Deranged Ramblings

Are here . Enjoy!

It is to be all made of sighs and tears; It is to be all made of faith and service; It is to be all made of fantasy, All made of passion and all made of wishes, All adoration, duty, and observance, All humbleness, all patience and impatience, All purity, all trial, all observance; If this be so, why blame you me to love you? William Shakespeare - "As You Like It"

This is just for me, so I always have a reminder: "The rhythm of life in modern civilization is characterized by pace, tension, a feeling of doom, the wish to hide our personal motives and the assumption of a variety of roles and masks in life (different ones with our family, at work, amongst friends or in community life, etc.) We like to be "scientific" by which we mean discursive and cerebral, since this attitude is dictated by the course of civilization. But we also want to pay tribute to our biological selves, to what we might call physiological pleasures. We do not want to be restricted in this sphere. Therefore we play a double game of intellect and instinct, thought and emotion; we try to divide ourselves artificially into body and soul . When we try to liberate ourselves from it all we start to shout and stamp, we convulse to the rhythm of the music. In our search for liberation we reach biological chaos. We suffer most from a lack of totality, throwing ourselve...

Upon reflection with my friends Michael and Liesl Downey that the last Harry Potter book ("Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows") has a rather disappointing name: Harry Potter and the Apocalypse Harry Potter and the Bearded Lizard.... Dragon Harry Potter and the Tumbly Wumbly Snazzleberry Harry Potter and Boobs Harry Potter BOOZE! Harry Potter and the Itemized Deduction Form 7-B Harry Potter and a Pound of Bacon Harry Potter and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Harry Potter and a Cobra Wrapped Around a Budweiser Harry Potter and the Lost Luggage Harry Potter and the Plan of Salvation Harry Potter on a Hot Tin Roof Harry Potter and the Missing Prostate Harry Potter Go To Space! Harry Potter and the Cat Harry Potter and the World AIDS Crisis

You know those times where you ever sit and think, "Man, everybody I know really sucks. Someplace somewhere there has got to be somebody so completely awesome that it literally would blow my socks off and make milk come out my nose just to be near him." Yeah, I hear you. We all feel that way sometimes. Well, not me. I know that guy. He's my best friend. He is a man of many names. Master of a Thousand Voices. King of Random Hats. The Golden Prince of Cheese. Lord of Catan. Kingpin of Kool-Aid. Viceroy of Vice. Grand Chancellor of Wild. Prime Minister of Pie. Savant of Nerdy Trivia. Impromptu Film Director. Emperor of the Eclectic. Avatar of Apple Martinis. Friend of Beasts. Duke of the Dance Floor. Protector of Awkward Comedy of Days Gone By. He is always there for you, with a smile, a laugh, or a drunken kiss, whatever the need may be. His door and his heart are always open, and he'll always let you pet his dog, sleep on his couch, or flirt with his wife. He is kind a...

My stories from this spring break are too numerous to tell here. I'll not bother to explain how I found myself stuck in Atlanta, Georgia for longer than anticipated, or tell you about bleeding all over myself some thirty thousand feet above what I think must have been Pennsylvania, or about how I wound up mostly naked in the back of a rented mini-van somewhere in New Jersey. These are all stories you'll have to get from me in person. Let's just say this: despite a week of warm weather, the northwest (including Newark International Airport) was suddenly visited by a horrible sleet storm on Friday, when a whole host of people (including yours truly) were supposed to be flying out that day. Here's a record of my woes: 10:00 AM, Friday, March 16 I arrive at the Newark Airport with plenty of time to spare. This morning on the news they said the weather was going to get bad and that there would probably be delays and cancellations, but not until later this afternoon. I can on...

Here's some pictures from my latest production, Twelfth Night. You can see more here .

This is for those people who ask me "How is grad school going?" Well, here's the clearest and most detailed answer I have so far: "This letter is to summarize our December discussion regarding your work in your first semester. It includes comments from all of your major professors and comments from the MFA faculty meeting that took place at the end of the fall semester. The faculty agreed that although you came to the program with less formal training than most students, your hard work and strong desire to learn and grow has helped you to make real leaps in your training. You possess a fresh, open quality and do not possess a lot of bad habits. It was noted that you are an intelligent actor and that your sensitivity and emotional accessibility are aided, not hindered, by your keen intellect. Your work at being more fully present in the moment and successfully connecting with other actors is progressing nicely. You need to continue to take risks in your work and embra...

