Play On

The title is really a misnomer.

The last performance of my show was last night.

And it was canceled.

The Woodshed Collective, which I had originally deemed a bunch of rich kids from Vassar who wanted to “freak the norms”, a place I had been at the age of 16 upon my first experience with cannabis, turned out to be a pretty solid bunch, admirable for their ability not only to put on such a complicated show for such a long period of time, but to do it for free and often, a combination rarely seen.

It wasn’t their fault that the 9:30 show we had was canceled last night. It had started raining, a downpour that hasn’t stopped since, even as I begin writing here and the boat we were performing was slippery under the best of circumstances.

Still though, my parents were there for show and I couldn’t help feeling sort of bad, since the last performance they had come to had also been canceled (about 3/4 in) due to rain.

This time, it was about half way through, even though the rain began in the middle of show. The last time they had canceled the show as soon as it had started, so it was admirable of them to keep it going for so long. I felt a camaraderie, even tucked away in costume in a dry room, as I realized that the normally scrupulous bunch had just decide to say “fuck it” and let the show go on, for our last show of this play we would ever do.

It was a valiant effort, but unfortunately, the Marine division of the Fire Department were near by and basically boarded us intimating to the production staff that it would be prudent for us to stop.

It was fine when it ended, a good run.

It was raining still, so I had limited time to get my clothes and say my goodbyes. I got a few numbers and shook a few hands and took most of my costumes (my actual clothes), leaving my shorts behind, because:

a. I had a surfeit of shorts

and

b. It felt like a long time before there would be a summer again.

I took the one beer I was given as part of our “cast party” as I scurried off to the dock to greet my parents, my aunt and uncle and cousin and my girlfriend who were all waiting dutifully in the rain.

They had come out all this way, I suppose, so they felt like keeping on.

And I walked them with my beer in hand and shirt in the other, down the dock.

***

It had been a good run.

I’d had friends come, I’d had teachers. My parents had come what seemed like 4 different times.

More than that, I felt cool that I accomplished something I hadn’t expected:

Which was that, by the end of the play, I was so used to it that it was second nature, it wasn’t a question of whether I would be able to do the play tonight, but how I wanted to do it.

The Nick who had shit his pants at the thought of memorizing lines had done a fairly decent job of it.

And while I wouldn’t exactly call myself actor, I at least felt a participant on that crazy boat.

An example:

My Friday was bad.

I spent the first part of the day learning that I didn’t have to come into work, something that depressed me as it made me feel unwelcome at the office, but that I could read from home the autobiography of a scummy, scuzzy individual whose writing style intersected between the tabloid-journalistic and an act of hairy self-fellatio.

Later, I had what I thought was an information session, but what turned out to be a group interview for jobs at the Apple store, an application I had filled out three months prior and had forgotten about. Working for Apple, I thought, would be a great part-time job, one that would allow me to keep up my cache of cool while actually showing semblance of supporting myself.

I came dressed in jeans and a button-up shirt to a call of “business-casual”, only to find the other people in the room considerably older, more experienced and even better, dressed to the tees. When I was asked about why I would recommend someone I was supposed to have spontaneously interviewed in the group I said his best quality was that:

“He’s friendly and very personable so he made me feel real good when he turned and started talking to me, which I bet he could do in the apple store, since I walk in there and am sometimes daunted by all the technology.”

Great. So I had just told the team of HR overseers looking to hire that I was “daunted by technology”.

They said they would let us know either way.

The day seem to spiral from there in a haze of package-checking, subway delays, food-flubbing and a visit home that not only entailed a fight with my parents but a notice that I had been unceremoniously rejected from the young playwrights program that I had applied to.

When my parents tried to console me, it only made me feel worse as they consolations felt like the consolations to Nicholas the 16 year-old as opposed to Nicholas the playwright who might actually have had a chance.

When I got to the boat, I felt like shit, I felt tired, I had just been yelled at by my mom for 20 minutes on my walk over from our house to the boat and I felt again unemployed and unemployable, about to do two shows back-to-back for free.

But then it was on, the music began, the show started and I wandered the boat and I disappeared into my character. I was pissed, so Aubrey Black was pissed. I felt misunderstood, so he did too. I had seen the bullshit of fake confidence in that group interview, so that was what I gave in my show down between confidence men.

By the second show I was better, I was ready. I was on the ball, I was gone.

Looking back on this play, The Confidence Man, I am proud of the experience, even if it wasn’t always my best.

It was something new for me to do, something I didn’t know if I could.

I still don’t think I’m the best theatrical actor in the world, or on that boat, or even in my scenes.

But I did it and they didn’t throw tomatoes.

And it’s another foot I have in the world.

Another thing to think.

***

Finally, I know I always do this, but Jason Lee recently accused me of pirating his blog, in the sense of controlling its spin.

As I just went into the horrific experience of a group interview though, I now have renewed respect.

Somedays I think it’s impossible that he’s reached the 100-application mark (and passed it) and still doesn’t have a job. I feel like he should write a non-fiction book about it, something Barbara Ehrenreich-y.

But still as always, know him or not, it’s worth checking out.

Kudos to Jason for the good, sardonic fight. And to the cast and crew of The Confidence Man as well as my friends who came out.

Change of Mind

I bonded with my girlfriend’s dog on Sunday, over our shared love of tortilla chips topped with black beans and salsa and rice.

I asked Eva before I fed the dog the aforementioned chips, but my gut had told me that a dog might like what a human might.

And after all, the only thing I knew dogs couldn’t eat was chocolate and perhaps gum.

I had arrived at my girlfriend’s house in Battery Park City to a veritable litany of barks from the same creature, earlier on.

