Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)

This was my morning, this morning.

I read an article recently on the eccentricities of those who live by themselves, how it’s freeing, but also promotes strange and/or anti-social habits in those who do so since, free from external judgement, they are both free to be themselves and free to indulge in the baser parts of their personalities.

I have many living quirks of my own, which is one reason living with equal-pay roommates has worked generally poorly for me, but among the less-gross ones is just listening to music every morning in the shower and, yes, sometimes singing along.

Now, that there are two other guys staying with me, crashing on my couch and in a little coffin-like structure carved out of my ceiling; doesn’t matter, fuck them.

This is my house, broski. I enjoy my music in the morning. It warms me up somehow, reminds me of words, clears my mind to a place where it’s not focussing on the dopamine still retreating from my skin or the last night’s dinner (or booze) in my mouth or any of those terrible things.

You move to it, you have your reaction. You rise from yourself.

And if my couch-crashers don’t like it, they can wake up earlier.

Which is of course, moot, because they don’t complain about it at all and it isn’t even that loud.

Maybe I just need to feel competitive with someone, early enough, or whenever. Maybe I need to gain a little status sometime, get a little edge.

My sophomore roommate and former best friend John Weeke, who was tall and beardy and contemplative and a total goddam mooch would tell me that he thought the universe would be organized like baseball eventually, wherein humanity bonds together around a common team, itself and its preservation and nationalities and squabbles are forgotten by the binding pressure of an external threat, like New Yorkers in the street after a World Series win,

He believed in the necessity of the adversary as a bonding force.

I don’t know what happened to him.

I believe in singing in the shower in the morning or, at least, letting Pandora take me where it does.

Today, it took me to the above-mentioned song, which was part of a funny sketch, my peer and funny lady Kelly Buttermore wrote as a satire of the esotericism of Time-Life song collections. It was a funny sketch and a funny moment, which leads me to mention two things in rapid succession:

1. As readers of this blog may know, I am frequently lost within the tangle of my own tangents, inspired at any moment to go off and wanting to talk about something else, delicious that is mention that I want to explore but at the same time wanting to cling or tether myself back to where I was to finish my thought–OH if I could ONLY finish my thought!–an arduous journey made even sillier by the fact that conversation is more about the connection between people than it is any one brilliant idea. So I’ll try to finish what I’m saying, but no promises.

2. This moment of seeing/hearing this song on my iPhone in the morning, the crux of Kelly’s funny sketch, brings to mind the idea of provenance, coincidence, a cosmic/divine realization or memory that may seem like a personal intervention by something greater than you. Coincidences do happen, frequently, and the math is always there, if unattractive, to look in to the chances of even the things we think unlikely. It is possible to believe in fate or lady luck or omnipresence or whatever force you want to see guided in the world. But it is also interesting and I think rarely discussed, to think about the kind of people we are, I am, that we/I allow things to bang up against our subconscious and stir something, engaging in a journey of reminiscence and thought. If you’re walking about to get a scoop of ice cream and the Beatles come on, telling you to “get back to where you once belonged”, do you take it as a sign? Are they reminding you to mind your diet through some omnipresence or is your subconscious trying to guide you, manifesting in your world like it would through a dream, in fragments of your experience? Or both provenance and consciousness, meeting somewhere in the middle like the Sistene Chapel?

Anyway.

In this moment, I was struck by the song, thought of Kelly’s sketch and flashed to my life and a show I had had on Sunday. Armando Diaz, my teacher and a man I greatly respect, says that every sketch show is a train wreck putting it together up until the last minute, from Saturday Night Live onward. My sketch group “Fish Reynolds” was no different, standing in the lobby of the Magnet Theater trying silently to rehearse our lines as another sketch group filmed bits inside the theater and all of us also tried to drink seltzer and do the sort of silly bits and in-jokes to each other that is the enjoyable-comedian version of procrastination. By the time we got in the theater it was 45 until our show, trying to run fully our frist rehearsal, few people were off book and we were figuring out tech, desperately-strung as we went along.

