Archives for June 2015

Tuesday June 30, 2015Body ImageLeave a comment

A little over a week ago, a filling in one of my front teeth fell out. Now this might sound like an odd thing to happen, but it actually happens to me on a regular basis. Despite the fact that I had braces as a teenager, my bite is so messed up that my lower front teeth smack into my upper front teeth every time I close my mouth. Which is why one of my upper front teeth is actually fractured in half, my fillings pop out on a regular basis and I’m getting braces again next week. Joyous! At any rate, I’ve become very accustomed to fillings popping out. I call up my dentist, she puts a new one in, I’m in and out in less than an hour. Well the problem this time around is that my dentist was out of town when it happened, so I had to wait over a week to get it fixed. Which meant a week of walking around with a gap-snaggle tooth. In my head it looked something like this.

I’d like to say that I am confident enough in myself that this didn’t bother me, and for the most part it didn’t. However, the couple of times that I had my picture taken I was very aware of it. I also met a writer/actor that I have a great deal of respect for and had a 45 minute conversation with him . . . flashing my snaggle tooth the entire time. I didn’t realize this until later, but when it hit me, I was mortified. I had to step back and remind myself, that if it didn’t bother, or even occur to me at the time, why should it bother me after the fact? Which really got me thinking. So the next day I pointed it out to someone that I was talking to. Guess what? She hadn’t noticed. I had to smile big and full on point it out before she was able to see what I was talking about.

This thing that in my mind was so incredibly obvious, was invisible to everyone else. I tested my theory, and started pointing it out to almost every new person I talked to, and trust me it was put on display. I have one of those smiles that shows off every damn tooth in my head. Not a single one of them had noticed, or were polite enough to lie about not noticing. In other words, nobody cared. They were too busy with their own lives and concerns to give a crap about some minor imperfection that I felt I had. Which got me thinking again, this time about how many times I have had friends bemoan cellulite, or wrinkles, or a pimple. Each time I would say something to the effect of, I don’t think other people are seeing what you’re seeing. Or if they are seeing what you’re seeing, they don’t care. I guess that’s my take away, people don’t care, and it’s fabulous. And sadly, I can’t show off my actual snaggle tooth, as I forgot to take a close-up picture before getting it fixed this morning. Ah well. Next time.

Thursday June 25, 2015Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

For years I was given the advice that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to have a blog. For years I had the same reaction – No! I don’t want a blog, I have no idea what I’d write about, I think blogs are dumb, no thank you, not for me. Eventually I was given this advice from enough people, some of which were in my chosen field, that I broke down and started a blog. I think that was threeish years ago, and after all this time, I can confidently respond that my feelings toward blogging are largely the same. HOWEVER, I have also come to realize that blogging is an absolutely invaluable tool, and anybody looking to be a serious writer should really have a blog. Sickening, I know, but here’s why.

#1 – it forces you to sit down and write at least once or twice a week. It doesn’t matter if you are fresh out of ideas or not in the mood, it is Tuesday and Thursday (or whatever days you choose to publish, but they should be the same days every week) and you have to get a blog out. So good, bad or ugly, you get a blog out.

#2 – it forces you to throw your work out into the world for public consumption. I think the number one thing that I hear from writers is that they are afraid to show their work to people. To them I say, how are you ever going to get better, if you never have an outside opinion? The quick answer, is that you can’t, and trust me it is much more painful to get those first glimpses of criticism on a piece that you care deeply about. So get yourself used to the idea of outside opinion on blog posts. They’re quick, they’re relatively painless, and if somebody doesn’t like it, who cares? It was just a blog post. What I think you will actually find though, is that you will find people who like what you’re saying, and you’ll get positive feedback. It’s amazing what a lift I can get to my day when I’m not in the mood, I cobble something together and throw it out there in the world, and then somebody comes back and says they really like the post. Huh. I guess I don’t have to be in the mood to write quality content . . . which leads me to the most important reason . . .

#3 – practice makes perfect. The reason that I can now pump out a blog post that people like, even when I’m not in the mood, is because I’ve practiced. Every post I write, I hone my craft. Every positive comment, or constructive criticism I receive, I hone my craft. I’m honestly kind of afraid to go back and read some of my first blog posts, because I know that the quality will not be the same as what I produce today. Which of course, will make me want to start rewriting and getting them up to snuff, but I won’t. They are the solid proof of how far I have come. My blog is my practice. No through line necessary, no character arcs, just practice.

So if you are a writer, or for that matter, any type of artist, create yourself a practice field that is open to public consumption. If you’re a singer, sing in public at least once or twice a week – record a YouTube video, go to Karaoke or open mic – find an outlet. If you’re an artist, start an art blog. A couple of times a week draw, paint, sculpt, photograph (whatever your medium is) and share it with the public. Don’t make it a piece that is important to you, or one that you spend a lot of time on. It is a piece that you did for practice. Maybe you’re playing with lighting, or a new brush, or a new technique that you saw on the internet. Practice and put it up for people to ooh and aw over. Or people will say nothing at all. You’ll get a lot of that, and it’s something that you need to learn to cope with as an artist. So that’s practice too.

