This Year Will It Will Be Different

A New Year by Sheldon James

This year it will be different.
There is promise in it yet.
More good than not.
Time to heal from loss.
To be loved, to be needed.
And if that’s not possible, let it
always be a good day to die.
Look around the room and
look in your heart or soul; call it what you like.
Every one, every thing you have ever known
is still there or somewhere. Call on them.
We are the conscious things of the
fragment moment now and always,
where the past has overcome itself,
the present dances wildly and flickers
through to the future when you allow it to.
Be fearless in thought, in tear,
in torment in tragedy.
One heaps itself upon the other.
Let it all happen.
There’s nothing we can do about it anyway.

…we came in? Isn’t this where…

I’ve started and stopped a half-dozen posts since my last one.  Every time I am prattling along, chuckling to myself over some near-useless pop culture reference that is being given its moment to shine when I stop and stare at whatever I just wrote.  I take it in, and then I erase the whole goddamn thing.

Like Raspberry Citrus Orbitz drink long before it (chuckle to self), I think I’ve just lost the taste for this.

Personally, I am back where I started long ago on this blog.  My weight  and health are not nearly as well off as they should be and I am struggling to keep my head in the game.  With this comes the realization that I have a couple things (depression and hypochondria to be specific, and oh, an eating disorder less under my control than I had thought) going on that wittily writing about, chatting with friends, or even talking with Susan aren’t going to solve.  And so, I’m going to be sitting down with a therapist again, but first it’s a visit to a neurologist and a CT scan to boot, which is always heartwarming and fun – at least, that’s how the radioactive dye makes it feel.

Cooper remains the brightest part of my day.  Nearly three now, and already practising sarcasm and deconstructionist theoretics.  

He has his own digital camera now, and he doesn’t just point and shoot all willy-fuckin-nilly.  He actually walks around searching out specific things to take a picture of that mean something to him.  He almost seems to take the time to frame shots.  I’m in awe to be able to look at how he sees things. 

Cooper has delayed speech.  His therapist comes by three times a week and according to her, he could be the poster child for the benefits of early intervention.  In the time he’s worked with her, he has taken on two dozen signs and twice as many words.  He’s been putting them into simple two and three word sentences lately, and can read out loud almost the entire alphabet.  That last thing – reading, recognizing and sounding out the alphabet, is actually considered pretty ahead of the normal age.  His ability to work through a maze or other logic problems always surprises me too.  He lies in bed sometimes, holding one of his books up in front of him, and I know he’s not actually reading it word for word… but watching him flipping page by page and laughing out loud at all the right parts, nothing else really matters in the world for just a moment.

Personally, I’ve never agreed with the child-rearing books that every child is on the same schedule with what they should be able to do by so and so age.  I think it’s different for everyone, and anyone that tells you that by age 2 1/2 or 3 that a child should have a vocabulary of 200 words can categorize themselves right in the ass. 

But the boy is everything.  He cooks with me now, pulling his chair into the kitchen so he can stand right next to me and do whatever I do.  He wants to include the mixer in everything (No, Cooper this is spaghetti sauce, it doesn’t really… meh, alright).  He insists on watching the new OK Go video for This Too Shall Pass at least twice a day and announces everything he sees in it (BALL! CAR! BARREL! Sign for umbrella! WHHHHOA!) He’s already memorized his latest batch of word cards.  He rifles through them announcing arm, ouch, out, oat, and so on until he sets them down on the floor.

“Daddy? Cars?” he says and pats the rug next to him.  I come down and see that he’s again lined up about 30 of his cars end to end… I always call it “Leaving SPAC after the James Taylor Concert” – a joke he doesn’t quite get yet but he says “yeah” anyways just to placate me.  Then he looks at me and smiles.  That smile.  That smile is my world.