Eva had tried to introduce me to Audrey, named for Audrey Hepburn, an actress whom I had previously told Eva, with her love of long-neck sweaters, that she somewhat resembled.

For those of you who know me well, you might know that I have a lingering fear of dogs, born from an incident when I was 5 years old and was scratched on the nose by a Yorkie or some other ignominous canine who certainly was smaller than myself but nonetheless, left a lasting scar on my psyche, easily irritated by a well-timed “ruff”.

Luckily my fear had passed mostly from that age of 5, somewhat due to a poodle I liked named Lucy at the age of 13, who was smart and furry, and an incident living with John Weeke over the summer at his ranch in Italy with its 6 dogs, where I ran through the meadows and wrestled them, literally facing down my fears, until I was a lupine king.

And Audrey was a mutt, a strange, brown-spotted creature, with naturally-wagging ears and what seemed like a half-hearted demeanor.

“Don’t worry.” Eva told me, beckoning me in through cacophony. “All bark, no bite.”

We made it through that initial contact though I got the sense that Audrey still didn’t like me. It wasn’t until the Sunday, spent in the parks of Battery Park City, that I finally won Audrey’s heart.

Battery Park City is a foodie’s nightmare and also a West Villagers, with its lack of affordable food and its tall, antiseptic buildings.

It took everything I had, really, not to make fun of Eva on a constant basis for living in such a place, even though it was unfair and I knew she had no choice in it, but at least I could preoccupy myself staring at her or out to in the Hudson and thinking of things better.

Anyway, we wanted to find, that Sunday morning, a place bring Audrey, or at least somewhere for takeout we wouldn’t have to leave her too long.

The dog had calmed to me a bit, instead focusing its energies on a voluminous amount of pooping, a quantity that would have been aggravating if it hadn’t veered eventually toward the impressive.

Either way, I didn’t envy Eva, with her pooper-scooper bags.

What we found eventually was Blockheads Burritos, inside the World Financial Center.

While it put a bad taste in my mouth to go to a corporate-Mex restaurant, the options were that or a more-Mexican version of Chili’s called Chevy’s. To be fair, I tried for Chevy’s but Eva wasn’t having it.

To my surprise though, the food was edible, even decent and actually affordable. Thy had Lunch Specials even on a Sunday and I got a “Mexican Chicken Wrap” that appeared to be a burrito without the rice and beans, but with the good things (guacamole, cheese, pico de gallo) that are really, actually important in a burrito. It even came with rice and beans on the side in case you needed them and chips and salsa and a soda, for 8 bucks.

It was even too much food for me and as I cleaned up, finishing my wrap to the rice and beans with the chips (the salsa was ketchup-y and poor), the idea came to feed Audrey who seemed to enjoy the meal, chewing and swallowing each chip with a satisfying “crunch”.

As I stared at the dog, I petted it behind it’s ears.

“You have good taste for a dog,” I told it, with no small bit of satisfaction that there was justice for both good-eating dogs and humans in this barren part of town.

But perhaps more satisfied than me was Eva who grabbed my shoulders in glee and hugged my bag with a coo as she watched her dog devour.

As we walked down Liberty State Park, on the temperate Sunday morning, it was three of us together, in the New York Fall.

***

Today was a day of good unions, the day of Karaokeing, where all my friends came out to relax and enjoy.

I did some regular songs, nothing too special, some Billy Idol, some Elton John. My specialty was “I’d Do Anything” from Oliver!, a musical I’d been in or at least witnessed as a 12 year-old (I stole my first kiss from Fagin).

Zach Weintraub was there, hairless like a dude on chemo, singing up some Washingtonian metal. So-Cal native and accomplished lurid-storyteller Andy Roehm did a rousing rendition of “God Bless The U.S.A.”, while Ro-Stubble Malone accepted my challenge to do Pocahontas’ “Colors of the Wind” and really threw himself into it, knocking it out of the park.

“Do you have a song?” I asked Rob.

“Nope. I don’t define myself like that.” Rob answered back with a glib smile.

I meant to suggest that the Disney song should be it, but Colin, the tattooed-and-cool bartender who knows us hairy Karaoke regulars handed me a free shot of the last “Blue Goo” of the summer, a drink he learned in college which he’d never reveal to us how to make.

But even though Karaoke was fun and I managed a few good songs before heading out to my play, something was missing. Or someone, really.

A friend from out of town had come in to visit and I’d hung out with him earlier before rushing off to go help my mom. He was supposed to go out Karaokeing with me, but disappeared when I left my friends to go help her.

We had eaten lunch earlier though and he told me of a dilemma.

An acquaintance of his had asked for a copy of his movie, claiming he’d heard it was good, and wanted to know if he could see it for himself.

My friend, over lunch was uncertain what to do. He’d had a shaky relationship with this acquaintance and didn’t know if he could trust him with his film.

“My good sir,” I informed him, scooping some Venezuelan guacamole onto a plantain chip. “Let me tell you a story.”

And I did.

***

I came into my sophomore year of film school, high on my own fumes.

I had been to Italy with two of my best friends, who both were in love with each other and whom I was going to live with.

I had found friends and a place for myself in the school, overcoming early stumbles to find a good place.

Best of all, I had left with my teacher praising my final assignment, a self-de-nuding poetic look at the street I grew up on and it’s winding, lovely inconsistencies.

I was taking an intro documentary class with the most bad-ass professor imaginable: Sam Pollard, a 6-foot-plus titan of a man with a huge booming voice, who had won multiple Peabodys and Emmys and worked often with Spike Lee.

I had gone into the class with my best friend and some other good people. What could go wrong?

“God laughs most when you have a plan.” A wayward vodka salesman would later tell me in a bar.