That is my advice, I don’t know why, but I’ve been asked for advice quite a bit lately, so I guess I’m still in the habit. And since I’m on a roll here, I’ve got one more for ya. Deadlines are your friend when it comes to your real work (the work that is important to you, the work that you agonize over). I can’t express enough how much having deadlines has not only improved, but moved my work forward. And really, that’s the biggest thing! It keeps my work moving forward. I can’t put off, or tweak a chapter forever, because there are people to coming over to my house for book club to hear that chapter and they don’t wanna hear that I got caught up marathoning Criminal Minds on Netflix. They don’t wanna hear that I wanted to hang out with my friends. They don’t wanna hear that I couldn’t find my muse and didn’t know what to write. They wanna hear a chapter, and so I produce a chapter. I sacrifice in other parts of my life, and I get chapters written in time for their deadlines.

Okay, maybe don’t do this to yourself.

Are they always great chapters -no. Do some of them get finished right under the wire – absolutely. But they get written. I have really come to discover that hiding behind every excuse I’ve ever given for not getting work done, is fear. Fear that it won’t be any good, fear that people won’t like it, fear that I am not good enough. Sometimes that fear even comes out as hatred or loathing for a project, and you rejoice when the stupid thing is over and you never have to look at it again. Guess what? That’s fear. That deadline pushed you so far out of your comfort zone, you can’t even realize that you’ve accomplished something great, because you’re too busy running back to where it’s safe. To that I say, get over it! Deadlines will help you do so. Your greatest work exists outside of your comfort zone, so let deadlines push you out there. What do you do if at the deadline, what you have is not your best work? Easy, you learn from it so that your next piece will be better. There is no perfect, so we must simply strive to be better than we were yesterday.

So there you have it – put your practice in the public eye, and have hard and fast deadlines. Now go out there and make art.

Tuesday June 23, 2015TheaterLeave a comment

I have pretty much spent all of my free time this June down in Hollywood for the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and it’s been great. The quality of the productions have improved from last year’s festival – for the most part – but I think the best improvement for me was joining up with See It or Skip It LA as a correspondent. Not only were we seeing shows and reporting back via social media (everything we saw was graded with one of four hashtags – #SeeItLA, #ChanceItLA, #DrinkBeforeItLA or #SkipItLA) to help people parse through the almost 300 (I think) offerings, but also getting together once a week to talk about what we’d seen. If you haven’t listened to our podcasts, you can check them out here. They were a lot of fun to record and fueled mostly by coffee and a love of theater since they were recorded Sunday morning and the majority of us were coming off of late night Saturday Fringe binges. Gotta love those 11:30 pm show times!

As I saw a significant amount of theater over the past month, I decided to do a recap – especially since there is still one weekend left of the Fringe, and almost all of these shows still have performances left. My micro-reviews for each of these plays can be read on the Fringe website, the interviews that I did with most of the shows can be read here, and last, but not least, here’s my breakdown on the shows I saw, and the dates of any performances they may have left.

Must See It – Get off your butt and see these. (This wasn’t actually a category we used.)

Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany – 27
The Player King – 26, 27, 28
Treya’s Last Dance – 23, 26
Breaking Bard – 25, 26, 27

See It – Good show, check it out

Sincerely, – 26, 27
Shakespeare(ish) – 27, 28
Bright Swords – 27
The Poe Show – 24, 27
R&J – Gender Reversed – 25, 27
Taming of the Shrew – An Exploration of Gender Expression
Thenardier’s Inn
Love Labours Won – 26, 27
Amelia’s Going Down – 23, 27

Chance It – Good for a specific audience

Shakespeare’s Last Night Out – 26, 27
King of Kong: The Musical Parody – 25, 27
YA Novel: A Parody – 27, 28

Chance It – Has good things going, but is a little rough around the edges

War and Peace: A One Man Show – 26, 28
My Gay Husband – 25, 26
The Count of Monte Cristo: The Musical – 26, 27
The Three Musketeerers – 25, 28

Drink Before It – Let’s face it, some shows are better with lubrication

You and Me and My Best Friend P – 27
Waiting for Affleck – 27
Four Clowns: The Halfwits Last Hurrah – 23, 26
My Darling Josephine – 26

Skip It – Needs work to be fully realized

Wombatman: The Cereal Murders
Might As Well Live
Fuck You Jason: Or Medea by Euripedes
Bernice’s Story

Honorable Mention – I did not get to see these artists, but I continually saw them out seeing shows to support other productions, so I figured that deserved a shout out.

