Oct 5th

Im typing on my MACBook Pro. Steve Jobs passed away today. Thank you Steve Jobs. You have so many quotes that business people use. You've been an innovator, inspiration, and workaholic. Very few of you remain. Here's a quote I saw today and made me think of people like Steve Jobs, but it goes for everyone: students, actors, artists, scientists, teachers, etc.....

Oct 4th

I was thinking about this today in class. Exactly 2 years ago today I promise you I woke up really early in the wonderful city of NYC , went to the gym, worked out, trained 1 or 2 people, tried to find more clients so that my monthly budget of 2500 dollars would be met, then went to my bartending job at Angus. I know this because I worked the Tuesday afternoon shift for almost 5 years so I'm guessing the odds would be that I'd be going to work that day. I would set up the bar and set up all the tables then I would talk to the manager about drastic, life changing topics like covering shifts, being out of coffee pots, salt and peppers not being filled from the night before, stock not being done, and real life changing things like candle use and spots on silverware. When the night crew would come in at 5, I would take my 30 dollars (Only 2470 dollars short of my budget) and go home. I would do important things that needed to be done like watch The Biggest Loser, get on facebook, and then find auditions that there would be no way in hell I'd be going to because I had 50 more hours of work that week.

Today in grad school I learned how to juggle.

I feel like I'm doing better now.

Oct 2

I had a lovely dinner with friends last night and the topic of work ethic came up. Being the "old" guy at school I was telling them that from my experience, once you get out in the real world your work ethic decreases by about 80%, if not more. If you spend 10 hours a day perfecting your craft in college, you'll find yourself only working about an hour a day in the real world. If you spend 2 hours a day perfecting your craft in college, forget about it, you might as well be looking for a new career. The reason i came back to college was because I know that the only time you grow immensely as an artist or actor is in studio and college. The moment you get your degree you will find 1,444,876,392,085,476,213 reasons not to go to an audition, expand your repertoire, learn new things, read new plays, relearn stuff you learned in school, try new things, expose yourself to new ideas, force yourself to take a chance, and the countless other things we do on an everyday basis here. I love to hear young people say "no, not me. I won't do that". HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!! Yes you. I'm sorry. Even you.

I'm reading about Sondheim right now and am floored by the amount of projects, compositions, collaborative teams, collaborative projects, etc that he did while he was in school. I suppose he's done alright for himself. We live in a society now that we really want to just do enough to get by and we'll "hit it big" because deep down the Gods know how much we want it and will present us with the opportunity. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH! oh, that's funny.

I'm starting to get worried about my time left here. There is so much more I want to get accomplished and I know that when I leave here some of those opportunities will be gone forever. I will never force myself to sit down and learn the things I'm being forced to learn now and that scares the hell out of me. With less than a year left, I feel like I'm a 4/10 at where I should be as an actor to compete in this business. I know what's out there. It's not getting to the 5/10, but it's the 6-8 that scares the living fuck out of me. That is an area that excites me and will take me to a place as an artist that I'm only dreaming of now. But I know how hard it'll be and how much pain there might be involved in that and maybe why I have an arm length keeping me from it. I have friends in NY who are absolutely brilliant on stage. They have done things that leave my jaw dropped and would earn them their MFA's in one day. I possess that. Somewhere inside me I do. I see drops of it every once in awhile. But it's not enough. I only live once. I want to look back at my talent at the age of 35 and say, "Oh, I was such an amateur then". Every minute, every hour, every day, every class, my goal is to get closer to that goal. I guess that's why I'm destroying myself in school right now. Because two years from now, there is a possibility that I could never act on stage again. And I don't want to wish I worked harder in school. This is my time. This is my time to make it happen.

October 1st

What have I missed since the last entry? (that's what she said) Let's see....... Got cast as Sid in Pajama Game, started teaching my classes, must be firm yet friendly, a kid threw up in my class on Friday, it's hot, the hurricane missed us and hit NYC instead, there was an earthquake, I worked my ass off and performed the first reading of my 9/11 piece (please refer to my other blog), this semester has kicked me in the balls, thrown me down, and punctured my brain with Shakespeare, theory , and movement techniques that I never knew existed. I wake up at 5:30 am everyday and go straight through until 10 or 11, I haven't watched any of my TV shows this season, my girlfriend is the most amazing person ever, I forgot what it was like to root for a college football team that sucks...but I remember now, my roommate cries when I throw her a surprise Christmas party for her birthday, I've grown more of an attitude of not caring what anyone thinks and am becoming more like my father and starting to hate when people tell me what to do for no other reason than to make themselves feel better. I'm predicting that I will die from an accident that texting or talking on the phone is involved. I love teaching. I think I have the potential to become a great great great acting teacher. I relearned how to sing in one lesson after doing it wrong for the past 7 years. I will always have a future in comedy and musical theater, as long as neither one of them involves dancing. I'm old and not old at the same time. Giving up soda is tough. The Charlie Sheen roast could have been much better. Forgiveness, friendship, and trust is a 10 act play. I like cats- the animal more than the musical. I miss NYC so much sometimes it hurts. I have many friends who are engaged, just got married, are pregnant, or just had a kid.

