Haiku 1

Elvis Costello
Knows exactly how I feel
before I've felt it

Puzzled

Ok, so Puzzle locker rehearsals started last night. I had to miss most of our first read through because I had logic class (blech) and didn't get there until the last ten minutes. The show sounds cool, but I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT'S ABOUT!!!!!! And no one seems to be able to explain it at all to me. In 1/2 hour I'm supposedly going to get a chance to read through the script for myself, but I'm so curious that I wish I could go back in time and be at last nights rehearsal right now. Right...now.
Damn. Haven't figured out time travel yet.
Well, If any of you are reading this, I hope you come see this play, because the whole cast has put alot of effort into not exploding with curiosity as to what this thing is about.

Perhaps I should give you a rundown on the facts I know:
1) All the characters are dead.
2) It takes place in the North West woods of America
3) It sounds like the play is as gory as hell (which I think is kind of awesome)

Aside from this, I have heard a few things about my character, which I will now share with you:
A) I sing a rock song (my character's name is RockStarBoy)
B) At one point I get burned alive
C) My crispy corpse has an affair with Kelsi Crivaro

This is everything I know about this play. DAMN YOU W DAVID HANCOCK FOR WRITING SOMETHING SO ENIGMATIC AND STRANGE!!!! Now I'll never be in a kitchen sink drama. Not that that's a bad thing. Actually, I'm just whining, because every play I've ever worked on has been a big stretch of the imagination. Even Rainy Days and Mondays was a supernatural ghost story. Come to think of it, the only play I ever worked on at Iowa where I wasn't a ghost was Who Wears the Boobs In This Family. But I digress...

Lastly, I just want to point out that this is most likely my last ever acting gig. I'm planning on never acting again. What a way to go.

On Flashes of Lightning

Where is it
Gonna go
Is it here
Is it where
Is it where
Is it there, yet?
Is it there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there
Yet Are we there?

WHITE
HOT

There we are, yet
There we are. Yet
There we are. Thus
It is there. It is there,
Yet it is there.
Where it is is here.
Here is where it's going.
There is where it's gone.
This is where it is.

WHITE HOT

There is nothing gone because it is here.
Nothing is gone because we went there.
Because we went there nothing is gone.
It is here because we went there.
Nothing is gone.

Imagination Teleportation

Wouldn't it be cool if you could just close your eyes and instantaneously teleport from one place to another? If only...
That's not to say that I'm all that interested in hightailing it at this particular moment, but I still think it'd great way to ween ourselves off the fuel economy. Too bad imagination teleportation isn't real...
Hohum...

In Honor of Bobby Evers

Sort By Song Title:
First Song: 1:Agogo - John Scofield
Last Song: Zero - Smashing Pumpkins

Sort By Track Length:
Shortest: Samuel L Jackson saying "Yes they deserved to die, and I hope they BURN IN HELL" (3 Seconds)
Longest: Fleught by Dominic Eulberg (1 hour, 19 minutes and 4 seconds. I have never listened to this.)

Sort By Album Title:
First: 7 Worlds Collide by Neil Finn and Friends
Last: Z by My Morning Jacket

Top Five Most Played:
James Brown - Get on the Good Foot (7 times)
Brad Mehldau - Get Happy (6 times)
Fairport Convention - Si Tu Dois Partir (5 times)
White Stripes - My Doorbell (5 times)
A.C. Newman - Miracle Drug (4 times)

First Song on Shuffle:
Today's The Day by Aimee Mann

Search for...
Sex - 3 entries
Love - 131 entries
Death - 28 entries
You - 260 entries