As for me, who knows?  Where do you start again to lose 60 pounds?  There’s a couple things I’d like to do this summer, running again might be one of them.  We’ll see how that pans out.  For now, though, I need to find another way to help me help myself, and that is not here anymore – it just isn’t fun anymore.  Not while I am what I am, and not while I’m not doing what I’m not doing.  Maybe someday again, but I doubt it. I peaked anyway.  That’s why I stopped writing the movie reviews for my high school newspaper, I mean, if you ever read my write-up for the 1988 remake of “The Blob” you’d know – it was all downhill after that.

And before I wrap this up, I should apologize to Hodge.  That last post I made which I took down was a little over the line.  I really think in the end it should have just kept its original title, which was “Dalmata’s Mom.”

Good night everyone, try the shrimp… they’re a low-fat, low-calorie protein that’s also high in vitamins D and B12.

Open Letters

Dear Patrons:

What the Hell?  How many more signs can we put up?  How many more times do I have to play the announcement before the show? THERE IS NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED IN HERE.  It’s simple really – it’s a really old fucking building, and your dumb ass bringing shit in that you eventually drop or just leave on the floor does nothing to help it stay a really old building for generations to come.  But I’m wondering now if that’s what really, well, grinds my gears.  I think what it is… is this – how blatantly open can you be about the shit you brought in here?  You heard the announcement!  You saw the signs hanging up!  Why do I so easily find you?  To the four fat ladies who came here for a movie and sat two in front and two behind just so they could all reach the huge bag of chips they got in – what is wrong with you?  And chew with your fucking mouths closed.  Marlee Matlin could have found you from the sound of you eating, let alone me.  To the idiots who got their cans of soda in tonight – next time you pop them open, do it during the loud ass trailers… not when the theatre has gone quiet at the start of the actual movie.  PCHK PCHK PCHK!  You’re the reason there’s little hope for the future.  To the off-duty usher who never pays to see anything here and rarely works enough to make up for it – YOU WORK HERE! You know the policies! But you still brought a fucking McDonalds Sundae in here in your purse.  And all the rest of you too.  It’s not that I’m so upset by the food – most Americans, if anything, are fucking hungry idiots first and foremost, I know – no, it’s the stupidity. 

Dear TLC:

Shouldn’t a station that calls itself  The Learning Channel think “OK, what will people learn from this show?” Sure the Cake Boss is entertaining, and my lovely wife has a thing for What Not to Wear but really, how much of your soul do you have to piss away to actually produce Toddlers and Tiaras?  Isn’t it enough these are the worst fucking parents out there raising their children to either A) hate them or B) be just like them?  Does that really need to be televised?  And which one of your producers can’t keep his hand off his dick with the ‘little people’ show fetish?  I get Little People, Big World, they’re a pretty unique family, but The Little Couple?  OH MY GOD, they can marry and live together and have a really fucking boring show about it? And the fucking Little Chocolatiers?  OH MY GOD, they can hold a job???  And please, stop putting the thought in the heads of parents who probably shouldn’t be parents everywhere that the more kids they have the better chance they have to get a show on your fucking channel.  18 Kids and Counting, oh wait no, it’s 19 now.  Table for fucking 12, Jon and Kate plus Eight Children of Divorce Because of You.  I bet you’re trying so hard to make room for that fucking Octomom you’re thinking of having her date a series of little people you throw at her.  Finally, worlds converge!  You dangle money in people’s faces and make them whore out their own families for your ratings, and for that… well, goodness, you’re just assholes aren’t you?

Dear Governor Paterson:

Please stop.  Please.  Just stop.  Just.  Stop.  You are… phew… you are just awful at what you do.

Down, Down, Down

Alas, I’m pretty much out of ideas right now.  Nothing I’m writing feels right because I’m not doing anything to back it up.  I’m kind of a downer right now, and people lose interest when this leans too far on the bummer side of my psyche anyway.  So here’s a rock, here’s a hard place.

