there is some new piece of information about yourself OUT THERE that is going to magically lift you out of your "oh my god what am I doing" stupor. Well I'm sure you don't need me to remind you: Google is powerful but not this powerful.

Anyway, Sheila is our brave explorer, our Magellean who discovered the still uncharted waters of Dup's Blog. And after reading it she recommends Rachel Ray's meat ball subs. (I looked for the recipe over at Food Network but I couldn't find it. If you can please post in the comments. You my audience of well...Sheila, I guess.) I'm still not much for beef but we did have bacon this morning. Hil picked the bacon up at our Greenpoint farmer's market, because the guy was cooking them at his stand to entice all of Mccarren Park to get bacon fever. It worked and it was an excellent vintage Tuesday morning breakfast.

Late breaking update: Sheila says she wasn't goggling herself and SHE CLAIMS SHE NEVER DOES THAT except when she's looking for press quotes. Instead she claims that it came up in her website stats. I gotta believe her. Still, Sheila sometimes you gotta go to the google altar and see if it has anything for you. I was surprised when I found out my Dad googles me occasionally, but when I have kids I know I'll be googling them. I'm going to go google Hil and Eliott and see what results.

Ah, yum. Rachel strikes again with the massive help of Hil and Fresh Direct's pasta department. These are turkey cutlets, broccoli rabe, and cornmeal fried spinach ravioli. The turkey is the same that made it into Eliott's Kong last night. And you thought I was going to post something without mentioning how it tied into the dog.

A Saturday Morning

Things are looking better. It's sunny out and Hil is sleeping in the bed and Eliott is sleeping under this desk and me I'm reading too much crap on the internet until I convince myself it's time for me to add to the crap.

So my first week of being an administrative assistant aka A SECRETARY is over. I have to say doing it for 35 hours a week causes a mild identity crisis. How did I end up here? I find myself asking this question too many times in my life I think.

I want to get back on track but when you're tired it's much easier to be distracted.

Last night it was unseasonably chilly in the apartment and instead of doing anything about it I just laid in bed and watched Last Tango in Paris which I rented from Netflix weeks and weeks ago. I love the Netflix for so many reasons, but there are times when you have to give up the ghost and just return the art film so you can watch more Sports Night or Family Guy. I'm surprised at how much TV I will watch on DVD. I had been thinking Hil and I would watch Tango together because I knew it was sexy but I think it would have driven her up the wall. It's a little sexy and a definitely has some interest and Brando is in an interesting period where he's not yet fat Brando but definitely older and more rugged. He's always a force. But the movie with all its gorgeous photography is still very tedious at times. Especially with Eliott running back and forth trying to get the leftover turkey out of his Kong. So I never finished Tango, but I did find out the kitchen window was wide open so I shut it and then took a long bath and then fell asleep for a while and then Hil came home talking about Metro cards.

This is my life. This is how it looks today.

Eliott the beagle seemingly enjoying his dog days.

A Dog's Life.

A couple of weeks ago I was literally living the dog's life. We had just adopted Eliott the beagle and I was unemployed and Eliott was super shy because he was a stray and possibly before that some jack ass had hit him and so we were just lying around the house chillin' and trying to figure out how he could enjoy his life as the newest member of our family. We were really on the same routine. I would lie on the bed and take a nap and he would go into his little house at the side of the bed and saw logs with me. I knew we were syncing when I saw him lying on the rug in the middle of the living room and I just laid right down next to him. Hil came home to find us both passed out.

Now with my return to work Eliott spends his days sitting around the waiting for our 9 year old Polish neighbor to take him out. Meanwhile I sit around an office trying to assume this guise of an administrative assistant and sometimes I have "appointments" or "auditions" and so I have to use my lunch hour to race back and forth over the big city to drink a Diet Coke and dance to bad dance music in front of a camera. That's the real dog's life. There's little dignity in that life. Although perhaps asking for dignity in actor's life is just too much. It can't be done. But sometimes I have to remind myself I'm 30 in order to give myself some backbone. I'm around kids, adults, other people and I feel like, "I have no authority" and then I have to remind myself that I'm supposedly a 30 year old MAN and once upon a time that was something and doesn't that offer the least bit of dignity. Sometimes it works a little. Like a small reason for me to affect some pose that I know what I'm doing.

