Saturday, June 28, 2008

Gosh I've been busy lately

But these guys have been helping me through my busy time.


I went to see GBV in New Orleans a little over 10-11 years ago. We stood in the very front. Two nerdy cool things that happened: I was wearing my Big Star t-shirt (that my ex -girlfriend later stole). The drummer stopped everything to announce that my shirt was awesome. He may have also said, "Make sure your girlfriend doesn't steal that shirt one day" but I may be super-imposing that into the memory. The other cool thing was that GBV had a cooler of beer on stage and agreed to play until they finished it. My pal Todd was low on dough and asked Bob Pollard if he could have a beer from the cooler. Pollard said, "Well, you let old Uncle Bob grab you one" and gave him a beer out of the cooler. Of course a bunch of other folks immediately asked for one and 'Uncle Bob' gave a few more out thus shortening our show a bit, but it was pretty cool.

Also, Uncle Bob pulling off high kicks and old school rock flair was pretty great, especially for a dude in his late 40s.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Portrait of the artist as a stripclub patron

Went to a stripclub this weekend. I added it up and it’s been 9 years since I had been to one (for my pal Zac’s 21st birthday) and that was in Florida. This weekend’s was for a bachelor party. As always, I had a few observations.

-This was the first topless and bottomless one I had been to, as I think there’s some sort of legal thing in Florida about it. Anyway, chatting with one of my buddies and in mid sentence looking right at someone’s butthole. Yeah, that’s gross. Not into it.

-The wife hates the strip clubs. I’ve had plenty of invites over the years that she and I have been together and always thought better of it, knowing that like food stuck between your teeth, it eventually festers and causes ‘relationship cavities’. It’s never been worth it for me to watch a girl dance around and have her pretend to like me (besides, I’ve got a hot woman at home who likes me and she makes me lasagna and watches Dexter with me, which would be very expensive if she were a dancer and I had to pay for all that). But this go-around, my wife gave her blessing and I went to support my soon to be married buddy (with the wife giving the addendum of ‘no touching, please’).

For the record, I have no problem with strip bars, morally (I’ve dated several girls who worked in strip bars). I’ve always felt very connected to strippers because I’ve always felt we’re in the same business. People pay us to play a part. Their part is to pretend like they’re very turned on and that the people watching them are all attractive. The parts I’m paid to play are usually gay men or mentally imbalanced people. But we both have to make a living. And I tip very well for theatrics. Costume, character, and on the rare occasions that they have been funny, yep, I tip well for that too. But for the whole experience, I don’t really get it. I guess it kind of depends on someone’s motivation for going. It’s cool to see beautiful people dancing around but I can’t imagine going and thinking that there was going to be some sort of personal connection, or action or anything. Those cats, coming looking for love or understanding, well, that makes me a little sad. In the few strip bars I’ve been to, there is an air of loneliness there. I’m certainly not trying to be judgmental but the majority of dudes I’ve ever seen at one look starved for affection and attention.

-My wife makes fun of me because I’m always curious about the psychology of strippers. She thinks I’m just trying to be diplomatic or high brow, I think. But it is a fascinating atmosphere, if you’re a people watcher (and I am). For instance, I saw strippers playing pool with customers and it made me think, “Do you let the customer win?” Are guys who go to these places into being beaten or do they want to be in control? When I was single, I loved girls who could beat me at stuff. One time, a girl at an arcade beat me at Street Fighter 2. It was smoking hot. Seriously. The girl herself was OK but her beating me pushed her into smoking hot territory. Strippers have to use a lot of psychology, I’d be willing to bet. Figuring dude’s egos out. Not so much the stripping part, because that’s just acting. But the improv part. The walking around talking part. It reminds me of working at the Ren Fest. Except with more breast implants.

- “Because we can never finish it, Lonette. It's frustrating. I'm like a plug without a socket.”
-Brad Pitt in Cool World.
Anyone ever watch that movie? Anyway, it sort of sums up my philosophy on lap dances. Never had a lap dance. I don’t see the point. I think linearly. It’s like riding on a toy train. It isn’t going anywhere except in a big circle. Sure there may be some trees and a little paper boy and some houses and a little general store and a nice little train station with a plastic old lady and her dog…I’ve totally lost my point on this toy train metaphor. Anyway, I don’t get lap dances.

