from spring awakening to purple summer

i recently discovered a broadway show called "spring awakening". i regularly read this blog called deus ex malcontent that is really pretty good. he lives in new york and he raved about seeing the show on broadway. i hadn't heard of the show, so i wanted to try it out and see if it was any good.

i remember the first time that i heard the soundtrack for "wicked". here's how i prove what a homosexual i am and admit that the first time i heard "defying gravity", i got shivers. actual shivers. there is something magical about discovering musicals. you know what i'm talking about if you own a "phantom of the opera" cassette tape or cd sitting somewhere.

i "discovered" wicked and then i found "rent. it's been a while, but i finally found something new. if you get the chance, i highly recommend legally finding a copy of the music and give it a listen.

life is a highway

so, yesterday was thanksgiving, as i'm sure you are aware. if you didn't know, sorry for spoiling the surprise.

justin went to his aunt's house in wallace and i didn't go. when i came back from CA, justin's father & stepmom made it clear that they don't want me in their house. i was 'dis-invited' if that is the correct phrase. i'll admit, it actually hurt. i felt i had gone out of my way to be incredibly civil and to try and adjust to their vastly different way of life. if there was any friction, it was mostly due to the idea that i was fairly offended by their need to indulge in the fairly tale of "close friendship" that made my relationship palatable to them. in fact, one of the most divisive issues happened when i made a joke that got taken the wrong way and the crux of the issue was that i had inadvertently addressed the fact/reality that justin and i were physically intimate with each other.

i love telling this story in person, but maybe it's time that i write it down before i forget it. there is this cozy little shack in a small town called Osbourn that is called "the snake pit". if you've ever seen dante's peak (the pierce brosnan epic), then you have seen this restaurant. it's like an old west TGI Friday's. there are old saws on the walls and various nick-nacks. it's kind of charming in it's way.

well, justin's folks used to always make dinner when we came over, but this one time, we decided to go out. i ended up footing the bill for everyone's dinner, i'd like to add before we start. it turns out that the specialty at this particular venue is called "rocky mountain oysters". RMO is the polite way of saying bull testicles. it's fried and breaded bulls balls. i was feeling particularly adventurous and i decided to try them out. everyone else ordered standard fare and it wasnt too long before we had our food in front of us.

now, for some reason, justin's dad had left the table. maybe to wash his hands, get something from the bartender...who knows. so it's just justin, myself and his step-mother, heidi. she turns to me and says,"i can't believe you ordered that."

without thinking, i blurt out, "well, i know what they taste like normally, but i wanted to see what they tasted like fried."

now, i though it was funny. turns out she was mortified. she's one of those people that plays her cards so close to her chest. i never knew when i'd gone too far until justin told me a few days later about a conversation that he'd had with her. to add insult to injury, when justin's father found out about it later he was super-pissed and it became a thing.

it was always like that with them. we would hang out and then go home. two days later, i would find out from justin that i had said or done something to offend and no one said boo while i was there. i got tired of that and so i was hurt, but not surprised when justin told me that they no longer wanted me around them.

now, the rest of his family, i got along with just fine. i like both of his aunts and pretty much everyone else. either way, everyone involved thought it would be a good idea if i stayed home. no worries.

i spent most of my time on the couch being lazy and watching tv. i watched a few movies and just kind of relaxed. i found my roommate's copy of disney/pixar's "cars" and watched that to start out with. i genuinely forgot how good that movie is. i have a great deal of respect for pixar in general, but i am in awe of the amount of talent that they employ. there hasn't been a pixar flop yet. i just saw ratatouille a week or two ago and it was outstanding.

stay with me, this all has a point. i'm going somewhere with this, i promise.

anyway..."cars" (if you don't know) is about a young rookie race car having an amazing year at the track and is on the cusp of winning the piston cup, the end-all-be-all of the animated racing world. he is on his way to california for a tie-breaking race and along the way he gets stranded in this backwards town on route 66 that got was abandoned when the interstate re-directed traffic away from them. while he is there, he falls in love with a porsche (who wouldn't) who loves the town for the idyllic stop that it once was. he also befriends an old rusty tow-truck name mater that is low on brains and big on heart. ( i feel like i'm writing the back of the DVD, lol). the race-car learns in the end (he makes it to the race) that there are more important things than winning.

it's an old maxim. one i've heard before. a young man in a leopard print jacket once told me as a child "life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it". this was after singing danke shoen(sp?) on a parade float in the middle of downtown chicago.

as i always do, i watched the behind-the-scenes doc on the inspiration behind cars and it had a great interview with john lassiter. over the course of the 16 or so minutes, lassiter spells out the lessons to be learned from cars, or rather the lessons that he had in mind when he started. the whole character arc is this guy living alone in the fast lane that is forced to slow down for a minute and learns to enjoy life.