I wanted to tie the whole thing about getting out of work to audition to one of my favorite movies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's one of the first movies I can remember that I became obsessed with quoting line after line. It's just one of those movies you want to rebuild with friends. Withnail and I is like this too. With this day job/leaving room open to audition situation I feel like a broken down, awkward and OLD Ferris Bueller. It used to be every few years you would hear John Hughes and Broderick wanted to put together a sequel to Ferris Bueller about skipping work but this might be better and more profound. The Fall of Ferris Bueller. No, no, scratch that. It's a terrible idea. It's the kind of idea that comes to you at 35 minutes to 5'o clock.

Still picture this:
30 year old man dressed in a purple Levi's shirt he found in a thrift shop in his hometown over 3 years ago
Subway platform
The man is pacing back and forth waiting for the E train to take him down to warehouse in Chelsea where he will mime drinking a Diet Coke for a 20 something casting assistant and marvel at all the models and Ramone t-shirt kids who somehow he knows deeps in his heart have never had to bluff their way into admin assistant positions(they were smarter and sexier than that.)
Sometimes he has to jog between avenue blocks in order to make it in time
He's very skinny and very silly but what can he do?

He's a dog of a common breed.

The red snapper with salsa that we made last night. I say "we", but actually it was Hil since she has been kind enough to return to cooking in this the week I returned to work. This is a recipe from Food Network star Rachel Ray's 30 Minutes Meals #2. I've seen only a few episodes of the actual show and Rachel does come off as many people describe her: annoying, but still the book is good and has had Hil and I back in the kitchen which is essential given the limited takeout options in Greenpoint. Amarin is delicious, but not if you're eating it 5 nights a week. So Rachel brings the stuff but it's hardly 30 minutes (maybe 45 if you have a good prep chef which Hil is but I am not.) That and it isn't the healthiest of fare. Oh yes we have had our share of the fried from this book. This meal though is pretty healthy. Look at those greens. Look at those reds. Yum da da dum.

One of the many reasons I love her.

There are times when Hil will very calmly talk me down from hurling myself off whatever self pity cliff I've climbed up on and say something like, "Don't get too worked up about it. It's just a job after all." And it comes out with such authority and a sense of calm that it really chills me out. I appreciate that.

The last 30 minutes

I'm in the last 30 minutes of my first day of temping after a long period of unemployment.
It's been more disappointing than I thought and yet exactly what I should have expected after almost (here comes the crushing detail) ten years of temping.
I started after graduating from Arizona State in 96 and moving to Seattle. So, my ten year gold temping badge should be in the mail in the spring next year.
There was a point in Seattle when FW asked me if my one question in judging an artist's success was whether or not they still had to have a day job and I answered it with a firm YES.
I might have quoted this exact quote on the last blog I published back in the days of 2002.
Some stories you hold onto tightly.

I really love reading blogs I finally admitted to myself this weekend. It wasn't such a big secret. Everyone who knows me knows I pretty much fall over to hear stories and intimate details about other people's lives so it's no secret that blogs would have an appeal to me. I was talking to one of my directing friends about my writing habits and one of them is to get up in the morning and write whatever is going on with myself if I don't have a play started or something and she was like, "Well, thank God you don't have a blog." But now I do.

I love reading my friend Sheila's blog. I stumbled upon this guy Nickerson's blog after he was linked by online gossip to Cameron Diaz. It really became an obsessive read to me. He's a very different writer and person to me in so many ways but there's a lot there in common for me too like being a commercial actor and a geek and much he's doing that I want to be doing in the next couple of years(like live in Southern California and become a father.) After reading his blog which if nothing else is a testament to his sincerity, I really decided that I wanted to contribute to the blog community. I'm not sure why yet. I have enough balls up in the air at the moment as it is and I'm always trying to not take on new things but I love a little distraction and I love the look of the blog. So this is my blog. We'll see what happens. I'm going to post for a month, see where I'm at and then maybe I'll open the gates wider.