well now, this will probably be the last post of the year. ah le petite blog.

i wanna take this time to talk about the two books that have occupied my november and december. the first being Lolita and the second House of Leaves. both books sent me into a trauma similar to being sucked underwater and held there until your lungs drown and your brain compresses. either that, or altitude sickness. ...the tomes flung me between altitudinal extremes, and whether high or low, it seemed to expand my horizons; now i can see further than before. i have a greater understanding of boundaries, or lack thereof. the alpha and omega seem now just constructs that easily can be eschewed. sound fun?

now here's the problem with living outside of a perimeter: it's like dreaming in black. say you had a dream, and all you dreamt was black. are you dreaming? how do you remember something without a line of demarcation? these thoughts just permeated my every winter thought, and was perpetuated by my marked propensity for imbibing liquor during the cold (disambiguated) season. and i'll tell you what, it was kinda shitty.

so now i'm reading some good ol' Malcom Gladwell. but, guess what? come the end of the aughts, i'm starting Infinite Jest. take that!

but, seriously, read House of Leaves. you must read it 2 minutes ago. the place it took me to/left me at is like a mobius strip of a Lynchian creepshow mixed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. i lent it to a friend and i feel like i amputated a phantom limb or something, i miss holding it (it weighs about 4 lbs, 726 pages).

new years eve party coming up. i'm gonna play music for it. started Miss Julie rehearsals today, and that is going to prove challenging and fun, more than i anticipated it to be. though, the lack of organization of the rehearsal process seems a little odd. i think i'm gonna have to come in with a lot more commitment and ideas with this, even though i'm barely on stage. Shrew is almost over, and all in all it was a pretty fun time. the days where i wasn't hopped up on caffeiene or nicotine were the best ones for that show. they are always the best ones... i havent' had coffee in a while, and that really makes me feel great. course, i havent gotten all fucked up in a while.

paint the black hole blacker.

on the road, i've seen fire and i've seen rain, three tall women, and...derryl strawberry.

moving on: the show is well into its 3rd week and is continuing to deepen and strengthen. but, not on my part. i'm stuck in some state of thinking where the only justification for my character is that he his mentally challenged. how else can you justify any of these lines or beatings? it's the only thing that makes sense to me. i can't fucking stand staring at everyone else on stage when in reality my character has no clue who anyone is or what anyone is doing. i'd love to get a collection of people who have been on stage in act v scene -whatever- and had no lines, and collectively decide how best to approach long runs of those scenes. it's damn near impossible for me to justify that. i guess the onus falls on me to figure that out, but i still think it's irritating; though perhaps its just been because the last two shows i've had no lines in the final 'stand off'.


some facts:
i was born on the same day as jack karoauc, james taylor, edward albee, and derryl strawberry.

muse is apparently touring in the US and its already sold out.

i'll be playing a servant in 'miss julie'.

no one should ever cover 'landslide'

the measure of success is still, i beileve, immeasurable.

the harmonics in 'mayonaise' make me smile.


running makes me feel better than anything.

accept change, accept differences, accept your faults are the faults in others as well.

bread that tears up the roof of your mouth is usually the most delicious bread.

weezer: it's like the difference between meeting a really smart, funny girl at a bar and striking up a personal conevrsation with her for 45 min.and then 5 years later after dating and breaking up with her, seeing her at a strip club, dancing with dead eyes around a pole to def lepard for 45 min. the former being Pinkerton, the latter being Maladroit --> Raditude

oh, hey!

special shout out this week to the pixies and tommy wiseau , who have made my life infinitely better this week. be it black francis' achingly confrontational display of raw emotion or tommy's remarkably droll and lackluster display of raw emotion, these two figures of entertainment inspire me and give me a reason to continue with life.

tanks.

clownin' 'round

i'm proud of our show that we opened this weekend. again, i'm not really doin all that much in it, but my couple scenes are pretty cool. it takes a fair amount of energy to bring myself to the place i need to be for larry (curtis). i'm focusing not on mugging, but allowing the character to be so dumb, so eager, that all of the reactions come from who this person is: a lonely fuck who can't get it together. the clowns really are the saddest people in the room.