"life is what happens while you're making plans" -j.lennon

lately, i've been lamenting to myself silent reproaches about living in idaho and the choices that got me here. when i was a kid, i hated living in the midwest, because it always seemed to me that life was happening "out there". in europe, in NY, in LA, anywhere that wasn't home. i've always had that mind-set. i've always felt trapped by it. if i'm not in the middle of it, i feel like i am wasting my time.

i feel helpless.

if i'm honest with myself, i feel very trapped here. i feel like the rest of the world is just kind of passing me by...again. it's not really cabin fever. i think it's just wanderlust. i miss waking up in the morning and being excited about my work.

film is the only thing that got me up at 5 in the morning, excited about the day. i'm tired of wasting my life at this dead-end job.

however.....

yesterday, sitting on the couch in my pjs, i got this sudden burst of "maybe this is all happening for a reason". maybe there is some fatal flaw in my personality that i need to salve before moving on to the next part of my life. i learned a lot about my experiences with justin's folks. maybe there's some lesson there that i need to figure out.

as always, i'm trying to change my perspective and the way that i think. i have to, if not just for pure survival reasons. if i keep feeling like i'm missing out, then i guess i won't see all of the wonderful things around me. unfortunately, the grass will always seem greener somewhere else.

i know i spend a lot of time whining lately. i can't help it. the whole point of writing this blog has been a personal assignment in catharsis. there's all of this stuff that i need to get out one way or another. all of these thought that i need to organize. i'm probably harping on about the same things, but i really hope that there is some kind of character arc.

a story without any kind of character arc is just boring.

it's just too much

i must be a masochist.
i keep looking at the presidential race and i always end up finding something that scares me. the presidential election period (especially when there is no incumbent) is an amazing time. all of the vast differing viewpoints come together and we find out
what it is that is important to other parts of the country. for example, i am relieved to find that the vast majority of my countrymen aren't so blood-thirsty anymore and that there is a possible chance that there might be some kind of end in site for the bush manifest destiny franchise being built in the middle-east.

i'm still not sure if i'm for hillary or obama. i'm honestly not. however, i find that i am watching with rapt attention the republican race. as of the time of this writing, it seems that Giuliani is leading just over fred thompson. when fred thompson became a serious contender, i don't know. i assumed he would end up falling off like bill brady.

what fascinates me is the writhing in the fundamentalist right to try and find someone as crazy as they are. i don't pretend to be a journalist, and i am certainly not impartial. i have a very clear and personal stake in Giuliani for the republican ticket. like bush he has used the momentum of 9/11 to his benefit, but he also has some credit for cleaning up NY. i still haven't forgotten the chris offili/saatchi show incident, though.

anyway, i found this article and it had some interesting points. here's my favourite quote:

"There are now more Mormons that used to be Southern Baptist than any other denomination," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a 16-million strong group."

"As a consequence, Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have taught their people what Mormons believe and why it's beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith, to inoculate them against those Mormon missionaries," he told Reuters.

and then there is this one:

"There are a lot of conservative Christians who are going to look at the Mormon thing and say, 'Wait a minute, he may be conservative but he's a Mormon,' and they're not going to go there," said Steve Swofford, a pastor in the city of Rockwall, near Dallas, and former president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention."

lately, the recurring theme in this blog has been how insane the mormons are. when the southern baptist have to stop and say "whoa", you have to ask yourself "what is wrong with this picture".

what is lamentably more amusing is the fact that there are some people who have said, "you know what, southern baptists are crazy enough for me. bat-shit crazy mormonism, now that's the way to go."

i stand corrected

so, i have to issue a rare retraction here. when i was talking about the church, i mentioned the ATM-like registration system. i asked christina to read the blog, b/c i was curious if she would be offended. she was not. she did correct me that the sign-in system is for the day-care, which i understand and support. i guess you have to sign the kid in and the sign little johnny out again.