The show was silly. It was on Oscar night. There were 6 people in the audience and the biggest laugh I got in the show was in pointing out that most of those audience members were performing in the show after ours.

It was pretty unprofessional. But it was fun.

It seems strange to say over and over again, but there’s so much power in knowing that whatever happens, the people who get on stage won’t hate each other when they’re off it.

My team for it’s silly name and sillier people are a bunch of people who seem to like and respect each other. I feel happy and relaxed to be a part of them. Even though Armando directs us, which is a great honor in itself and should be pressure-filled, I feel loose and silly with my friends, capable of making bigger funnier choices, capable of bringing in sketches when I can and not feeling too hard on myself when I don’t. I think he’s a great teacher, a great director, for this reason. That he seems genial and relaxed about things, so everyone else tends to be too. He’s self-effacing and so you feel that need to be something gradually fall away.

As my very good yoga teacher mentioned today, even she checks, physically looks when she’s doing poses to see that she’s doing them right and my class is full of other teachers from the studio who just want to learn from her (I obviously am sweating to keep up).

Knowing that there’s humor there, that we’re having fun, that you’re reaching a place of balance or enjoyment. That’s easy to lose in the pressure to perform, to be immediately great, et cetera.

Knowing to ease up on yourself, to not seek perfection but to enjoy the work and treat yourself with some humor.

And know that you’re doing it.

Just like writing, performance, sex or art, it can easy to forget that: It’s supposed to be fun, so enjoy.

Which is to say I’m screwing all of my sketch group Fish Reynolds.

Or to say otherwise that a great teacher or director can remind you to relax, to be yourself, not to judge, or to bring you back to that place. But that’s always a gift I can give myself. Forgiveness, compassion, excitement.

These things sound so trite.

And inside me, a 17 year-old ponytailed high-school is kind of sneering about how lame it is.

But inside that, he’s kinda jealous.

Yeah.

***

I’ve grown as a performer.

I knew this when I went into an ADR session, which is something where you have to try to match your own dialogue because the sound people were not able to get a good enough quality on set, so you go back and try to speak the way you did in the best takes of something.

I watched myself in a web series I acted in for my friend Charles Rogers and was really impressed. I was making fun, silly choices and branching outside my normal shell-shocked character to weird places of engagement with another actor. I felt free to make choices. A teacher told me that “acting is highly controlled improvisation” and it just clicked with me, along with remembering Jay O. Sanders when he acted in my thesis film and seeing him try to make a different choice for every take so that the director had a range of choices to work with.

It was nice and I was actually able to take Charles’s compliment when it was given to me. I’m still not my friend Sebastian’s idol Chris Farley (“Bro, I just watch the best-of DVD just to remember what I’m reaching for.” he has told me more than once, walking down the homeless-filled stretch of 8th Avenue by Penn Station), but I’m getting better.

ADR is still hard though, trying to recapture a performance while matching your mouth, sitting in a small square booth. In these moments, an actor-ish person gets to see their idiosyncrasies in full light, trying to match their “ums”, their pauses and the strange way they twisted the words in the nonsensical heat of that moment.

Before it happened though, I went to Chelsea Market to sit, buy a caramel brownie (imagine me saying that with the weight that a fat-kid character in my sketch show said the phrase “meat-ball meat-za” and you’ll get the longing, shame and desire in my voice for those things) and eat some delicious dinner. I went to Chelsea Thai Wholesale because, even though Chelsea Market has rapidly yuppified from its initial gentrified standpoint, Chelsea Thai Wholesale seems blessedly untouched with their racks of Sriracha, lack of lunch specials and actual Thai people hanging around making fun of your dithering.

When I kept trying to choose items, trying to shy away from the General Tso’s knockoff they had which I knew would hang badly with the broken-promise brownie I had promised myself I’d only eat half of (I failed), the woman behind the counter kept pointing out that if it was her she’d eat spicier and so I ordered the Pad Gra Prow with brown rice, which came, the sumptuous visual to my table.

“Your number is number one.” She told me as I placed my order, then a smile– “Yes, you can feel good about that.”