The groups were determined randomly, I was separated from my best friend and put into a group of people I didn’t know well and didn’t get along with.

Working with people in a collaborative, artistic manner can be difficult at the best of times in art school: after all, we were chosen for our own unique peculiarities, the same things which alienated us in high school.

But here I was, an unexpected type-A personality by virtue of my puffed-up-ed-ness, clashing against a long-haired d-bag who I had managed to antagonize from the get-go by making my documentary assignment on him (a requirement) about his painful breakup with his girlfriend.

Me and long-hair clashed often and really none of us in the group knew how to make a documentary; we just knew how to be dicks to each other.

But, by the end of it, we all hated each other or, at best, were severely alienated, and were glad to go our separate ways.

I felt deflated from intro to doc and took it as proof that I wasn’t good at documentaries to try to shield myself from the ego-Titanic that was considering that I might be bad at making movie.

I wanted to put it all behind me for my intro to 16-millimeter filmmaking class, so imagine my horror when long-haired d-bag showed up in that very same class with all his friends, staring me down.

When I showed my first movie, a paean to my dorm bed, flat and uncomfortable and full of crumbs and honey, but unquestionably home, I had no idea what to expect from anyone.

Anyone but long-hair, who I knew would attack me, merely based on the same sorts of squabbles we had had as group-mates.

But when he raised his hand, the first up, his face broke into a toothy smile as he described how “awesome” my film was, how irregular and personal and cool.

Other people followed suit and I was emboldened once more.

Intro to 16 millimeter became my best and most defining experience at film school, in no small part because I felt that mandate, that even enemies could be swayed by trusting my own vision.

As for long-hair, I liked his stuff too, which always had a style and verve that my films lacked.

We stayed friends due to our mutual admiration and he ended up shooting my movie, as well as becoming an acclaimed DP and director on his own.

His film was just submitted to Sundance and as I tell all my friends, he’s the closest person I know to making his first feature.

Later he would cut his hair, which a teacher would describe to me admiringly as “a touch of emo”, but it didn’t change anything in terms of how we related.

I love the movie I made with him, a movie I trusted him with, with my poor vision and color-blindness, because I knew where we had disagreed as well agreed, so I had more complete picture of who I knew him to be.

All because I took that compliment and toothy smile and decided that maybe this long-hair wasn’t a d-bag after all.

***

“So, my friend.” I told him, grasping my arepa in both hands. “Give the guy the movie.”

A bite.

“If someone offers you a hand in friendship and you don’t have to give anything, you might as well see where it leads.”

By this point my friend was mostly done with his starter-salad and was snacking on the remains of his arepa.

“What, dude?” He asked.

“Nevermind.” I told him. “Just be cool.”

And I picked up the tab.

And went on.

***

BLOCKHEADS BURRITOS

Mexican Chicken Wrap Lunch Special w/Chips+Salsa AND Rice+Beans or Salad AND Soda– $7.95

4 World Financial Center near Vesey St+North End Ave.

123ACE to Chambers St. (15 minute walk from train)

…And I Knew That I Should Start Writing Again When My Mom Left A Comment To That Effect On My Blog.

My mom reads my blog.

Have I mentioned that before?

My dad does too, but he’s sometimes a little more discreet about it.

Or at least, he likes to comment on it in person, in a wry self-deprecating manner as in “So are you sure Eva isn’t your ‘not-girlfriend’, har-har”, as opposed to my mother, who leaves comments on my post like:

“Great job!”

and

“Another well-though-out post! I am so proud of your writing abilities!”

To be fair, such things are not pure embarrassment/mortification.

I should be thankful for a doting mom in some ways, since I am aware of the alternatives, from friends who talk about their parents in past participles to the ones who think “twittering” is a sound attributed to certain avians.

It is a nice thing to hear some encouragement from time-to-time, as well as in some ways, a wholly expected thing from a well-meaning-but-over-bearing Jewish mom.

But it always makes me groan and sigh a bit (i.e: saying the words “groan” and “sigh” out loud) when I check my phone and tell my friends, whoever around me, that my mom just commented on my blog.

Then again, those actions might be appropriate for most things that happen in this forum.

So maybe, I just shouldn’t sweat it.

***

A showdown, recently.

Mexican-style.

Or more like Hipster-Williamsburg-style.

Or Post-Hipster.

At work one day, gathered around the conference table, biding our time, one of my fellow employees, a recently arrived out-of-towner, described how she now lives off the Bedford stop in Williamsburg, to which we all replied with raised-eyebrows-comma-rolled-eyes.

“Hip.” One person said.

“Really hip.” Another.

“Benn to any Yo La Tengo concerts yet?” I asked.

“Actually,” She told us. “It’s not even a hipster neighborhood anymore.”

“Well, what is it?” I said flatly.

“It’s, well, post-hipster.” She described.

“It’s like all the hipsters who lived there five years ago left and now the people showing up are people from all over who heard about that it was a hipster neighborhood and who want to be hipsters but aren’t.”

We all took in this description and it sunk in.

“Wow,” I told her. “Apt.”

And there I was, a few days later for a friend’s going away party, in that “post-hipster” neighborhood trying to figure out whether I belonged as a hipster, a post-hipster, a faux-hipster, or just a guy with unceremoniously long hair.

Anyway, I was with Eva, my girlfriend, so the evening was mercifully light on these sorts of contemplations and more heavy in the “stopping ever half-a-block to make-out” department (Yes, I did mention that my parents read my blog.)

In recent days, Eva and I had been trading anxieties about our relationship, with friends simultaneously complimenting us on our new-found happiness and turning a suspicious eye to the alacrity of our affections. Personally, I was most comforted to find out from Eva that we both shared a deep-seeded fear that both that we would lose what we had together and that even if we did stay together, it would be the death of us artistically as writers.