you're full of cowardice

this week has been flying along at breakneck speeds dangerously close to the ground, grazing the heads of innocent bystanders. it has been long days at the theatre, tours (which have gone remarkably well (save discussions about what perfection is. how does one have a perfect show? not fumble lines? what about exploring space and text and moments and objectives? there are some people whom i tour with who build a crafted performance and they're convinced that it's the best they can do. i want to tell them that you have no idea if you've made the best choice until you've played in they abyss and found out everything that doesn't work. we're smart; use the text and the characters to keep finding specifics and different moments. dont' just say your lines perfectly. who are you helping? don't be a coward.) and now we're in the midst of what looks to be a very shaky tech process for 'taming of the shrew'. another thanksgiving for me will be spent away from family (3rd year running) and it's gonna be a bit of a stressful one because we open the aforementioned Shakespearean comedy the following day. i would love to just drink an entire bottle of cabernet and eat pounds of turkey and take a meat nap, and i hope to do so without this show looming in the distance.
sara palin has a book out, and boy is there buzz !!! here is the best way to read it. or if you would just to read christopher buckley's interpretation of the index, go here. both are, i'm guessing farily accurately, far better than the actual book. even in reading short excerpts from the book, i'm convinced she has the intelligence (and perhaps the temperament and fighting stance) of an Alaskan king crab. just briefly, in the first three pages, she refers to metaphorical train (which fast becomes a mixed metaphor in the next paragraph) as being 'increasingly derailed'.
but i know not much more about it than what i read about it.
speaking of reading, i'm re-reading 'lolita'. boy do i enjoy reading about a page worth of descriptive prose about humbert humbert's erections. if i could write, i would write like nabakov. he's so self-aware and witty and verbose and poppy and effete and daring

until later

its evolution, baby

i'm doin away with capitalization today to show how i can be all savvy and detached. people don't capitalize when they don't want to be taken all too seriously, i think, and i'm pretty sure i don't want to be taken seriously. non-capitalization (or, "typin' all tiny like") implies a sort of off-the-cuff nonchalance that i can get behind. and then, it offsets and pairs nicely with some propperly written prose. ha, as if one expected poor grammar and sentence structure because of this anti-caps legislation.

the arcade fire's "neon bible" just keeps growing on me like a cute fungal infection. pushed in part by watching their dvd "miroir noir", i listened to the album a lot recently and it's a perfect example of a band evolving: less four to the floor dance/pop and more gradual building with songs. they've changed their lyrical content to explore a wider array of topics, looking outward, and relying on new sounds, (organs, found acoustical tones), and regine's voice is way more prominant in this, and that adds so much diversity to their already eclectic sound.

business will be theme of the next week. back to touring more and lots of rehearsal and tech at the end of the week. we're puttin up another show.

also... there's something here at this company that's odd: offering to be nice to people is like a threat. or it's not takin at face value. or it's not trusted. it's confusing.

until later

The Glen Beck of TV = The Human Wrecking Balls

The leaves are crisp and dead on the ground, winter's chilly visage is just around the bend, and the Packers are disappointing, then it must be the time of year where I slowly get caught up on Top Chef, my achilles heel when it comes to reality TV. As sort of a warm up I went on Hulu and watched and old episode from last season. Brought back fond memories, made me hungry and remorseful that I really only cook on my George Foreman, reinstated my crush on Jamie. But then I saw this.

Before I get into that---

I was already reading today about how Glen Beck is becoming an idiom in his own right, (i.e. The Glen Beck of culinary arts = Guy Fieri, or the Glen Beck of music = Toby Keith ( Further, I must share with you this little quote from the Bio of Toby Kieth on the CMT.com website:

That all changed in 2002 when he recorded "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," a response to September 11 that became one of country's most highly charged political statements since Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee""

"Okie From Muskogee" is a fucking satire, and Merle Haggard admitted he wrote it as such, and jesus, you think that's a charged political statement? Putting one's boot in someone's ass? "Boy, that ol' Mahmud Ahmadinejad , I'm gonna give that sawn bitch a knuckle sandwich to show him what for." There's my highly charged political statement, CMT, give me my Country Music Award. Now. I want it right fucking now. )) and how in some cases it may not be fair because Mr. Beck is such a giant pile of crudely plucked ass hair who should only be compared to, well, a giant pile of etc... Guy Fieri was quoted as being "a very nice guy in person" and "charming", but that's not Mr. Beck's m.o.; it's appealing to the lowest common denominator, the people who want chicken little stories with clear binary problems and solutions. Nothing new, I know. But I really think it's an award (no CMA, to be sure) to become part of this new colloquialism.