christina asked me to re-consider going to church, but i think i need something a little more intimate. it would be cool to work the cameras or play in the band, but i just dont know if i can deal with that anymore.

i've noticed that as i've gotten older that it is easier to hold grudges (which i never used to be able to do) and i seem to be getting more morose and engaging in life less. maybe it's just a phase. maybe it has something to do with the meds. dunno.

grappling with big religion

so, it was an interesting weekend.

due to the fact that i can't afford to fly home for thanksgiving, a group of my friends and i decided to get together and have a thanksgiving meal on sunday. my friends christina, kim, and tara all go to this church over in post falls called real-life ministries. they've been asking us to go to church with them for a while (never persistantly, but just enough for us to know that we are always invited). i finally aquiesced and said we would start sunday by going to church with them. i said that justin and i would both go.

so sunday morning, we get up early and get dressed in decent clothes and meet them at christina's house. from there, we go out to post falls and to this church.

now, the church is set back from the road about a quarter of a mile. we've passed that spot in the past and when people pointed down that road and said that the church was down there, i always assumed that it was past the warehouse, turns out it is the warehouse. the side that faces the road is canary yellow and probably a good 35-40 feet tall. we pull down the road and check out the parking situation. imagine walmart. then imagine that the car park for walmart wasn't quite big enough and they had to have people parking in part of a cleared field and you've got the picture.

i have to admit, it made me uneasy. as we were walking in, i made the obligatory wise-cracks about jim jones.

"if anyone hands me kool-aid, i'm outta here", i joked.

the prior service had just gotten out and it looked like a train had just arrived. people streamed out of the various doors and moved their cars so that the next brood could slid in. we walked in past the people who were catching up with each other in the convention centre style lobby. before entering the actual "sanctuary", a few of my party wanted to go get coffee.

the place was huge and filled with people. i was reminded of an airport terminal, you know, the way they used to be when friends, family and various well-wishers were allowed to meet you at the gate. hanging from the ceiling in various places was a closed circuit television system with a timer counting down from 30 minutes, ostensibly telling us when the next service would begin.

i wonder if they dim the lights right before, like they do at play intermissions. i'll have to ask.

i almost forgot to tell you about the programs. you know, the double sided photocopy folded in half that lets you know what hymns you're going to be singing and the like. at real life ministries, the look like insurance brochures. printed in full cmyk on card-stock with a little "pocket" that holds all of the obligatory "tell us who you are and what you want us to pray for you about" cards mixed with the tithe envelopes.

so, now my friends are getting coffee that huge banner is telling me is from christian mission growers and i am nervous. i like the term "as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" a lot. partially because it's so homey and full of character, but also but because, to me, it implies that one is vigilent to the point of being paranoid due to a perception of danger. in this case, i think it fits.

i'm scanning the crowd and i see the first thing that runs shivers up my spine. just past the coffee, i see a sign that says express check,-something. i'm not fully paying attention. my social anxiety is kicking in, so i'm already uneasy. there is a crowd of people and at first i think that there is some kind of cafeteria selection of pastries and they're making money off of the concessions. quaint, but not disturbing.

then someone moves out of the way and i noticed the screens and the ATM-like devices that they are attatched to. i look at the sign again. express check-in. an automated roll call? do you have to be a card carrying memeber, like the mormons?

i put my best foot foward and try to consider the logistical nightmare that managing this place must be. i push my exceptions into the back of my mind and we move to the sanctuary portion.
now, the snactuary portion is the size of a large gymnasium, in fact when i look up to the ceiling, there is a basketball hoop on one of those electric arms. here's the kicker, though. to give you a sense of scale, when the basketball hoop is in the upright and locked position, it is a few feet from the wall with the hoop facing the cieling. the clever observer will note that this means that since when the hoop is brought down, it will need to be in the correct position, that means that the pole holding it is the length of a basketball court.

and then, there's the stage. yes, a stage. i've been to churches with a stage before. i was in the band for a very brief period of time, but this is a stage. you know, like when you go to a concert and they have that metal girder-looking stuff that they hang the lights on? yeah, it's set like a concert hall. it looks like in a few minutes, rush is gonna take the stage and open with "tom sawyer". i find myself looking for my seat number on my non-existent ticket. i make a lot of nervous jokes about who the opening act might be. apparently, motley crue would not be welcome, though i'm not sure about stryper.