As I walked down the street today, I realized that my perspective on being artist was formed by the book and later the movie of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, about a young girl who smart and intensely stifled develops amazing powers of mental acuity, which she loses upon the happy ending of the book.

For me that book was tragic, because I felt I was living at that age in a stifling hell, but that if I ever got happy, then I might lose something.

The whole thing seemed a metaphor for artistry, one of the dark messages embedded in Dahl’s children’s books and a message I took on, like many messages and commands we hang on to unconsciously from childhood.

But here I am writing and maybe it’s time to grow past that story.

And so much to tell, anyway.

I spent that night, like I said, making out with Eva as she finally got to have her showdown–as Jonny-Jon-Jon arrived at the bar.

He spotted us making out, like bandits in a dark corner and came over.

I introduced him and, as expected, he responded with some witticism.

“Well, you shore know how to pick him Nick.” He commented.

And Eva, bizarre and wonderful, having heard all of the stories about him from me, just laughed at him and stared weirdly as she stuck her tongue in my ear which caused me to make a sound like “Brrrr-oo-ooh!”

Which successfully won her the showdown, as Jonny-Jon-Jon, unable to pick off/mock or try to fuck the girl I was with, went to go find a girl who would react more kindly to his intoxicated state.

Knowing him, I bet he found’er.

But I had my girl, already.

***

Opening night was this past week and it was really, like most other nights.

I feel I gave one of my most intense performances, the one where my character, often played as a goofball, got serious and tried to con the con-man.

I played him exasperated and intense, a feeling motivated by a need to “step up to the plate” or something when pressure is applied to me.

I don’t feel I’m doing the sensation justice, other than to say that I feel a burning sensation, a tension or a boiling, when faced with something I feel is momentous and I try, or something more than my conscious mind tries, to do it justice.

As I ran around the boat that’s my play-thing though, I noticed my sister who greeted me during the show in-between scenes but who I did not converse with.

When I saw her later, it was walking out of a scene to take a couple phone calls, which I saw her do in full-view.

Later, during one of my lulls in the show, I talked about how charged I felt by the night and the energy and how the audience really seemed to dig.

“I haven’t even seen anyone leave.” I told my fellow actor, a curly fellow named Brendan

“I saw one person leave.” He told me.

“Bathrooms?” I asked.

“The other way.” He told me.

And in the pit of me I knew it was Cecily.

When I saw my parents and my grandparents waving to me as I went to get changed, she was gone., a spot on my night.

Days later, I would call my parents and complain about her, ask how she could take phone calls in the middle of the play, how she could be the only one to leave, how she could upset me on my opening night, but I realized that just as they hadn’t been able to give me answers for the last 7 years about her, they couldn’t give them now.

I confronted her on the phone about her behavior, her lack of sobriety, how she’d been staying out late and hanging with the same people she did before her conviction, before rehab.

“I’ll go to meetings. I need structure in my life. I need a job. I don’t have any friends.”

“You said you’d go to meetings three weeks ago and self-control comes from you and if you want structure go volunteer somewhere. If you want friends, go to NA.”

“How could you do that at my performance. How could you think that was appropriate?”

“I was having a bad night.”

“You seem to have a lot of those.”

“Is your girlfriend going to help me get a job?”

“I don’t want her to help you.” I replied. “I don’t want her to stick her neck out for someone who I can’t trust.”

“So you won’t help me then.”

“It sucks, but I’ll help you when you’ll help yourself.” I told her.

“Call me when you think you can be a functioning sister to me.” I told her and hung up the phone.

That was a few days ago.

The reviews came in later, from Variety and Time Out New York and they were both very good.

I don’t know how good I feel about it all, but as they say, there’s one more week and the show–

Well, it goes on.

Slammed

“What are you doing here?”

Ah, the first day of Advanced Production Workshop, the summit of the classes of New York University Film School.

Beyond the introductory classes, which were offered on digital video or black+white reversal film, you could make a movie in Color Sync as a junior or a lower-scale one in the one-semester Narrative Workshop, but neither one of them was Advanced Production, the class I’d looked forward to since I was a freshman.

Back then, I’d heard tale from guest speakers, NYU Alums, coming in to our freshman colloquium, speaking of the ritualistic camp-outs that would happen between the top students at NYU, waiting in hiding in one of the rooms of Tisch to be the first to register in the pre-computerized registration line the next day, all for the best Advanced class, which would somehow assure them their best, final NYU-Film.

And now here I was, after it all, staring down from the back row, looking at all the fresh faces, the students who were ready to take that plunge in their lives, ready to compete and complete their films.

The teacher came in the room finally and looked at me and said:

“What are you doing here?”

“Shit,” I replied. “Blake, was that on my list?”

Blake LaRue, resident Tisch-y pseudo-17-year-old, and I had made a bet on what would happen when Ezra Sacks, my old professor for Advanced would notice that I was in the room upon entering.

“I dunno.” Blake replied, with apathy, as he returned to his discussion regarding basketball.

“I believe the top bets,” I announced. “Were ‘you don’t belong here’, ‘what the hell’ and ‘go home’”

“That one was next.” Ezra replied. “Go home.”

“C’mon,” I exhorted. “Other people have come back to their old Advanced classes before. I just wanna be a part of the new generation!”

“I don’t want them infected.” Ezra told me bluntly.

After which I gave him my puppy-dog eyes to which he answered back with a basset -hound stare.

I began packing my things.

“Don’t you have something to do in the real world?” He asked, as I packed up my things to go.

“Actually I was just kicked out of my internship for–”

“I don’t care.” Ezra said merrily, as he gave me a smiling one-hand wave, goodbye.

