Deranged Ramblings

Today I'd like to share with you something that makes me very happy, something that brings little rays of sunshine into my life every day. I trust that all my friends have refined and exacting tastes and have not totally been brainwashed by mainstream American entertainment. Not one of you watches American Idol, I would venture to guess (and if you do, please don't tell me – it would break my heart). As thoughtful and educated members of society, I'm sure you would be willing to give any recommendations I might make a chance. Like many good things in life, what am I about to pitch to you is definitely an acquired taste (for most Americans). But since it brings me so much joy and pleasure, it would be wrong of me not to tell you, my dear friends, all about it. I'm talking, of course, about British comedy. British comedy is, I believe, superior to its American counterparts in nearly every single way. I don't expect you to come to the same conclusion, but I'd hope...

I wasn't feeling very well yesterday (stressed and discouraged, with a slight sore throat) and so I decided, quite selfishly, that I deserved a break from the rigorous and painful sugar strike I put myself on last week. I had already anticipated this would happen, back when the determination to eat healthy and nothing but healthy was fresh and strong, and had removed all of the obvious sources of temptation from my house. Still, in my new sugar-starved state, I was able to work around this obstacle with the help of my roommate: we baked some cookies. Ah ha! Outsmarted myself again! Most of my life has been filled with this kind of conflict with myself. I'm always the winner, but then again I'm always the loser as well. It's a messy situation. But that's besides the point. The reason that I had not anticipated cookies as a possible method of breaking my healthy foods-kick is because the idea that I myself might actually bake cookies did not occur to me, not just bec...

Today is the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, which has been a national holiday since 1986. Accordingly, many people do not have to work today. I do, unfortunately, but I didn't want that to stop me from thinking about the significance of the day – so I'm taking a quick break from all the ruthless taxonomy to share my thoughts about MLK. Who was this guy? Why does he get a national holiday to celebrate his birthday? Did you know that the only other American who gets a holiday to celebrate his birthday is George Washington? It's true, I wouldn't lie. I was just reading an article from 1985 about how today's holiday came about, and apparently there were a lot of people who thought it would be a bad idea. Businesses would be closed and lose a lot of money, plus there were people who argued that Dr. King deserved no special recognition above and beyond that which so many other great Americans have received. Rep. Jesse Helms, R-NC, even denounced th...

I'm fat again. I really have this problem with dedication and commitment, you know? I dropped nearly 20 pounds for Macbeth and was well on my way towards my target weight when I kind of ran out of gas with the whole “eating healthy” thing. My infrequent indulgences in pizza, cookies, and ice cream became more and more frequent, with bigger and bigger portion sizes, and my physical activity level got a little lower every day. Still, everything was fine as long as I was still in a play. At least then I had several hours of light exercise each night, and that seemed to be enough to keep me from blimping up too much. Well it's been a little more than a month since “Two Gents” ended and let me tell you, that month has done its work. I'm now nearly back to the weight I was at when I promised I would never let myself weigh this much again. Now, to keep all this in perspective, I'm not horribly overweight or obese or anything and I'm certainly not having some kind of breakd...

I'm quite tired with people today. I'm tried of the dark and depressing aspects of human nature we see all about us: hatred, intolerance, prejudice, exclusion, demagoguery, and despair. Sure, it's in the news we get each day of still more violence and bloodshed in lands far away. But its here too, right in our backyard, in our community, in our workplaces, in us. We cannot lament the worst aspects of human nature without implicating ourselves. Perhaps thats why the reminders of our own failings as a species are so depressing – somewhere, deep down, we know that the darkness within others only proves the existence of darkness within ourselves. Why then must we always judge and condemn each other? Why then must we still live in a time when human beings live in perpetual fear of the judgment of their neighbors? Why, in this age of “progress” in this land of “freedom,” must human beings hide the most precious parts of themselves for fear of rejection and retribution? Why must ...

I guess I have one of those faces. When it comes time to hand out responsibility, I must just look like somebody who either will handle it well or, more likely, will take it without complaining too much. Its happened to me a number of times throughout my life, and sometimes I don't mind it because I can be a bit of control freak and want to get in there and do it myself. But a lot of times, I'd like to just be another one of the grunts, you know? Responsibility brings a lot of stress with it that I could do without. Especially when it does not bring along extra pay with it. Allow me to explain myself. As regular readers of my blog will already be aware, I got a new job a couple of months ago doing vague, inexplicable work known only as “taxonomy.” It's been a pretty good job, I really don't mind it. The work itself can be tedious, yet mentally engaging in its way and, since I can listen to the BBC or music from my personal collection all day and chat with friends onlin...