AMAZING STORIES! VOLUMES: I II & III

BAM!
Episode 1!
BAM!-BAM!
So today a strange man broke into our house! BAM! He totally took a shower in Gene's bathroom. Isn't that bizarre, strange AND wonderful? But also unsettling. Veeeery unsettling. So unsettling that I took Gene's toy plastic bbgun shotgun, and now it's sitting on my lap for protection. Robin took care of the situation. He very patiently asked the dude to leave. I hate guns, but it makes me feel like I'm Samuel L Jackson in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
I SHIT YOU NOT...uh...muthafucka.
No, but seriously, I heard a noise in the basement, and I thought that he'd come back, so I lit a cigarette (I know, I know) and stormed my castle. I felt all badass. Then I felt like a moron. What is it about being a dude that makes me want to be such a stupid asshole sometimes? I think it's hilarious when it happens. But still, Gah!
So then, when I thought the bbgun unloaded, I fired it at a drum, and a bb ricocheted across the room, like in a comic book. It was awesome. Isn't it great to witness magical acts of stupidity? Aren't they sometimes the most memorable moments of your life? They certainly are for me.
BAM!
BAM!-BAM!-BAM!
Episode 2!
BAM!-BAM!
I might have a fuckton of plays produced in the next couple months. I don't know how this happened, but a whole bunch o' oppertunities just popped up to share my work with people who might be interested in putting that shit up. Sarah Hammond is going to throw a copy of Billie the Kid across some Lit Manager's desk in South Carolina. Hooray for Sarah Hammond! Mitch, the first ever professional director to ever produce my work, is starting up a new theatre company, and he's looking for submissions. His mission statement involves producing new plays that blend together Art, Multimedia & Technology, or Music in any way. They're also looking for new spins on old ideas. I figure I might try to whip up some more robot plays. See Episode 3! BAM! Lastly, Pegasus Players, in an effort to keep the Young Playwright's Festival fresh, is looking to commission new work from alums of the YPF. They're framing it as a bi-annual award, where one alum is commissioned to write a peice or produce a new draft for the purposes of a workshop, with a small run. Reward - 500 dollars. Thank goodness there are places like Pegasus to keep young artists writing. How incredible. I never would have been a playwright if it weren't for them. I really hope I can have a chance to repay the favor for them somehow. I would totally love to be a lacky intern there. If I don't get into Brown, I hope they'd let me lag around at Pegasus, until I find a proper job in theatre.
Oh, and I also gave a copy of El Dorado to Mitch Emerson, my buddy who works down at the mill and did a kick-ass job as the Pimp in my play. We're talking about producing it together cheaply somehwere in Iowa City. I would love Mitch as Sparrow in that play. BAM!
BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!
Episode 3!
...The Final Meltdown.
BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!-BAM!
MY FRIEND CARL HAS COMPOSED THE MUSIC OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. This may sound far-fetched, but in fact, it is not. Using a progam on his powerbook called "Super Collider" (BAM!) he has calculated the frequency of the rotations and revolutions of every notable object in our lamentably nameless little neighborhood. The frequencies are too low for human ears, but the whiz kid found a way to imagine an omnipotent hand point his finger and stir the pot, so that the whole operation moves about 800 times faster. The result is a SYMPHONY of SPACE, a CONCERTO of the COSMOS, or a TARANTELLA of TIME. I like that last one the best.
So I might write a short robot play based on that sound and an all-knowing supercomputer (which will be the exact size and shape as a pair of real boss sunglasses.) I might in fact make a series of short robot peices, combining them with IO and several other short robot things I've come up with in the past. This is the package I'm thinking about assembling and sending off to Mitch for his new theatre company.
For the first time in my life, I'm starting to feel like a working playwright.
BAM!
Life has become happy once again. I'm listening to Poses by Rufus Wainwright right now. It just ended, and the next track will be Jeff Buckley's version of Halleluja. I'm starting to feel good again.


Halleluja.


Halleluja...


BAM!

Perhaps a Bachelor for All Eternity

Perhaps. We shall see. I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the idea.

Maybe I don't ever want to fall in love again. And maybe this isn't such a bad thing. Love is great, love is amazing, love is a many splendored thing and so forth, but maybe it's not for me.

I was talking to Steva last night on the way to Iowa City, and she said something to the effect of "I'm going to wander the world alone forever." That didn't seem to bum her out that much. Reflecting on that, it doesn't seem like the worst thing to me either.

Think of it this way: I've already been in love. I know what it feels like. I know how great it can be and I know how horrible and destructive it can become. So what need do I have of romantic love anymore? Haven't I already experienced it? Hasn't it, for me at least, become passe? Wouldn't I be a much more whole person if I never needed to rely on love to get me through my life? I think the absence of romantic love that I'm experiencing is a good thing.

