No buisness like show buisness.

For weeks before Plaid auditions I kept saying I can't sing harmonies, I'm not going to audition. The day before Plaid auditions I said I can't sing harmonies, but it might be neat to try. Then of course the day of auditions I had my happy little arse singing in the basement of the arts council. When I first read some of Rabbit Hole last year I said that's too intense of a role, I don't know if I'd want to do that. A few weeks ago I said that's a really intense role I think it'd be neat to do, but I've done two shows already this season so I probably wont audition. Well last night I had my happy little arse auditioning in the basement of the arts council. It's a cool role in an award wining drama, that has many laughs and many tears and a we'll make it, we'll persevere kind of ending. Time will tell whether I make it into three shows in a row or not. Don't worry I wont be going through this with Fools, GSCT's last show for this season, I've been saying for months that I want to audition for Fools. Fools was the first show I ever did with GSCT a few millennium ago, so it'd be cool to revisit the start of all this. So unless I switch it up and bail on Fools then the wishy-washy streak will come to an end.

Confidence?

A recent quote of mine from a conversation with some supportive fiends - "You know me and confidence, we're not on the best of terms." You would think someone who has no problem getting on stage and being the dancing monkey (hopefully an entertaining and talented one) would not be lacking in confidence, you'd be wrong. You see acting and performing have always come naturally to me, I use to put on shows for pretend audiences in my backyard as a kid. But when it comes to doing something new or different I get all gummy beared inside. It's not so much a feeling of fear as a feeling of certitude of failure, I know it's not rational I've succeeded in as many things as I've failed, possibly more. But it's there. Every time I order something for others at a restaurant I know I'm going to screw it up, every time I think of playing the guitar I know I'll quit before I learn, every time I think I can do, or be better I end up knowing that I can't. Sometimes I get a little brave, a little the little engine that could and I try things- some work out (the show Forever Plaid), some don't (team leader position at work). The crazy thing is I know it's not about ability or talent it's all about sustaining the courage to see an undertaking all the way through and not quitting when it gets tough. This really came to a head yesterday as I heard (through the grapevine) of a job opening that my degree might actually be useful for and help me get and as I looked at the job and it's requirements I kept thinking I can't do that, I need to just keep doing what I've been doing, I'm good at what I do now, I shouldn't try to advance to do 'better' and it was very frustrating. I'm afraid I don't have any happy ending, silver lining for this blog, no funny epitaph to close with. Sometimes risks pay off, I'm going to get ready for a show I said I couldn't do (very tight harmonies I didn't think I could get)that has gone smashingly well and sometimes they don't, I just need to find the confidence to try.

New blog for the new year.

I'd be remiss if I didn't start this off by mentioning the new little bundle of joy in my life, Maxwell Grant Spurling, born Dec. 29th and filling my world ever since. Max was a surprise, complete surprise and as I looked at him earlier I remarked to Rainey how beautiful he was and how he filled me with such love and she summed it up superbly we she said, "He's every thing you never knew you wanted." His birth experience wasn't without a couple of hitches though, first he has a very pronounced birthmark on his chest,back, and left arm that the doctor is going to send us to a pediatric dermatologist to have checked out. And secondly our family got hit with a terrible stomach bug (which involved throwing away a mattress) both during and after his stay in the hospital. It's been three days now since any ones been sick, so I hope and pray we're out of the woods. The worst of this for me was I got sick the night Max was born and wasn't able to stay in the hospital with him and Rainey which led to a number of tears on both our parts. But we're here now and so far so good and that's all we can ask for sometimes.

In keeping with the random name of my blog I liked to discuss (briefly) my new favorite reality show, the GOP primary race. With it's ups and downs and name calling and rigmarole and now a vote that has sent one or more people home it's as exciting as Survivor ever was. Of course this show has much deeper implications for our country and unfortunately shows the pitfalls of the party system in America. I've always been sort of middle of the road in politics, on some issues I'm liberal on others I'm conservative and some issues or just to complicated to fall into a nice little category. If you'd have asked me a few months ago who I'd vote for come Nov. I would have easily said Pres. Obama, a month ago I would have said whoever the republican nominee turns out to be. Now? Well, now I'm not so sure. What led me away from Pres. Obama was the debt crises in Europe and our own unbelievable debt here (trillions of dollars? I can't even comprehend how much that is). I don't blame the Pres. for the debt it's been climbing for a long time under both repubs and dems but something has got to be done about it and it's not going to be pretty. I hate though that the first things they always want to cut are the programs that help the needy, can't we start somewhere else? Like with congress's pay and benefits and the pork barrel spending on needles things. What I would like is for the Pres. to say I'm going to remain socially liberal but I'm going to drastically cut spending and shrink the federal gov., he'd win hands down. Or I'd like to see a repub. say I'm going to be fiscally conservative but I'm going to be liberal on some issues. See, I'm very middle of the road and I don't think I'm alone. But the way party politics are candidates have to line up all on the left or all on the right or they don't have a shot. Look at my fav. of the repub. hopefuls, John Huntsman, because he isn't far right he didn't even campaign in Iwoa and has been largely out of the conversation the last week or so, which will change now that they're all moving on to New Hampshire. I don't think Huntsman has a chance but I do think he's about the most qualified to lead our country right now, when China and other developing countries our are biggest threat. But unfortunately it seems to be a money racket and Romney has the money to get the nomination. Well, not as briefly as I'd meant to be but there it is for better and worse. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out and I can only hope and pray that whoever wins the election will lead the country to prosperity.

