Listening: work mates filtering in and trading vacation anecdotes
Mentally Replaying: "carbon," Tori Amos
I'd rather be in school studying the busienss of theatre
Considering: getting a business degree
Desiring: a viable career in theatre
Enjoying: Bear Claw Free Fall, a Gunner's View
black and blue
shred in ribbons of lithium
blow by blow Her Mind cut in Sheets
Layers Deep now unraveling
Just Keep Your Eyes on Her
Keep, Don't Look Away
Keep Your Eyes on Her Horizon
--carbon
--Tori Amos

Ok so you're avoiding the New Years thing and just want to party for the sake of partying and are trying to ignore the fact that you're a lemming for partying on New Years just like all the other lemmings you think you're cool cause you avoided doing the look back over the year and marking high and low points and making some meaningless promises to... no one and nothing in particular.

Then the little vacation you afforded yourself (not that you could afford it, but what else are your savings for? retirement?!) brings new and different vistas and fun and intriguing ideas and suddenly you realize the new year has to be a very pivital moment when you re-adjust your focus on the stuff you want to do vis a vis the stuff you're capable of doing in the little world you've created for yourself.

From first-hand experience let me tell you that is very humbling, elating and quite anxiety-inducing.

Dungeon was in full effect at Blue last Tuesday and I completely wrecked my ankles dancing in knee-high vinyl boots and torn fishnets. Just dressing for it nearly reduced me to self-hating tears but I had company so I had to keep it together.

The cross-dressing dominatrix caught me staring at her while she was practice swinging one of her floggers (a very soft one that strongly resembled a very huge mop head) and she flirted with me trying to get me on her horse. I wanted to very much but I wasn't dressed to accomodate showing off my behind to a bunch of strangers. And my top was made of lace which also isn't bery forgiving for this sort of thing, but to a lesser extent than the fishnets. I blushed and blustered and hid behind the boys until she wandered off.

In a genuine stroke of good fortune I didn't have any blisters but my ankles are still angry with me, as you'll see I keep torturing them.

The next day Molasses and I set off to SeaWorld. It was a very pleasant San Diego day. Low seventies, a sweet sea breeze and cute furry/feathered and/or scaly critters. Exciting whales, playful dolphins and manta rays, creepy eels and sharks, goofy seals doing everything they could to wreck a carefully staged show, all in all pretty nice eventhough we didn't get to see the polar bears. I had thought they didn't hibernate? But their habitat was empty.... Oh well it was pretty cool and relaxing.

The hotel had a hot tub so we killed an hour and a half in it, staring at the stars through the steam.

On the second we checked out and headed to a city tour in these mini-buses that were shaped something like trolley-cars. The city tour was two hours of driving 'round the major attractions plus any time we spent if we got off at any of the six stops.

I had never been greatly enamored with San Diego, possibly because every time I've been there, except for this one, has been with my family. Therefore I've only seen the major attractions and either extremely rich parts of town, extremely poor parts or the student areas. But Molasses really liked it and this was an extremely pretty day - highlighted all the more by foreigners from the Midwest who were in constant awe of the cloudless sky and sparkling water and locals dressed in tank tops and shorts. Although one of the tour-guide/trolley drivers did note that people were nervous of a growing crime rate as there were over a hundred murders in the city in 2002. Molasses and I shared a look at this as we had just read a newsstory the put LA as the murder-capitol of the US with over 600 murders. We decided they're just not trying hard enough.

But I can't argue with the fact that it really does look peaceful and lovely and relatively clean. It would make me mildly nervous to live too close to a huge milatary target, but then I practically live in the heart of a massive economic bulls-eye. Also I've heard stories of the cost of living. I think the energy thing has calmed down some but I still had to pay the a $3 surcharge on my room. But to hear Angelenos talk about the expensive live one must keep to live in San Diego you'd think we were foreigners astounded at how much it costs to live on the beach.

But what really bowled me over is what a relatively tight theatre district they have. The tourguide was very proud of the student rush stand that they have. I didn't really ask many questions about it but it seemed that many of the main theatres were in the same general neighborhood. But that's not what really got me thinking.

I already knew that I wanted to go into theatre before I got to high school and everything I've since then seen in a class or on a stage has propelled that along to one extent or an other. It's been a driving goal for me and has pushed along other thoughts that are mere details to what I want to do, but not inconsequential in determining the life I would like to live. I have found I like either great big cities, or tiny corners of the world that are overgrown with Nature. Since theatre requires human interaction from it's birth - the first readthrough - to death - the final curtain, secluded places have to be ruled out as not being conducive to my career.

For that reason I looked forward to living in a metropolis to persue my career.