Greetings all and Happy New Year! I just watched the big ball drop and so, of course, I couldn't help but wonder about many things. Like, for example, why the heck do we drop a big ball to celebrate a new year? When is it really the new year, since its already past midnight in a number of places in the world? Where is the first place to turn 2006? Is our calendar completely arbitrary? And, of course, what in the heck are the words to that "Auld Lang Syne" song?? Well, I listened really closely to the words this year just so that I could pass them on to you. You don't have to thank me, really. Without further ado, here they are: Should mold in places we forgot, and ever wrought with grime! Should mold in places we forgot, and days of auld lang syne. Now, I know this doesn't really make any sense, so I did some research. Apparently the words were written by a Scotsman, who was probably drunk, which explains a lot. Also, it is a little known fact that "auld lan...

Ok I have something really cool to show you all today. First, you may want to read my friend Chris Clark's blog (link on the right) for a funny introduction to this process. Basically, this family history website is beta testing a new face recognition software. You upload a picture of yourself and it matches you mathematically with celebrities that look the most like you. Chris made it seem like so much fun that I'm going to shamelessly plagirize his idea and show you my results, and then I suggest you all go try it yourselves. I'm not sure how accurate this program is, I got a few different results on the same pictures in multiple tries, but here's the highlights: I started with this picture, which you may recognize from my blog profile. It was taken in London and I think its a very flattering picture. The site says the program works best with your face facing directly into the camera, but I thought I'd give this a try anyway. And here were my results: Wilhelm Roen...

Hi, everybody. I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend. I know I did. The gifts have been opened and stacked into a neat little pile to be properly inspected. The wrapping paper lies strewn about the floor – a forgotten casualty that stands as a testament to the orgy of commercialism that now is over. Your dear friends and family have gladly received your gifts and either broken or exchanged them by now. The tree looks less magical and more like a large plant dying slowly in your living room. There are no more Christmas songs on the radio, and thank heavens too because if you heard “Christmas Shoes” one more time you were going to barf. All this can mean only one thing: Christmas is over. And that can only mean one other thing: time to look forward to a new year! 2006 is almost here, but before we say goodbye to good old 2005 I thought we'd look back at the events of the past year in a brief and fairly reductive sort of way. This year: I graduated from college. I experienced the...

This weekend a good friend of mine from high school got married. The ceremony was in Arizona, and though I could not take the time off of work to drive down there and offer him my condolences in person, my parents (who consider him as their own son) were in attendance and assured me it was a lovely experience. I'm happy for him, honestly. He couldn't have chosen a better bride to keep him out of trouble. They are heading to Salt Lake City for their honeymoon (which seems a bit unfortunate to me but nobody asked my opinion) and so they were in town last night where I was able to see him for a few hours. He seemed happy and, more or less, the same as always; it's still early. I think of marriage rather like I think of bungee jumping: I'm sure it's great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't really have much of a desire to give it a try. It's the big craze these days; everybody's doing it, even members of my own gender who I had previously expected to...

Call me a Scrooge, but I've found that the last couple of years Christmas just hasn't carried the same sense of wonder and excitement it once did. When I was a kid, I was ready to pee my pants every day in December just thinking about the twenty-fifth, which crept closer so slowly that the month was always filled with blissfully tortuous anticipation. The sense of suspense, the agony of not knowing what the fantastically wrapped boxes contained, was only heightened by the lights, the music, the snow, and everything you knew meant it was Christmas time. Back then, my heart's desires cost about twenty bucks and, tragically, seemed both completely unobtainable and the key to my whole life's happiness. This was the season, then, when miracles of a very practical kind could happen; objects only admired on the shelf, or at a friend's, or in some abstract sense of obsession could literally become my own and wind up, eventually, in pieces somewhere in my closet. I like to c...

It's not every day that you get to spend four hours with people you really like, laughing at everything and anything, bask in the adoration and the occasional scorn of hundreds of elementry school children, and take on the persona of one of the most famous dramatic roles ever. For me, its every Tuesday. For the last year and a half I have been part of a traveling Shakespeare show that performs for children in elementry schools all over the area, and today is my last day in the group. I auditioned for the group two years ago, to play Orlando in "As You Like It." The director of the group, my friend Chris, said I was good but there just wasn't a part for me. Once I had spat out the bitter bile of failure, I moved on with life and tried again in the spring for the next year's show, "Cymbeline" and got in. I did that for two semesters, and of course had to do it again this year when I heard we'd be doing "Hamlet." What was it about the idea of ...