Once upon a time I thought I’d start this ridiculous word jumble and it would somehow help keep me in shape.  The notion being that I would know you folks are reading and it would keep me in line…  but no, that didn’t quite fuckin’ work out right, now did it? 

There’s this part of me that’s done with this.  That part hates writing.  Writers, too.  Mostly poets and the parents that so morosely over-adjectively described them into this world.  That part is also not much of a reader.  Warren Zevon once said that the reason we like to buy books so much is because we think we’re buying the time to read them.  That part of me couldn’t agree more.  And looking at best-seller lists that include soul-raping jerk bags like Glenn Beck makes me want to forget I know how to read anyway.  Mostly though, that part of me is just tired of trying to put failed thoughts to words.

There’s this other part of me, though, that really digs writing.  That part always feels better when I’m doing it.  That part goes to the Writer’s Almanac every day because Garrison Keillor knows better than most how to pick a poem, because that part also likes poets (some poets, e.e. will forever rock).  That part has about a half dozen short stories sitting in an old Batman bookbag waiting to be mailed out just to see what happens.  That part really likes finding old used book stores and just wandering through them, and that part really wouldn’t mind owning one someday himself.

Always treading that line.  It’s the same with my health.  Get better?  No, fuck it.  No, get better.  It’s funny how the those two things run along like that for me, writing and health.  It all does though in my head, I’ve talked about that.

Christmas, you ask?  Christmas was a wash… I just couldn’t get my head in it.  I’m tired of the scheduling, tired of the hurt feelings because we’re not in one place or the other long enough, tired of nobody appreciating anything, tired of not seeing friends we’d like to see more of, just so goddamn tired.  I could never understand people who don’t want to head out and see family for the holidays, but I almost got it this year.  I joke with Sue that we’re staying up here this Christmas, but it surprises me to find I don’t think I’d actually mind… won’t happen though.  Probably because I’m a goddamn sucker…

I thought about trying to nail down some resolutions, but meh… Sue and I are trying to eat better.  We’re cooking more, which is nice.  We’re even sitting at the table more often to eat as a familia with the little one which is even nicer. 

But my house is not in order, and neither is my head. 

So a new year… 2010.  Yeah, here’s to you, sport.

Let it ride
Let the wind blow past my shoulders
Let the road like a ribbon unwind
And the pain of it make me older
Let the world keep bringin’ me
Down, down, down

Who the hell would cheat on Liz Phair?  You gotta be out of your mind.  She’s the chick you cheat with!  Then that leads to an ultimately fulfilling long-term relationship, because you weren’t just a fan of Exile to Guyville, Whip-Smart, and Whitechocolatespaceegg… no, you even appreciated her two forays away from indie and into the pop princess world that lost her so many of her fans.  And she, in turn, appreciates that.  You even went to Banana Republic back in May of 2009 just to hear her new tune, which for some corporately whorish reason, was only available there.  But it’s cool, it was for the money, honey – it was all for the kid.  And you know how that is, since you took on that hit that one time, killed those two guys and made it look like a Jiffy-Pop accident just for a few grand so you could buy your own kid that Thomas the Tank Engine bed.  Fuckin’ Thomas, man – the Tiffany’s of train-based imaginary play. We all gotta do bad things for a few bucks now and again.  But it wasn’t until that night…  it was a Tuesday, since you regularly meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Clarion.  You both thought you’d throw caution to the wind and go for a walk on the pier instead of the usual post-coital viewing of Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America.  Walking along, you mention to her, “You know, there was a guy who entered our local paper’s pun contest. He sent in, like, ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.”  That’s when you find out that Liz is a pun-fetishist, and she’s just gone all smitten on your ass…

…or something.  I just really dig that song.  That, and Liz Phair permanently holds spot #2 on my ‘Allowed List.’

