On Solitude and Introspection:

9/12/20

A little of both goes a long way...

Some of us, at least consciously, glide through life with little self-doubt and virtually no self-deprecation...then there are those of us who, without distractions to disengage us from the voyage, are in a perpetual state of "if only I had done"...

Among those diseased with inferiority complex, there are two common subsets--the Trumps..the braggadocious blowhards who think their own voice can drown out the demons...and the furiously-softspoken who have come to accept...even desire...the self-consumptive feasting on one's ego...

I have been without my wife for a week now...without her 24/7 presence in my home if not my heart...I have come to realize how much I rely on her to intercede with "Rick The Prick"--the doppleganger who keeps appearing to chastise me for past failures and past successes--and spare me from the tiring dialogue.

She returns tonight.  I really must straighten up the house and kick Rick to the curb...

 WITH APOLOGIES TO MISS MANNERS

I take--and give--a ton of flak...

My readers admonish me for "too much anger"and "too much profanity", both "off-putting" and "alienating" to members of my audience...

I admonish them for being too fragile, and myself for being a curmudgeon...

Here's the thing:  Lisa was my "governor"--you know, the devices they put on engines to keep them from revving to "red line"...she was my voice of reason...she was my quaalude...   Without her presence, I am now rudderless...a large and old rustbucket vessel circling in the harbor, making waves and threatening collision with the party boats...

I think my personality is that of a hardened cop in a lot of ways...you learn to approach every situation with at least a tinge of suspicion...you "hope for the best" but are "prepared for the worst"--especially in people.  I know I am textbook "personality disorder" in a lot of ways...I am ill-tempered, quick to confront, have no impulse control....

At my age, I can now say "tough shit"...  It's kind of liberating...

However, there is a caveat...I don't give a rat's ass if people "like" me, but I really do want to say my piece and have it received by--if not friendly then accepting--ears...  I want someone to take me head on with factual information which may blow my thesis out of the water...not some prepackaged pablum prepared by The American Heritage Foundation or Wayne La Pierre's Flying Monkey Squad...not some mole-fed mush supposedly coming from Liberal, trusted sources but which is in fact nothing more than well-camouflaged Karl Rove propaganda...  Facts.  Certifiable, creditable facts.

Or at least a damned interesting hypothesis well-stated....something to chew on..

Sorry if that sounds condescending or self-aggrandizing... first of all, I am a classic narcissist...secondly, "tough shit"...

Love and kisses to all.

"That's life...that's what people say..."

Well...this was the year that was...we sold our little oasis in Los Angeles and headed for the big pines of the Northwest...we found another, different oasis...one with 50 foot pine trees in the backyard...with tadpoles in the pond...with fuscia and perrywinkles and clematis abounding...we went from dead broke to flush to dead broke again...we, along with our intrepid steed--the redoubtable, massive black Expedition nicknames "T.T." in homage to Tina Turner, another big, black and ballsy broad--traversed 1200 miles of geography and light years of anxiety...we had landed, safe, on our home base...

Then Lisa died.

The horrific irony of that is something I will spend a long time trying to "get around"...

We had finally found our home.  It was owned free and clear, purchased with cash.  Lisa was about to reap the fruit of her horrible labor--her 50-year "galley slave" existence as lackey to her adoptive mother, fraught with physical and emotional abuse--...it was over.  The Wicked Witch--morphed at life's end into some Norman Rockwell sweet biddy--was dead.  All the legal maneuverings to keep white-trailer-trash "relatives" from raping the Witch's assets...all the expensive lawsuits...all the court appearances...all the confrontations culminating in a remarkable conservatorship which preserved not only money and property but also the Witch's personal dignity....all were going to finally reap reward. Lisa and the Witch's grandchildren were going to share in a substantial estate.

The first payment arrived in January...now 6 months ago...We giddily deposited money in separate accounts under Lisa's name....we bought her clothing and shoes, things she had done without for too long...we put up a fence around our new oasis...we sent her on her first vacation in 11 years, somewhere it wasn't raining....somewhere sunny and warm and lined with ocean...we sent her to Kauai...

She died there, in her sleep, on February 29, 2016.

And so I sit here, 4 months after my personal apocalypse, trying to make sense of the first sentence--"that's life"--

All I keep saying is..."What the fuck???"