after a few minutes of extreme discomfort, i ask justin if he would be okay with leaving and it turns out he is as uncomfortable as i am, only he actually has the good sense to be quiet about it. we ask our friends if they would be offended if we leave. they say no (no way of telling if that's true) and then we are gone.

as we walked out, i felt kinda bad, but then by the time we got to the car, i could feel the weight lifting off of my shoulders. no more arena-rock churches for me.

the reason that i'm writing about this is that even though the experience was uncomfortable, i'm self aware enough to ask why.

allow me to digress for a moment.

when i was going to school in ireland, we went on a field trip to the irish museum of modern art. a very nice museum in an old army hospital complex. very cool place. there was this couple from russia that made these little automated scenes in these boxes and the idea was that they were to entertain kids that were in the hospital with severe of terminal cases of whatever. a noble cause certainly. the show-boxes were interesting and well constructed. the really interesting part was that the way they presented them was they sectioned off part of the building and made it back into a hospital again. each area seperated by sheets on a metal bar, like the privacy sheets at any hospital ward. it was an interesting way of showing the work, because you had to factor in the room and the significance of the empty bed. by having the empty beds, you had to factor in the perspective of the child when veiwing the works. in retrospect, i think it was really interesting. at the time i hated it.

one of the things they had done, one of those touches that makes the atmosphere, was to spray everything down with that cleaner that they use in hospitals. you know the one. they dont really use it much anymore, but when i was a kid, that was the smell of hospitals. it is very distict, but it's hard to describe. i imagine it is a series of disinfectants of some kind.

when i walked into the "hospital room" to see the work, i was assaulted with that smell. it made me very uncomfortable and i made it through only a few before i couldn't take it anymore. i only have a vague memory of the works. i was so distracted by the mise-en-scene that i could not concentrate on the work.

it wasn't long until i was tearing my way through the exhibit, through the various rooms trying to get out. i don't know how many "rooms" there were, but i remember being on the verge of a panic attack trying to get out. by the last few, when it seemed like there was no end in sight, i must have seemed like a madman, pushing the curtains aside, hoping that the next time i swept curtain out of my way, i would be free.

i left the museum and walked around dublin for a while in a daze. i've been to a lot of museums and i've seen a lot of exhibits, but there arent many that are as memorable. the point of art is to provoke some kind of reaction in the viewer. a good piece of art is interactive. a masterpiece is a mirror.

i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about that work that got to me. i wasn't sure if it was the quiet discomfort of the empty hospital rooms. or if it was the works. eventually, i realised that it was the smell. i knew why the smell bothered me. i associated it with memories of my mom being in the hospital when i was a kid. i think there was more to it, but even though i dont have a very good sense of smell, i am always very wary of walking into hospitals, lol.

the way that this ties in to my point is that i was incredibly disturbed when i came out of that "church". i've been trying to figure out what it was about the experience that was so unsettling.

i'm wondering if it was the setting.

maybe i'm a closet traditionalist. i mean what are the basic components of any church service?

A) there are seats for the congregation
B) there is an elevated space for the preacher to lead the service and to give his sermon
c) there is some kind of musical instrument to lead the congregation in song

all of the basic parts are there, it just happens to be a re-imagining based more on the genesis "we cant dance" tour than the traditional transept and pew arrangement.

there was a part of me that really wanted to go. i havent been to synagogue in probably 2 years. i miss the communing with G-d thing.

i mean, it could just be a stirring of some old memories. when i was in college, i used to go to a church called "harvest". someday i'll have to write all about my experiences at that church because they were formative. i feel the way i feel about christians because of that place. there were a lot of similarities in organization, but the scale was far smaller. it was at least more intimate than the county fair.

it might be my prejudice against christians.

dunno. i'll have to think about it.

a moment of reflection

so, i've been writing this story. if you read my last blog, you know the title. it's a cool title, but at the end of the day, i'm writing it as a catharsis, a bloodletting, if you will. there are things in my psyche that i need to deal with and things that i can't keep hidden from myself.

i know this is all kind of whiny, emo stuff, but the question i find myself asking is this; will there ever be a time when i won't be an addict? i mean, i'm not doing drugs or anything, but don't confuse the not-doing with the not-wanting-to.