Higher Ground

So, higher powers? Yes, I love you guys too, but there’s only one higher power for me –

…In the Dark, Warm, Narcotic American Night

It’s not that I’m a glutton for punishment, I tend to shrug off the heavier burdens to give all the little tiny ones more room to ride my psyche.  So as I wake up again with a dull headache from staying up too late to get up too early and snoring through most of it, a few things come to mind…

I’m in a bad place in my head.  I cannot get a grip on my health.  Morning brings the notion that today will be different, and by evening I’ve spent the day eating crappy food, convincing myself I don’t have time to make something and eat better;  been stuck behind my computer at work, convincing myself I don’t have time to try and exercise later in the day;  and not lived up to anything I should live up to, convincing myself that it’s just the way it is.  I am still my own worst enemy, and that, goddamnit, needs to be worked on.

I’ve spent a long time not wanting to be here in this little part of the world anymore, so much so that I haven’t been here in quite a while.  Always thinking of what will be, so much so that I stopped appreciating anything about being here.  Now, with the recent realization that here is where I’m going to be for a little while longer now (but not forever) it’s time to try to be here now – in body and in spirit.  Time to appreciate what I have, and not resent it for what I haven’t got yet.

It’s time to tackle those lists I mentioned several posts ago.  I started to, but then it once again fell by the wayside, as much that I start is want to do.  I sat down the other day and pulled out all these little slips of paper I’ve been jotting things down on.  Things I need to do, to remember, to buy, to sell, to clean, to organize, they go on and on… but there were close to a dozen of them.  A dozen sheets of paper, all with something different on them, all with something I know I won’t do, but if I write it down…  yeah, no more of that.

There’s more, but those are the big ones, the ones I keep coming back to every night.  All these things are connected to my not sleeping, my health, my weight.  I lay awake and let these all roll through my thoughts again and again until my head is spinning so fast that it’s a good thing I’m already lying down.

But then I look over in the half-dark of 4:30AM and see my son, now 2 1/2 years old, curled up in the arms of my wife, and he’s sleeping so soundly that he’s actually smiling a little.  My miserable outlook on life see-saws as much as my weight does but one thing has remained constant –  whenever I walk through that door this beautiful little boy comes over to me – sometimes he hugs me, sometimes he kisses me, sometimes he just takes my hand and leads me to his Matchbox cars laid out on the floor where he sits down and pats the floor next to him.  He smiles as I sit down next to him and there we stay, the only bit of peace and quiet in my head lately – laying there rolling toy cars around that used to be mine, watching Cooper being happy just because I’m with him.

“Hey, you know what?” I ask.

“Wha?” he says, too fucking adorably to be corrected.

“I love you, that’s what.”

He rolls his eyes, and starts making a beeping sound because he’s backing his little truck up now, but it’s cool.  I know he knows.  Monkey, he signs to me.  “OK,” I say, grabbing the remote, “I could use some Curious George myself.”

There’s these lines I tread.  Here’s one between finding it easy to think about being healthier and finding it impossible to actually do.  Here’s one between being a hypochondriac and not being quite so much of a hypochondriac.  Here’s one between blogging helps and blogging is only for attention seeking sadomasochists and teenage girls.  Here’s one between me being a depressive that can find nothing good in the world and me controlling that… and that’s the one I think of whenever Cooper takes my hand.  He keeps me on the right side of that line.  He always keeps me on the right side of that line.

I may not be the best person right now, but I’m trying, kid.  I am.

I Still Need Some Sleep

In an effort to not just blather on like an idiot who never follows thru with his own ideas, I thought I’d follow up on that last post…

I still need some sleep.

I’m down with everyone who pops a pill, but I can’t.  I have a soft spot in my heart for pills from back in my college years and once we get back together we have a hard time breaking it off.  Pills are nothing but filthy old whores, but they’re the filthy old whores in movies with a stereotypical heart of gold and how can you not fall for that?  I had a migraine headache the weekend in August that my pal Kevin got married and I was downing Fioricet like a madman.  Then when the migraine was gone, I kept taking the Fioricet for another week just because I felt better doing it.  Oh Fioricet, you’re the Julia Roberts to my Richard Gere migraines.