-It’s probably better, if you’re doing a bachelor party, to be with everyone from the beginning. I joined said bachelor party in progress and was way behind everyone and therefore very self conscious and self aware. These guys were having a ball and I was stone sober walking in. Some places you probably need to be a little lit just to walk in, especially if you’re going to have to look at someone’s poop shoot. If I had to make a rule, I’d say two shot minimum before that kind of thing.

-I used to have a charming quality about me. I was very boyish and sweet. A naïve quality, you might say. I was reasonably aware of it at the time. It got me out of jams and it also kept me from being threatening in situations where I didn’t want to be threatening (drunk people wanting to fight, etc.). But then, I started to lose my boyish quality and became man-ish. This isn’t bad. It’s nice to be treated like an adult. However, being man-ish at a strip club is a much different experience than being boyish. Boyish Matt got his hair tussled and was treated like a little brother by the strippers. Man-ish Matt was told he had nice hair (Thank you, Sapphire) but also treated like meat, a MAN with money, a dude to be worked or get the hell out. It made me feel gross. Then I looked around and realized that most of the dudes there were MAN-ish MEN, lonely suckers with a wad of cash. My friend who I sat with for most of the night, he has the boyish quality I once had, and of course, he was treated very warmly and not nearly as creepy as I was. One stripper sat and talked to him for over an hour, talking about her commute I think.

- I was talking to some of my pals and they were clocking something behind me. Thinking it must be something interesting, I turned around and it was a dude getting a lap dance. And everyone was gawking at him. Or the dancer. Or both. Anyway, major staring. I don’t get that. I think that’s like stealing cable. That dude paid for that channel and it’s his channel. Buy the channel if you want to see.

-Lastly, I’ll say that apparently I’m a big nerd. I was talking to my pal (the boyish looking one) about theatre. It wasn’t a drunken conversation because I wasn’t drunk. Perhaps a mild buzz, but the atmosphere was sort of a buzz killer for me. So we’re chatting (he’s an actor too so it wasn’t just me waxing poetic or anything) and a stripper comes up, looks at us and says, “Who comes to a strip bar to talk?” We giggled like goons. “What’s so important that you guys have to talk about it now?” she adds.

“Art,” says Joe with a completely straight face and not at all sounding like an asshole when he says it. He’s a very sincere dude and probably the only person I know who could pull it off. Anyway, she flashed her boobies and said, “I’m art.” I agreed. And then she left us alone. 10 minutes later she had her ass in some dude’s face. 7 hours later I was talking to puppets. This is our art.

More Modern Art


Friday, June 20, 2008

Superstar Wrestling Game!

When I was a kid, in the backs of the magazines were ads for wrestling related crap. One such piece of wrestling crap was the Superstars of Wrestling Game. The ad was a tiny murky affair, barely readable with a tiny black and white photo that was either Bigfoot or some piece of the game itself. The ad copy for it was something along the lines of “All of the fast paced fun of wrestling right in your own home!” and this thrilled me to no end. Wrestling back then was like a gay cousin, everyone had one but people rarely spoke about it, so there wasn’t all the wrestling merchandise that there is today. And there certainly wasn’t many wrestling ‘games’. It was mine and my friends’ secret shame. So to enjoy it in the privacy of my own home without judging eyes, yes this was something for me to get behind.

In 1985, $15 was a LOT of money for me, the exact price of the game, plus shipping and handling. I debated with myself about buying that game for a long time. I weighed the pros and cons. I tried to decipher the murky looking picture in the mag. I read and reread the copy of the ad. “All the fast paced fun of wrestling right in your own home!” So I took the plunge and sent off $15 cash (not a check) which I had received from my grandparents for my birthday. And I waited. I envisioned playing the game and all of the fun I would have. For 4-6 weeks I did this. And it never came. Maybe it’s just a little late, I thought and waited some more. And it never came. I would come home expecting to see it on our doorstep but IT NEVER CAME. Still, everyday (seriously, EVERDAY) I would speculate on all the cool stuff I would do and the matches I would have. I probably had more fun speculating on the stuff I’d do than the actual game.