Therefore I, Jeremy Dana Larson, in accordance with the international "Cause I'm Right, That's Why, Sir" social critique 'festo, hereby declare The Glen Beck of TV to be "The Human Wrecking Balls"And I'm aware of the redundancy.

Now, that link to the preview and a couple short videos on Youtube is all I saw, because I didn't want to write this and seem uninformed. But now that I am informed, I can safely say this is the dumbest, basest, most ignorant thing on TV. And while a little part of me wanted to watch, the majority of me knew that these two brothers (who used the phrases "Get some" and "This is the rockstar dream, baby!" ) are representing something that is truly depressing. Someone at G4 (men's answer to Lifetime, another equally appalling and sexist channel of truly horrible programming) had to greenlight this, knowing that there's a gathering of people who would just love to watch goateed, bleached hair, giant men smashing things with their bodies.

I'd extrapolate more, but it's almost too easy to follow this to the inevitable punchline. Congratulations, the brothers Pumphrey, you win.

Until later, just remember, white lightning's still the biggest thrill of all.

The 24U

Monday. A day off.

Almost.

All's Well That Ends Well has one week left in its run. If I never have to wear medical adhesive for a fake mustache again, I will die a happy man. On Saturday's performance, a friend of mine gave me a note about what I was doing in the background on stage, saying that I was being too loud in my peas and carrots dialogue.

Firstly, no one, ever, is watching what is going on upstage of anyone who is talking. It's definitely one of those parts where you gotta say to yourself "Ok, I'm rarely , if ever, driving the scene here. Let's just go onstage and not distract people." But if I am playing an ancillary character in a show, I do get very excited about being able to create something that can be really ridiculous and interesting for me to play that absolutely no one knows or cares about. Because trust me, it gets fucking boring up there after a while. Last year, I was in a show where I played a servant who fell asleep standing up. That was my choice after a while. It came from a very real place.

CSC is one of the few resident ensemble companies in the US, and I feel very blessed to be apart of it. I believe that it is one of the only ways to develop a theatre for a community, serve that community, and be comfortable knowing each other on stage and feel safe to risk, fail, and risk again. However, 4 months in, there are downfalls. Your co-workers are your friends are your family are your drinking buddies are your confidants are your bosses are your roommates. Incestuous describes all too well what it's like. And, hell, if this was a artist commune where we all did acid and benzedrine and stayed up late writing manifestos (hereafter " 'festos ") and creating new exciting challenging pieces of art, that would be just dandy. But a classical theatre company (read also: business) lends itself to some inherit limitations, insecurities, and a general shield that can permeate and perhaps stifle a creative flow. At least, I feel like I'm not part of the flow. Maybe it's like Reaganomics trickle-down theatre. I'm gettin the juicy run-off of the higher-ups... I want the fruit that's at the top of the tree, man.

I'm going to work now with less of a censor over me now. I'm living in the now, the idealism, the pragmatic, the 24, and not trying to adopt a specific set ethos that can permeate the theatre. Maintain my beliefs, be open to others', and kick ass.

I'll leave with you with some of what I want to work with. Buckley live.

Until then.

To Varying Degrees

I find that, to varying degrees, people, generally speaking, (and this is to say that perhaps more often than not), seem to have the tendency oftentimes -- no, I should clarify and do away with certain vague notions and say 'are', forever waxing and waning towards, (and I say the following with a scientific certainty unparalleled in any pedagogical or professional institution and hope to eschew any previous linguistic transparencies, euphemisms, or abstract syntax) being utter, unmitigated, pure douchebags.

