Let's Make a Ghost

I've been meaning to write this one up for weeks, but I've got a legitimate excuse for why I didn't this time: I had to wait until it was cleared with the legal department of a cable TV network.

This is one of the weird things about blogging as an actor. Once you get to a certain point, there are things that it's really difficult to disclose online, and even those things that are okay to disclose, you usually have to wait a long time before you do.

I guess technically it's only been 13 days, but it feels like it's been much longer. Heck, when this happened, I was technically single and didn't know what I was going to do with myself in August. Now I just met my new girlfriend's mother, confirmed a subletter for my apartment for the next month, and booked with multiple couchsurfing hosts across the west coast. So I feel like it's been a while.

Thirteen days ago, I was on the set of my first TV show (ignoring the online show with NBC Universal, anyway). Ever since I did it, I've told lots of my friends and family about it, and I don't think I've yet managed to say what show it was and what I was doing while keeping a straight face. So consider this an early warning about what my very first IMDB credit is going to be (once the production team comes around to registering my page):

Appeared in "Celebrity Ghost Stories" (2012) as "The Murderer"

I was shipped up to a small town just north of New Jersey with about a half a dozen other people for a small "reenactment" of a legend that ends with somebody dying at my character's hands. It involved some very tense scenes in period costume, and a couple stunts with a dummy in a bridal gown. Interesting day's work. I had a great time with everyone involved, especially the director and the rest of the cast of 1930s wedding guests. To say more I think might get me in trouble.

So for the the full story, you're just going to have to watch the Biography Channel for the episode of Celebrity Ghost stories featuring Kevin Sorbo this fall. once I get an exact date, I'll let everyone know.

Recession Project

I'm turning 26 in three days.

I sometimes joke about signs of the times, especially the economy. Back when I was in high school, I would go to the bakery and the people working behind the counter would be about my age, sometimes a little older. Now, I'm in my twenties, I go to that bakery... and the people working the counter are about my age, sometimes a little older.

I meet and hang out with 35 and 40-year-olds who are doing basically the same thing they did when they were teenagers. Which is fine, only you can't lead an adult lifestyle on a teenager's wage. Everyone's broke. One of these friends came to me recently and admitted that he was about to get kicked out of his apartment. He said he was behind on his rent and was going to have to go to one of those quick loan places. I asked him how far behind he was. He said "not that much, just five months."

Multiple friends of mine are talking about their credit card debt and how they just can't pay it off. They're trying, but it keeps growing. I ask people what they're doing about health insurance, most of them say they don't have it.

I used to think these people had chosen this lifestyle for their art. But a lot of them haven't. A lot of them aren't artists of any kind. They just live this way because it's the only way they can.

I had drinks with a couple friends from college I hadn't seen in years. One of them used to be on the football team. All of his teammates were Economics majors, one of them now works in oil futures. Whatever that means. He makes US $4 million a year. He's two years older than I am.

Now I know a lot of people can and do argue that that guy is probably not as happy as my friends making less. But forget happiness-- how about the money that could have been used to make it so that if one of my uninsured friends suffers a medical condition, they can get the care they need to live? If oil future man was making, say, $400k (still a huge salary), how many of my uninsured friends could be employed with liveable wages and health benefits with the other $3.6 million?

So forget my tutoring rich kids about the Gilded Age this past spring for a moment, and look at something a little more visceral:

In 2006 I filmed my first episode of a show about my study abroad experiences in India. And there's a 45 second clip near the end where I talk about something I'd never experienced firsthand before. I'd just arrived in the country. And the thing that smacked me in the face was the divide between the "haves" and the "have nots." And I just remember feeling grateful to be going home to a place where the disparity in income wasn't nearly so high.

Well. There's a measure of the disparity in income between countries. It's called the Gini Coefficient. It's measured from 0.0 to 1.0. A gini coefficient of 0.0 means perfect equality, 1.0 means one person in the country has literally all of the income.

India has a Gini coefficient of .37. The United States has one of .41.

In other words, I went on a show with NBC Universal and openly lamented how unequal one country was, only to come home to country that is now even more unequal.

As I said, I'll be turning 26 soon. I have this feeling that I should be doing something more adult and responsible with my life now.

Right now meaning I'm paid on an hourly basis for a job that mostly works in the evenings and has no real opportunities for advancement. I live alone in a not-that-nice-but-livable neighborhood in an apartment furnished mostly with hand-me-downs and free pieces from Craigslist or the curb. I have no debt (thanks to parents who could both pay for my education and taught me to always pay my bills in full on the date they're due). I started a Roth IRA a few months back, and I'm searching for individual health insurance plans I can afford that will actually pay for hospital care (surprisingly not a given).