I like to travel. I like airports. Mind you, I wouldn't want to do it everyday, but every now and then its pretty fun. I travelled to the Columbia Airport with my friend Ian, who was flying home to New York. We chatted a bit in the waiting area until it was time to board my flight. I didn't really speak to anyone again until my brother picked me up in Salt Lake. But I watched everybody, and I saw some fascinating people. I had a blank piece of paper with me, so I took some notes on a few interesting people. Mr. Flight Attendant Kid He is young, possibly younger than me. At least, he looks unimpressed with everything - a sure sign of youth, I hear. He drones out the safety procedures litany with barely disguised boredom and cynicism, obviously reciting the words from memory without making any attempt to communicate by giving the words meaning. You can tell by the way his breath pauses appear unnaturally in the middle of a phrase. Throughout the flight, he does as little as poss...

The following is an excerpt from a paper for one of my courses, detailing the essence of my progress this first semester. It is applied specifically to the art of acting, so you actors out there may find it especially interesting, but the heart of it is pretty good stuff thats useful in almost anything if you are interested, and frankly I can understand if you didn't want to read some boring paper I wrote for class... We were told that the first semester of graduate school was going to be rough, but I don’t think I really understood what that meant. After all, the obvious problems of adjusting to a new and rigorous schedule, meeting high expectations, multi-tasking various assignments for several different classes, and still finding time to stop and breathe every now and then were daunting, yet hardly something I had not encountered before in my scholastic life. But what I did not understand was how challenging the first semester was going to be mentally, because basically what I f...

Attention everybody. I will be returning to Utah to celebrate the holidays on the 18th of December, and I will be staying until the 8th of January. Prepare yourselves, for I am coming. That is all.

Well the Thanksgiving break is over already. This year marked the first celebration of the holiday in many years in which I was not with my extended family in Utah enjoying Grandma's celebrated home-style cooking, but I was able to make it enjoyable none the less. Yes, the day is all about family, but what is so great about the holiday (and what makes it perhaps my favorite of all holidays) is that people who aren't family, who are in fact perfect strangers, go out of their way to make a family together, if only for that one day, for that one meal. I ate the feast with a group of local transplants from Utah, like me, and though I barely knew them we became a family together as we enjoyed the meal and gave thanks for how lucky we really are. So while I missed my family terribly, I was far from lonely on the big day. Besides the expected self-indulgent food rampage on Thursday, my weekend also included a trip to Savannah, Georgia with some of my dear friends (for pictures, look m...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the forces of Fate are combined for one ultimate purpose: to defeat and destroy me. That may be dramatic and illogical, but it does give me a sense of importance I would otherwise lack; and, as I've said before, it is easier to accept cosmic enmity than cosmic apathy. Not too long ago I was riding on a new surge of confidence after a highly successful audition for summer work. That confidence has been challenged by a grueling weekend of auditions for our upcoming mainstage shows. First off, let me say that I was screwed in the beginning, before the auditions even happened, because of the selection of the plays. They are great plays stuffed with great parts that I cannot play, for one reason or another. Most call for an age or a look or quality that I do not possess, or, even more likely, am not perceived by the powers that be to possess. A good chunk are beyond my admittedly raw and yet untrained acting capacitiy. So I went in to the proc...

So the story goes like this: I am sleeping, snuggled up comfortably on my inflatable single bed, dreaming of peaceful shores and relaxing breezes. I feel a delightful tickle on the back of my neck, like a cool breeze on a summer's day. I feel refreshed and peaceful. The tickle then moves to the front of my neck, on my chin, and then on to my face. It is at this moment the realization pierces through my sleeping brain that there is something alive and crawling on my face. You never have seen something go from so inert and inactive to alert and active. You never have seen someone jump up five feet into the air from a prone position. You have never seen someone bolt out of their little room in seconds, the blink of an eye. When the light was turned on, the culprit was found. A very large coakroach sitting innocently on my pillow, looking at me as if to say, "What? Yeah, I crawled on your face. You got a problem with that?" Unfortunately for him, I did. Down the toilet he wen...

Check out the production photos from "Good Person of Setzuan" and you'll get an idea of the craziness that has been my life for the last two months. Points for you if you can recognize me in any of the pictures! Production Photos

Yesterday I had a great day! I've been having a very rough couple of weeks where I have been greatly depressed about a great number of things, including my acting ability. I have this recurring nightmare that I actually suck and nobody is brave enough to tell me. Well, I received the perfect confirmation that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be yesterday, when I went to some screening auditions for summer work. It was a ridiculous cattle call style audition, with group after group of would-be actors filing in and trying to impress auditors in only 60 seconds that they are good enough to be considered for professional work. It was even scored on a points system, with those receiving the highest points being passed on to the actual audition for professional companies in March. Out of a possible 84 points, I got 83! Here were some of my comments: "Excellent." "You are instantly likeable." "Easy to follow, clearly spoken." "Well done - you know ...

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair. 'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair. Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade; But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare, And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair. Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat, And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare He can curse the God that made him for the colour of h...

I got my hair cut today, and I had them chop it all off. I have less than an inch left. I look like a jerk without any hair. I thought it was appropriate.