A big problem here is I’m overweight, and when I’m on my Oprah see-saw down on the end that keeps the wife and kid up in the air with little to no effort at all I tend to snore, alot.  And snoring just sucks for everyone.  So what really needs to happen is I need to get my ass back in some kind of shape, especially if Lara and I are going to run the Boston marathon as she suggests.  I’ll have to check and see if our 69th place relay team time in the Buffalo Marathon qualifies us for Boston.

I’ve also been trying to go to bed earlier.  Chilling out with a book is better than chilling out with the TV ’til we fall asleep in each other’s arms.  That Jon Stewart, he’s a cuddler.  Those nights I do go to bed earlier I have a much easier time getting up in the morning, so that’s something.  Still don’t feel like I slept well, though.

But mostly, my lack of sleep is just another reminder that I’m not healthy, and that I need to do something about that.  Need to do something about alot of things, and lately that pile seems to be toppling over.

I Need Some Sleep

I need some sleep, it can’t go on like this
I tried counting sheep, but there’s one I always miss
Everyone says I’m getting down too low
Everyone says you just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go

I need some sleep, time to put the old horse down
I’m in too deep, and the wheels keep spinning ’round
Everyone says I’m getting’ down too low
Everyone says you just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go

– e

I think it might be time to get to the root of things – what is probably the base of alot of what’s off in me.  I haven’t been sleeping well now for about two years. 

It’s my own fault.  I don’t go to bed when I should, God forbid I not watch a Family Guy episode I’ve seen half a dozen times already.  But even after that I read until my book punches me in the eye two or three times because I’ve dozed off and dropped it on my face.  Once I put the book down I lay there and listen for anything and everything, suddenly awake enough to pounce at a moment’s notice because of any number of things out to harm me or mine.  This little quirk probably stems from the fact that I was allowed to watch things like Amityville Horror, Alien, Psycho and the like when I was but a wee sprout of 6 or 7 – giving me an eye for cinematography that used to bowl my teachers over at a very young age, but also instilling in me the never-to-be-doubted knowledge that at any given time, something, somewhere is probably trying to kill me.

But I nod off eventually, and it’s up again at 6:30 or so.  Funny it’s never because of Cooper.  At 2 1/2 the boy is a cuddler, and would just assume stay in bed in the mornings. That is, until you say something like ‘peanut butter toast’ and his eyes pop open wide and he leaps from the bed and laughs sliding on his belly all the way down the stairs, then sprinting to the kitchen, stopping only long enough to do an awesome little soft shoe of sorts in front of the TV.

But on the not-so-cute side – I haven’t gotten a night of sleep longer than 6 hours in a long long time.  I don’t really dream anymore, nor do I get much deep sleep – this I know because of the lovely feeling most mornings of foggy groggy headaches.  Not dreaming can be a bad, bad thing, and not just because of the shit that went down on last week’s Fringe.  And also, according to the wife I snore – not Dalmata snore (he’s kept the whole cabin up on camping trips before) but nevertheless…

Alot of this points to sleep apnea, but let me tell you a little about me and sleep apnea…

I’ve been a part of two sleep studies to look into my own apnea.  And really, please, stop…  The place I went to was very well put together, well staffed, well all of it.  My room was like a higher-end hotel room, TV and everything.  So I’m relaxing to some Seinfeld when the woman comes in with her cart to hook up the diodes or electrodes or whatever the hell you call them.  I remember thinking she seemed sort of grandmotherly for some reason. We start to chit-chat about health and sleep.  At the time, I was going thru a healthy cooking thing that involved spinach with almost every meal so I mentioned that.