From the "Hey Diddle-le-dee, an actor's life for me" file:

PROLOGUE

At 70, the "calls" get rarer and rarer...so when a world premiere of a really fascinating play comes along, and you really dig the character, and they call you in at the "head" of the day to read for it, you trip over yourself to "accept" the audition...

But you also start to lose attention to detail…

THE DAY BEGINS

I showed up, dutifully, at 10:15 AM for my 10:30 call...to an empty parking lot....to a locked theater...and it was now 10:30...I even got the theater business office manager to check her booking schedule...and nothing was there... 

 

I had been sucked into the vortex known as THE ACTOR'S NIGHTMARE...

The casting office called me at 10:40...on my bluetooth as I tried desperately to get back to my home computer-stored emails and check the address...the casting people wanted to know where I was...I replied "At the ________ Theatre, well I was but now I'm rushing back to my home to find out what was happening..."  

"The ________??  No, hon, we're at the ___________ in Hollywood...."

Picture, if you will, the map of your local area.  Now...place a point somewhere near the lower left edge of that map....now place another point somewhere towards the upper right sector....if you can, place all kinds of natural and man-made obstacles between points A and B....that was my location in context to their location....it would take any human being at least 45 minutes to traverse LA catty-corner during business hours...I could do it in 30, but not in a car with a very unhealthy transmission...

I gave my profuse apologies, told the assistant to make sure that his boss knew how much I appreciated this opportunity, how much I loved this script and this character and how I really would love to read for it, but I was now in Playa Del Rey, and Hollywood was an unrealistic goal in less than an hour...."We're breaking for lunch from 12:30 - 2" was the reply.  

OK.  I could get back in my now-seriously ill car, already overtaxed from the morning's first journey, and drive like a NY cabbie to this spot in Hollywood, and get there before the 12:30 lunch break.  I suggested this possibility, and was told to try it and I would get in the morning run...

I asked my trusty steed, my Saturn, if she had this one trip in her.  She said, "hell yes...or I'll die trying"...and we were off...

We got there without bloodshed or violation at 11:50, parked and checked in...the young blonde woman monitoring the call told she had made the same mistake during the previous day's business, and was very sympathetic to my Homeric journey..

.

Once inside (they even bumped 7 guys to get me in the door...imagine my apologies to the room on my departure) everyone was lovely, my abject apologies on entrance warmly received...the playwright and the director, first meetings for me, had the glimmer of true “mensch” in their eyes, and they were outgoing---rare and refreshing qualities, when genuine, in my industry--and the producer and casting director were pleasingly friendly, so... "Let's do it", I said.

THE SCENE BEGINS

I have the first line...and, since there's no designated "reader" with whom to interact, I prepare to launch with option "B":  you play it to an imaginary fellow actor somewhere on your plane...somewhere within "the 4th wall", as it were...something resembling the final product given the medium...

Foolish boy.

A slightly annoyed tone arises from outside that 4th wall..."read it to me"...the casting director is telling me to break 4th wall, and to play the scene with an audience member--namely himself?....ok....been there done that..."Let's go", I say again, this time in the guise of the first line of the scene, waiting for the reply which will prompt my next response, etc. etc. etc....and what comes back sounds like someone reading the minutes of some local Kiwanis Club meeting...no inflection, no emotion, not even the attempt at eye contact...and at an inaudible level and at breakneck speed...

Listen, please....I can play it any way I'm told to...I pride myself on being a "money player", a craftsman who can provide a quality product to my clientele...you want "representational" acting, especially important for most media comedy?  No problemo...you want a certain style, you want a certain sound...I'll give it my best shot...but IMHO this play deserves more, and these two men I just met deserve a chance to judge my work with all the steam in the engine and at pressure, and this beast was never going to take flight with that lack of commitment on the other end of the see-saw, so..

..

"What?  What?  For Chrissakes, I'm an old man!  Speak up, boy!"  hurled from my mouth, in the appropriate dialect of this complex character, in his eighties....and it got my scene partner's attention...

The rest of the scene went...ok....but not what I would have been chosen as my ideal scenario for this once-in-an-ever-so-quickly-shortening-lifetime chance at reaching for the ring...