***

I actually just had been kicked out of my internship for the day when I headed to go see the first advanced class.

When I left the office, I realized that I could go home and play video games and try to make my bed or I could go see my friends Blake LaRue and the stolid J.D. Amato in their first day of Advanced.

As noted by my friends and office colleagues, the start of a new semester is a reminder that your life is leaving you behind.

And with my life so uncertain, with play-performance cancellations due to weather and still no source of discernible income, it made sense to cling to something certain and hopeful, the first day of Advanced, even if Ezra’s reaction was somewhat expected.

As to why I was kicked out of the office, the reason was debatable.

I had finally finished reading a terrible script for them that I had been reading for weeks, they had just added me on a new assignment and they had executives coming in to a small office. It was possible for me to work from home with my assignment, making them look better and leaving me just as productive.

These were all good reasons.

But the real reason was thi: I still hadn’t karaoked in weeks.

What I mean by this is that there was still that aching gap in my soul that yearned for a musical release, to pound one’s heart and soul out in musical fashion to the music of Al Green or Green Day or Daydream Believer.

There was that yearning, unexpressed even in shower-morning singalongs that desired to be free.

So when the morning radio that my bosses had on turned to “Thunder Road”, what can I say except this: I was helpless.

In the middle of script-reading, I began a full-fledged performance that started off soft but geared up, louder to a discernable level eventually moving downstairs to my bosses’ level as they noticed me, even as one of them began uncontrollably laughing during the performance.

“What can I say, Rob,” I would later explain to my Ro-Stubbled friend Rob Malone, in a lengthy voicemail. “You can hide beneath your covers and study your pain. Make crosses from your lovers or, well, throw roses on the rain.”

“Waste your summer, praying in vain, for like, a savior to rise from these streets.”

“Well, I’m no hero, that’s understood. All the redemption I can offer, Rob, is beneath this dirty hood. With a chance to make it good somehow, but say, what else can we do now?”

“Except I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you so talk to you later, peace.”

(I later received a call back from Rob that simply started with the phrase: “I know the song.”)

But the fact was the same: that, despite amusement and my game explanation of karaoke deprivation (“It’s my song! I implored), I was asked not to come back for the rest of the day and work from home instead reading my new assignment.

Leaving, I wondered whether the fact that it took my boss coming in and telling me my shirt was probably inside out after I had been in the office for 2 hours might also have had something to do with it.

All I knew was that the same radio station played “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants as I was leaving, one of my favorite songs of all time.

And it almost, all started, all over, again.

***

That night, like the night after it and part of the night before, my performances were canceled because of rain and I had a free evening which I gave to my friend, the rascal-y Dan Pleck, since he had been planning to see the show with his father, who was in town for just the night, all the way from Illinois.

Dan wanted to go out to dinner and I suggested that we go out to a place that a good friend of mine and his larger-than-life Italian father had taken me, a place called Becco over in the theater district, which offers a delicious unlimited trio-of-pastas tasting menu for a relatively cheap price, something that had previously gotten me so full that I couldn’t even eat dessert.

But the reservation we could get there was too late and we ended up going to an Ethiopian place, Meskerem, which was my first experience with Ethiopian food, which I deemed OK but generally not as good as the Indian stuff I had had.

It was nice seeing Dan’s father, a college professor/intellectual teacher of History and talking politics at the table along with the friend of Dan’s father with whom he was staying. It was also nice to see Najia, Dan’s beleaguered girlfriend who had been bogged down in a well-paying but long-houred medical researcher job, as well as the countless medical school applications that she would later describe to us.

“What’s one word I can describe myself in?” She asked.

“What? Why?”

“No,” She said disappointedly. “Those don’t work.”

Then-

“I checked out medical school websites and they said that’s often a question they ask in the interviews: to describe yourself in one word.”

I found this rather ridiculous as I criterion for our nation’s health-care providers, but held my tongue. Najia would have to find her own word.

After dinner, we headed up to see Dan’s new apartment, a place he shared with other friends-of-mine who have appeared on this blog before, So-Cal Fresh-and-Clean Andy Roehm and my former erstwhile roommate Brennan McVicar.

Dan showed me his room as he and everyone else seemed to marvel at it, a small sized room with a large queen-sized bed taking up the whole of it.

“It looks nice. ” I told Najia and Brennan to their laughter.

“You know Najia, now that I have a girlfriend, I appreciate how you’ve been making fun of my small twin-bed I have at my apartment. This seems really nice, if you’re going to invest in room-space to invest in this. After all, I keep slamming my girlfriend against the wall in my bed as we’re sleeping whenever she comes over.”

What I didn’t know, saying that, was that Dan’s father and friend were in the other room and, like a stencil, their conversation had come to a halt directly before the phrase “slamming my girlfriend into a wall” came up.

For the rest of the night, I received confused, earnest looks from Dan’s father as well as a guido-voiceover from Dan as he walked me to the Times Square Coldstone for a craving.

“Yah, dude, I totally fucked the shit outta that girl last night, you seen her.” He ad-libbed. “Man, I slammed her against the wall!”

And they cracked up as I tried to divert the energy going to blushing to thoughts of Chocolate Jello Pudding ice cream with Caramel.

That and home.

***

BECCO

Trio of Pastas Unlimited Tasting Menu w/Salad or Antipasto included– $17.95 for lunch, $22.95 for dinner

46th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

ACE7 to 42nd St-Port Authority

Un-for-bloggable…

I haven’t been able to karaoke lately.

I feel like this has been the subject, or at least the way, I’ve started several blog posts, but it really does take a toll on you.

I could find excuses, either in prior commitments, rehearsals for the play or my friend’s misdirections.