Well, that sums up the last 3 months. I will be better at this funny writing shit again. I miss the release (that's what she said).

56th Day of Summer

Oh yeah, my blog. I watched something on the news the other night about how some people are making money off of their blogs, so if you could tell your friends and I could gather 5000 or so followers, I'd appreciate it.

Let's see, New York decided to make an appearance to the 21st century. The gays can get married, or as my dad says "Do they not see married people, why do they want to torture themselves????" I have to agree with the far right, homosexuals getting married is going to ruin the "sanctity" of marriage...... ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!???!! The sanctity?? Sanctity?? You might be able to come up with a lot of arguments why you're against it, but please keep sanctity out of the equation. Have you watched tv lately?? Do you see who is holding up the sanctity of marriage in our country? Britney Spears, Dennis Rodman, Elizabeth Taylor, Lindsay Lohan, the entire casts of the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, Larry King, Hugh Hefner, and everyone else who has made their marriages last as long as Britney Murphy's drug career.

I would comfortably say I have a couple hundred friends who are in openly gay relationships. Most of them put my heterosexual friends relationships to shame. Hell, they put my past relationships to shame. There might be large groups of people who would give me a list of "facts" why this law shouldn't have passed. I'm truly hoping that none of these protestors are either women or a member of a minority race. Guess what? I never lived through the civil rights movement or when women weren't allowed to even sit in a classroom or church, but I'm assuming it's about the same thing. Here are people, who are happy WITH THE WAY THEY WERE BORN, and want the same rights everyone else gets. Isn't that what Martin Luther King wanted? Or Virginia Woolf? Or Betty Friedan? Now the names are George Takei or Rosie O'Donnell. I think we made a huge turning stone this week and I bet when my generation's kids are my age, they won't be able to think of a time when homosexuals couldn't get married. The same way that I don't remember blacks not being allowed to vote. Or women holding a public office. Or minorities being allowed to play on professional sports teams. I mean this is the white heterosexual male's country!! At least that's what we told all the native americans before we took the land and killed all of them. Duh.

But.........I do believe in change. I do believe in progress. I believe living in the stone age prohibits our growth. I believe times change and we adapt to those changes. But it takes some time and patience. I remember when the no smoking law hit NYC while I was bartending and we were convinced all of our jobs would disappear, no one would go out anymore, and people would rather buy a six pack and smoke in their apartments than have to go out to a smoke free bar. We were wrong. It took about 6 months for everyone to figure out how it was going to work, but 10 years later, no one thinks twice about the rule now. And it's spread across the country but it's not made a big deal of anymore. People adapt.

Gay rights has been a hot topic for years. Extremely hot. So hot that half of our country thinks the other half wants to kill them all and send them to hell. The "God Hates Fags" church appears at military funerals to protest. I can't believe no one has shot them yet. I'm very surprised by that. When this law passed last week, the first people I thought of were some of my closest friends who have been together for years and can now share the same bond that my parents have. Men who have lived together for 20 years and love each other the same amount they did the first day. Women who tell there co workers that they've been dating each other for 5 years and get the response, "Wow, I didn't even know you were gay".

So the next morning rolls around and the news on all the stations are how the law passed in NYC and everyone's reaction to it. And my worst fear came to light. CNN cuts to a celebration, most likely in Chelsea, from the night before and you would think Studio 54, La Cage aux Folles, and Ru Paul's drag show looked like they were having an orgy. Now..... as someone who lived in NYC, I know where these parties were and most likely us actors would have ended up somewhere near them if I lived there, but here I was in Orlando Fl watching 4 men in body glitter and thongs grind up on 3 drag queens wearing extremely flamboyant pink feather costumes. I smiled. I was so happy for them. But then I thought of the 6 men sitting in a bar in Mississippi who don't even think they have seen a gay person in their life thinking that this was what this law meant. The "freaks" getting their way. The reason people are prejudiced and racist is because they usually don't understand. They have preconceived stereotypical images in their head that are the worst of what they can imagine. I was upset at CNN for not helping this "change" be shown for how special it really is for so many millions of Americans. I wanted to see the young couples. The older couples. The couples that defined exactly what love means and how happy they were. This is why the theater community rose up together. We have so many friends who feel equal. That they can hold their head up high. That they fought and won.

