Goodbye, Tongue & Groove

Last night at approximately 8:15 p.m. I ended my almost seven year affiliation with Tongue & Groove, Philadelphia’s Spontaneous Theater troupe of actors/improvisers/all-around good people. Our work was not improv in the usual sense: fast, funny, wacky. Every scene was grounded in reality, whether funny or serious or sad, “better” as one of our reviews said, “than the best scripted plays.” We did four shows over the weekend at the Kimmel Center’s Innovation Studio, to what appeared to me to be packed houses. We were damn good, too, eliciting laughs and tears and myriad emotions in between from our audiences and even, I think it’s safe to say, from ourselves.

We collaborated with RealLivePeople(in)Motion, an improvisational dance troupe that worked with us seamlessly to add a new dimension of movement to our mostly verbal scenes. We also all made new friends of the dancers who were generous and talented and funny and real. By the last show it felt as though we’d been working with them for a whole year, not the weeks they actually spent with us practicing, working out the kinks.

It was a little emotional and I’m sure the reality of it will sink in slowly over time. I’ll now have my Thursdays free, rather than attending practice with the group. I won’t have the opportunity to do an emotional “check-in” with everyone, letting them know how I’m feeling, what’s going on and how it’s all affecting me. We got to know each other and became more than friends: supportive and caring and loving – when things were bad or we were down or feeling angry, “What can I do for you?” was not a rhetorical question. And of course we also shared the joys, the good times, the happiness… I’ll miss the hugs.

The group changed in the years I was with them: members dropped out and moved on (in one case getting a contract with the Food Network for his own show), new people joined and became as integral to our success as those who left. But they were all talented and brought their unique vision and perspective and energy to the group. We were never stagnant, never still, or so it seemed.

I’m a little misty as I write this. And I know I’ll see the Tongue & Groovers from time to time. We’ll be in touch. It’s not as if I’m moving halfway around the world or something. It’s just that Tongue & Groove really defined a very specific and special time in my life, an era, if you will, that’s coming to an end. I tend to hold to that saying about a door closing and a window opening. But what’s behind that door will always be special to me. I’m different – better? – for having been connected with you all. Blessed. Plus, I had a hell of a good time.

Thank you, T&G.

The Nightmare in Boston

As the reports continue to come out of Boston about the aftermath of yesterday's horrific events, and the number of terrible injuries seems to climb by the hour, it's easy to want to tune out -- especially since virtually all the news is concerned with the bombings.And of course there's always the nagging worry that something comparable could happen anywhere else -- Philadelphia, for example, as I head to the train at the end of the day. And regardless who's responsible our hearts go out to the families of those who died and those who were so brutally injured.

Columnist, commentator and media critic Michael Medved put it about as well as anyone, I imagine, and I quote his comments in their entirety from his website.

“As I write these words, it’s still too early to know who perpetrated the bloody attacks on the Boston Marathon, or even to guess at the motivations. Nevertheless, the two explosions undeniably represent a premeditated act that deserves classification as unspeakably evil. No ‘higher cause’ can conceivably justify the shattered lives and severed limbs. The Boston Bombings remind us that brutality remains a constant presence in our world, and that cruelty should discredit relativists who blur distinctions between good and evil, civilization and barbarity.

“We must also recall that those who defend us against random violence – soldiers, police officers, first responders, doctors and nurses – toil on the side of decency, regardless of politics. We must recognize their efforts and respond decisively against the warped mentality of terrorists who make pain and destruction their primary focus.”

Roger Ebert: Wisdom

Film critic Roger Ebert died last week at the age of 70, having succumbed to cancers of the thyroid and salivary glands. He was best known for his "thumbs up/thumbs down" reviews with partner Gene Siskel on Public Television. He wrote a number of books, including one on director Martin Scorcese, another titled "The Great Movies" and more than one on movies he disliked, including the title "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie". He won the Pulitzer Prize and had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was a recovering alcoholic with 30 years of sobriety. (Read about his journey here - http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/08/my_name_is_roger_and_im_an_alc.html) It's worth reading his obituary in the Chicago Sun Times to learn more about this remarkable man. (He had had his salivary glands and thyroid removed due to cancer, altering his appearance rather shockingly and rendering him unable to eat or speak. Nevertheless, with the help of his wife, he kept on writing, thinking, producing and loving.) Which leads me to the following which is taken from his autobiography, "Life Itself". I think it's something we could all take to heart.

