What the...?

Kind Of Blue

Kind Of Blue is my Favorite Miles Davis album. So, since I'm working at home today I figured I would download it and see if it still moves me? It does, in case you were wondering.

I've decided to not rehearse my lines today until I'm actually at rehearsal tonight. It's something that has always worked for me in art. I stop painting for a few days and go back to it. It's like my brain processes things in the background while I'm out doing other things. Surfing is like that too come to think of it. Neural pathways being formed I suppose?

We went out after rehearsal last night and just went off at karaoke. If you didn't make it last night, you missed a helluva show. Highlights being Mary singing Janis Joplin and Buirge and I doing synchronized dancing (yes there were jazz hands involved) to Mary’s rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart. We thought it was funny, or at least avant-garde.

Last night was the last night you could smoke in bars in Minneapolis. I always find it interesting that people can unite against smoking, as it’s now politically correct to do so. Yet things like homelessness, AIDS, or let’s say war, isn’t more on the forefront. Its not like smoking is good, or even desirable, but neither are a lot of things that would seem to take precedence in my mind.

Lying for fun and profit

So acting is lying essentially. That's what Mary tells me (but she’s an actress/liar, so I’m not sure if should believe her...?). I'm at this point in the process where I'm almost there on the lines -but not quite. I also have a bad tendency to give the character a voice before I know who he is. That's what five years of voice over work will do to you.

The director suggested (well Mary too) that I should play it from myself first. So it’s something of a struggle. It’s challenging coming in late like this -but also rewarding. My character is lying, or rather acting as if he lying but at the same time getting away with it. So I have to play to the audience that I'm lying, while still convincing the lead that I'm not lying. It's very confusing in an unfrozen cave man lawyer kind of way. Plus, I'm not a very good liar.

Unfortunately most of my acting experience is in animating (yes, acting is required in animation) and voice work. It’s a completely different thing when you are on a stage. I hope I’m getting there.

Down a Long Dirt Road...

It's Mary's birthday today. She's turning 29 again according to her. While I don't have any super recent pictures of her , I do have these shots from her performance in The Good Woman of Setzuan. Look at them now because they won't be up on the site very long.

Actin' Up

I took a stage combat class on Saturday morning. Learned how to fake fight and cheat sounds of impact. Very interesting.

So, I've been in rehearsal for The Imaginary Invalid a week now.

I'm really enjoying the acting process this time. It's actually a lot like drawing and painting. Mary pointed out that discovering the character is like a sketch before you move on to a more finished piece. I tend to sketch very well. But in acting I'm more like a first year art student. I think I’m afraid to make choices without some sort of go ahead from the director. Which of course doesn’t make any sense because the director will tell you “yea” or “nay” right away usually.

I think with acting I tend to chicken scratch instead of hitting the broad strokes I use in other kinds of art. I'm also feeling a little behind because I came in so late -but I think I'm getting there. I guess I'll find out tomorrow when I start rehearsing my scenes again.

I believe too that any kind of artistic endeavor is good for an artist. So anything you do tends to lend itself to everything else. Life drawing makes you paint well, painting makes you draw better, etc. At any rate I’m finding a whole new experience in the process this time. It's refreshing.

The Imaginary Invalid

I’m back on the boards. One of the actors in the Molière play Mary is doing quit on Monday. Mary can’t abide quitters. It's so bad for the rest of the cast and the show. She had me down there and in front of the director, script in hand within a half hour. In an odd turn of events the director is the man I took my first acting class from in 1988.

So with only three weeks of rehearsal before tech week I’m trying cram the dialogue into my head as quickly as possible.

I always forget how much I enjoy acting until I’m in the theater.

Riding Giants

I just got this from Netflix. Riding Giants. All about the history of big wave surfing. Very fun flick.

It really captured the way I feel about the ocean and surfing. Which, being in Minnesota now, I don't have a whole lot of people that even understand that feeling.

I've tried explaining it by comparing it to –oh, let's say ice fishing, but I just get that confused dog look on people's faces. You know the one where they cock they their heads to one side.

03.17.05

St. Patrick's Day

By 7:40am I heard it for the first time in the office. "Everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!” I believe there are some Irishman that might in fact take exception to that statement.

Of course immediately after that some one goes into the whole “Mick’s drink a lot you know.” Our country is so myopic sometimes.

Now who wants a Shamrock shake?

Take a memo

I am having major difficulty deciding what I want to be any more. I used to think I knew. I wanted to make money doing what I like. In some ways I have.

Mostly I'm struggling with my identity as an artist. For many years I didn't know what that meant to me. I didn't even really consider myself an “artist”. I was I suppose but I always joked about being an art whore. Will draw for food and whatnot. Ha ha get it?

Lately I've been meeting people that have embraced the art monkey in much more real ways than I ever have. It's like I've been waiting for a go ahead to do my "art" as pretentious as that sounds.

It's a real conundrum. I remember thinking many years ago that by the time I was 40 I would have much better handle on who I was. I guess that's the rub huh?

I have decided to focus more on art. In whichever form that ends up taking. I think as redesign the web site (which is what I’m doing) I'm going to use the Blog section of it for focus on art. So as self indulgent as that may seem that's where I'm going.

Roller Derby

Okay, everybody knows that Roller Derby is back in a big bad way right? Next match is March 2oth, 2005 at Cheapskate in Coon Rapids. This is our friend C. Stars of the Atomic Bombshells. Be there or be square, bitches.

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

I'm finding myself more and more relating to odd things lately. I've always liked this song, Hallelujah -for instance. But it seems to mean something different to me than it used to. Something deeper or important? I don't know.