“Oh yeah,” she says, “I like to…” and she gets this look on her face, sort of surprised and sort of like she forgot something.  And right there, mid-sentence, she steps out into the hall…  wait for it  …and rips out the most otherworldy low-end bass heavy fart I’ve ever heard.  Just right outside the door, she didn’t try to get any further than that.  It was like she punched a bear in the kidney.  She capped it at the end with a little high note like it was asking her a question.   Maybe that question was “Hey, are you going to go right back in that dude’s room like nothing just happened?” and her answer was yes because that’s what she did, immediately, wafting her baggage with her.

“…boil it with garlic,” she says, finishing her sentence, to me with my jaw hanging open, and making me forever relate spinach to the memory of her ass’s acoustic show in the hallway, and bears.

SIDE NOTE – Farts are either funny or disgusting.  That’s it, there are only two choices.  To the individual, that usually comes to mean mine are funny, yours are disgusting.  You also, I’m afraid, have only two choices for their inevitable release – you do it out loud and make a show of it, or you go somewhere else and keep it to yourself.  Location dictates this.  It is NEVER meant to be part of the conversation like you just coughed or sneezed – that is just wrong and you are not allowed to do that.  You are either shamed for what you’ve just done, or you give me something to dance to.  You either make the joke, or you are the joke, we live in a society here – you do not just let it fly by in front of everyone like it didn’t happen – it’s rude.  “Well, really Dan, if we’re going to look at (FARRRRRRRT), ‘scuse me, the issue of musicality in 18th century lepers…”  See?  Don’t do that.  Don’t make someone’s eyebrows go way up and then just continue on, giving him no excuse to bring them back down.  No. No. No. Like it or not, farts are funny or fucking disgusting, they are NOT just a part of life. 

Anyways, I’m dealing with grandma gas while she starts sticking little diodes (electrodes?  I don’t fucking know) to me.  24 of them.  Stuck to me with this sticky gel shit that pulls at every little hair on your body – the hair on your wrists, the hair on your ankles, all the places it turns out, that really fucking hurt to have hair plucked out of you.  Then she shuts off Seinfeld without asking (rude) and it’s lights out, lie on your back, arms at your side and try to sleep.

I don’t sleep on my back, I sleep on my stomach with my arms under my pillow, and I tend to move around a bit to find the sweet spot.  Well, there’s no fucking moving for an apnea test – it tugs at every little hair on your body to move and it also upsets the diodes, and it upsets the testing.  So essentially, I didn’t sleep all night.  The next morning, according to my results, I have sleep apnea.  I’m still not sure how that was the end result but hey, I just wanted out of there before she farted again.

I have to come back a couple nights later for the mask test.  Sleep apnea is handled by a mask and air pump that essentially forces air into you so you keep breathing all night long.

Look at that fucking thing!

Well it’s a big fucking mask.  And a loud fucking pump.  I spent most the night fighting with the mask – it has the power to make your mouth do raspberries that you can’t stop.  It’s kind of terrifying.  Then the lady got that look on her face again, but nothing happened, or maybe it did, I couldn’t hear over that pump and all I could smell was fake air.  And again with the diodes…  so no sleep for me.  Come the next morning I was told it helped. I don’t recall sleeping though.  I was also made aware that my health insurance would pay for me to have as many sleep study sessions as I wanted but they wouldn’t pay a cent for the bloody apnea machine, which runs in the $1500 range.  So well, thanks for fart story anyway, lady.

Lack of sleep leads to irritability, headache, forgetfulness, confusion, ironically and sometimes humorously falling asleep at any other time of day, depression, fucking hallucinations, high blood pressure, emotional outbursts, blogging, and yes, overeating.  And hell, that’s just the barely scratched surface.  And also hell, that’s me in a nutshell.

So yeah, I don’t get to bed when I should, and even when I do it’s not the most restful sleep in the world anyway.  But something’s gotta give.  I used to be quite a wiz at meditation, but these days it just doesn’t come easy.  Lack of focus… hey, that’s from not sleeping too!  Awesome!

Maybe it’s just time to come to terms with the fact that the world will keep spinning if I miss a Family Guy episode. 

Boy, you’d better fucking hope it does.