My Sister
Timeheart
Ex-Communication
Dating: Adults Embracing Failure

I have one more show that I am scheduled to see – Tracers – and I know that the script for this one is phenomenal, so I’m hoping the production is too! There are many other shows worth seeing that I didn’t have time to get to, so if you’re in LA, come hang out in Hollywood this weekend. Rub elbows with some artists and see some great theater! As for me, I need a nap.

Thursday June 18, 2015Humor, LifeView all 2 comments

I’ve been having trouble sleeping, well, almost all year. Which isn’t overly surprising as I have been an insomniac off and on since I was 16. But in the past several years it hasn’t bothered me at all, so when it hit hard earlier this year I had forgotten most of my coping strategies, and the ones that I did remember weren’t working. So it’s been back to the old drawing board with lots of trial and error. That trial and error has finally come to fruition, and for the past week and a half I have actually been sleeping. Whoo-hoo! Until last night.

Insomnia by Brian DeYoung

Last night I found myself in the middle of this god-awful dream that had snakes, and more snakes and crocodiles all along this path that I had to walk. It was like the Wizard of Oz Australia edition. And right as I was about to completely lose my shit I woke up to see this gigantic spider crawling across my pillow straight toward my face. This was not a dream. Real spider on my real pillow and now I did lose my shit. I screamed one of those soundless screams and flailed wildly. The result of this flailing was that Bubba got kicked in the head and the spider got spooked and started to crawl up the wall. At which point I looked around frantically for something to smash it with, but being in bed I had nothing. Before I could think better of it, I reached out to smash the damn thing with the palm of my hand.

I think it must have been mid-smack when my brain finally broke through the haze and screamed, “What are you doing idiot! That thing is the size of quarter!” Well, by this time it was too late to reverse the momentum, so I redirected it and smashed my hand into the wall right next to the spider . . . At which point it either fell back down into my bed, or scuttled away so quickly that I didn’t see it. Obviously, I assumed that the damn thing was back in my bed. I froze. Maybe if I just stayed very still it would crawl its way back up the wall, we could part company and never speak of the incident again. No such luck, and I gave the little fucker plenty of time. So I gingerly started moving my pillows one by one, in the hopes that when I did unearth it, it would crawl across my hand. I eventually got through all of the pillows and even pulled the blanket back a bit, and no spider . . . anywhere. Not on the wall, not on the bed, not anywhere. Fuck.

It was at this point that I figured I had three choices. 1 – Eradicate with fire. Burn down the entire apartment. 2 – Abandon all belongings and find somewhere else to sleep for the night. 3 – Suck it up, assume that it has crawled away in fear, and go back to bed. Number one got ruled out, because I’m pretty sure that my renter’s insurance won’t cover destruction from spider eradication. Number two got ruled out because the living room was still hella hot, and while I can sleep fairly comfortably in the back of my car, there was no way that 75 pounds of puggle and me were going to be able to sleep in the back of the car. So that left option number three. Suck it up, and go back to sleep. I was not a fan of this option, but reminding myself that I am indeed an adult, and I had to get up in a couple of hours for work, I sucked it up . . . after building a pillow wall and moving to the other side of the bed.

Now here’s the problem with this solution. Several months ago I rearranged my room with the end result being that a shadow box filled with tchotchkes hangs partially over one side of my bed. Instead of going to the trouble of rehanging the box, I simply sleep on the other side of the bed. That way, in the event of an earthquake, I don’t get beaned in the head with a tchotchke. So my option was sleep on the spider’s side of the bed, or possibly get beaned in the head. Obviously, I chose the possible head injury route, and settled myself down to sleep.

However, at this point, I am not only awake, but my brain is on full alert. That’s when a horrifying thought hit me. What if that spider has a vindictive side, and is waiting for me to fall asleep so he can come tap dance across my face, and explore the inner workings of my nose and ears. Which is ludicrous, spiders aren’t intelligent enough to be vindictive. But at 3 in the morning, feeling a little shell-shocked, that seemed like a perfectly plausible scenario. I feigned sleep for a bit, then would look really quickly to see if he was making his move. He never did, and this got old really fast.

Then I realized, what’s the point in having dogs if they won’t protect you? So I grabbed Bubba, and repositioned him between me and the wall of pillows. He was not a fan of this plan, probably still disgruntled over being kicked. So I grabbed Zoey, which I should have done in the first place, after all she chases spiders and eats them for fun. She was perfectly amenable to this plan, as long as she got to sleep on my pillow, above my head. I was finally able to fall asleep for a bit before my alarm went off. I still have not seen hide nor hair of that stupid spider again. He’s probably set up residence in my new memory foam pillow and is selling timeshares to his buddies.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’m ever going to sleep again.