All right last topic, I promise, Forever Plaid opens the end of this month and boy do we have some work cut out for us in the days leading up to opening night. I feel like I'm cramming for finals. There's still a couple of songs I'm having a hard time remembering. Why do you have to sing the same words different ways each time? And which doo, dah, do goes where? Which ooo or ohh goes here? Or was that suppose to be an ahh? The harmonies have to be tight on this show and the choreography has got to be learned quick. So bring on the late night rehearsals, the singing these songs until we're sick of them but know them backward and forward. And if, no, when we learn it all bring on the crowds.

Flying Feeling

I pushed the pedal down, feeling a thrill of exhilaration and a stab of anxiousness, wondering if I could make it up the hill without the tell tell knock, knock, knocking of a misfiring cylinder. My car has been under the weather for awhile, engine light on, leaving me fearful of standing, stranded on the side of the highway. I've tried a few things and hit the road with anticipation to see if they've done the trick, usually ending with a car that runs better but still not hitting on all four. So there I was climbing that hill, accelerator depressed, fourth gear, hit the clutch, threw the transmission into fifth... and sailed right on over the crest without a knock or a ping. Yes! Hallelujah! I sped on up to the limit and over, only slightly though, I didn't need to risk a ticket and thus bring my spirits crashing down. By the time I returned home the engine light was off, waiting to warn and frighten me again another day. While I am elated there's still a fear lurking in my mind that it's all just a fluke, that come Monday my car will be back to it's old tricks, and tics and knocks and pings, but if it does I'll just go back to the drawing board and try, try again. But for a night at least I felt like I was flying.

Some books I've read.

So it's been awhile, again. I think I started my last blog the same way, anywho, sometimes I post on here about books I've read, sometimes I put a note on facebook and sometimes just a status update will do the trick. It's been three books back since I've posted about any of them so I thought a blog would be a nice fit. The last book I remember posting about was Faithless:Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates (to recap, it's a short story collection, I liked most of them). So after the somewhat long, short story collection I turned to something light and predictable but also enjoyable, The DayBreakers by Louis L'amour. If it were an old movie western it'd be the white hats versus the black hats, with just enough ambiguity thrown in (except for the hero who never waivers,of course)to give the story a minuscule amount of depth. But you don't read paperback westerns for depth you read them for the never give up, tough as nails, gun-slinging, gentlemen heroes and lines like these: "The first thing I was learning was there are times when a man had to kill and times when he had no need to. Reed Carney wanted a shoot out and he wanted to win, but me, I'm more than average contrary.", "There would be trouble enough, but man is born to trouble, and it is best to meet it when it comes and not lose sleep until it does." More than average contrary, I love that line.
After Louis I dove in to Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first in his Millennium series, it was a big hit in Sweden and then a big hit here, they've already made Sweedish movies out of the trilogy and now there making them in Hollywood. So I thought I'd give it a try. It starts out a little slow as it sets up the characters and then it becomes a whirlwind page turner for most of the book. Reading it I was loving it and then it hit some sour notes, the Swedish title literally translate to Men Who Hate Women and that title is very much to the point. There's some real sadistic characters in this novel and I don't care to read about such goings on, had I know what I was in for I don't know that I would have started reading it in the first place. So by the time I finished the book I wasn't planning to read the sequels. Now, I'm not so sure because the main character Lizbeth Salander, despite being a little too over the top, is a really good character. Larsson said the idea for the character was a sort of Pipi Longstocking grown up, and I might add a little, no lot, twisted.
Then finally, this blog has gotten long winded I'm afraid, Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov. Again one I liked at the outset better than at the end, although let me hastily add that I still did like it at the end. It's the story of a person, Hugh Person to be exact, and his four trips to Switzerland (I just now realized I read back to back books set mostly in Switzerland) and it's about the transparent nature of life, things, and memories. Near the beginning there's a fantastic chapter about a pencil that falls out a desk drawer that Mr. Person tries to close. It runs down the history of the pencil from great tree to manufacturing to much sharpened and very little thought of pencil. Near the end Nabokov says, "Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self...,going faster and faster and gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colors around a dead person or planet." This novella was... interesting and entertaining but also a little bit of a downer so next up is Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends, which should be an lol read.