I know I'm likely to change my mind on this matter, as I do on all my epiphanies. The evidence for this is the joy I find in other people's love. There are few things as uplifting as witnessing what Vonnegut called "a duprass" in Cat's Cradle. But that's so rare, and I'm not interested in wasting my life looking for that. Stumbling into it is a different story. I'm fine with pleasant surprises...

Love is great, but it, gah. What do I really want to say here? Am I bitter about love? Is this what's fueling it all?

But I'm not jealous of other people's love. Not even people who would, in a normal situation, make me jealous. I'm happy for them, but perhaps that's not for me.

Perhaps I'll be a bachelor for all eternity.
Unattatched but available.

Or perhaps this whole entry is all a crock of shit.

Me & You & Everyone We Know

How about it? The ultimate break-up movie.
I recently told someone a fib, and said that I had seen the film, when in fact I hadn't. I don't know why I lied, I never do (unless I'm talking to faculty.) I felt bad, because my lie had extended to going online and finding a quote off of IMDb. So, to atone for my venial, bizarre and inexplicable sin, I went out and bought a movie I knew nothing about.
Watching it with my parents was a mildly bad idea...
I really liked it, though. It was kind of beautiful through it's mundane aspects. All these strange, bizarre and inexplicable moments, colorful and playful, magical but real, made me feel like a helium balloon expanded in my chest. In other words, quite an uplifting picture.

I don't understand why uplifting art is so rare these days. Who died and made cynicism king? This is, of course, coming from a man whose only play ever to be performed involved killing off every character by the curtain call, but let's just ignore my moderate hypocracy for a stint, shall we?

Why so cynical? Why does every good love story have to have a sad ending? Annie Hall, Harold and Maude, Love Story, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. All tragic. What gives?

I put Me & You & Everyone We Know in the same category I would put Punch Drunk Love or any of Wes Anderson's first three movies. All tone. Sad, but cathartic. Just...way cool.

Thank you, Me & You & Everyone We Know. Thanks for cheering me up. And thank you too, person that I lied to regarding whether or not I saw Me & You & Everyone I know. My dishonesty to you and the subsequent guilt I felt for lying led to one of the luckiest blind movie buying experiences I have ever had. Perhaps some day you and I will have to watch it together, and I can confess the whole thing in person. I hope you'll think it's a funny story.

A Village on Fire

Today in my Wallace Stevens class, Tom Simmons had us construct small structures out of matchboxes in order to better understand architecture, in order to better understand poetry, in order to better understand Wallace Stevens' poetry, in order to better understand Wallace Stevens.

His kids though it would be really cool if we lit them all on fire after class.

So did we.

There were these wonderful flickers of majestic fire, where the old Cecil B. DeMille notion of flaming tornadoes in "The Ten Commandments" actually existed in brief. The experiment that we conducted felt one of a kind, yet there was utterly no significance to it save what we could conjure in our own imaginations.

Some people imagined the sticks to be people, and that we were demolishing someone's home. Others pictured it as a simple act of pointless destruction. I saw it as a plague of fire that swept through this licentious villa of matchsticks, as though their sins, however inanimate, were being punished.

The scene would have made a wicked album cover. Luckily, photos exist.

What a wonderful tool the imagination can be. What an awful weapon against one's self, but at the same time, what an awesome bandaid for the spirit.

In that moment of complete and utter pointlessness, that action of burning a little matchbox village, which has no relevance to any of the literature I have as yet come across, an act of imagination was born.

Like some magic to cure boredome.

The Best Photo Anyone Has Ever Taken Of Me.

By Robin Svec.

Today's events.

The past 48 hours-

Dan came out.
New years.
I kissed two girls.
Passed out.
Woke up.
Watched Danielle answer the phone.
Told her to hang up the phone.
Met up with Dan.
Bought him dinner.
Picked up Danielle.
Picked up Danielle's spirits.
Dan left.
Edited Billie the Kid by myself.
Watched it.
Blogged.
Wondered about you.
Blogged.
Wondered about Dan and Fran.
Then, again, I wondered about you.
Watched my eyes get fuzzy.
Now I'm going to sleep.