In 1986, $15 was still a lot of money for me. And guess what? It finally came. I think I timed it out as a little over a year and a half before it arrived. I couldn’t believe it when it finally did. I had almost forgotten about it but when I heard the air brakes of the UPS truck, it was the first thing I thought of, like a soldier coming home from war. I RAN to the door and busted it out and started reading all of the rules.

I guess I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t as good as a 13 year old boy’s obsessive imagination could have built it up to be, but it was OK. Really, most of the game was decided by dice roles (2D6 for all my DnD nerds in the house) and all you really decided is when to go for the pin. Everything else was just rolling dice and totaling up points.

I played the shit out of that game. Nearly every day for years. I could play it by myself so friends were not needed. Heck, the game played itself. I wasn’t needed. Yet, I set up matches and personalities and feuds, and then rolled and added.

But that wasn’t all. There were other sets so I wanted the other sets. But the ads stopped appearing. No more was there the promise of ‘the fast paced dice rolling action of pro wrestling right in MY home’. I wrote the company and asked if they were still selling the new sets and much quicker than I ever got the game to begin with, I got a form letter saying they went out of business. In hindsight, how could they go out of business in a venture that was almost assuredly two college kids in their dorm room photocopying these cheap ass games and mailing them out, but they did. Maybe they finally discovered girls.

I’ve always been curious, yes 20 years later, what the other wrestler cards were like. I saw ads for female wrestler cards (“Match ‘em up against the guys and see what happens!”) and all sorts of stipulation matches (“Settle the score with an Indian strap match!”). So by the grace of the beautiful beautiful internet, I found a bunch of tribute sites to that darn game. And there’s folks still playing it. And someone has taken the initiative to program the game so you can play it on your computer. What a weird world.

A funny fact about the game: it wasn’t licensed by anyone so they couldn’t say who the wrestler cards were due to worry of copywrite infringement. They hinted at who the wrestlers were by giving the wrestler’s moves creative names to ‘clue you in.’ For instance, a guy would have ‘the Texas punch’ and ‘the spinning toe hold’, so I could deduce that it was Terry Funk, who was from Texas and used that hold. Often the names for the moves were ridiculous (which my pals and I hated because it wasn’t ‘serious enough’) and bordered on racist/sexist/ and just plain nonsensical. Now I look back and I think the names are hilarious. I will now give you a short list of some of my favorite moves from the game and their points values.

-“CroMag Bodyslam 9pts” from the Missing Link's card. See he was the missing link in human evolution but he has Cro-Magnon leanings, and in that way, we learn about science as we wrestle.
-“Fairy Bodyslam 8 pts” from Adrian Adonis, who played a gay character. I would have preferred the Limp Wristed Bodyslam, but beggars can’t be choosers. This guy’s card was filled with every innuendo but the Homo-Headlock.
-“GomerPyle Driver 12 pts” from Sgt Slaughter. This is gold. Comic gold. No comment necessary.
-“Sing Russian National Anthem 4 pts” from Nikolai Volkoff, who sang before his matches, but how do you get half as many points as the FairyBodyslam with it??? From singing? This was little me’s first run in with inequality. Until the Fairy Bodyslam gets at least 3xs as much credit as singing, there will be no equality.
-“Strut and whoop 6 pts” from Ric Flair, which gets half as many points as the GomerPyle Driver?? If I ever get into a fight, the first thing I’m gonna do is strut and whoop and bank those 6 pts. Take that, frat boy.
-“The Apartheid Crab 10 pts” for Col. DeBeers, who played a racist South African. Now is he putting Apartheid in a crab, thus negating it, or is he putting other people in the crab and thus oppressing them? The mind boggles.
-“Satan Slam 8 pts” for Kevin Sullivan, who made a deal with the devil to learn his bodyslam.
-“Hawaiian Punch 9 pts” for Don Muraco, who was of course Hawaiian, but had no affiliation to Punchy, the Hawaiian Punch asshole who sucker punched people while they were drinking.
-“Muscrat Suplex 10pts” for Captain from Captain and Tennile…nah, I’m just kidding. It was for Hillbilly Elmer. It still makes about as much sense, though. What was up with Muscrat Love?
-And lastly my favorite of the moves, “the Brian Claw”. It was for Baron Von Raschke, who performed his dreaded claw on anyone named Brian. Actually, I think it’s supposed to be ‘Brain’ claw but it’s misspelled on the card and became forever known as the “Brian Claw” to myself and a bunch of other giggling virgins.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Zombie Dreams and other things

- This Old Zombie House.