Growing up in Orange County means you both depend on and resent all things Los Angeles. The attractions were in OC but the necessary business was often in LA and I'd often visit LA for different reasons. In doing this I got a chance to really look around at the crush of people and see their different faces and this intrigued me more than anything I've ever seen in OC. OC is *WAY* more spread out than LAC and contains a great variety of races and classes of people. But there was something missing in it. Or maybe I just didn't feel like I'd be comfortable doing my thing in it.

My dad attended USC and I'd visited the campus several time over several years. When it came down to choosing a school I applied to eight and was accepted at six - NYU and CalArts were the two holdouts and it was just as well I would have studied acting exclusively - it came down to between UC Santa Barbara and USC. For reasons that escape me now the Theatre School at USC sounded better, and obviously there was a sentimental attachment.

But four years at USC sealed my love for LA, as well as persuing my degree in Theatre had played thoroughly to my proclivities. At USC, as with Los Angeles at large, the only artform theoretically worth persuing was/is film. At least that's the prevailing notion and if you're in theatre/drama you're either working at becoming an actor (oh you thought you were an actor because you were in a play? oh dear, how very cute) or you're just dicking around. Being the stubborn cheerleader for all things (I assume are)underappreciated, I heartily believed, and to some extent still do, that if only the normal person could see some good theatre, I mean some really good shit, a modern version of Antigone, say, or some Tom Stoppard - I just might kill to take some Luis Valdez into East LA - then, maybe they - the masses - would except some truly worthwhile art and culture into their little mass-media-ized hearts.

It's an ideology, and not even a well-formed one at that. But it's what keeps me going. Maybe this ruca out of Boyle Heights will see Los Vendidos and learn not to buy everything she's sold. Maybe some homeboys will see Arcadia and see, really see some mind-shattering thoughts take shape. I've always wondered how the Mahabarata would play in Fairfax/Hollywood.

But on the Second of this month all of the stopped for a just second and another thought seeped in. Throughout college I heard about all the supposed 99-seaters and waiver theatres that are supposed to exist in LA, but I've been to a tiny handful. They're not connected and up to now I don't know of any publication - paper or otherwise - that has connected them so that we the ordinary mortals might know what's playing, where, when and for how much.

The LA Weekly does only so much and if you're about to suggest the New Times, sorry it doesn't exist anymore, thank you for playing. At anyrate, the LA Weekly is a good source for what's going on *now* but it's fairly piss-poor at telling what company is considering mounting what play. You know, the stage where us menial workers might just be able to make nuissances of ourselves until the producers of said companies agree to give us jobs to put our unused degrees to work.

LA has a great scene for huge plays, don't get me wrong. If you want to see touring companies of what was on Broadway last year, you can *totally* do that, no problem. The Lion King, Bring on da Noise, Bring on da Funk, Rent, Mamma Mia, etc, etc ad nauseum. No fucking problem. Want to see some Ibsen? Chekov? Hansberry? even some decent Shakespeare? (by decent I mean non-college affiliated) Good luck. If you find any let me know. But waiver theatres can't afford to do much advertising and huge theatres will lose money on non-musicals. Not to mention the Pantages isn't really a good house for a production of A Doll's House.

But I want this connection. I want it to exist. The fact that it doesn't, the fact theatre is so pooh-pooed around here makes me just burn.

I've seriously thought about physically building the system myself. Buying buildings and converting at least part of them into viable spaces for theatres. I'd scatter the buidings around because I'm Angeleno at heart and designing districts/neighborhoods for one kind of thing is sooo *done.* We've got cars, we've got databases, the Internet and cellular phones. We'll be just fine.

Of course, first I need to be able to run around snapping up buildings and contractors and stuff, and then encourage interest in theatre arts. And one thing has been made abundantly clear to me by my education: Donald Trump I am not.

The more I've grown up (and I didn't think it was was particularly possible but I really have grown up a lot since college) the more I've come realize how important learning boring damned shit like marketing and business is to doing tons of other boring damned shit like reimagining and then rebuilding different parts of town. This boring damned shit is what art is based on after all.

Art is the best part of humanity, it's the top 10%, and therefore the 90% under it directly contributes to its existence and richness. To get to the 10% I've been dreaming of since I was maybe 12 there is still a lot of work to be done on the 90% below.

All I'm really trying to say here is that I'm at an impasse and I'm not quite sure which direction I ought to head in, or indeed if I have to pick one over the other. I want to have access to one stage at a time and direct players in a piece I've selected and worked over so that I can see the images I get in my head played out in a space and see if I can communicate with several strangers that way. On the other hand I want to push my two great loves to prominence - Los Angeles and the theatre - and greatly doubt that the ambitions of the plays that I might mount would ever realize that dream. I mean I'm dreaming big just to think that I might make it some day in live theatre, but to think that the theatre that I put on would create loads of attention not for myself but for my chosen home. That's pushing on "plain silly."

So I have to figure this out and plot a course for this next year. I have to start soon and then haul ass. That and lose some thirty pounds and a promotion at work.

*sigh* why do the last two seem easier?