“BBQ in Long Island” J-Sam claimed, no doubt to hit up the prissy Long Island Jewish girls he hung out with who I so loathed for their unique mix of arrogance, ignorance and faux romanticism, uggh.

“Sick. Contagious. No one would want me.” Dan Pleck told me, which echoed his girlfriend Najia’s answer as well, though I knew hers was partly motivated by her lack of affection for Karaoke and his, probably in turn with hers.

“I’m at the beach.” Ro-Beardo claimed cryptically. I say cryptically because Rob had been absent from both his beard and New York for some time now, hiding out in PA, dog-sitting and threatening to erect barns.

“That’s kind of a douche thing to do,” I told him. “Choose the beach over your regular-status Karaoke requirements.”

“Bad timing.” He claimed and returned to his beard-line tan.

So, in absence of my regular friends to Karaoke with, I ended up at a barbeque held by members of the “Last Pictures” crew.

It was something of a housewarming, something of a get-together or shindig and something of an offshoot of that need for community unemployed art students feel in the days once the semester has started, leaving them behind.

It was also a Sundance submission party for the crew, who had sent in not only their film One Night Only, my friend Chadd’s big outing featuring Kristen Wiig and Garret Dillahunt, but also Bryan Gaynor’s Life Lessens, a comedy we had read in my writing group.

They celebrated in a group in a Bushwick backyard, with the head-card party game from Inglorious Basterds and burgers-slash-hot-dogs that no one was willing to cook.

In other circumstances, I might have been dismayed at the lack of “poultritarian” options to suit my pallet, but in this case I had, on one hand, a tall boy of Modelo Especial and in the other, my girlfriend, Eva.

***

I remember Eva telling me at one point that she was pleased to find, when she discovered my blog, that she was not too present on it, that there was not an ecstatic outpouring of emotions here, a denuding of our feelings for each other.

Having a girlfriend is a strange thing. I found a Battlestar Galactica DVD today, while looking around, and said to myself out loud:

“Now that I have a girlfriend, I could probably bring this home, since she’s already aware of how nerdy I actually am.”

Except that I haven’t seem to be too nerdy lately. On the contrary, I seem to attached to Eva at the mouth, the reason why I couldn’t pay much attention or play the party-head-game at the BBQ.

On subway cars, on the dock near my play-boat, in Brooklyn/Manahttan, in my home or hers, I can’t even look at her without kissing her, with privacy or no.

This is a real issue, because being with Eva has effectively eliminated some of the core principle of my identity: Jewish shame.

I should feel ashamed of myself making out with my girlfriend in public. I should feel embarrassed when we put on show for the home-going F train. I should feel warm-ears when I hold her downstairs from my apartment on the SoHo sidewalk, because the idea of kissing her upstairs makes me when I’m downstairs, deserves anticipatory action.

All of this swirls around in my head and I have many questions and many answers.

I have to go back to my shrink sometime soon and tell her about all this, since she’s been on hiatus, a point of irony, since I’m usually in her office complaining about girls.

On my blog, I’m used to discussing my feelings about the world and my tactile experience of it.

But maybe I’m attached to Eva at the mouth as we kiss each other, because what we feel then is unspoken.

There’s a privacy to a kiss, even done in public. There’s a transmission to it, a feeling passed or shared from one person to the next.

Maybe what I’ve learned or what I’m learning from all this, my first “girlfriend” experience, is that somethings can be left unspoken.

Un-blogged about.

Well, except for what I’ve already said.

***

Speaking of things, un-blogged about, I work somewhere I cannot blog about, so I won’t.

For the first time in my life, I have signed a confidentiality agreement. I will mention no one by name from my work nor the name of it on this page, since I enjoy my job and do not want to kill it in its infancy.

However, since I spent all day today at my job selling myself as a foodie, I will share a place I discovered through it.

***

I was warned about Azuri Cafe that the owner “might be grumpy”.

If anything, this only excited me more.

Considering the restaurant I have a love-hate relationship with, Shopsin’s (I love them, they hate me), I have found that often it is the “grumpiest” of restaurant owners who have the best food.

After all, if their food wasn’t excellent then how could they stay in business with that sort of ‘tude?

However, it turned out beyond my imagination, that the place’s grumpiness was not just a signifier of its quality, but also it’s prime virtue.

Azuri is a traditional-ish run-down falafel joint, like a Mamoun’s or (a better comparison) like Alfanoose downtown.

However, unlike those places, they don’t ask you any questions when you order your falafel.

They know that they know that they know what’s best.

No questions or requests needed.

When I observed them preparing my falafel, they put hummus, babaganough, hot sauce, peppers, pickles, regular salad, Israeli salad, onions and more things that I couldn’t even tell including a cilantro-y looking sauce they used a profusion of, which seemed to resemble pesto.

The result was unqualifi-ed-ly delicious. The falafel was crisp and broad and numerous within the pita. The sauces and textures blended so that, while individual influences could be noted, you could enjoy your sammy in ignorance as well.

“You know,” I told a co-worker on the walk to the subway. “If I had to choose what was on my falafel, I probably wouldn’t have made something this good.”

“Knowledge isn’t everything.” He told me, as we headed the long walk to the train.

***

AZURI CAFE

Falafel Sandwich (w/the works)- $6.50

51st bet 9th and 10th Ave, closer to 10th.

CE to 50th St.

Two Plugs (OK, I guess 3)

I passed this place yesterday.

Once upon a time, it was a small un-pretentious Pueblo-Mex restaurant called Pio Maya that specialized in delicious roasted chickens.

But now, it specializes in video games and comic books while you eat burgers with guacamole in them.

Stuck in a small corner near the NYU stretch and the West 4th Street Subway Station, “Planet Action” seemed both willfully bizarre and too nerdy to exist.