It was spicy indeed with basil and toothy jalapenos, fresh stir-fried red peppers and brown rice, oh the brown rice! Usually it’s the same anonymous small coffee+cream-colored beads that adorn my chinese food or my extra-dollar lunch specials, but here the brown rice is sticky, grain out, together in clumps, flavorful and real and unlike regular brown rice, which maintains its flavor inside of sauces, the brown rice let itself be seasoned by all the bold vegetables and mix and intermingle with them. In the end I was left with a small stack of jalapenos, along with a neat pile of some of my manhood, and a full and contented belly.

ADR happened. I had a show.

And then, full, home.

***

CHELSEA THAI WHOLESALE

Pad Gra Prow (w/Thai Brown Rice)- $8.95 (w/tax)

Inside Chelsea Market (9th Avenue bet. 15th and 16th Sts)

ACE to 14th St-8th Avenue

Tell Me Your Dreams

I found this in the waiting room of my therapist’s office perusing when my therapist was 1-2 minutes late for a session, coming down the hallway, a fact that is inconsequential (I have been late and I sometimes run-over), but a fact that I lord over her.

The book was there but the placement was my own.

I frequently noticed it, perusing the shelf of cast-offs and maybe strategically placed therapeutic books, it was hard to know: kismet or misplacement? A thoughtless collection of what people could find, or just a random selection of whatever anyone was too in distress, to distracted to remember to take with them after a 45-minute session of, perhaps, baring their souls.

Anyway, this book seems pretty tragically out of place in a therapist’s office, with all of its intimation of a concept of “womanliness” and strange pandering to a sub-sect of illusory middle-school girls that I imagine do not exist outside of television.

But who knows, maybe that’s what people want. A topic starter, a place of discussion.

I once saw a book in my therapist’s room that said “Lesbian Psychologies” and thought it said “Lesbian Pathologies”. What did that inspire in or say about me that I found that there, just a certainty of a point of view, a subconscious gesture, what? I think I had just been defensive or unsure about how I related to queer culture. What was that moment that happened that would not have otherwise?

Nowadays, when I go to my therapist, half of my time is spent talking about girls. Therapy can feel like some sort of wishful make-out session, some sort of pow-wow in a closet or sleep-over looking out to what might come of my love-life this new-found (somewhat) attractiveness and who’s a good idea or bad idea. These moments are like milk chocolates for me or the Sour Patch Kids that my best friend Frank kept offering me while we watched the Studio Ghibli adaptation of The Borrowers: sweet and quick and empty, fun but requiring self-control.

It is an illusion to think one’s problems are solved or that one cannot improve their psyche or to see progress as itself some sort of pedestal. Back in the depths of earlier depression, I would insist to my friends and others at my happiness and relative fine-ness when I was losing hair at how unhappy I was at my post-production job, when I was crushed after not getting a movie-theater promotion, when I wanted to be okay so desperately in the months following my break-up.

Now looking back at those moments, it’s easy to see how unhappy I was. I didn’t want to be a post-production coordinator but felt obligated to, didn’t want to work in a movie theater, but needed some sense of worth, I wasn’t ready to love someone else, but so desperately wanted the pain of a first love to go away.

My friend Sebastian often accuses me of being maudlin (he also frequently complains about how he is portrayed on this blog) and in this case he is correct, I am being maudlin.

But I am also letting myself experience those emotions from a distance with the fondness of some completion. Like the shows I can look back on, I can either smile or cringe. And if I’m lucky and I think of a moment, some real emotion might be released into me, a gift that no video-game or twitter-feed can bestow.

As I’ve said before here, the great gift I’ve found through therapy, yoga, improv, growing-up, life, what-have-you, were the lessening of expectations; to stop being so hard on myself and just notice where I am. To just treat the journey as the fun thing and to not worry about “the big picture”. Life, I seem to have decided, is pretty great for me right now (despite my relative lack of love or solid career), I guess, I have become a fuller, more self-confident person to the point where I believe that those things will come in time. That as long as I continue to have fun, wherein my fun is self-improvement in writing and comedy, everything else will come or not.