Get Behind the Mule

I found an old note from my friend Jolene.  She remains, to this day,  my oldest friend.  I’ve kept in touch with no one else from the otherwise misspent youth of my high school days, except for my cousin Lou who I was pretty much born next to, but like his title says and like I’ve told him countless times – he is my cousin, it’s $20 if he wants a friend.

But that’s besides the point, what matters is this – Jolene knows me pretty well.  We talked each other nightly through some just mindnumbingly godawful teenage relationships, obsessed on things (she on Billy Joel, me on Moonlighting), and kicked each other in the ass every now and again when we really needed it.  And here we are now, crappy relationships a thing of the past, Billy Joel for some reason kind of a douche and tuning down a half-step, Moonlighting long ago cancelled, and trading baby pictures on opposite ends of the country.

She used to have this habit of signing off on her emails with a quote from any number of historical literary figures and/or muppets, and this was one of them –

“To fall into habit is to begin to cease to be.” – Miguel de Unamuno.

I know, I thought she was coming on to me too. No, I KNOW!  I was like, should I tell Sue? But you know what?  Yeah, she wasn’t.

SIDE NOTE – Ol’ Miguel there was a professor in… Spain, I think it was.  He was once hauled off in the middle of a lecture for some thought or another he wasn’t supposed to be having about the political air of the time.  He was kept from teaching for four years before the powers that be released him and allowed him back to his job.  He went into his class and started it off with, “As I was saying yesterday…”  – I like that.

So I stumbled across that quote the other day and it kinda sorta hit me.  Because, sadly, I am nothing if not one big day in and day out walking and talking habit.  And as I’ve said, lately I feel a lot less me.

Now what to do about it?  I’d love to say it struck me so hard I’m going to change this and that and blah and blah….. but no… I may be less me, but I still know me.  But, and this is a big but (and I cannot lie) – it was the first time in a long time I suddenly felt some kind of… kick in the ass maybe?

So yeah, it was purely unintentional, but I needed it.  Thanks, Jo.

Taking Stock – The Damned Theatre

So in an effort to reacquaint myself with myself, I thought I should look at some of the things that take up most of my time and hence, why I do them.  As it turns out, outside of not being at the theatre, I’m usually at the theatre.

I left college with two bachelor’s degrees, one in plain old Theatre and one in Theatre Management and Production.  I always thought two bachelors traded up to at least a masters of your choice but I was apparently mistaken.  So when I got the call that a friend was leaving his position here and that I should come back and have a go, I jumped.  Sue and I were tired of Albany anyway, and there was only so much to do with the lighting as Supervisor of BJ’s Wholesale Club’s liquor store.

That was 1999, and the Opera House did alot more actual theatre back then.  I came back to a professional summer series of plays and an executive director who felt that his actors should not have to work more than 35 hours a week, but the three of us taking care of all the sets, lights, and sound could get by with somewhere between 90-110 hours a week for the entire summer.  But as they soon found out, with a college up the road that specializes in the same stuff, and the Chautuauqua Institution down the line doing it even better, nobody gives a shit that a bunch of unknowns are strutting about to Wait Until Dark, Craptastiks, an Star Spangled Girl.  We once did a matinee performance of Wait Until Darkto about two dozen bussed in blue-hairs fresh from their liquid lunch at a quaint little B&B who proceeded to spend the entire show talking out loud to everyone on stage.  And they thought they were the funniest bunch of bitties you ever met, there was literally no stopping them.  These were nobody’s Grandmas.

So after that there was still the local community theatre group, during whose tenure I mastered the three day design and build of the entire set, lights, and sound plot.  Those were good times, sort of almost, but the group collapsed in on itself when the oldies clashed with the young ‘uns and we’ve not heard a peep since.