I suppose I'm getting older and realizing things, or maybe I'm just morbid and stuck in my loner-bad-boy artist thing? Which reminds me (speaking of bad-boy artist things) I had a strange thought yesterday. I was getting ready to go out somewhere with Mary and I looked in the mirror at my leather jacket, cool guy shades, thoughtless hair and I thought. " Wow, I'm the guy that your mother warned you about." To which directly followed the thought. "Well, except Mary, because her mother died when she was three." No warnings there huh?

At any rate I’m not sure what that meant? Mary seemed to think I was on to something with it?

These are the lyrics to the song. Leonard Cohen actually wrote it, and sings it but I like this version too. Leonard’s lyrics are probably more apropos to me.

Hallelujah
Rufus Wainwright

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Say Nothing

Say Nothing is a short film by our friends Andy Hunt and Jason Lausche. This morning we received an email from him stating that the short had become a finalist in triggerstreet.com online festival.

These TWELVE films will now go before our soon to be announced panel of entertainment industry judges who will determine the recipient of the 2005 Budweiser Filmmaker Discovery Award.

Now since triggerstreet.com is primarily a Flash site I can't link directly to the movie (yeah Mark you were right, that is annoying) so you will have to do a little work. The film is Say Nothing by Sleepy Eye. It is one of the finalists so for the next few weeks it should be listed on the right side of the page. To leave a review you have to sign up (but it's free).

Congratulations Andy and Jason!

Friday

I've been having a terrible week at work. It's become sort of dull and boring. I hate that. As much as I appreciate the steady paycheck I keep finding my mind wandering. My focus going away.

I haven't really been doing any art other than for work. Which is odd. It always used to be my escape. My solace. Maybe I'm just figuring things out? Or maybe being a corporate shill is my true destiny?

I'd like to do more art. I have a painting that's been sitting on my easel for months. Almost a year actually. I feel like if I could finish that one to my satisfaction I could start again.

Maybe I need to just set it aside and try something different? I've found with art that sometime it's better to just let it go.

Scaly McPeelsAlot

That twenty minutes we spent in the tanning booth last week has given me the worst sunburn I've ever had. My entire body is peeling like a damn snake. Mary isn't much better. We've decided to forego having relations until we heal because of the ensuing dust cloud our peeling remnants of skin would cause. Vanity. She’s a harsh mistress.

Mo' SPAM

So I'm trying some different things to fight SPAM in my commments and Trackbacks. Don't know if it will do any good but I guess I'll know in the morning if the 'pooz is filled with comment spam.

nope that didn't work either...

IWD 2005

Everybody knows today is International Women's Day right? Yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing either until I clicked on the ankh in the google logo today.

A feminist raised me and I didn't even know what that was until much later in my life. I grew up thinking that women were equal to men and I didn't realize that was an unpopular opinion until I was in my late teens or early twenties.

I’ve always had a tendency to date strong women (or marry them in Mary's case).

I remember one of my first girlfriends wanting to get married to me, which frankly surprised me. I assumed that women didn't want to be married any more after the sexual revolution. That’s what TV and Hollywood had told me at any rate.

It took me awhile to realize that women didn’t want to be treated like men but rather to be treated as equals and individuals. It seems like a simple concept now.

The thing is this, I tend to paint and draw a lot of nudes -specifically female nudes. Which some of my female friends find fascinating and others find annoying. The males don’t seem to mind so much either way. I’ve met more women in the past few years that know what vintage pin-up art is more so than men. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing female kind an injustice by painting the female form. I just find it so appealing. It’s a challenge. Something I don’t get much of artistically anymore.

Yet the women I draw and paint all seem to be powerful. Well basically no matter what the source material is, I paint Mary. She really is my favorite work of art. Not to mention a hell of a model. I couldn’t hold those poses for as long as she does.

Spring Hopes Eternal

On Saturday night Mary and I went to an art show in St. Paul. I haven't been to an art show since I left Minnesota. We ran into to old friends we hadn't seen in years. I'm talking to some of them about having my own show before too long now. Short hair and corporate suits not withstanding, I do still create you know.

I woke up at 5:00 in the morning Sunday. Which is okay. I've generally been waking up at weird times the last few months, unable to get back to sleep. I don’t know if I’m just getting older or if my strange dreaming pattern has something to with it? Here’s the thing, yesterday was much warmer than it's been. Almost spring like.

I got that feeling that I used to get when I lived in Minnesota before. That once again I've made through a Northern winter. It's a strange sense of accomplishment. It’s like completing a test you didn’t want take or paying an outstanding bill.

Mary, Lana, and I walked around Lake Harriet in the afternoon. The lake was just packed full of people. It was one of the best Sunday afternoons I've had in good long while.

After the last few years of Las Vegas, Orange County, and everything else it felt really good to enjoy just the very simple act of walking around the lake with my wife and daughter. Sometimes it's the little things that matter most.

Burn baby, Burn

So Mary and I pretty much have second degree burns all over us. It's suck-a-riffic. I don't know what the hell we were thinking. I told the Belle about it (she is no stranger to sunburn herself) and she said 20 minutes on our pale ass Irish skin was completely stupid. She was right. That is the setting for old Floridian women.

Micropatronage dude

Tanner

So Mary and I couldn't take it anymore. Our pale skin staring back at us in the mirror this morning forced us into a tanning booth this afternoon. We are now covered in slimy aloe vera and missing the beach. It burns , it burns. Which is a very odd feeling for March in Minnesota.