Already, I’ve gotten numerous performance opportunities on New York stages, I’ve gotten cast in my friends sketches and gotten to put up my own. I’ve even gotten to work with performers I idolize like Christina Gausas and learn from them, which was and still is unimaginably great for me, from starting out.

To be all buddhist-y about it, the journey is the goal.

But all my friends and parents say otherwise as they ask me to know what I want to do or be again. In film school, this question was answered for me, which is in one way a relief, but in another way led to a massive meltdown and certain unhappiness as I got rejected from 50 film festivals, the only recourse to which was: “Well if you really wanted to do this, it wouldn’t break you.” But then what if it did?

On his “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast, comedian Todd Glass comes out publicly and talks about the use of the word “gay” as derogatory and why people so cling to wanting to use it, despite the negative effects and connotations on others.

“I don’t think that those are very terrible people or even that they don’t realize it in some part of them.” Glass says. “I think it’s just that it makes them feel uncomfortable, because if they’re wrong, it means they have to change.”

Change is painful, it’s something we avoid. I’ve talked on this blog repeatedly about “homeostasis” the biological process through which our bodies try to preserve order and how this is the same things our minds and natures try to preserve as well. When I had to get out of film school and look at the world, when I had to get out of a relationship and do the same. Another thing I talk about is how the most painful moment for me is the schism in which I understand the reality I thought I perceived was not the one others’ perceive, which could be when a girl isn’t in to me, or when I get fired from a job, or when I realize in a certain situation I  am friend-less and alone and one way to look at these situations is the mental crux of “Am I going crazy?” but another is to look at these as moments where one is forced to confront the necessity of change and that is truly frightening.

So that’s what I worry about as my roommate Teddy hits up famous people on Twitter asking for jobs, because he tells me “[he] wants to make the whole world laugh.” That’s what I worry about when my friend Sebastian talks about Chris Farley, or my father or Frank asks me “what do you want out of this?” meaning comedy or writing or the rest.

I am afraid that the zen or calm that I have found, that I am comfortable in, is just another stalking-horse for a defensiveness, a clinging to the moment that has already past in the guise of a peace about the present.

That having no great dreams is a defense against having any at all.

And that is the difficult thing I suppose, to asses that moment, scary as it is.

Because how ever comfortable I am in my life, lady-less, in-therapy, without an even paycheck:

I like it.

***

I went down to North Carolina this past week to perform in a show that my only bit was standing behind a plant and clicking next on a projector and that too was cut for time.

But I still had a blast.

I was holed up with a bunch of comedians as a part of the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival, sleeping 5-6 to a hotel suite, leaflet-ing downtown Chapel Hill, getting sized up amused-ly by the ladies used to frattier boys in a way that seemed to take some of the pep out of my step.

But I ate boneless wings, found an incredibly comprehensive (and expressly forbidden-by-my-lifestyle) beer store in a close-by strip-mall and shared stories with a bunch of groovy people, screwing around and making friends.

Even though France was amazing and liberating and somewhat lonely, I was doing a lot of work on myself out there, you know? Wandering the streets of Paris, thinking about improv (I am insane, right?) and my friends back home, trying to unpack every moment cross-wired with my old relationship, trying to forgive myself for things I had displaced on to the veneer of strength and confidence you get from co-dependency. I was largely successful at that and it was amazing, but it felt less like a wacky vacation than an immersive experience.

But this was a fun-fuck-around moment, the college trip to Vegas I’d never gotten, loaded with funny comedians who suddenly thought I was cool, whom suddenly I could talk to and hang out with and just shoot the shit.

We searched for BBQ places, I helped pick out a bunch of prizes for a rowdy North Carolinan crowd and I got to hear a really funny dude do a preview of his one-man show for us in the front row. Amazing, the 10-hour ride back may have been the best part of the trip, from something I was once terrified of.

It’s nice finding that dynamic of people, finding some mutual respect, but also just drinking and working and being exhausted and getting wild. It felt like a film set, without all the existential “will my life amount to anything” baggage.