And that was when we really settled in to pretty much what we do today, which is year-round little bit of everything.  Alot of music (folk, jazz, big band, etc.), the occasional just travelling thru one night only play or musical, magic shows, comedy, cinema series.  Then there’s the folks who rent the place – authors, bands or singers releasing their next CD (had to talk a death metal band out of renting the place once though), political debates, dance groups, weddings, awards ceremonies, whatever and ever, amen.

Ten years later and I have to admit… I’m winding down.  I have been for a while now.  A friend from back in the day once told me his view about working in the theatre – If it doesn’t scare you, it’s time to move on.  But, he also killed himself so I guess there was alot more not scaring him anymore than just the theatre.  But he had a point – I use to get worked up for shows because any number of things can go wrong, and it keeps you right on that edge.  At some point though, it just stopped being scary, and became more of… an annoyance I guess.  I’m not really sure how to explain that right.  Most all of the performers we have here are really quite nice, but every once in a great while, in comes some puckered ass hole who just needs a little more monitor… little more… just a smidge more… little more… (between every song) and wasn’t there supposed to be a meal here in the green room?  What kind of speakers you got here?  EV’s?  Pfft, whatever.  What do you do?  Make it bright?  Know what you’re doin’?  Could I get a little more monitor?  Little more….  and it just isn’t much fun anymore.

There’s still moments though.  Moments when I’m just blown away by some guitar player here, or some one-hit wonder from the 70’s who’s just passing thru and probably won’t even remember he played here, but goddamn everything he sings is just fucking GOLD, and how he was ever a one hit wonder is beyond me…  but, those moments seem to be getting fewer for me.

The one thing that’s never changed here for me are the movies.  God, I love taking care of the films here.  I book the films, I manage the marketing materials for them, I splice them together and platter them when they arrive, I project them when they show, and I break them down when they’re done – and it never gets old.  Probably because it’s the part of my job where I don’t actually have to deal with anyone.  Movies don’t need a little more monitor.  Probably also because every film I take care of here I preview to make sure everything’s cool.  And I preview it by myself out in my  theatre without people, without people talking thru the whole fucking thing, without people checking their fucking cell phones a hundred times… no, it’s just me.  Sometimes it’s me and Sue, sometimes me and Sue and Cooper if nothing is going to blow up or be shot in a fantastic spray of blood from the neck, and sometimes I drop Sue off here and let her watch something by herself so she can have that little bit of peace on Earth known as ‘a theatre to yourself.’

It’s the one thing I will miss about this place more than anything else when I finally pick up and go. 

I’ll step out in the middle of something playing here sometimes just to hear the sound of 200 people laughing out loud.  I never notice that sound at other movie theatres… most likely because theres only 8 or 10 other people in the theatre whenever I go to something.  No, it’s a different sound when you choose to hear it, when you’re just observing, and it’s a really good sound.

SIDE NOTE – Tonight we’re showing My Sister’s Keeper – kids and cancer.  200 people sobbing is an altogether different sound.

There’ve been four Executive Directors of this place in the time I’ve been here, and I came close to just quitting because of the third, but I… managed, and the Opera House is much better now in Rick’s hands than I ever remember it being.  There are only three of us on staff here.  People are surprised by that.  Sure, we have volunteer ushers, and a board, and folks that come in to help gussy the place up.  I have an assistant I can call to cover my ass if need be.  But really, there’s just three of us here doing just about everything that needs to be done.

So there I am.  Ten years has seen my love of live theatre wane, but I’ve also learned something entirely new in that time that’s pointed me in a new direction – that I’d one day like to own my own movie theatre.  I don’t know how that happens, or even if…

Looking back at this and re-reading it, I don’t even know what it says about me.  Which I guess makes sense.  I’m in a weird place right now with what I thought I wanted to do with my life as a career, and in the end I can’t really explain it.  So there you go, aren’t you glad you read all that? 

Hey yeah, sure.  You’re welcome.

Ugh.  I’m sorry, I really am.  I’m sure this all makes about as much sense as Donald Duck hawking rubbers… oh wait…