There will always be hate in this country. For every race, gender, and orientation. Hate crimes will continue to happen and that's just sad. This law is not going to change anyone's mind over night. But I do think that over time this will come to be a thing of the past. We'll laugh that we kept a group of Americans on the back of the bus or out of the church. We'll change and grow together. People will think that NY has given rights to their "images" of what homosexuality is, but they're wrong and we as a people have to grow up and realize that we are here for each other. We only slow ourselves down if we're against one another. We make people aware. We do our job to promote how much good all of us can do. As someone in the heterosexual community, I hope we don't ever let the gay community down. You know the people you can count on. Congratulations.

30th Day of Summer

A lot calmer of a day. I know some of you said couldn't wait to see what happened on day #2 but we started off with sitting on the couch watching mickey mouse and pouring cheerios. Much easier than the bread instructional video. After that we ventured off to Cedar Point. This was a whole new experience of an amusement park for me. It was just me and her.

After getting into the park and looking at all the big rides and being jealous of all the high schoolers who were going to the upside down, twisty, corkscrewy, fasty, and screaming rides..... Tatum and I went into the Hello Kitty store and she told me about all the characters and more facts that I forgot by the time we walked out. We braved it and rode the Merry Go Round. I rode a rabbit in honor of my roommate, Russell. Then we went to Snoopy Land. Yup, next to Snoopy Land is the...well, I don't know the name of it but it should be called "Holy Shit this ride is awesome!!" I watched them as I was lifted up and down on the Snoopy submarine. From there we got icees and made our way to Camp Snoopy to see the shows.

After getting lost, three times, we found snoopy land and we instantly went to the Tatum's favorite ride, The Jr. Gemini. This is a roller coaster that is actually pretty good for very young kids. It's "just right" for them. The downfall is it takes longer to get strapped in than the ride actually lasts so they let you go twice. She rode that 7 times. We didn't put our arms down once the whole time! Probably more of feat for her than me. I was trying to grab the tree limbs as we went by. Another icee later and a corndog, we went to see the Peanuts Gang dance. Holy crap. It was 90 degrees, these actors were in full costume, probably 130 degrees inside and had to dance for all..... 4 of us. There were more characters than people watching. My need to take care of the uncomfortableness set in and I made a fool of myself and did more entertaining than the characters who looked like they'd rather be at the hello kitty store.

After that was Karaoke with Snoopy. "With" is a stupid word here since sweaty actor playing Snoopy just stood there and gave high fives. Since the place was packed with Tatum and I, she of course got embarrassed and guess who sang at the 3'4" microphone stand: Uncle Jason. I tore the place up with killer rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and when I busted into my opera voice Tatum curled up in a ball and looked around in case any of her boyfriends saw her. Tatum still didn't want to sing but I finally convinced her to sing the alphabet song. I told her it was in alphabetical order so she should have no problem. She sang it and the girls working the gig told her how great she was. Of course she was! She's my niece!

But this brings me to my lesson of the day. After we left karaoke with standing silent Snoopy, I asked her why she was so hesitant of singing. Surprisingly she said "It was embarrassing". There were 2 girls, a standing sweaty Snoopy, and eventually a father and son and she was embarrassed. To some this wouldn't be big news. Kids get embarrassed, they get shy and hide. But I have been doing soul searching lately that would leave Buddha amazed and the issues I'm finding with shame, embarrassment, fear, and risk taking seems like it's something learned in life. We as humans are scared to death of embarrassing ourselves. Shame tears or insides apart. We fear showing someone that we aren't as good as we want to be and that will destroy our future and opinions made of us. If we can avoid looking bad in front of someone, we will. We'd rather do nothing than something if it meant we'd be comfortable. We prefer to only do things we're good at and are quick to point out when someone doesn't do something that is up to our standards. OUR standards. If people lived up to OUR standards, the world would be much better. At the age of 35, I understand the logic of this and see that it happens. But a 6 year old? Where does that core emotion of embarrassment stem from? What does this girl have to fear by doing something. What in our society has started those feelings at such an early age? Let's say she sings and does awful, what deep feeling has already formulated inside her that she has fear of the consequences. We all live with fear. Most problems we suffer from are all fear based. Fear of ___. What in the hell does a 6 yr old have to fear? This isn't about her personally, she just opened my eyes to this question that has been floating around in my head for awhile.

To be in front of someone is being vulnerable. We hate to be vulnerable because it usually leads to pain. By protecting our vulnerability, we protect ourselves from pain. Has she experienced pain? And if so, what kind of pain does a young child experience that we forget about as we get older? We hate to be wrong. We would give anything not to be wrong. Kids are always wrong. What difference do they know?