I came back refreshed and ready and happier than ever that I had my life at home as 2 days felt like I had been gone for 2 weeks.

By the way, watch The Chris Gethard Show tonight at 11pm on MNN in Manhattan or at www.thechrisgethardshow.com or download the podcast on iTunes.

And look closely for that man behind the plant.

He’s pretty happy, just to be there.

***

Is there such a thing as a Soy Cappucino?

My server at  MUD Coffee seemed confused too.

You see, I am a fan of Cappuccinos over lattes (a trip to Italy in my adolescence solidified this as did my recent trip to France) but I am also, and let’s be honest here, one of the fartiest people in the world.

It’s true! I’m sorry ladies! I’m kind-of-sorry my friends! I cannot help it. I am slightly lactose-intolerant (I think?!) and I don’t really care.

So I do that d-baggy thing and order soy drinks sometimes and this time I did.

It was filled with that weird soy-y foam. But it was light and kind of nice.

I got weird looks from the servers, but no more than someone with half-a-pair-of-pants who might walk in to an east village coffee shop.

It lifted me up after a night of drinking and just getting back from a collective 3-days-12-hours-of-sleep and a big trip down the coast.

I was awake during brunch with my family.

And I didn’t fart…

Well, maybe a few times.

***

MUD COFFEE

Soy Cappucino- $4.00 (in a mug, to stay)

9th St bet. 1st and 2nd Aves.

6 to Astor Pl. R to 8th St-NYU. F to Lower East Side- 2nd Ave.

***

POST SCRIPT-

Oh yeah, I hear I’m back on TV. Here’s a deleted scene brought to my attention by someone, forget who.

I think it is unfortunately called “Nobody Likes A Unibrow”.

Yep.

Enjoy!

Shit Gets To You

This was taken from the window of Lafayette French Pastries over on Greenwich Avenue.

I almost passed it after noticing it, just deciding to go on with my day. After all, Greenwich Avenue is one I pass through often, a quirky diagonal that I use to walk home from the Magnet on late weeknights.

But it just stuck as I saw it, it looked to egregious.

And after all, I do have a blog I have to supply pictures for.

But what really got me was that this store that already was calling out the extremely questionable logo “Say No to Obamacare and YES to COOKIECARE!” in it’s window along with an article from what looks like Talking Points Memo was the same goddam bakery that almost got rioted for making “Drunken Negro” cookies 3 years ago in “honor” of Obama!

I have linked to the article right there but I will include the picture just for goddam effect.

So, after a giant stink about this whole thing, you think the guy would back down. You think after a boycott of his business along with the VERY few supporters of racism and/or hardcore republicans in the quaint corner of the West Village that Lafayette French Bakery is located in, this guy would back down and stop doing stupid shit?

But no, he puts that ridiculous goddam poster in his window and I have to stop and take a picture.

Even though it has nothing to do with me.

Even though I have practice now calming myself and trying to take in the world as I see it.

Even though it’s cold outside and I have places to go.

Sometimes, you just need to feel it and fucking get pissed. To be in your emotions and screw everything else.

And accept that it won’t always make sense.

Today, I woke up on Valentine’s Day, Valentine-less.

Now, I have only had a Valentine who was a person who I was “with” (one time a girl gave my flowers away, another time a girl called another guy up to literally take her home from my apartment) one time in my life.

But for once, I didn’t feel crappy.

I looked at myself in the mirror and could see the outline of my abs, for the first time in memory. I weighed fine despite the orgiastic amount of dark chocolate I had consumed the previous evening. I had recent memories of girls flirting with me or at least looking at me in a different, more considering type of way.

I also just felt happier about my life and where I was in it. I’d let go of (most of) the terrible expectations of myself. I had a good community full of friends and something of a loose schedule in which I could fill my life. I also, through Yoga as well as Improv, had learned to feel the change in my body and mind, checking in with myself, becoming more patient, but also allowing myself to have fun.

Even my family problems had more distance than they’d had before as I allowed myself to see them from a distance, accept them and know whatever was going on would happen without the violent helplessness I used to toss into the mix.

It was nirvana by no means, but it was something to wake up with on a date-less Valentine’s day.