Shakespeare and Spark Notes

I just finished reading The Merchant of Venice yesterday and besides the seeming anti-Semitism it's a good show. While reading Shakespeare's history plays I got in the habit of reading a synopsis of the play after finishing it to see if I had it all straight in my head, a few plays back I discovered Spark Notes (SN) and I wish I had found it when I first started reading my way through Shakespeare, it's really a great resource. The SN page address the antisemitism in this play and shows that in the context of the plays of Shakespeare's time he actually presents a human side to what would be considered a stock character (the evil Jew). It's this Jew (Shylock) that utters the now famous line, "If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?" So while Shylock is the heavy in this show and is stereotypical he also elicits some sympathy. Another point that SN highlights that I completely missed is the possibility that Antonio (the title merchant) has a repressed homosexual attachment to the lead male, Bassanio. The female lead, Portia, is a great character and according to SN one of Shakespeare's first strong female roles. It's neat to note that the three main women of the show go in drag at one point or another, a regular Shakespearean device, which would have been very funny in his time since, of course, all the female roles were played by men. So you had men playing women dressed as men. In the end all is well and everyone is happy and in love, except for poor Shylock and Antonio.

Book, book, play: kind of like duck, duck, goose but without the running.

It's been awhile since (I saw your face) I've blogged and almost as long since I've read others blogs. So I've just read about ten blogs and now I'm posting one of my own. In the past couple weeks I've finished reading two books and a play - Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar, and Shakespeare's Love's Labor Lost. The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu or as the translator of the copy I read believed the title is actually Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching and it is a collection of old Chinese proverbs (that one about the man with a hole in his pocket wasn't in there) that fall into the Taoist tradition. I read this after reading, and really liking, the Tao of Pooh and while there are some really great pearls of wisdom within it's pages there's also a lot of double talk, the kind you might find in self-help books written by would be sage's. In the introduction the translator says to understand the Tao Te Ching you have to know something of the time when it was written and goes on to explain that it was a time of political upheavals in China and that to find yourself on the wrong 'side' could mean literally losing your head, this is why the Tao Te Ching says to be like water always taking the lower but wearing away the harder and higher. Taoism has three gems (tenants) that are expressed in the Tao Te Ching - compassion, moderation and humility. Sounds like some pretty good gems to me.
   Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein is an overview introduction to some of the great names of philosophy and there main thoughts. According the the authors jokes and philosophy have much in common they both have a set-up and a pay off and they both try to shock us into seeing the world a little differently. The two writers use jokes to illustrate and explain some of the main thoughts and branches of philosophy. It was a really enjoyable book I wish I could remember have of what I read in it, my only complaint is that it wasn't longer. I would loved for them to have spent a little more time on each person and thought. I thought I'd share a couple of the jokes that I can remember- A man wants to get married but can't decide which of three women he's been seeing to propose to so he gives each woman a thousand dollars to see what she'll do with it. The first women goes and gets a new do, makeup, manni-petti, and new clothes and tells him it's all so she can look good for him. The second women goes out and buys lots of presents for the man and says making him happy is what makes her happy. The third women invests the money and makes big on it and tells him she's investing for their future. So which one did he marry? The one with the biggest tits of course. (I can't remember what point that was illustrating but I thought it was funny.)
      (This one isn't politically correct, sorry) Two Jewish men are walking down the street when they see a sign in front of a Catholic church that say's they'll give a thousand dollars to anyone who'll convert. One of the guys decides to go in and see what it's all about. The other guy waits on the sidewalk for a very long time, finally the guy that went in comes out. The guys on the sidewalk says, "Well? What happened?", the other guys says, "I converted." so the guys on the sidewalk says, "Did you get the money?" and the other guy says, "Is that all you people think about?" (This one was illustrating an Reductio ad absurdum.)
    One more and I promise I'm done with this book - An 85 year old man goes to his doctor and tells him his younger wife is pregnant and he's not sure how it could happen at his age. The doctor says let me tell you a little story, a man decides to go bear hunting but on the way out of the house he grabs an umbrella instead of his gun, he finds a bear, raises the umbrella and shoots, and the bear is shot and killed. What would say to that? The old man says, "I say someone else must have shot the bear." "My point exactly." says the doctor.

   And now the play Love's Labors Lost by ole Bill Shakespeare, the first of the comedies I actually enjoyed. The humor is mostly made of wit and biting sarcasm, Shakespeare would have been great at a Friar's Roast. The play center's on three men and their king vowing to study for three years forsaking all other things, including love. So of course they are visited by a princess and her ladies in waiting and all fall madly in love. At first I thought the women were being royal (pardon me here) bitches but then you learn they thought the men wooed them in jest and both parties verbally dismantle the folks who try to put on a show for them. Eventually all is resolved and the women promise to wait for the men if they make there vows true (but only for a year, not three.)