A steady diet of the Zombie Survival guide, watching Song of the Dead (the zombie musical), and reading the 3rd volume of The Walking Dead made me have a zombie dream the other night. In case you didn’t know, I LOVE the zombie dreams. I love the running and hiding and trying to find guns. And I love being scared shitless when I wake up.

Weird, huh? Can’t explain it but I love dreams where I have to run. So the prospect of having a good ole zombie dream is A-Ok with me.

However, this was not one of those dreams. This was a boring dream. A dream where all I was doing was preparing for zombies to attack. Yep, I was nailing up boards to the windows, barricading the doorways, putting my car in a good spot incase I had to run for it. I’m surprised I wasn’t filling out spread sheets about zombies. In short, I was just doing chores around the house. Zombie chores.

Maybe all my hard work would have been Ok had there been an actual attack, but instead I just spent hours dreaming about work. That’d be like watching Star Wars and just watching Luke fuel up the X-Wing, checking his flaps and sitting around looking at maps for hours. And in the morning, I was tired. Tired from the zombie chores.

Maybe the zombies were like that swarm of killer bees that’s been on tour across North America for the last 20 years. Where are those dang bees at?? I know bees don’t fly very fast, but 20 or 30 years, I think I could probably jog across the continent. Isn’t that what Forrest Gump did? Wow, how interesting would that movie have been had he encountered the killer bees.

I digress.

-Good news: it’s not fatal!

I read the lead singer/writer dude from the Shins (I’m a big enough nerd that I listen to them but not a big enough nerd as to know his name) talking about the significance of calling their most recent album “Wincing the night away”. He said that he’d spend whole nights cringing thinking about the stupid things he said and did, being unable to sleep.

This has always plagued me as well. I developed (at an early age) the mutant ability to think of a particular event and conjure the exact same feeling that I had at that moment (why Professor X hasn’t come after me for this talent is beyond me, I means, come on, a mutant who can break codes but no Emotional Recall Lad?). It’s good for fun events (remembering the EXACT feeling I had when I got the Millennium Falcon as a kid for Christmas), but bad for particularly unhappy events (every horrible thing anyone has ever said to me or any horrible thing I’ve ever said). It was bad when I was younger because I’d keep myself up all night obsessing about something that happened and carrying that feeling around with me for days. And I have a pretty long shelf life on these things. I’ll often remember some long forgotten event and walk around with whatever feeling it gave me for the whole day. Psycho, I know.

The actor side of me has always found this talent helpful in that I can ‘emotionally recall’ an event pretty easily if I was having problems getting where I needed to be emotionally in a scene. I’ve always thought it was a little mentally dangerous to do that kind of stuff too much because it crosses wires and makes a very confusing line between real and imaginary and wears out events that are probably best left traumatic. This approach to acting has always bothered me about child actors as well, as often directors will use emotional recall as a way to get kids to cry or be upset about things. There’s a long, blow-hard version I could go into but needless to say, I think it’s dangerous for adults but much more so for the tikes.

More digression.

Anyway, the good news is that Alzheimer’s disease runs in my family, and maybe in small ways it’s already working its tiny effect on me as I don’t wince the night away nearly as often as I once did. So while some may think that this is my mutant power going away, I welcome the prospect of being blissfully ignorant of the millions of little idiotic things I’ve said and done through my life. Every cloud has a silver lining.

The downside will probably be when I rewrite this blog later on and can’t remember that I wrote it in the first place. So anyone who reads my ramblings or speaks to me will have to endure the reiteration of stuff they already know. Heck, some may think that this is my mutant power going away, but I welcome the prospect of being blissfully ignorant of the millions of little idiotic things I’ve said and done through my life. Every cloud has a silver lining.

