Truth and Lies

It's about 3am. I cannot sleep and I cannot focus enough to learn my lines. I am caught in a quandary. To name names or disclose places would cause a world of hurt so I'll maintain generality. I have to make a decision. Well, that's not entirely true. I've made the decision but now I have to act upon it. And the action of the decision is what codifies it and completes it. So I have not fully made the decision. Certain arguments are so persuasive that I find it hard to focus on what must be done. Therefore I find myself in a state of inaction and not fully completing the decision making processes. To do so can cause problems. In actual fact the problems were already caused because one party involved who has begun a clandestine relationship with another party involved has spilled a portion of the proverbial beans. It was my bad to sit on specific news necessary to move myself from a state of maybe to a state of action. Why? Fear. I don't want to have to answer questions. In the end I have to think what's best for me. We all do in making any decision that has an impact on what we do with ourselves and our futures. But I like indecision and find indecision to be comforting. Not in a rational sense but in a "that's what I know" sense.

You see, I don't know truth from lies. Promises were made. Statements of intention were put on the table. Many of these intended proclamations were never acted upon or were slowly and cleverly modified until they no longer had a semblance of their original incarnation. With statements from all sides, those directly opposed and those only peripherally associated, I find myself at the whim of feeling when I truly believe I know what must be done. Why not act? Fear. Collateral damage can be significant or it can be minor. But, as stated just moments ago, I know that a shift has already occurred because of that initial party speaking when it wasn't his turn. No blame. I'm sure the impetus to give certain bits of information was for the best. Clear the "maybe" to "decision." For this I have only respect. I am annoyed more with myself for leaving it to the last minute and not acting sooner. But that initial party has had an odd behavior around me. As if he is hiding something. A something I suspected and has now been unintentionally handed to me. I hate that I have this information. I don't want it. If I could I'd give it back, but it doesn't work that way. Whether it was meant for me or not, whether it was leaked innocently or not, whether it was my intention to have someone confirm what I thought does not matter. It sits there and the cup of lies floweth over.

These, however, are not the only lies that flow. Our second party, the one casting the proclamations, has not, from what I can gather in this moment, uttered a single truth in our relationship. The utterances are many and, at times, exactly what I want to hear, but these spoken bits never seem to come to fruition. So I find myself confronting a direct lie only to be met with a story of clandestine operations. A bit preposterous but not so much that it couldn't be true. On further examination, later and in the privacy of another space, I find the story tipping the scales and spilling onto the floor.

So many lies. Most inferred and easily denied as never having been spoken. But I fear the consequences of the actions taken by both these parties. One will be hurt more than the other when the opportunity presents itself; when one's use is no longer needed. For I fear a leaching is occurring, and with a leach sometimes burning is necessary to remove it. I hope our initial party is strong enough to wake up soon and see what is lying beside him.

But the fear is also extended to my future. A selfish statement, sure, but true nonetheless. Our second party could, potentially, cause problems out of spite. And spite is a reality with this party. I must, then, tread lightly into the action that is to occur. I must tread lightly forward and hold fast to my knowingness staying away from the sweet aroma of hollow promises. Too much time has been spent around that perfume and now is the time to cap the bottle and find out what it is like to breathe fresh air.

Blood on the sheets

No, this is not a story of innocence lost or some raunchy "that time of the month" sex story. Dear lord, get your minds out of the gutter. The title did get your attention though, huh?

So, I woke up the other morning and saw a little drop of blood on my white sheets - up around where my shoulders would be. At first I thought it was just a spot, maybe a balled up piece of cat hair, something inconsequential. I go about my business and the thought didn't really enter my mind again until I woke up the next day and saw it afresh. At this point I stopped and really took note of what it was, a drop of blood. A drop of life, one might say. What concerned me about the whole thing was that it was just a drop. You would think if you were bleeding there would be more. Understand, I'm not asking for a pool of blood. A pool of blood would have been bad. Very bad. But a single drop? And from where? I looked, there were no open wounds. No fresh scabs.

Recently, I worked on a new TV show, Jericho, and had to shave my head, chest and arms. No, I wasn't playing a bald transvestite. I was playing a victim of radiation poisoning. A very cool show and a very cool part. Tune in - Jericho, CBS, Wednesdays 8pm. OK, enough of the shameless plugs.

The reason I bring this up is because of nasty little things known as ingrown hairs. Women know about this. Gay men know about this. Your typical car mechanic knows nothing about this, unless he is a gay man or a woman. I now have a much greater respect for the shaving, waxing and removal of unwanted hair. I also have a greater understanding of the discomfort associated with said unwanted hair growing back in. Oy. But this what we do for our art. We change and adjust in order to become something or someone else. Fun. Weird at times, but fun. The part on Jericho seems to follow a pattern in my acting career: the guy who gets killed or dies or, more specifically, dies a horrible death. It doesn't make for recurring parts, but boy its fun.