“Kindness covers all of my political beliefs,” he wrote, at the end of his memoir, “Life Itself.” “No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

After Hours - Another Movie Gem

Martin Scorcese’s 1985 black comedy “After Hours” is another one of those movies I love that was never what you’d call a smash hit, though it did win Scorcese a Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

It stars Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett, a hapless word processor who meets a girl, Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a diner and agrees to a late-night date with her later on. He goes to her apartment, which she shares with a sculptor and on the way loses his only money, a $20 bill that flies out his taxi’s window. Stranded in the lower depths of Manhattan (probably TriBeCa, also the name of Scorcese’s production company) Paul’s only desire is to get back home, a desire thwarted at every turn as he runs into and frequently finds himself fleeing from, a variety of bizarre characters, most of whom are at once comic and vaguely sinister oddballs. There’s no plot in the conventional sense; it’s a series of misadventures that eventually turn hostile and sinister, thanks to Scorcese’s handling of the material. Still, you can’t help laughing as the misfortunes pile up against poor Paul, until he’s fleeing for his very life, encased in plaster like a statue. You have to see it to find out why.

The cast, which apart from Dunne and Arquette, also features Teri Garr, Cheech and Chong and Catherine O’Hara, is uniformly wonderful.

Most critics liked it when it first came out. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and said it "continues Scorsese's attempt to combine comedy and satire with unrelenting pressure and a sense of all-pervading paranoia." He later added it to his Great Movies list. But it never seemed to catch on, I think because it defies categorization – is it a comedy, a mystery, an urban fairy tale?  I don’t know and I don’t think I care. It’s a unique kind of dark, shaggy dog story. Check it out and let me know what you think.

My New Favorite Blog

I have been trying, with limited success, to start writing a play -- a farce really (the type of play, not the effort) -- and I've found it's very, very difficult. A farce operates on very different rules than a standard comedy, or any play, for that matter: it must be set up with the precision of a Swiss watch, plotted to within an inch of its life and should, if it's successful, leave its audience laughing so hard they gasp for breath. (The actors, too, should be gasping, but more from their exertions onstage.) I've seen several definitions, but one says something to the effect that a farce begins when Character A tells Character B that everything will be all right as long as Character C doesn't show up. Then there's a knock on the door and it's... Character C.

Anyway, I went to the Internet to search "farce plots" and was directed to an article in a blog by Ken Levine, named one of the best 25 blogs of 2011 by TIME Magazine.. I'll let his brief profile speak for itself:

Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created his own series including ALMOST PERFECT starring Nancy Travis. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and has hosted Dodger Talk on the Dodger Radio Network.

The article on farce was short, but sweet and, while there I took the opportunity to look through some of his other posts. Suffice to say, he's a terrific writer and covers the showbiz/Hollywood/pop culture scene brilliantly. There's lots of insider stuff about, for example, M*A*S*H -- the writing, the filming, the actors. Stuff, as they say, you won't find anywhere else.

Check out the following and see if you don't agree:

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/03/its-time-for-american-idol-to-say.html

When I'm Sixty-four

I spoke today with a couple of good friends, with whom I was discussing life and work and how things are going, and the conversations turned to the whole topic of "Where did the time go?" You know, now that I'm beginning to think in terms of retirement and what that will mean for me in terms of income and work and... (ominous musical sting) The Future! (The other day I was thinking of the Beatles' song, "When I'm Sixty-four", realizing that when I first heard it 64 seemed eons away. And now... I'm 64!)

Who knows, as Judy Collins once sang, where the time goes? A couple of weeks ago I celebrated 29 years of sobriety and I was, as I usually am on these anniversaries, struck by how quickly the time has passed. It doesn't seem that long ago that I finally had that moment of clarity, the spiritual experience people talk about, that led to me putting down the drink for good. I had known for years that I had a problem with alcohol, as did most everyone I knew, family and friends. And as hard as I tried, I just couldn't stay sober. Then one night it just hit me like a ton of the proverbial bricks: I can't do this any more. I remember saying it out loud. I can't do this... So I polished off whatever it was I was drinking at the time (I think it was one of those Manhattans-in-a-can I was so fond of) and took myself to bed. There's no earthly reason it should have "stuck" that time, but it did. That was my last drink, January 12, 1984. Miracles do happen.

In the meantime I have: been through several courses of therapy, moved to Los Angeles, started a small business, starred in a no-budget independent movie, met and lost a partner to AIDS, traveled to Canada, London, Ireland and the Dominican Republic, moved back from Los Angeles, was reunited with someone I had a crush on who is now my partner of eleven-plus years, was diagnosed with clinical depression, got my Actors Equity card, got acting work and an agent, then wound up working at Drexel University, was diagnosed with bladder cancer, anemia and diverticulosis...oh, and I wrote, produced and directed two shows for the Philly Fringe Festival, went through some Landmark education courses, and got a couple of tattoos. And those are just the highlights.