i mean, the story is my way of trying to create something that will let me deal with my past and to try and have some creative go at my past in the LA underground. more to the point, with my time in LA altogether.

in the story, i wrote a scene about the character getting high. the idea is that he starts out where i was and gets closer to where i am, just without having to trudge to idaho. i'm still working on it.

anyway, it's taken me a week to get through that scene. i read the description (and i think it's a good bit of writing, btw) and it gets my heart racing. it makes me wonder if i'm ready to deal with this. will i ever be? why not now; sooner than later?

in taking mental stock, i found that i know that if someone handed me a bag of the stuff, i certainly wouldn't turn it down. i don't know if i even have the mental fortitude to do so.

i suppose i could just suck it up and just try and move on, but when i did that, i was brought to my knees the first time that i ran into anything. if that experience taught me anything, it's that there needs to be a bunker or citadel that you can retreat to when the barbarian hordes come to the gates.

just checking in

i haven't written in a little while because i have been busy writing a story.

i've had this idea in my head for about a year and when i was swimming a few days ago, it just coalesced into a feasible plot line and story. the next day, a friend of mine in LA sent me a link to the national novel writing month site. i gave the link to a few other people as well. the idea is to write 50,000 words during the month of november. the idea is to just write. you can edit and re-write in december, but for november, just write.

at some point, i'll try and post the story. there is an excerpt of it on the NaNoWriMo site, but it's not very easy to navigate. if you're brave enough to try, my name on the site is bnelson7. good luck.

other than that, things have been fairly quiet. i've begun this strange fascination with marcel proust and i'm going to attempt to read "remembrance of things past" because i hear that it is amazing. after that, i'd like to pick up genet's "our lady of the flowers" or sartre's "road to freedom"series. for some reason, i have this craving for french literature. i'm yearning to read thomas mann or even thomas hardy.

i've been reading this book series called the "dresden files". it's the literary equivalent of a mcdonalds hamburger. the premise is that it is about a wizard who works as a private detective in modern-day chicago. the character is incredibly noble, sarcastic, chivalrous, and quotes or references sci-fi or fantasy movies all the time. there are maybe 10 or so books in the series and justin and i have devoured them each in turn.

i have always felt bad for my escapist tendencies when it comes to reading. i try to pepper my literary dancecard with stalwart classics. i'm not sure what my motivation is. i mean, i want to say that it is because literature is something that helps you to grow as a person and as a human being. ideally, a good work of literature will help to lay bare some empirical fact about life and who we are as human beings.

i'm not sure if i buy it.

the definintion of post modern culture, as i understand it, is the creation of something new by using a pastiche of old concepts and ideas to create something new. i would submit that the simpsons are the ultimate in postmodern entertainment; the reason is that the show's humour is written in layers. the smarter you are, the funnier that show is. for example, if there's a shot of homer getting stuffed in a barrel and thrown down niagara falls, then there are several layers of funny. first off, there's the initial schadenfreude of watching someone yelling as they scream going over the cliff face, but then there might be a hobbit reference as he inches towards the edge. if you get the hobbit reference, the joke is twice as funny. does that make sense.

the best example of this is "moulin rouge", the baz luhrman film. it is a musical, but the songs in this musical are actually pop songs that are part of the popular consciousness of western culture. i guess the best way to describe it is as a cinematic mix tape.

i have a confession.

i cannot read moby dick. i have tried several times. i even got the book on tape. i cannot seem to get into that book no matter what i do. maybe there is some guilt about that. i consider myself a reasonably intelligent guy, but to be confounded by moby dick is embarrassing.

if i'm to be truly honest with myself, i think that i would like to be more intelligent and to have a greater range of references to draw upon, but maybe i just want to be able to get more jokes.

dunno.

anyway, the name of the story i'm writing is called "starfish prime". cool name,. huh.

it's actually the code name of a was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted on 9 july 1962 over Honolulu, hawaii. of course that has absolutely nothing to do with the story that i'm writing. well, philosophically, there is a parallel, but i thought the name was uber-cool.

it's kind of like reservoir dogs. it's not about a reservoir, and it's not about dogs, but it is about criminals and a bank heist. after you see the film, you kind of just get the title. it's a strange thing, but it works. it's supposed to be something like that.