Until I thought about 10pm and realized I’d probably be date-less at Mustang Sally’s, handing out chocolates to girls at the bar without dates trying to get them home with me (where my 40-ish couch crasher is, which would be a problem, if it ever even got to that, which it wouldn’t).

Or when I sat in the back of a show at the Magnet getting angry at student-performers for not giving a good show, since the fate of the theater depends on them, which is ridiculous, because it’s a make-em-up class-show in a 40-discarded-terrible-movie-seat improv comedy theater.

Or even when I sat in the back of my first ever Advanced Study event at UCB and saw someone who had gotten passed out of a class I hadn’t and was lit anew with the fire of anger at my teacher, I was better than this fuck!, I wanted to scream, you goddam fucking moron!

And there I was. I had passed. My teacher was not a moron, anyway; I learned a lot in his class and he made his decision. Everyone was friendly here. and it was a great time.

But sometimes, even when you get happy with yourself for those changes, those pounds, how less hard you are on yourself, it’s good to just remember that there’s always a lot of fucked-up inside of you to go around.

Or at least inside of me.

I used to be proud of this kind of thing, righteous anger, I’d own in the moment, defend it in the moment after, it still has that force of justice or some sense of a burden lifted or self-validation.

But really, what am I doing?

I told my therapist today (and a girl over the weekend) that the difference between me now and me a year ago is that I’m not in as emotionally compromised a position. When we are centered and something pushes us, we have our normal reaction–happy, sad, angry, whatever–and then we step back and make a rational call, to the best of our sense, as to what our action should be.

i.e: If someone pushes me in a bar, I will probably get scared and angry, but then rationality will set in and I know I don’t want to fight anyone so I will try to apologize and extricate myself from the situation as well as I can.

But, if someone pushes me in that same bar and I am emotionally compromised–maybe angry at my family, sad at my loneliness, afraid for my life–if I have big, unresolved things going on, maybe I’ll push the guy back. Maybe I’ll yell at him. Maybe I’ll cry. I don’t know. The point is my reaction would be immediate and irrational.

There are degrees of this too not just in the physical choices or active choices we make outwardly, but in the inward choices we make for ourselves.

If that guy pushes me in the bar and I’m fine and we apologize to each other and everything’s good then I go on with the rest of my night relatively unfazed, barring shenanigans.

But if I’m not in a good place and that happens, maybe I don’t fight, but maybe I just get really angry, get really sad, maybe I dwell on strong emotions unhealthily.

There was a good article I read on burn victims and virtual reality treatment, which is more effective than morphine. The thought is if you are “in” your pain and can’t escape it, you shine a spotlight on it that makes it more pronounced in your psyche. But if you can focus outwardly or on other things, despite its presence (like even virtual reality), you can learn to manage something backgrounded.

The point that I am trying to make is that I still do tons of stupid things and I also still feel lots of stupid ways, I hold grudges, get angry, give rants. Also being defensive is another way around that, literally, you are trying to ignore someone or something trying to help you because it is too painful to admit your own mistakes or perceived failures.

The only way it seems like for this is acceptance and just noticing everything, bit by bit, as you live your life.

And also being okay with how fucked up I am.

So, I’ll go see people on Valentine’s Day. I’ll probably sit in that bar with those chocolates. I’ll try not to be pissed off at my old teacher, or at least try to remember how pointless it is.

I might even try to forget that stupid racist republican fuck over at Lafayette French Pastry, since he probably can’t even help the way he is, if he’s that far gone.

All of that and try to have fun.

Which I seem to be doing a pretty god job of.

Most days, anyway.

***

This sandwich was good.

I’ve been going to Better Being Underground over in the West Village forever and have plugged it many times here, but it really is close to my heart.

It’s secret, it’s hidden, the sandwiches are really good and they always give me extra pickles.

Other than the Fu Man Chu (a Korean BBQ-chicken Sriracha-Kimchi-wich) and the Whole Wheat St. Luke’s (a big piece of fried chicken with Peppercorn mayo and pickles), I had been looking for a new sandwich to get from there to expand my sandwich-y horizons.