One of the first jobs I had was playing Rhona Mitra's (know for Boston Legal and Da Ali G movie) boyfriend on Party of Five. I didn't die per say, but she was fucking Scott Wolf's character behind my back and a little part of me died when I found out. That was the beginning and it only went down hill from there - a figure of speech more than a statement of fact. Cut to Threat Matrix - played a middle Eastern terrorist who got plastic surgery to become white and blow up the Chicago Commodities Exchange. I was blown up in a bomb truck at the end of the episode. I wasn't coming back on that show. 5 years later, or so, I ran into someone on that show. She was dead sure we had met or worked together. I couldn't remember and with a girl like that I think I'd remember. Turns out she remembered me from that show and said I was the best part of it and they should have spent the entire series looking for me. Nice words. It meant a lot to me. But it wasn't to be - I died and the show eventually got cancelled for a myriad reason. It's ok, the exec producer went on to be the driving force behind the little known phenomenon Desperate Housewives. And yet, I've never been on the show or had an audition... interesting. Apparently he didn't share the sentiment as this young actress.

CSI - died of an overdose of sugar, drugs, alcohol and sex. Nice way to go, very fun to shoot. Very fun.

My piece de résistance was a little short film that looks like it will never see the light of day: "The Disappeared." I got to play a Russian mathematician who got abducted in Chile while solo camping, was abducted and tortured to death by an psychotic ex-Nazi. True story. Acted my balls off and killed in it. I must call the director and find out what's going on with is.

So, when you think about it, a little drop of blood on a white sheet is nothing more than a drop of blood on a sheet. But I say we make it a symbol of my career. The image that translates my good fortune to play people who lack such a virtue. The image that translates my passion for the darkness that can only be seen by the light that surrounds it. The image that translates the unceasing nature of this industry's desire to either see me dead or kill me off. The image that could be nothing more than an ingrown hair that has been scratched and the scab fell off in the middle of the night allowing a small amount of blood to be discharged from my skin and adhere to the white cotton sheets bellow.

I think it's probably the last since I don't really believe in symbols. But I'm not going to complain if this fachachta industry wants to keep killing me off, 'casue I'm going to be laughing all the way to the bank.

Procrastination be damned

I've been known to procrastinate from time to time. Yes, it's true. I know it's hard to believe, but I too succumb to the wiles of sitting on my ass and doing nothing. Or sitting on my ass and watching TV when I should be learning the entire part of Master Page for a production of Merry Wives of Windsor I am doing in a week and 2 days.

TANGENT: Recently my dear friend called looking to find a NY actor to fill the spot left vacant by another mutual "friend" who had agreed to do a part in his play but bailed at the last minute. I racked my brain but came up short. When I heard the play and the part - one I played many years ago - I volunteered myself. Good idea or bad idea, the jury is currently out. I was then given a larger part so that my friend could play the smaller part and focus on directing. Cool. I've always been a bit of a complainer when it came to the size of my role so now I've been given the opportunity to stretch my wings and fly. Awesome. And I have a weekend to learn the role then getting 3 days of rehearsal and do the show once. No complaints, just mildly inconvenient to have to learn the entire play in a weekend. I'll be posting to let you know how that went...

Back to the procrastination rant. So, while I should be learning my lines right now or listening to a lecture and not writing this I am reminded of how technology is supposed to help us and not hinder us. HA HA HA... Technological problems have become the new form of procrastination. I have had all my computers crash on me in the last month. Two of the three essentially in the same week. So what does that make me? A magnet for tech support? I think so. Deep down I think I am paying for the previous blog and being sent to "we are experiencing extremely high call volume" land.

The first was the Mac. Macs don't crash, their crash proof! Well, not a whole truth. While my Mac didn't crash it was mysteriously loosing available free space on the hard drive. Such that a 100 gig hard drive with about 70 gigs of info on it only had 252 megs of free space. To educate you on the danger of this, when the hard drive has no available free space it is unable to run key processes that are vital to it's proper functioning. When it can no longer function properly, well it goes straight to hell in a hand basket taking everything with it. So the solution from the genius' at the genius bar was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything and, then, see what happens. Joy. We did that. I haven't had the wherewithal to pay attention to the free space because for the last 4 days I've been in reinstall limbo. Sometimes the programs work sometimes they don't and that means, yup you guessed it, more customer support! Christ I've talked to everyone and spent about 15 hours either in person or on the phone for the Mac. That's just the Mac. The next step, if this archive and install (as they call it) doesn't work is to demand a new computer! I swear... 15 hours. Remember that.