It has been, as many friends can attest about all our lives, a roller coaster. And every time I think things have smoothed out, that I'm in for some smooth sailing and uneventful times, things change again -- for better or worse, in big ways and small. I've been privileged to know some remarkable people in these 29 years, many of whom I count as friends. And I've been fortunate to have been shown that it all fits together somehow. That as random as things may seem, it's all part of a pattern. The pieces of the puzzle all fall into place. The trouble is, we can't see that until after the fact. When we're in the midst of it all (whatever it all may be) it just seems like a maelstrom that makes no kind of sense, nohow. It's like thinking you've been on bumper cars, then looking back and realizing you've been on a straightaway four-lane highway the whole time.

Apart from the thousand physical "things" that seem to come with aging, my mental and emotional outlooks seem to change from year to year. (Or month to month or week to week, even.) Lately I've been having that vaguely OCD thing I recently wrote about, and this vague anxiousness (not really anxiety) that tends to keep me off-kilter. I guess it's due at least in part to the fact that things will be changing in ways big and small, and fairly soon if the amazingly fast passage of the last 29 years is anything to go by, and I wonder if I'm ready.

Well, maybe not right now. But I trust I will be. I trust that whatever's in store, I'll be taken care of. As my new, favorite philosophy says: Don't worry about tomorrow, God is already there.

Happy Obsessive Compulsive New Year!

Like many people these days, I've had my share of therapy -- on and off -- for years, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. From time to time issues come up for me that I can't shake off with positive thinking, gratitude lists, prayer or a diet of "super mood foods". Sometimes it takes sitting down with someone who's been trained to deal with what author John Cheever used to call his "depresh".

So I've not been particularly concerned about the tinge of anxiety that's crept into my consciousness in the last year or two, the occasional panic that something's wrong (particularly at work), or something will be going wrong very soon. Ask me exactly what I'm afraid will be going awry, the dreaded event (event horizon?) that will derail my life as I know it, and I have no answer. "I don't know," I'm likely to say, "but it's on its way and I can't stop it! Medicate me now!" 

I'm told that meditation helps too, regular, daily meditation. Focusing on the moment at hand, not living in the past or the future -- neither of which exists -- and paying attention to this moment, which is, of course, all we really have. So I've started meditating. I meditated yesterday morning for ten minutes. And this morning for ten minutes. I'd like to say everything has changed as a result, but I don't need to tell you that's not the way it works. Meditation doesn't work on "issues" the way ibuprofen works on a headache. It will take time. But enough people, whose opinions I trust, swear by the practice, people who (not to get too New Age-y about it) definitely have a different aura about them.

All that said, I've become aware of something new, a different wrinkle in all this that alternately amuses and concerns me: I think I'm developing a little late-onset OCD. Not possible, you say? I say, you're wrong.

To wit: I find I'm constantly checking to make sure I have my wallet. Several times a day I pat my butt to assure myself that the new, compact, skinny wallet I recently purchased with a Groupon, has not slipped out of my back pocket. Then, having made sure that the wallet is there I take it out of the pocket and open it to make sure my money and/or credit/debit cards haven't fallen out somewhere, to be used by unscrupulous people out to steal my identity. Okay? Several times a day. Is that OCD? And when I have the wallet out to pay for something, I take that opportunity to check its contents. 

The other new development is checking my keys: I received a new key ring for Christmas, a very nice one, engraved with my name. One of those key rings you can pull apart so as to hand only your car keys to the parking attendant or valet. Since I've started using it, I find I check three or four times before I leave the apartment to make sure I have it with me. It's in my hand, but I have to look -- to make sure I have the right key ring? Maybe.

But also to make sure all the keys are there. As though sometime when I wasn't looking, some of the keys (which have turned into little anthropomorphic, cartoon keys) jumped off the key ring and have been dancing around on the kitchen counter, then hiding behind the coffee maker as soon as I get ready to go out. I swear I'm not making this up, and I can't for the life of me figure out where this is all coming from. 

Only I do wonder if it isn't connected with the fact that, the older you get, the more things change and fall away. Having lost two siblings, both parents and a life partner so far, and more aware than ever that everything changes, maybe I just want to be sure of something, that I'm in some kind of control. Even just a little bit. Even if it means listening for those dancing keys, trying to catch them before they jump back on the key ring, giggling because they know they're driving me crazy.