Meditation

I'm up in the woods

I'm down on my mind

I'm building a still

To slow down the time

I wish music would make me laugh more often.

Thank you ODB, Sage Francis, The Darkness, Lil Wayne, They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, *live* Jeff Buckley, Dragonforce

No Thank yous to Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliot Smith, Bon Iver 99% of other bands

Against All Odds

So, as previously mentioned, this blog will have some training wheels on it. Oh, I don't think I'm ready to review songs every day, or every blog post. Writing thoughts on songs I'm not attached to is not something that I or anyone wants to get involved with. I'm not credible on things I'm not familiar with or passionate about. But today, I had an experience with a song. A revelation. A little diddy called "Against All Odds" by Phil Collins. I don't know what it is about his voice... A dash of Sting, a little bit of Rod Stewart...a snare drum that sounds like a handgun (see every 80s ballad), and then the just utter honesty of it? It's so dumb, the chord progressions are so predictable, when it goes to that Cmaj/D chord on "empty space", it's that musical theatre chord, it's all over the place in Steven Schwartz songs, and it manipulated me. The lyrics are are terrible at points. "We've shared the laughter and the pain/we've even shared the tears." But the chorus. Jesus. I could listen to it over and over again. It's stadium, it's epic, it's absolutely draining. He stole god's mic and plugged in to the speakers of the universe. It's the most massive purging of emotion in a song that I've listened to (lately). And what makes it all the better is that Phil was just this balding, 30something, short brit who played the drums and sang. He's coming from a marginalized place in pop-rock, as if who the fuck should care about his recent divorce with his wife, he dives in, no apologies, and lets us know their ain't a betting chance she's coming back, but he's gonna stand there and take a barrage of internal emotional warfare.

While listening, I regressed to being on the bus in middle school listening to that Mariah Carey/Boyz II Men song "One Sweet Day" while trying to hit on Jessica Chase. (Fruitless, even when she asked me to go out the ski-lift with her). This has happened to me before, just something triggering this listen-fest, as if my heart just opened for the first time. Camus said

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

I don't know what it is about fuckin "Against All Odds", but I tried to describe it here.

Tomorrow I start rehearsing my second play proper with CSC, The Taming of the Shrew. I'm playing Curtis, who will be inspired by Larry Fine. That should prove interesting... I'm never really good at doing that kind of outside-->inside stuff, so it will be good new challenge. The sense that I get is that's how a lot of people work here. I wouldn't know, because as an actor as you get older, you stop talking about your process with people mostly for the better but sometimes for the worse. I hope to understand throughout this year what "ensemble" work is about. So far, I have glimpses of an ensemble idea, and moments of light cracking through, but it's still not cohesive. It gets better every time though, and that's partly me getting my bearings in the company. It's like being a freshman all over again...feeling young, but not knowing really how to flaunt my youth.

Lord, to be 17 forever.....

Until then

Beer and Cigarettes (Past Tense)

More about moderation:

Some of the absolute best, most memorable times in my life (with friends) have been staring up at the world from the bottom of a case of beer (or jug of Carlo Rossi, extra strong Daquiris) and a pack of cigarettes. What is it about the freedom of indulgence that creates such perfect moments in time?

The Rain (All's Well That Ends Well)

I opened my first show proper at my CSC last Thursday, All's Well That Ends Well, and I couldn't be prouder of the work this company does. The script is tricky (clunky) , and we all strove hard to make positive choices, and, even after one of our leads got sick with a stomach flu and the stage manager went on opening night with book in hand, we persevered . It's doubly fitting, because that really became the theme of our All's Well: perseverance. Whether that's being conveyed, I'm not sure... I think so. I know there's some talented folk up on that thar stage speakin true.

After nights of going out, I'm spending this one at home. Recharging. I'm still trying to understand what a normal schedule of behavior is like. Every time I teetotal, I get anxious. Every time I party, I get self-conscious... gotta keep it on the level. Why can't moderation be a thing of simplicity? Moderation is more of an enabler for me... it pushes me to one end or the other. Something to think about...