This one comes pretty close to those two all-stars.

I wandered in, as usual. they complimented me on how good I look, as usual. They gave me a ton of pickles, as usual. And I ordered this.

Macerated (Smashed?) Chickpeas, some lemon, dill, mint, garlic, tomato, red onion and Kashekeval cheese on pumperknickel bread.

A bizarre combo.

But an intensely delicious one, kind of like a Mediterranean sandwich explosion, greasy, bound by the dark Rye bread, full of crunch and juice from the pressed tomatoes.

Mix and match it half-and-half with the Fu Man Chew.

That’s what I do.

Blue.

***

BETTER BEING UNDERGROUND

The Kashekval (Chickpeas, Kashkeval Cheese, Tomato, Red Onion, Lemon, Dill, Harissa)- $10 bucks

St. Lukes Pl. bet. 7th Ave South and Hudson Sts in the basement of a brownstone.

1 to Houston St. ACEBDFM to West 4th Sts.

Tea and Sympathy

I live with two dudes.

My apartment isn’t big. It’s pretty small. One room and a bathroom, a shower, no bath. Some nice exposed brick, high-ish ceilings and one pretty nifty lofted sleeping-space.

I’ve got things I’m proud of. A PS3. A couch I found on the street that is semi-fold out. About a 5 year-old flatscreen TV and a 4-year old Mac Mini-TV set-up.

It’s pretty swell. But then there’s three of us.

It is my fault. I collect people.

As a history, I am an insecure and lonely person, still part of the swing from now 14 years ago of not speaking to people through middle and high school and the swing 6 years ago of realizing with those same tears I once reserved for isolation, that I had the option to not be so lonely.

In college, it was easy to find myself near people with classes and roommates, dorms and couches and chairs, parties and such. In the times after college and the let down from that, I moved in to the one-room with the nifty lofted bed and as my friends struggled to stay in New York City, I offered it up due to fear of falling from it and fear of facing myself in one room.

It was relatively easy to fit them into my life. I didn’t charge them rent, of course, my room was too small to really charge someone (or so I told myself). They were film-school friends: Andy Roehm, Brennan McVicar, John Beamer, probably others, so we shared an interest, we’d watch seasons of shows before bed on my TV and discuss, we’d see movies, we’d just converse, or I’d fade into video-game oblivion. When ladies faded into my life, it was easy and conscience-less to kick these roommates out of my place, since they weren’t being charged rent.

In another way, for an insecure person, someone adjusting 6 years to the idea of their own worth, it was a way to maintain status, to have someone who would be my friend, who owed me.

Because–and this is something I am only someone coming out of very recently in my life–for a very long time in my life, a part of me just knew that no one, given the choice, would want to spend time with me. I was second or third choice, low-status, a quirky fall-back plan, a trailer before the main attraction.

A lot of my overcompensation in life as well in performance comes from this, I think. Making films about myself in college, acting all full of bluster and confidence around teachers, nowadays, playing high-status characters in improv scenes. Creativity is our subconscious (or “shadow” or what have you) come to manifest and this kept working itself out in that.

In my romantic life (and this still is true), I could only thing of myself utilitarian-ly: what role am I playing in this person’s life, what could I help them to fix, what could I give them in return for loving me?

In my romantic life now, it’s the hardest thing for me to just say, as my friends often council: “Hey, would you like to go on a date with me?” not because I am afraid of rejection, though that is a part of it. It’s because then there is no other excuse, no other interest, nothing else I am offering.

And part of me just didn’t understand why that would be something that anyone would want.

This week, I got to hangout with some comedy heroes of mine, got cast in a sketch, a web series, a run of shows at a comedy theater and got an opportunity to work with some wonderful people I admire.

I did karaoke in front of my friends who’d never seen me perform and killed it (as readers of this blog might imagine). I was flirty and confident. I got drunk from my friend’s bottle of Snapple-tequila and somehow didn’t have to pee as much as I usually do.

It’s taken me 24 years to discover some measure, fragile or nascent, some level of self-confidence, self-esteem.

