The Twentieth Century Way

My girlfriend (mi novia) took me to a play called The Twentieth Century Way last night. It was amazing. The cast is only two actors, the production design is minimal and the set is a stage. The characters are actors waiting for a movie audition. The play takes the form of an improvisational story line that the actors create as a form of competition while they wait. The story is a true story about the criminalization of homosexual activity and the use of actors by the Long Beach police department to entrap the men engaged in those activities. The scenes are done by the two actors as they slip from character to character to make the scene work.

The play was filled with a lot of meta thinking about acting and the nature of the craft. The way in which the actors create each character and the depth of each characterization makes it quite a performance. I highly recommend it and will probably be going again sometime. After the performance last night, the actors, writer, and director stuck around to answer questions. I was so overwhelmed by the play and the performances that I couldn't come up with any questions. I think I need another viewing to get it all in my head.

Some caveats: Because of the setting of the improvisation that the actors are creating, there is some sexual tension between the two male actors. Homosexuality is one of the primary themes of the play. The play ends with both men nude. The play runs 90 minutes with no intermission.

I recommend it highly.

Waste of time

TV is for the most part a waste of time. Having said that, Sarah my ex-girlfriend may be on a TV show that does makeovers. She called me and asked if I would go on it as a friend of hers that does not agree with her style. I told her that it sounded fun and when the producer called my I scheduled a time to go in for an interview. I read the release forms before going down there with an increasing trepidation. The contract is written to give the network (and anyone else they designate) full rights over the footage even so far as to say that they can lie to me and misrepresent me. I went down into LA anyway to talk to the producers and possibly do it anyway, and after talking about my concerns got the reply "Well, if you are that worried about it we would rather just find someone else." So I drove back to the office wasting a total of 2 hours.

Oh Well

Facebook Dynamics

I have added a few new friends to facebook this week. These are people that I met at an improv show called The Dungeon Master (see my Stage Ninja post) and It has changed the way I see my facebook. Until recently, all of the people I had friended on facebook were people that I know and spend time with in real life. I don't tend to be the person to initiate the friend request and on more than one occasion I have deleted or rejected someone that I don't know or don't care about.

Now I look at my status updates differently. There are people that will get my updates that don't know me. I consider things differently now that I have these new acquaintances. I want to keep personal information to myself but at the same time I don't want to bother people with frivolous bullshit, so my posting has dropped precipitously. I need to figure out what these new "friends" mean to me and how I am going to handle them. Do I charge forward full speed ahead and let them deal with my posts as they will? that seems to be the only answer as I will not allow it to stifle me. I just have to get used to my new use of Facebook to share with new people instead of just keeping tabs on old friends.

Bent

I was just out working on a bowl on my lathe and I think I broke it. I have an old shopsmith 10ER. When I say that this thing is old, I mean that this thing may be 50 years old or older. I was working on making a bowl out of a piece of purpleheart not unlike the one that I posted a picture of recently, and I caught the tool digging into the wood and stopping the revolutions of the blank. This put too much pressure on the spindle and it bent.

I know that my father has one of these machines (in fact he has managed to collect 4) and had done the same thing once. I am going to have to consult him on how to proceed from here. one thing is certan though. I am putting this machine through more stress then it was designed to handle. I have to face the fact that I need to get a real lathe. The problem is that the kind of lathe that I want costs around $5000 and I don't have that kind of expendable cash lying around.

What the hell do I do now!?

Doomed

Despite how crazy I feel about my new girlfriend, I cant help but feel that our relationship is doomed. A myriad tiny clues lead me to the feeling that we have a time limit. I am worried that we have 8 to 12 months, and by that time it will be over. I don't want this to happen but the feeling persists. What I have to remember is to not make it a self fulfilling prophecy. If I were to act like we had a time limit then I would be the one limiting the relationship, and I don't want that.

Connections

Ok, this one is even more sappy then the last one. If you are getting sick of it skip this next paragraph.

I am still resisting. Slowly the barriers come down and slowly I let her more and more in to my life. No, that's not true, there is nothing slow about it. I am running desperate and foolish. First it was the calls. I try to keep it cool but we talk for an hour or more on the phone about anything, just drinking each other in. We talk about her, about me, we talk about cultural identity and how it relates to ethnicity we talk about movies and places er have been. Then, when the week is over, we can see each other and hold each other. We look into each others eyes and kiss and think of anything anywhere as long as it is together. Then apart again which is like pain. I am addicted to her, to her touch, to her smell. It is a physical thing a crawling feeling beneath my skin, a shiver along my spine. I think of her and want to reach out, to text or to call. I check facebook and then I check again. I know her email address and want to connect to her via chat, but I don't because it will kill any focus that I have left. How can you miss someone that you saw that morning?

One thing that I still keep separate is this blog, but I do not know for how long. I asked a friend of mine and she told me what I should have already known: that it will be time when it is time, and counting days is irrelevant. I want her to be able to know about me and about my thoughts. I believe that she would care for me more after reading these posts so that is not what is stopping me from sharing. If I give her the address to this blog it will create an imbalance. She will have access to a couple of years of my thoughts and feelings. My thinking on my ex, my fears, my insecurities. I will have none of that. I trust that she is being open and truthful to me, but there is so much ground to cover and I think we should cover it together. Even so, I am already compensating for her future access. I have already omitted a post that I would have made about us. Only time will tell.

Cracks

I have done a little woodturning the past few days. I was successful in making a bowl out of purpleheart for my girlfriend but since that I have tried two more times and failed due to cracks in the turning blanks. This is a bit disheartening. One of the blocks was mango that my father brought me from the Philippines and the other was a piece of Olive that I cut myself when a friend was cutting down an olive tree in his yard. I hope that some of the other olive blanks are actually usable but I fear that they are all too cracked to use.