THE EPILOGUE

Now I descend into that darkest of cellars in the actor's psyche:

How to do I rationalize my blowing this without losing the last, slim glimmer of hope that keeps me caring about being an actor? …without using the "ok, you didn't get it, the callbacks were today and you ain't called, so..." dialog, which if not monitored becomes a spiraling descent into the dark and desperate and oh-so-attractive-to-all-us-Brando-era-“mavericks” place…the portico of the hellhole of the "Oh God I need This Job" place, that chant of the serf, and which so demeans your personal sense of value as a person and as a product?....

And there are dozen levels of perfectly logical reasons for “not landing” this plum…”With this director’s ‘cred’ and this kind of writing, there may be three ‘A-listers’ already being wooed to play this role”, “you were too young to play him (What?  Have you seen my selfies???)”…even the “Simple. You suck!” response…you name it, it’s part of the dialog…and it’s being spoken right now…

(Author’s Note: Keynesian-inclined responses proposing that "a more accurate assessment of the offered commodity" might be in order are welcome.)

Ah, f*ck it.  I'll feed the dogs...

Thanks for listening...

I'm getting to know the meaning of "Bro"...

It has been far too long since I have opened the door to this room...

My last posting, in October 2014, is a curious lead-in to this writing...

Lisa and I are in dire peril right now....she almost died shortly after I posted the October piece...stress and a faulty liver almost took her from me, as she lay bleeding out on a ER gurney from an esophageal varices...

Short version:  she made it, because she is remarkable and our guardian angels were on the job.

Now we are faced with the slings and arrows which are flung upon the poor...the unemployed...the folks at the base of the Murikan Pyramid...

We had no health insurance...a mixture of "eligibility windows" and an entrepreneurial attitude about the relative unimportance of protecting your most valuable asset--your employee--had thrust us into the cadre of peasants who sludge through the mud on a daily basis, fearful of slipping into the mire, with no safety nets to save us if we fall...

We are facing massive medical bills...and the whopper, the one from the hospital with its 18 hrs of ER, 3 days of ICU and two in "general population"--with all their attendant charges for the 8 units (yes, the body only holds, roughly, 9-10 units) of blood, 4 of plasma, countless more of saline...the $50 gauze pads, etc.--has not yet come...

Prior to this incident, we barely had enough, robbing this Peter to pay that Paul, to keep the electricity and gas flowing and provide for the fuel needed to get around LA to work...and pay for prescriptions...and "walk-in lab" procedures (a great boon to patient care, BTW...you can get virtually any lab procedure done without having to traverse the Yellow Brick Road of "primary care physicians", and their oh-so-expensive colleagues "specialists", to find out precisely what your thyroid or liver or kidneys are doing..or what your testosterone level really is).  We have kids who need to be fed.

We are Murika.

So we are at a crossroads.

We will probably have to sell our home (hopefully while market conditions are favorable), pay off the first and second mortgages and the bulk of remaining medical bills, and hope to have enough to find a community where our balance of assets can provide us with a new field in which to plant our gifts.  We will have to "re-invent" ourselves...

I'm probably sharing too much.  I apologize for that.  I guess I'm just really feeling a long-overdue fraternity for my fellow Americans.  I fought for you, and you spit on me when I returned.  I nursed and saved you--when I could-- from death as a paramedic, and you showed me the horrors that man does to fellow man--or oneself in the depths of despair...and made me leave a career which I earnestly felt an affinity for, but which was too overburdened with bureaucracy and a "caste system" mentality to be bearable on a daily basis...a career which I chose for me, as opposed to theatre which was--lovingly--imposed upon me from birth...a career I left because the consequences of failed decisions were life and death matters, not just playtime drama...

Hence my personal crossroads....

When Lisa lay bleeding out, after me missing the precursor symptoms for 72 hours, I ripped myself a new one...I lost 10 pounds in a week just pacing the floor....I cursed myself in 4 languages...  Despite my keeping my MEDSCAPE subscription--and CME credits--current (although it is than 40 years after my turning in my "whites") my poor ego thought that I could see the deteriorating condition of my beautiful mate fish, despite being inside the tank with her.  Foolish boy...

