It’s been a long couple of weeks. Trouble is sort of relative. If you have the energy and focus to deal with whatever you’re facing down you can take on the entire Empire yourself. If you’re tired and sick and just plain ol’ wore out putting on outside-the-house pants can be a legitimate struggle. I’m still putting on acceptable pants but it’s been a long year and I’m plain ol’ wore out. My final show of the year opened a day late but is now firing on all cylinders and now can move from the stressor category… Because life is nothing but serendipity with a bourbon chaser – I’m running a noir detective mystery and finally made time to start reading Powers by Brian Michael Bendis. So it’s been pretty much this: and this: Powers is a super hero book told from outside the cowl and cape in
I hate losing. I hate losing Settlers of Catan or Uno or Soul Calibur.
Being in rehearsal until 10 every night and visiting with my wife or taking care of other assorted business after rehearsal has meant that in the time I’ve been in Austin I’ve mostly not been able to enjoy baseball. Which is a shame because in case you haven’t been reading (and you haven’t) life for me in this moment is an evolving tension between keeping my world full of interesting and challenging projects and having enough mental space to not get crushed by it. Baseball rhythmically is great for that. Available all summer for 3-4 hours a night you don’t need to alter your life to catch it. There’s a cast of characters that you get to know well and the voices of extended family talking about those characters. I gave up baseball for theatre mostly… but there are always exceptions… I’ve been a Red Sox fan since the end
I can’t say up as late as I can when I don’t have the metaphysical sniffles, but neither am I down for the count.
For this first time in my life my work as a performer has been nominated for an award.
I am bad at simply doing a thing. I tend toward pursuing a thing to the furthest edges and beyond.
It is tech week #2 for Trouble Puppet Theatre Co.’s The Head, wherein for a period of time I get to manipulate personal demons instead of them manipulating me. It’s a rollicking good time that I recommend you go see early before the good seats get all gummed up with folks and you have to miss it. But see, the thing is is the Missus is lighting this puppy. Which means that we’re both in tech and so food is… food is sort of catch as catch can as happens in tech weeks. That doesn’t mean however that our CSA box from Johnson’s Backyard Garden isn’t going to sit and stare at us wondering why oh why we’re ignoring it. There’s nothing sadder than a disappointed squash sitting in the fridge with those big puppy dog eyes staring out at you… so we killed him. On Saturday we had a
I am a deliberate human being. I am deliberate and I do deliberate… to the point of oblivion
Maybe ‘happy’ isn’t quite the word I’m digging for here. I am descended from a long line of laborers. All the traceable distance into my family history it’s laborers, mill workers and carpenters and the like. From the putative foundation of the North American Bedard stock, Isaac Bedard who was a master carpenter near Quebec City after leaving La Rochelle right on down to my Dad who has been carpentering himself for the last 40 years or so. Sidebar: My Dad TOTALLY just made this (non-carpentering division): I forget sometimes that I come from a line of folks more accustomed to using their bodies in their work. My brain is my primary muscle and there are plenty of days when it gets good and tired. But in the course of my day-to-day I do very little that could be construed as physical labor. Part of my ongoing war with sleep is
Every day like Puppet Christmas – what’s going to show up today?!
I laugh pretty easily and unabashedly, but there’s a different level of amusement that I don’t often reach that I’ve been calling wonder.
Can I seriously spend an entire blog post shouting how how great Siggis Orange and Ginger yogurt is? Or how great it is to discover that there is such a thing as Orange and Ginger yogurt because it’s been left out with your coffee for breakfast? Which is what Breakfast Christmas would be like if Breakfast Christmas existed.
I have been busier in this past two years than I ever have been. Mixing theatre and work and life into too few hours and then drinking deep. Busy to the point that the word itself stopped being an adjective for my schedule and began standing in for an emotion: “How are you?” “BUSY”.
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