Until Later

Fall is At the Bottom of Everything

Opened All's Well That Ends Well last night, 5 Bears last evening, and a short meltdown that I was lovingly wrested out of by the best of people. Cincinnati almost skipped Fall, but it certainly is here now. The wind is brisk today, the kind that makes you walk faster without being miserable because of its frigidity.

Bright Eyes - At The Bottom Of Everything

I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that out of my many songs on my computer (more on the future of cataloguing music on a later post) , good ol' boy Conner Oberst comes on and tells me about the futility of the American living-dream in the fitting fashion of Americana Heartland Rock. The impetus, I guess, of this whole blog kinda falls into this song, and I really think this song is a microcosm of what's going on with The Underlying Theme.

Firstly, the song (like, I believe this blog) starts out... just terribly (like this blog). There's Mr. Oberst, talking to us (you) telling this faux-improvised story about a man and a woman on a doomed airplane ride (it's not going well). I often skip this first 90 seconds of the song or so (which I recommend you skip the first 90 or so blog posts until I figure out how best to do this).

BUT, as soon as the song proper starts (a year or 6), Bright Eyes finds a sound that is evident throughout the rest of the cd which is something that's like Ryan Adams without the douchbaggery. Each line starts with a "we must", a call to action and a demand of the listener, which can become laborious in many a tune, but Oberst's rhyme scheme and imagery(we're bed fellows, really) lets us enjoy his demands about the things we have to do to deal with the life we're given; the significance of being small and apart of something you can't understand.

And it's so catchy even Matt Holiday would have been able to hold on to it.

It's late, but, I updated it "today". Probably take tomorrow off. More monday.

Until then.

Stop Making Sense: This is the Water.

I watched "Stop Making Sense", the Talking Heads DVD the other day:

There's water at the bottom of the ocean...
-David Byrne

That reminded me of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon University:

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older
fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the
water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of
them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?

...

[life is] awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight
all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and
over: 'This is water.' 'This is water.' "

If ever you wondered why the world wide web needs another blog, I don't really have an answer for you. Fact is, all self-deprication aside, I should delete this thing right now. The internet is a crowded place that I hardly understand, but at the tender, ripe, raw, piping hot on the outside but frozen on the inside age of 24, a local regional actor, I feel I have a voice, a reason, and a sense of humor that unfortunatly revolves around achingly precious wordplay and pop-culture references (Micheal Ian Blackface, Edward James Almost Famous, for two). But I think the reason why I want to write is five-fold:

1. I'm bad at speaking. I speak for a living, but in conversations with other people, I get flustered, and I feel like I constantly have to perform. But, in Blog Lando Calrissian (I'll stop) I can think about what I want to say, I can adjust, delete, use a thesaurus, be verbose, loquacious, garrulous, and it's all recorded for to go back and look at it later and marvel at where I was at this time in my life. "What a dick", he whispered.

2. The title was kind of a joke. I sang Limelight at karaoke the other night, and always thought it was some proggy mess like "beyond the lions teeth" (misquoting lyrics = humorous ) and when I read the lyrics off the screen I was impressed with our beloved prog trio.

Part of my struggle right now is to look for reason in things that don't necessarily have it; to not be discourged by those who are far more talented than I at expressing their thoughts.

3. To air my existential laundry (let's get ansgty, middle class style) and go on about the unwavering aspects of my life that consistantly remind me why there's somethings are just great and worth living for: theatre, music, and community. And bourbon. And Miller High Life.

4. Every day, I'm going to review a song. At random. From my library. I may know a lot about it, or know very little about it. It should prove interesting.

5. I'm constantly influenced by artistic minutia, fleeting blips that have a halflife of about 2 days. Currently it's Talking Head's"Once in a Lifetime" and Michel Houlellbecq. I'll tell you what's in focus. Life in the 21st century is made up of short stories, lists (see?) and momentary fascinations.

So: Stop making sense of the water that is everywhere. This is the water. It makes no sense.

The reviews will begin tomorrow. If anyone does read this, thank you for bearing with me as I get my sea legs on the good ship The Underlying Theme.

Until then.