Also, it seemed like a terrible idea to combine these things (though I heard from Ro-formerly-Beardo that a place called “Barcade” does something similar).

I could only imagine, your controller would get greasy, not to mention the comic books.

You would spill some pico de gallo on your X-Box and then you would be in real trouble.

Microsoft wasn’t going to repair that shit.

No way.

On top of that, no self-respecting gamer would go someplace to play Madden or Oblivion in front of other people when he could just order in and do so at home in his underwear with a 2-liter soda or malt liquor of his choice.

Still, I felt like trying it since, by virtue of its willful insanity, it seemed still like the sort of place a gamer might open.

Alas, there was no non-meat entree.

When I asked about a turkey burger advertised on the menu as “TOP SECRET BURGER X!”, the owner said he had made them but nobody had bought them so he had given up.

I left disappointed, but I still would like a meat-eater to try it and see if they find the experience satisfying.

Or Gamer-licious.

LAN-tastic.

***

As I have said in the past, it’s my belief that my friend Jason Lee is a better, if not much-much more depressing writer than I am.

His most recent post is a meditation on his job search upon reaching the holy land of the savaged post-collegiate coastal-intellectual: Austin, TX.

There he lists over 46 places he has applied for jobs, some for which he is ludicrously overqualified (Test Prep, Bookstores) and some for which is he under (Administrative Assistant, Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Government) but all of which, through numerous follow-ups seem to only irk him further on a plateau of post-jobless-despair boredom.

The list would be funnier if it wasn’t true and is also funnier that it is.

In any case it’s a sad and true attempt to depict the difficultly for the post-collegiate in getting jobs which previously were assumed to be shitty enough to hire anyone (a story about an ice cream-chain in Jason’s post particularly comes to mind).

Anyway the post, along with the rest of his deadpan, Scandinavian-misery blog is worth checking out, whether you know Jason or not.

He’s linked on my blogroll, but here’s the post direct.

***

Finally, come see my show.

We’re sold out but last night was the first night I felt I did really well.

I feel like as previews go on, I am beginning to get freer with my performance to ease up, to try things, to become more “natural”.

I remember meeting with Michael, my director, in Washington Square Park where he showed me the lines for one of my scenes and asked me to just read them naturally, which I was amazed when I was unable to do.

I felt a queasy feeling, like I had gipped him, considering that he had hired me as a non-actor for my natural persona. But the problem was is that I only knew how to portray the exaggerated character of “Nick Feitel” in performance and not the way I was daily added on to a script.

“You’ll do it when you know it better.” He said. “You’ll do it when you know the lines so well that speaking them is like talking about girls. Or magic cards. Or whatever else you talk about on your blog.”

Last night was the first night I felt that ease as, seasick with a headache from my second show of the evening, I settled in to a scene with an uncaring ease, using my pissy-ness for the work.

“Fuck, that was good.” I felt afterwards, the first time in my performance of the show that I hadn’t panicked about my own performance looking towards Michael for some brand of reassurance he couldn’t offer considering the 10 other actors he had to manage along with the one he was replacing temporarily as she headed to a Wendy’s commercial.

Last night, the actor I grew up downstairs from, Jay O. Sanders, came to see the play with his family (including a rambunctious son Jamie who had Facebook-snubbed me as a building dweller, but added me after the show).

He was, as always, professional and in good cheer, willing to support a “friend” as he generously described me to another peer working the show who he knew. Mr. Sanders was always like that, leading a cheer for me on my on film set and inspiring the people around me.

In the swirl of emotion and Tylenol and passing seasickness I even did something crazy and invited my last interviewee, the writer-director Whit Stillman to come see the show, who I barely knew at all and who had just been nice to me when I interviewed him.

I emailed him at 12:05 and was amazed when he responded to me within the hour saying that he’d love to come “if it wasn’t too shocking” and that he would let me know what day when he returned from Los Angeles.

He’s a generous guy and I won’t hold it against him if he can’t come, but nonetheless the giddiness of a filmmaker I admired coming to see a show.

Still, it didn’t stop me from feeling the pain from my shin I had bumped during the show, throbbing through the Tylenol I had taken for my headache earlier in the evening.

“I can’t see you tonight” I told my girlfriend over text-message. “I don’t think I would be any fun. I’m feeling a throbbing mix of abrasion/head pain and seasickness, also I miss you.”

“Three Similar Sensations!” She exclaimed.

And I kissed my phone in a way that I had told her was less a desire to french my iPhone and more about missing her, as I tucked the phone under my pillow and tucked myself to sleep.

***

PLANET ACTION

A Burger and an hour of video games- $5

8th St bet 6th Ave and MacDougal St.

ACEBDFV to West 4th. R to 8th St-NYU

Boy/Crazy

“great job in the show last night”

“who was that hot actor in your scene??”

I had taken to sleeping with my cell phone under my pillow.

In my old apartment, I had slept with my bed near the window, my head resting toward the light inching out of my wrong-way-slatted blinds, and there I could afford to put my cell phone on the window ledge, where it was both inconspicuous and accessible in groggy half-wakeful times.

But as part of my adjustment to living somewhere new, I had no more blinds, I slept by a wall with a window on the other side of the (admittedly small) room and there was no ledge either.

Some nights I would appropriate the broken-ass IKEA chair the Norwegian-Professor-Owner of the apartment I was subletting had left me, rolling it over praying that one of the wheels wouldn’t fall off and have to be meticulously rescrewed, knowing that it was only a matter of time before it did.

But even this was a stop gap and the chair was an unreliable place for something as precious as my cell phone.