The funny thing about this story is if you asked my family to name the two people who were always the center of attention, they'd name me and Tatum. But when I looked at her saying that today, it's the curse that haunts every performer I saw in her behavior. As much as we perform, entertain, make people feel included, are the first to volunteer for anything..... we possess a fragile side of us that doesn't coincide with what we do. It's what has held as back as artists for centuries. We are scared to embarrass ourselves. We are afraid to be wrong. We are scared to be negatively judged. We are one pin prick away from everything we know ourselves to be from exploding into nothing. Here's my frustration: If we as artists did away with those negative feelings, there is not one thing in this universe that would stop us from being able to make every thing we dream of to come true. To change the world. To create art that was more powerful than any other force. But........ we're scared..... so it doesn't happen.

I was able to think through all this while she rode the bumper boats and Snoopy bounce house. Later, we got back to the car and it took her about 30 seconds to fall asleep. I didn't need to ride those big rides. I had the most fun thing with me the whole day.

29th Day of Summer

For all of you who have kids, you're going to laugh in my face. For those who know me, you're going to laugh in my face.

1st Day of Babysitting my 6 yr old niece, Tatum.

7:30 am- Woke up to her face right in mine saying "Uncle Jason, daddy told me to wake you"

7:37 am- Finally got my whereabouts and got up. She had been standing at the door for the past 7 minutes waiting to come downstairs with her.

7:45 am- Received instructions from the task master that she would like her toast not toasted, with butter, and no crusts. She reminds me not to forget the blueberries.

7:50-7:52 am- Looked around the kitchen for her vitamins until she rolled her eyes at me and got them herself.

8 am- I finally had my morning pee

8:20 am- Watched 10 minutes of some acid induced thing that was on the Disney channel with her until I started playing Pink Floyd to see if it matched up with the video.

8:30 am- Put on Peter Pan for her

8:32 am- Sat down to some light reading of the 9/11 Commission Report

8:33 am- Had to chase and kill the huge fly that was flying around her

9:02 am- Successfully killed the fly

9:07 am- She got tired of Peter Pan and we played Barbie cars on the back porch

9:10 am- Called the prince by the wrong name and she rolled her eyes and left me to play by myself.

10 am- She informed me of her bathroom going ons

10:15 am- She thought I was ridiculous when I told her about mine

11 am- Got into argument because I didn't know any fancy ways to "do" her hair. Was informed that brushing it did not consist of "doing anything" with her hair. I tried to use the excuse that I was a boy and didn't know anything fancy. She challenged me with the fact that my brother is a boy but no one was there to laugh when I said "Not really". She rolled her eyes and said "what about a clip". She didn't find it funny when I replied "What about it?".

11:15 am- She got dressed and I put her hair up as close to what I thought Cindi Lauper would have worn in 1984.

11:17-11:22 am- Looking for a bandaid because the small cut on her foot is rubbing against her sock until she rolls her eyes at me and gets the bandaid herself. She does not find it amusing after I put the bandaid on I fake that I have paddles in my hands and have to shock her heart back to life. She rolls her eyes and walks away.

11:30 am- Went to Dave and Busters to play games. All of the waitresses gave me a lot of attention cause it looked like....well face it....I was fucking adorable walking in with her and us laughing with each other.

11:45 am- She hits the jackpot on the fishing game and wins 1000 tickets. I'm so proud.

12:06 pm- I teach her how to play skeet ball and she gets a 20 and says that's the most she ever got and I start getting teary eyed.

12:10 pm- I flirt with most of the waitresses

12:17 pm- Security notifies me that they found her.... her who?

1:00 pm- We leave Dave and Busters with an oversized horse and I make her say "I love you so much UNCLE Jason loud enough for everyone there to hear.

1:08 pm- She complains that the air isn't on in the car. I haven't started the car yet.

1:30-3pm- We eat lunch and both watch the Disney channel and I watch dozen of teen actors who have more talent than their writers and actually get sucked into the plot of some shows and even get upset a few times that the realism was skipped over at a few places.

1:32 pm- Finally can put Selena Gomez's face with the name. Please don't become the next Lindsay.

3pm- She wants to go over to her neighbor's house to play and they play until 4 while I read the 9/11 Commission Report and figure out how to get Osama and Al Qaeda into my show without shoving it down the audiences' faces. They want to murder infidels, but more importantly Americans, and not women and children, because all of us are infidels.

4:15 pm- Have a tea party with Tatum, the 2 horses, and the baby Tiana doll.

4 pm- Ride bikes around the block a couple times and try to teach her how to get the pedal to go around while scooting the bike up. She sucks in a lot of air and blows it out to show her frustration. It is then I realize she will look back at this moment in the future and realize why she despises me.

6:00 pm- She practices piano, I tell her if she curled her fingers more.... before I can finish she rolls her eyes and says "I got it".

6:02 pm- I shoot her with tranquilizers and put her to bed. See you tomorrow.