In other words by the standards of my childhood, I'm kind of a bum. But by the standards of today, I'm doing very well. Perversely, I feel there's something wrong with that.

And I have a good amount of free time and energy.

I've been watching a lot of TED talks about how people work, what's going wrong with our world, how people are working to fix it. Thanks to my travel, I wanted to work in international development or international relations. Saving the world. But I'm starting to realize that the world that I should work to save may be a lot closer to home.

I don't believe in a conspiracy that causes income inequality. One of my favorite shirts from the Occupy movement was a short young man wearing a T-shirt saying on the front "I'm part of the 1%" and on the back "Tax me. I'm good for it." I believe in a system that needs a little tweaking, and people who, if they can separate themselves from partisan politics for a bit, really want to help.

And the first place I'm thinking of starting is making it simpler to hire people. I've got some interesting ideas related to using this theory to implement some ideas from this book  and this other book to make people want to hire more, possibly in conjunction with this campaign as well as lobbying this group to take action among its members.

But first I need to talk to more small business owners. This could get interesting.

A Toast

I'll admit it. I'm not entirely sober as I write this. So, since I've been drinking, I've just come home, and it's nearly two in the morning, I'm gonna do what you do when you're drunk and happy: I'm proposing a toast.

 To art, to the gods and animals we create and channel for an audience, and for the moments they catch their breath at our most human.

To friends, the false, the true, and those who meet us at a bar to laugh at our sorrows and everything else worth laughing about.

To this wonderful city, full of self-absorbed whiners awaiting recognition of their greatness, and the hilarious magical deeds they perform without even trying because they're here.

To nature and the fragile beauty we'll never own, conquer, or  control, no matter how hard we try or try not to.

To love and lovers, drinking each others eyes and lips and getting in the way of people who need to be somewhere else, occupying the bliss of another world that only holds them for that moment.

To the past, for the lessons it will never teach us because we're too busy to pay attention, and the ones that we learn anyway against all odds  thanks to the elders who deserve more respect than they get.

To the future, whatever the hell it turns out to be.

To cats that purr, dogs that wag their tails, and all creatures great and small that know how to smile in their own way, and have reason to do so.

To music, to capture the truth of moments I'll never be able to write in a blog post.

To smart people and their ideas, and their ability to share them.

To those who use those ideas and make the world better, both because of and in spite of their best efforts.

To death, for showing us how great life is by our fear of its absence.

To life.

To gratitude.

To you.

Thank you.

My Next Show: Dramatic Improv with DICE Theater

In just about two weeks I'm going to go onstage with a bunch of pretty, talented actors, and perform onstage. And I have no idea what any of us will be doing.

I've joined the ranks of DICE Theater. We do improv. Only we do it a little differently. Most improv groups' express goal is to make you laugh. Our goal is to make you feel like the characters you're seeing are real. Yes it can be funny sometimes, but more to the point, it's powerful.

I don't know what you'll see, but from what I've seen the rest of the company do, it's going to be good. I do know that we will also follow it up with a ten minute play inspired by a past improv session that has won a couple awards, and then host a reception.

So here is what I advise you do. Five simple steps:

Step 1: Buy a ticket for yourself and a friend (or several) or a date (....or several) here. ($10 for one)

Step 2: On Saturday, June 23rd, Come to the Drama Bookshop's black box theater at 250 40th St, before the 7:30pm showtime. Get a good seat.

Step 3: Enjoy our show.

Step 4: Clap a lot at the end. If you really really really liked it, you can stand up while clapping, too.

Step 5: Hang out with me and my friends afterwards at the reception.

You can do that, right? See you there!

Exit to Fire Island

Two nights ago I was sitting by a copper fire pit in a Long Island backyard, making s'mores, trying to look up the French word for 'Asbestos' to help an a guy from Adelaide explain something to a woman from Brittany. The something had to do with how the fire had been started by our host using a can of gasoline in such a way that prompted his one-toothed father in a sleeveless shirt to yell at him from the porch for a good couple minutes. Apparently even though asbestos being inhaled as particles is horribly dangerous for you, putting a sheet of it down on dry grass is a good idea for protecting against fire.