-Dog Neurosis-fest 2008!

So for the last 6 nights, my pal Yoshi, dog wonder, has decided to get up at 2 to 3 in the morning and climb on my head. Literally, when he’s scared, he tries to climb on my face or my wife’s face if we’re lying down. And he weighs 80 lbs. So in the middle of the night, in the dark, 80 lbs attempts to sit on my face. The first night I thought someone was trying to kill me. That’s a draw back from all those zombie dreams. Daddy wakes up with fight or flight in full effect.

So last night, the misses was do her late night obsessive house work and I was sleeping with the lamp on so she’d find her way in when she finally went to bed. And at 2 o’clock, Yoshi attempted to be a hat. So I could see what he was looking at and afraid of. And it was…the closet. Or something around the closet. Maybe a ghost. No idea. But he was terrified of it.

6 nights in a row. See, besides my horrible allergy, this is why I don’t have cats. Cats are crazy. They see things. They freak out for no reason. They climb on your head. Now I have an 80 lbs cat that barks. I’m pretty anxious for a return to normalcy in my sleep habits and no more ghosty visions for the boy. Some may think that this would signal the end of Yoshi’s mutant power but I welcome the prospect of being blissfully ignorant of the millions of little idiotic things (ghosts) in my house. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Friday, June 13, 2008

More art


Happy Friday, art fans.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Gym Ghouls


I think the gym is haunted.

Or maybe the same dude exists at every gym. I’ve had a gym membership of some sort since 1999. I know, I know, you say, ‘Matt shouldn’t you be in killer shape by now?’ Well, I’m on a little plan called the beer/pizza/exercise plan. I eat trash. Lots of fast food. And I drink. A lot. But I also exercise. So the fact that I’m not a gentle, tubby giant is pretty amazing. It all balances out. I’m breaking even.

However, in 2007, I left my gym of choice of 8 or so years, Lower Alabama Fitness. You know the one. While I was there, though, there was a dude who was ALWAYS there no matter what time of day. Tall guy, heavy set, very cheerful. Didn’t look like he really exercised that much, but he did work the gym. I mean he’d walk around and talk to ALL the fine ladies. He was loud so I always heard what he said. Then he’d adjourn to the locker room and talk to all the dudes. And he always discussed his exercise plans and how much weight he’d lost. Apparently he was doing some hellified routine but I never really saw him lift a weight or touch a machine. He seemed like an OK guy but I generally avoided him. He’s what I like to call a Psyche-Vampire. Very taxing to talk to and generally it’s just tedious conversation. I’d end up talking to him sometimes (he’s a MASTER at starting conversations that you feel like you HAVE to respond) in the dressing room. Usually it’d be something about what was on ESPN at that moment and I’d say, “Yep” or “I hear that.”

But then I left that gym. Bought a home gym. No more dude at the gym striking up tedious conversations, right?

No. Because my new company has a gym you can go to for free. Nothing special, but good enough to keep you busy. I go on my lunch breaks. And he’s there. Or someone who looks EXACTLY like him. And acts like him. Dammit, it’s him, I’m positive of it. Same M.O. Same loud talking to himself (‘Let’s see, what are we going to do today? Hmmm…maybe some cardio’, etc). Same radar for hot ladies, too.

I attempted to ignore him when I first spotted him. I put my face firmly in my magazine while I did the elliptical. And he sat up shop right in front of me. He put up those aerobic step things and started running up and down them. I couldn’t escape him. No matter how fast I ellipticaled, he was right there. I was trapped. So I ignored him. And then he fell. The little step bits completely slid out from under him and he busted ass, falling Charlie Brown missing the football style. So with only myself and a woman and him in there, I was forced to speak.

“Are you OK?” said I. The girl (who was pretty but not fall off your elliptical pretty) chuckled and that was all he needed. He was fine but he launched into a talking spree. A veritable supermarket sweep of unimportant stuff he felt like talking about. All directed at the girl. And when I left, he was giving her the full business, following her to her car chat-chat-chatting away.