Of course, I still don’t know what’s going on in my life. I still fuck-up near constantly.

My job is in flux, I have no idea what this comedy stuff will find me at, I keep getting scared about my hair, I missed Yoga this morning trying to get my Apple headphones replaced (successfully) and I still have not one, but two guys (improvisers) living in my one-room apartment.

But letting go of expectations was probably the first step to being happier in my life and I still feel happy now.

One of those roommates helped me home when I was drunk, yelling stupidly at cabs. Another fixed my lights.

Also, life is more joyous with more people, especially once you get a grasp on some of your more egregious insecurities.

Nothing is forever and who knows what I’ll do, or what this stuff will bring me.

But also, who cares?

There’s enough money to live, a life full of laughter and friends, the freedom to do stupid things sometimes and the newly discovered ability to be ok with we’re you are and, for the love of god, have some sympathy for yourself.

So I’ll put up with Teddy’s goddam snoring.

Till I hit him with my yoga mat.

Right about,

Now.

***

I now know how my non-improv friends feel when I drag them out to goddam improv all the time.

Like I did when I went to see my friend and teacher Alex Marino go to do an open-mic poetry jam on Super Bowl Sunday at an Alphabet City non-coffee serving Tea Lounge.

The place was named FujoMukti and I have no idea what that means.

The crowd was particularly interesting because it was Super Bowl Sunday, so even though I know the Venn diagram between people who enjoy that and open-mic spoken-word poets must be small, you know that that weeded out probably the most normal ones.

The ones we were left with, enjoyable and otherwise, were a man sing-song rapping about the Periodic tables, a slam comparing the Burj Khalifa (of MI:GP fame) to a club sandwich and, most notably, a guy named “Orion 0.52369″ who did a 5-minute poem exclusively/graphically about having sex with young boys, while standing about three-feet away from a 6-year old boy playing on his dad’s iPad who seemed relatively bored.

A couple thoughts on this time-out wise.

1. Dude was clearly insane, but had every right to do that. We all have freedom of speech, this is an open-mic poetry slam and really, what is HOWL but an ode to fucking young dudes (among other things)? He left immediately after reading his thing and obviously you shouldn’t if there’s a little kid standing there, but I’ve heard crazier.

2. Dad, don’t bring your 6 year-old kid to an open mic poetry thing, though I guess you have every right to. Who knows who will be there or what people will say? Poets tend not to be incredibly well-adjusted and while New York City is the lion’s den as such, you usually try to avoid people you know who might be actively unstable or are talking a lot about fucking, kids or otherwise. Still, I guess you can.

Alex was pretty good, straight-forward, interested and enjoying himself. His relationship with his cool-ass girlfriend (also a poet) had created a popular show at the Magnet called “Kiss, Punch, Poem” which blended both improv and poetry in ways that highlight the themes of both. Some of the poets at the mic had actually read there and I recognized their stuff.

I actually got a pot of chai (the Bollywood Favorite) that took about 20 minutes to come, but was otherwise excellent despite their lack of soy milk.

I drank it with regular milk and it was so vanilla-y and light that it required no sweetening, which I quite dug.

But the thing about poetry and tea lounges and all that shit, is that it’s a bunch of crazy weirdoes getting up and talking stuff that might not make sense or at least requires you to meet them half-way.

And after an hour-and-a-half of this, I remembered “Oh yeah, I don’t really like poetry that much. It doesn’t really vibe for me. I live in a pragmatic reality and enjoy weird bits and iPhones.”

And then I felt bad for the friends I had dragged to watch me do essentially the same thing to them, about improv.

Also, I was fighting a hangover from that karaoke party, which is never a good combination with poetry.

I congratulated Alex, you should all see “Kiss, Punch, Poem” and I’ll try to be less offended when you don’t come to my shows.

Yeah.

***

FUJOMUKTI TEA LOUNGE

The Bollywood Favorite- $7.00 for a pot, milk, etc…

4th St bet. Aves A and B.

F to Lower East Side- 2nd Ave, JM to Delancey St.