Now we must march like Patton's troops to make her strong and well and back to health...mental, spiritual and physical health.  We have enrolled her in a Covered CA Platinum PPO...an extra $150  month but covering essentials much better than any competing product.  She's got a new, sharp, young primary care physician, she's seeing the gastroenterologist this afternoon for a consult on a follow-up procedure...

Once this immediate hurdle is cleared, it will be time for some serious soul-searching.  I really must commit to either art or medicine, because I must relieve my poor, overstressed and overworked mate fish from the endless duty of keeping the tank clean...

And, maybe, make a mortgage payment...or a healthcare insurance payment....or car insurance...or Time Warner...or...

Female experience, the follow-up

For those who give a rat's ass (and from the response to this morning's post on FB, not many do), here is the description of my distaff detour:

I was standing at our overcramped-with-dirty-dishes sink at 6:30 this morning, struggling with a load design which would allow all the offending dishware to be done in one, water-and-time-saving bunch...  As I did so, I felt distinctly female...

Before you unleash a salvo of commentary about my sexism, let me explain...  Women, especially women in marriages or other types of domestic partnerships, are often not the breadwinners...therefore they try their best to find other ways of being essential in the crewing of the ship of life....  They work overtime to play a supporting role, and to play it well...  They are the maids, they are the sex toys, they are the friendly ear, they are the oil for the pistons...

That was me, today, standing at that sink...

Lisa has been the breadwinner of our family for quite a while...my acting career is like those subterranean fires that burned for decades in Pennsylvania--yeah, there's still heat, but damn little flame...  I collect my S/S (early retirement) and my actor's union pension (meager at best), so I am able to contribute to the expenses of running the house, but...with over $800 bills for utilities, and the mortgage, and our prescription drug costs, and our pets, and, and, and...it falls upon my 20-years-my-junior wife to bring home the bacon...and she was disabled for a year and unemployed with nothing coming in for a couple of months thereafter...

Happily, she has found a position where her remarkable and very unique talents can shine, and she is enjoying helping a small-business owner build a successful insurance practice....but the rewards from this effort, aside from a minimal hourly wage, will take time to reap, so...

The point is, it is up to me to be the cheerleader, the physical trainer ("Hey, Champ, how's that shoulder today?...Did you get enough sleep last night?"  etc. etc.), the logistics and supply officer...the soccer mom driving the kids to the match...you get it....all those duties which fall, with regularity, to women...

Women, who are not only eminently better equipped emotionally and psychologically to the task, but who also are conditioned from birth to bear pain and frustration and feelings of inferiority with silence and grace...unlike the members of my sex.

Men are taught to bellow and bray.  We are taught that "men don't take that shit lying down"....we are taught that we are the kings of the universe, made in (male) God's image and worthy of (male) God's worship...

It is a brutal lesson--often fatal if not to body then to mind--receiving the memo that all the misogynist bullshit you learned about "male superiority" and male entitlement was a lie...and it is inevitable, even if only on the deathbed, that the memo will be delivered.

I, for one, am glad to experience this humiliation--essential to my growth--in increments while still aware enough to incorporate them into my daily life.

LALAland, up close and personal...

Wrapped a shoot for an ultra-low budget today...

As I sat in my self-provided canvas chair between takes, I took full advantage of our location--an "elite" little plant nursery next to Sherwood Magazines  (if you know LA, you know this place....if not, all the explanation in the world won't help).  I devised a little game where I would cast each passing person into a sitcom or "reality" show, past or present...  Lots of "Vanderpump Rules"--the 20-somethings who are oh so concerned with their looks...a few "Cheers", even a "That Girl"...a "Girls Gone Wild" segment with 7 or 8 vaguely Midwest-looking sorority sisters, all down-dressed in sweats, fast approaching La Cienega with plans to launch a meaningful Saturday Night assault on the local bars...

There was the mid-thirties fellow who talked to the plants as he passed by...he then actually came behind the gate and conversed with one of the exotics, then smiled and explained:  "My therapist!"  I smiled back and told him I approved of the choice...

But then came along a guy on an old, battered Honda scooter...he was shirtless, skinny as a rail, sunburned...he stopped his scooter in front of an apartment complex dumpster, opened the lids and started to rummage...his attempt at finding an honorable meal...

That brought me back from fantasyland to Murika 2014....with the simple thud of a dumpster lid...

God bless and help us all....