It's that time of the year again. If you hadn't been indoctrinated with Western culture since your birth, you might think everybody collectively goes insane in the month of December. We put electric light on the outside of our houses and bring trees inside. We listen to the same set of about twenty different songs over and over in countless variations. We scarf down candy, rush to the store to buy junk we'd never look at any other time of the year, and force our children to sit on a strange old guy's lap. It's like the world is upside down! Such is the phenomenon of the American Christmas season. Each year it starts a little earlier, though the majority of people still complain if you start listening to carols or put up your tree before Thanksgiving. But once the turkey's cold its no holds barred all out Yuletide action. But in all the furvor of the holiday, have we forgotten the true meaning of Christmas? Do we remember how and why it started in the first place...

I'm pretty much an ingrateful little jerk, as many of my therapists have said, but once and awhile even I feel the need to express my gratitude to the people who make my life so worth living. So I thought that I'd do it on my blog even though 1- its kind of late being several days after thanksgiving and all, and 2- most of the people I'm going to thank don't even know I have a blog and, in some cases, don't have any idea what a blog is. I hesitate to name specific names here mostly because I can't possibly list every single person who I am indebted to and appreciate in my life, and I'm tired and pressed for time and so I don't want anybody to feel left out if their name isn't on the list. But then I remember point #2 of my previous list and I think I'll probably be OK. If I miss anybody, its not becuase I don't love you. Ask me in person and I will tell you why I am thankful for you and then I will put you on my blog in a place of honor. I...

A production of a play is made more by what you don't see than what you do. When you go see a play (as I'm sure you often do, since all readers of my blog are cultured and intellectual), you don't see the hours and hours and HOURS of rehearsal and discussion and preparation the cast and crew gave to put the show together. You don't see the intricate web of movement and interaction I can only call "the backstage dance." It's made up of all the cast members not currently on stage, as well as stage crew and costumers, moving about to get into position for an upcoming scene, prepare a prop, discuss the progress of the show and the audience's reaction, flirt, or talk about things totally unrelated to the play. As you get comfortable in the routine of the show, you find yourself in the same place with the same people at each point during the play. It's really quite a remarkable feat of collaberation and cooperation. Each person in a group of twenty to th...

No, I'm not dead. And no, I've not given up on the blog. Not yet. If I were to try to describe how busy I have been over the last few weeks, your head would probably explode - and I can't very well have you messing up my nice clean blog, can I? Just trust me when I say that I've had precious little time to do much of anything in the last little while, and what free time I did have went to important computer gaming in order to save my remaining sanity. The play has been going quite well. Much better than was generally expected, actually, so I really encourage you to come and see it if you haven't yet. Just thought I'd mention it. I got a new job this week. Yes, its a big deal. As you are aware if you have read my blog at all before, [understatement coming] I didn't really like my previous job [understatement finished]. So I now have a brand new job closer to home in a more typical office setting. The problem with having a degree in English (well, one of the ...

Well, once again I'm too busy to bother updating my blog, which can only mean one thing: there's another play coming up! Yes, indeed, within a couple of weeks I will be opening a new show at the Pardoe Theater on BYU campus, so I thought I'd make a fuss about it now so you can all work it into your schedule. You are going to come and see it, right? All signs indicate that this will be the last time I perform Shakespeare in this area, so it could be your final chance to see me and the Bard together - a match as fortuitous and fateful as gunpowder and fire, oil and water, England and France, and Hannity and Colmes. The play is William Shakespeare's "The Two Gentleman of Verona," in which I play Valentine (also known as Gentleman #2) and it performs Tuesday-Saturdays starting November 9th through the 19th, at which point it breaks a week for Thanksgiving and then returns for a final week of performance, November 20th through December 3rd. So there are plenty of ...

In keeping with the general theme of complete egocentricity and self-absorbedness on this blog, I now present to you a selection of nine pictures of my face. I went to a photo shoot yesterday morning, because I need head shots in order to become the fabulously wealthy and successful actor I was born to be. I picked out these nine as the best of the 100 or so shots she took, and now I present them to you for your opinion. The photographer recommended that I show them to my friends and relatives who know me best. Apparently, the person in the picture would naturally pick out the ones that they feel are most flattering, rather than the ones that best represent their actual looks and personality. That is your charge, my friends: peruse the photos and then post a comment under the ones that you think are the best based on those criteria. You can vote for no more than two! As always, I value your frank and honest opinion. Good luck!

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