A group of eight couchsurfers, either living in or traveling through New York were camping in the yard so that we would be up and ready to spend the next day, Memorial Day, on Fire Island. It's a 50km long pencil shaving of a barrier island, and averaging about 300 m wide, just a bit east of where I got horrifically sunburned while on set for Men In Black III. We were headed for Atlantique Beach.

The ferry ride was half an hour on a cloudless day that left no doubt about summer's arrival. We sat in the upper deck, in the back, letting the wind do crazy things with our hair and the Aussie's beard (still substantial even after one of the slightly more inebriated locals had snipped off about five inches of it with kitchen scissors the evening before). We docked, paused for the restrooms and hilariously awkward debate with the Hong Kong native about guessing certain clothing sizes of women walking by. Then we walked the five minute walk from the bay side to the ocean side.

I've seen some beaches before, and this had some of the nicest white sand beaches I'd seen in some time. It would have been perfect had the water been warmer than ice. It was still pretty nice just hitting the sand and walking along the shore, pausing to grab a quart of Ben and Jerry's, sitting on a bench near the dock, passing it down a line and making fun of ducks.

In fact, really that was what made the trip: sharing stuff. Whether it was taking a walk with the Armenian interior designer to get coffee, a loaf of bread, and two dozen eggs to augment the bacon our host had out for breakfast, or three of us in a row at the chowder house near sunset, passing down our bowls of seafood bisque, Manhattan clam chowder, and New England clam chowder in a line so everyone could try some to wash down the raw clams and oysters we'd practically inhaled minutes before. The food was only part of it. It was the times and stories we shared to that made the trip. The only one things we all had in common was that we were all travelers registered on couchsurfing.org, we all had a decent grasp of English, and we were all there. And that was all we needed.

It's good to have weekends like these.

Inspiration

I found a two minute monologue that is perfect for me, less than half an hour ago. Ten minutes ago I memorized it. This never happens. Not to me, not to anyone. But it just did.

The monologue isn't even really a monologue. It's a poem, written by the guy pictured to the left, who, one hour ago, I'd never heard of. I was having an instant messenger conversation with a good friend of mine about my tutoring, and she asked me if I would consider being a teacher. I gave my standard answer of no and my explanation, but a second later out of curiosity, I Googled "What do teachers make."

If I had used the more appropriate question "How much do teachers make," I never would have found that poem.

Taylor Mali wrote the poem, anonymously at the time, about exactly what it is teachers make. He's since performed it for a huge variety of venues. I read it once, then again, then watched him do it twice. I loved the words, and there was no doubt his performance was passionate, but a little part of me started thinking "I'd actually read it a little bit more like this..."

I printed it out, made a few cuts, and read it twice. Then I put the paper down, and recited the whole thing, top to bottom, only checking the sheet twice. The second time I did it, I was off book. And it felt good.

This never happens to me. It took me three weeks to memorize a monologue half this long. I must have read it on the subway hundreds of times. But this new piece I have down cold, and it's so good that I want to go to auditions now just to deliver it.

New Company for Me, New Facilities for You

My school always builds the cool stuff after I leave.

This is the Logan Arts Center. The University of Chicago, my alma mater, has gotten the funds for and now built a state of the art theater, film, and visual art space.

I was in Chicago and on campus these last four days for completely unrelated reasons: friends, family, and the annual world's largest scavenger hunt according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Patricia Marx was in town to write it up for the New Yorker. So instead of explaining it myself (again), I'll probably repost whatever it is that she puts up once it's available. I will just say that balsa wood bridges built to bear human weight are really hard to make (and that people really stink after they fall into Botany Pond), and that getting a mixed drink from a piano that makes a different kind of cocktail depending on what song you play is kind of amazing. I digress.

I took a quick visit of Logan with my oldest niece, who might be applying to the school next year. The facilities are drool inducing. The set shop is massive, the two theaters we saw are gorgeous, and they have catwalk and fly systems. No more running around the outdoor parapet above the windows to get backstage in deep winter, or spotting for people on ladders to hang lights. And that's just the beginning.

It's great to see that the school is starting to really giving the arts some quality facilities to work with. I'm seriously jealous of anyone who is able to participate in University Theater in the future. If nothing else, it will make a degree from the school look that much cooler, once all these serious actors start coming from the program, having benefited from the new state of the art spaces and tech available to them. Who knows, maybe they'll even go ahead and start calling their TAPS major an actual Drama program!

In the meantime, I've just joined the DICE Theater Company, and will be doing some new things with dramatic improv. I'm going to be curious to see how things work out with them-- they're cool people with an interesting concept. More news on all that soon.