On to the PC. Dell is not so well oiled a machine as Mac. Either because they are larger and pay less attention to the consumer or because they are lager and pay less attention to the consumer. Either way, they are larger and pay less attention to the consumer. And they outsource to India which, no offense, makes communicating a problem that much more difficult when dealing with the ever present If/Then scenario computer system they use. On a side note have you ever noticed that all the tech people in India are named Mike or Tom or Andy. They are so not Mike or Tom or Andy. Just an observation.

Well, it began as a small crash and a screen saying "if you are seeing this for the first time restart your computer blah blah blah." So I restarted my computer. Then Go Back - a program designed to help prevent loss of information in the event of a crash - tells me that it has shut the computer down because a problem has occurred and I should restart the computer and then reinstall Go Back. Huh? Well, I did that and all seemed OK. Then this started happening over and over and over again. So I decided to see if I was still under warrantee. Yup! Thank God at least I won't have to pay for... What the fuc...? That would be the screen going completely insane. Mosaic tiles of pretty purple and blue. Psychedelic patterns that remind me of the acid trips I never took. Well, we're definitely calling Del now. So I did. I mentioned the problem with the hard drive but we got way into the screen issue. That ended (4 hours later) with a tech being called to replace the video card and the screen. OK what about the hard drive... exactly.

The next day the screen was working again. Joy. The tech, Mario, was scheduled to come but didn't. Called me late in the day and told me he couldn't make it until late the next day. Crap. But it's working now so not so so bad. Well, that's when the screen went again. Back on the phone with Dell. With the screen gone he couldn't remotely access my computer to fix it and run diagnostics from his end. More time wasted. Finally it was left that the computer video card and screen needed to be replaced and then he would call me on Monday between 3 and 5. That phone call was 3 1/2 hour and the tech visit was 2 hours.

I went to turn the computer on today and I got a blue screen right off the bat "un-mountable volume." For the layman, that means YOUR COMPUTER IS FUCKED AND I REALLY HOPE YOU BACKED UP ALL YOUR INFO CAUSE ITS GONE!!! Well, I can't wait for that phone call from Dell on Monday.

I pose the question again, who needs to procrastinate when they have computer problems? I was unable to do any work. None, but man did I play a lot of FreeCell while waiting for the computer to boot up - 10 to 15 minutes a pop. A computer should take no longer than 2 minutes, really. So, Tech support in my opinion has become the modern procrastination. That and blogging.

The upside of all this is one of my bosses called me today asking if a new computer would solve my problems. Well, a new office computer will definitely solve my office problems, however, it will not in any form or fashion solve the fact that I have an un-mountable drive in my personal computer that is sitting like a large paper-weight on my office desk. All this means is I have another series of hours awaiting me in the upcoming week with Dell Tech support. Maybe I should give up working and become a professional tech support caller. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Because Tech support is so much fun and so helpful and so time efficient.

To all you who think that computers have made our lives easier I say, sit down and shut up. Easier is not the word I'd use.

Spiders

I moved recently. Now that's nothing special, really. When you think about it moving sucks, but we have to do it from time to time in order to better our living condition and/or maintain a stabile head space. I have moved 3 times in the last 3 years. That is 3 times too many. A young woman I have just been getting to know has not moved since moving to LA. 11 years. Now that's impressive. I've been here 8 years and moved 6 times. I'd like to not move anymore... If that's ok.

To my point. A part of moving is loosing things you didn't really need and acquiring things left by the previous tenant. Well, aside from a handy dandy little kitchen side table and some curtains I acquired spiders. And a lot of them. One in particular has made its home under the light outside my front door. Prime real estate for a spider. This little spider has been my companion for the last month. I have kind of gotten used to his presence and I always stop to see what new bug he's caught and what he's up to.

Well two things have happened recently. 1) I found out he is a she and she just had a shit load of little ones and 2) she caught a butterfly. 1) is annoying and ultimately just going to be a mess. 2) is very very very uncool. Butterflies are beautiful and this little cunt of a spider has been sucking the life and the color out of him.

When I came home the other night I saw the butterfly next to my door. In vein I tried to capture the little guy to get him away from the web and the light. That didn't work and our beautiful little friend started to flutter all over the place - specifically toward the light. So I turned it off and, hoping for the best, went inside. Well, this morning the unthinkable had become a reality: the butterfly was becoming spider food.

At that moment the spider, my new 8 leg companion, became my enemy. I have put up with walking through her fellow spider's webs as I walked up my walk way. I have put up with the bug carcasses on the ground. I have put up with the fact that she's a spider. Now THE BITCH IS GOING DOWN! And her little kids are going with her. It's time to ship out little fucker.

I know. I know. Never kill a spider it's bad luck. If you have spiders you have a clean house. I've heard it all and, while I'm a superstitious type person, at this moment I DON"T CARE! You don't fuck with the butterflies, damn it!

So there you have it. Spider that was once my friend is now no longer and has to be eliminated.

If you screw with the beautiful things in this life you are no friend of mine.