Tuesday June 16, 2015Change, LifeView all 2 comments

Calm – (noun) freedom from agitation, excitement, or passion; tranquillity; serenity

I do many things well. Some better than average and I’m not too modest to say so. It has come to my attention though, that the art of being calm, is not on that list. It isn’t even on a list that is anywhere near the list of things that I do well. It really isn’t even on the list of things that I do poorly. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s on the list of things that I have not done for years, and don’t think about anymore. Which would explain the anxiety issues that I have been having.

So I did a yoga class this weekend, in an attempt to bring some calm to my life. Or at the very least some deep breathing and stretching. Holy crap that was the longest hour of my life! Seriously, how do people do yoga on a regular basis without losing their minds? At one point, I actually think I was becoming more anxious because I wasn’t yoga-ing properly. And this was supposed to calm me down! So I focused harder on the breathing, and on making sure that I was doing the moves correctly and eventually the panic subsided. I still wasn’t yoga-ing properly – based upon the sheer volume of crap flowing through my brain – but at least I looked like I was yoga-ing properly. (And yes, I am well aware that isn’t a word, but I don’t know what else to call it, and by this point it’s making me smile. So yoga-ing is here to stay.)

We ended the class laying down with our eyes closed, which I totally thought that I could be down with, after all when have I ever passed up the opportunity for a nap? It wasn’t long enough though, so that part was foiled as well. Essentially, I had just spent an hour getting limber and annoyed. That’s when I realized that for all of the agitation in my brain, my body actually felt pretty dang good. My shoulders weren’t up around my ears, and I felt like I wasn’t wound up like a top. Cool! Which of course means that I’m going to be going back, because it obviously worked at least to a small degree. So now I feel like my body is at war with my brain. My body is excited to go back to yoga, and my brain is trying to convince it that there’s no need. In truth, I’m starting to feel like I’m going a little crazy. Thankfully they know me there.

Thursday June 04, 2015Humor, TheaterLeave a comment

I don’t know what it is, but there is something about a Fringe Festival* that just makes me all giddy inside like a little kid on Christmas morning. Or better yet, that thrill when the Sears or Toys-R-Us catalog finally came in and you got to go through and mark EVERYTHING that you wanted Santa to bring you. (I just dated myself there, didn’t I?) However, unlike Santa, who inevitably would stick an orange in my stocking and bring the one thing off my list that was even remotely educational, I get to go see anything and everything that I am able to cram into my schedule. Which for the viewing audience at home is a whopping 23 shows. Why? Because I’m crazy that’s why.

And that stingy Santa bastard wasn’t around to rein me in. I’m just kidding, Santa’s fantastic.

I have no idea why I’m stuck on this Christmas analogy . . .

Now here’s the catch with any Fringe Festival. With so many shows – I believe there are over 300 this year – how do you know what to go see? Well, you could scroll through all of the different categories of shows and read the little blurb about each one, then make a list of the ones that look interesting, then figure out a schedule that allows you to see as many on your list as humanly possible. That’s what I did. Why? Because I’m crazy, I thought we already covered this?

Or two other fantastic options is to attend a Fringe Cabaret, or follow See It Or Skip It LA on Twitter and Instagram . . . probably some other social medias as well, but I’m not on those so I don’t know how they work. A group of us – yours truly included – are going to go out and see as many Fringe shows as we can. Then we will tweet, Instagram and podcast – we’re also doing podcasts – what we thought. Even better, all you need to know are four different hashtags.

#ChanceItLA – This one looks awesome. I’m going, but haven’t seen it yet.
#ChanceItLA – I saw it and it’s not my cup of tea. But it’s well done, so you might like it.
#SeeItLA – This one is awesome. Get your butt in a seat.
#SkipItLA – This one was not awesome. Get your butt in a different seat.
#DrinkBeforeItLA – Libations will make the experience more enjoyable.

Now it’s just a Will Ferrell thing.

But no matter what way you pick your shows, come see some Fringe. You can check out the schedule, read about the different productions, buy tickets, and find answers to all of your burning questions at the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival website. Previews start tonight, June 4^th (as a hint, preview shows are generally less expensive), opening night is June 10^th and shows run through June 28^th. If you’re wondering what shows I picked to go see, my list and an interview with each production can be found by clicking here.

So what have we learned? Fringe Festivals are better than Santa. So get your butt down to the Fringe.

*For those of you going, “A what festival?” A Fringe Festival is a gathering of performance artists – clowns, singers, musicals, dramas, comedies, magicians, solo acts, etc – who bring their shows to one location – in this case Hollywood – to perform. These shows are jam-packed into a back-to-back schedule, in several different venues so that people can hop from one show to the next almost all day long. It is crazy, it is dramatic; it is a glorious gathering of creative minds reveling in the shared love of art. I’m sure there’s a much more technical definition, but if you want that, ask Google.