I had recently obtained an obstreperous case for my phone, one taken from my more fashion-conscious mother, called an “Otter Box” which not only made it resistant to falling (we had attempted several dropping experiments) but also made it waterproof (we had not conducted such experiments to test this).

I was pleased my phone had become invulnerable, but I still didn’t want to trust it to that damn chair.

So under my pillow it went.

Which is how I awoke to those two text messages, the entreaties of my sister to be hooked up with my 35 year-old co-star in the play I’m in.

***

It’s hard to take a stern tone while text-messaging.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

“The guy you sold all the art to.” She replied with a buzz or a beep.

My sister was referring to the play she’d seen me in a few nights previous, The Confidence Man.

In it, I play an artist named Aubrey Black, among other people, who mocks a beleaguered former hedge-fund manager who thinks his last shot is convincing me to sell him my paintings.

The play had been going well, I thought, with the regular hitches that a massive installation piece involving 30 actors set on a boat might have.

I’d even received praise from an elderly couple the other night who I thought must have been pretty P.O. ed at a show that had them not only stnading but walking for 90 minutes. Instead, they were so grateful they asked if they could leave money anywhere.

Embarrassed, I told them the show was free, but if they want, they could grab a drink at the bar, the proceeds of which I believed went to the company, which they headed off to do, slowly.

However, now there was a problem. My sister wanted my co-star’s number.

Again, the challenge of a “stern” text-message.

“Cecily: A. He’s like 35 and B. No I will not give you his fucking number.”

I then thought better and decided to include a word of encouragement.

“There are plenty of guys your age.” I told her.

Then considered.

“Age 25 MAX.” I added.

“Comon Nick, I need dating material!” She implored.

I sighed. My sister had just returned to town and could use a distraction, since classes hadn’t begun yet and she was looking to set down a new life.

“Well, there’s the other guy in my scenes but he already has a girlfriend and besides shes very nice.” I told Cecily.

“Blondie?” She texted.

“Check.” I replied, my texting code for yes.

“not my type” she said, with a three-word dismissal.

I sighed again out-loud.

“Sigh.” I texted my sister, still groggy from the previous evening’s show and the sounds of paint-chipping down the hall.

“Look, sis, I wish I did have a stable of boys to farm out to you, but I don’t.” I told her.

“Boo.” She replied and I was finally able to put down my cell-phone and head out.

And as I put on my shirt, I felt bad for a second, but then thought better and rolled my eyes.

What was I thinking, I thought. My sister had always been able to find “dating material” her own damn self.

***

At this point, I should probably mention in brief: I have a girlfriend.

Pertinent points of information as pertain to this blog:

A. Her name is Eva.

B. She is very pretty and cool and smart and stuff.

C. Yes, her and I are in agreement and she is my “girlfriend” (Not my not-girlfriend, or “faux-girlfriend” or “lady-friend” or what have you).

Eva and I met a few weeks ago when my poof of hair attracted an old friend from high school, Aviva to my sidewalk location, feeling complain-y about the bar I was at, Asian Pub.

Eva was there with Aviva, a hip-artist-type, then as well as now. I started talking to Aviva, as awkward sidewalk-reunion conversations go in New York and she told me that her and her friend Eva were going to a bar down the block to celebrate Eva’s birthday, since past, but still present in memory.

Feeling my dissatisfaction with the night, as well as the opportunity to catch up and spend some time with some cute girls, I convinced my friends to come out to the bar, The Grassroots Tavern.

As the night went on, I found myself talking to Eva more and more, in smoke breaks I joined her and Aviva for and later at a seedy EastVil diner we headed off to the 3 of us. We spent all night having “deep conversations” (the result of 9-dollar pitchers at the Grassroots) and talking about love and sex and life and the such with the ladies filling in their side and me awkwardly attempting to demystify the male side of things, as a particularly unfortunate spokesperson.

It was only until I got on the train with her, as Aviva walked to head home that I realized, looking at her dead-on, that here was a young lady who was very pretty and off-beat and cool, who I had spent all night discussing what we had wanted out of life and love with only to realize that they were somewhat similar.

An opportunity. But the next stop was mine.

So I hurried.

“Um, I’m sorry, I know this is kind of the cop-out-y-est way to do this especially since I’m getting off at the next stop but you know I was kind of wondering if–”

“Bring it.” She said, interrupting, with a grin.

“–Could I have your number?”

And she read me off the digits as I rushed them in my phone and realized that the door was closing as I left with an awkward wave.

And the rest?

Well, the rest is like, awkward history.

***

I was planning on ordering Chinese food when I found my sister aboard the boat.

“Cec?” I asked amazed.

It was near the end of the first show of the evening of a two-show night and I had realized that I was dinner-less facing an 11:30 out.

Reaching out in the dark, I had texted my parents, who live 4 blocks away asking if they could come by and leave dinner.

They hadn’t answered, so I made plans for Chinese, when there was my sister with two slices of delicious Chicken-and-Ricotta pizza from Bleecker Steet Pizza.

“Aw, man.” I said, hidden in my room. My sister had come on the boat and managed not even to disturb anyone, bringing me my pizza while the show was going on.

“Thanks, Sis-star.” I said, with a smile, feeling a warmth that was both love- and pizza-related.

“Don’t sweat it.” She said as she handed me the box and left the room.

I geared up for some pizza when something hit me. How had my sister found the room? I was on a boat in the middle of the show, “off-stage”. There was no way she would have know, unless:

My sister was on the deck chatting up my 35 year-old co-star who she thanked with a coy smile as she headed off the boat.

“Todd!” I called manically, ina stage-whisper-shout. “TODD! Motherfucker!”

But he was off to his next scene, unhearing.

I was glum.

But at least, at least.

I had my pizza to console me.