So are all gyms haunted by this guy? Or perhaps spirits like him? Soul-sucking energy ghouls who ramble through conversation after conversation. I’m worried that, now that I have a home gym, he’s just going to start showing up in my office, asking to work in.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Beginning of the week wrap-up

No one ever does a beginning of the week wrap up. I figured ‘why not?’

-Watched the Pixies documentary ‘loudQUIETloud’ this weekend. Not a bad flick, although I kept waiting for some sort of confrontation or catharsis or something. I guess that’s the problem with real life (and documentaries): there is no ‘big moment’ or happily ever after de nous mont. Instead it felt like there was the simmering of something else always waiting to bubble up. The misses and I were talking about how quiet they all are around each other. Then the speech from Pulp Fiction popped in my head about comfortable silences. Maybe they all are REALLY comfortable around each other. However, I don’t think so. Good music, though.

-A funny aside while watching the film was my wife and I thinking at the same time how hot Kim Deal must be wearing a sweater IN CONCERT! A sweater! I’m burning up on my couch right now and I don’t have hot lights or a task to perform. Anyway, I knew, from that silly observation, that the misses and I are meant to be. That and that she told me the other day what not to do if I ever killed her. She watches a lot of the Court channel, so she laid it out for me. Good woman.

-So I went from really having not much coming up theatre-wise, to now having lots o' stuff to do. I start rehearsals next week for my pals Christian and Randy’s new show ‘Fwd.’ Should be fun. They’re funny/talented cats and my part should be a hoot. That’s over at the Dad’s. And if the cast is who I think it will be, I'm in hog heaven.

And then after that begins ‘Dracula’ in Lawrenceville. I get to be Renfield. This marks the first time in the history of my acting career where I requested to read for a part and actually got it. What a world! That drive to Lawrenceville is going to kick my butt due to the ever inflating price of gas. It might be cheaper for me to rent an apartment in Lawrenceville. You think I’m kidding. 90 miles round trip. 5-6 times a week. That’s a tank and a half of gas a week. Think about it. Talking about paying for the privilege to do your art. Still, I’m stoked about the show, though.

Plus, Tim and I are trying to write some sketch stuff. Combine that with the hope of doing a short film with Sweeney and you’ve got an action packed schedule, Pee-Wee.

-Went to see Song of the Dead this weekend at Dad’s. Good stuff. I was hanging out during the genesis of the idea but had no idea the monster it would become. Good tunes, good group doing it, and two good writers. I was really impressed. And I’m what they call, in the theatre community, a ‘douche bag’, which means I generally come to shows to be overly critical and second guess everything everyone everywhere is doing, politely smile afterwards, then talk shit about them on the way home. But this time I didn’t have to do that.

Oh yeah, and good pal Steve (Platinum) Scarborough takes a hellacious bump on that hard-ass Dad’s stage. Take it from a guy who’s banged his knees and elbows on that thing more times than he can remember, that ain’t fun. But it looks cool.

-I realized this morning that I have three types of showers:
The ‘Swamp Thing’: this is the quick shower when I’m just too stinky to be functional but have to be somewhere. This is pretty much hitting the ‘problem areas’ and getting out. Run time: 3-5 minutes.

The ‘9 to 5’: this is the most frequent shower. It’s my morning wake up shower and a light, half-assed sort of affair. I get clean, I wash my hair. It’s a strictly by the numbers shower. Sometimes I shave afterwards but mostly I don’t. Or I’ll shave the parts of my face that REALLY need it. Run Time: 5-7 minutes.

Lastly, the ‘Bachelor’: The Bachelor is the full swing, double scrub, getting sassy. This shower was made popular in my teens and up to mid-20s, before I was a complete slob. Or at least wanted to give the appearance that I wasn’t a complete slob. This is the kind of shower/primping that I did when I thought I might get laid. I guess it’s the equivalent of a woman shaving her legs for a date. Now it’s more of my ‘wedding, funeral, audition, big date with the wife’ shower. This one requires some spruce time because I don’t quite have that slobbish charm that I used to have (you know, that Euro-greasy look the lads have? I used to have that. Now, not so much, so I actually have to try to look good. And it isn’t always effective like it used to be.) Run time: 10 minutes for shower, plus additional 15 bathroom minutes to primp.

Now you know.