Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Thanksgiving 2022

 


This is probably going to get me into trouble but my mental health is so bad these days that I really don't give a flying fig.

One of the things I learned in therapy is that when things get bad, mental depression-wise, something that might help is listing the things for which one is grateful, i.e., literally counting one's blessings.  And while I love my family deeply and am continually grateful for their presence in my life, right now I am simply not in a very good place and it has nothing whatsoever to do with them.

I am not especially grateful to be in America right now, or to be an American.  That's mostly it right there.

I can't feel safe at the movies.  Might get shot.

Can't go to a concert.  Might get shot.

I can't feel safe at the grocery store.  Might get shot.

Can't send the kids to school and feel good about it.  They might get shot.

Can't go to a club or let my bi family members go to the LGBTQIA+ club.  Might get shot.

I am sick of living in a place where guns have more rights than people.  Where the right to own assault weapons supercedes the right to live without fear of being shot.  Shot for who I love, how I live, how I voted, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It sucks.

Saturday, October 23, 2021

The Hutchins/Baldwin Tragedy

 As most of my friends know, I used to be a working actor.  These days I mostly do voice work (when I can get it) but before my poor health gutted my acting career, I did a fair amount of stage and a little bit of film work, and I wanted to say something about the tragedy that the family of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is experiencing.  My heart goes out to them and to Alec Baldwin as well; I can’t even begin to imagine what hell he must be feeling.

The level of negligence and incompetence that led to this tragedy is unbelievable.  My first question was, what the hell was the Assistant Director doing with the gun in the first place?  It is not the AD’s place to deliver firearms to the actors.  Where was the propmaster?  Where was the armorer?  Where was, at the very least, a pyrotechnician?  Why were live rounds anywhere near the production at all?


Basic gun safety was clearly not being observed by anyone.  The first thing that anyone, anyone, should do upon being handed a weapon is to check it.  Make sure the load is correct, the safety is on, there is no round in the chamber, etc.  You do not blindly trust what anyone who hands you a weapon tells you, you check it for yourself, always.  Which means being taught by an expert on how to do exactly that with that weapon.


Weapons are never to be pointed directly at another person, ever.  Make it look good, but safety first.  And they are never, ever, ever to be used for pranks or as toys.


When I was first starting out, I played the role of Lennie in “Of Mice And Men” and [spoiler alert] at the end of the play, Lennie is shot and killed by George.  The production was done in the round, in a theater with the audience very close to the actors.  The muzzle was close enough to my head that I could see the flame from the blast go past my head.  The safety level on that production was extremely high; it was around the time that actor Jon-Erik Hexum had accidentally killed himself by firing a blank at his own head in jest.  We had an armorer who made sure that only unwadded blanks were used.  We had a member of local law enforcement (a sheriff’s deputy and marine vet, if memory serves) who checked that Luger every time an actor touched it, and who stood guard over it every night.  He made sure that the right kind of ammo was loaded and trained all of us in how to properly check and use the gun; he was the one who taught me that you never take a weapon from another’s hand on trust; that it can never be checked often enough.  (A quick word on blanks: there is more than one kind.  Unwadded blanks are just cartridges with powder; maybe a tiny of bit of paper to hold the powder in place.  They just explode a blast of hot air and plasma out of the barrel.  They are still lethal.  Firing an unwadded blank at close range into, say, one’s temple would still transmit a tremendous, potentially lethal amount of explosive force.  This is how Hexum and actor Brandon Lee were killed.  A wadded blank is just what it sounds like:  a small amount of cotton is packed into the cartridge to hold in the powder.  That wadding is fired out of the barrel of the gun at the same speed and with the same force as a bullet, and at close range is just as deadly.)


The point is that there should have been a number of safety precautions in place, any one of which would have prevented this terrible tragedy, and it seems as though none of them were.  This morning I learned that one contributing factor may have been that a union crew on the film had recently been replaced by a non-union crew after the IATSE settlement, which puts the blame even more squarely on the shoulders of the producers, if true.


Know that, sad as it may be, nobody but nobody can be trusted with your safety except you.

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Destiny 2


So.  I’m writing this to share some news with a few good friends, and I need you to bear with me for a while with a bit of background information.  Many of you might know that I really like video games, but probably very few of you know just how avid I am with regard to the video games I play.  One in particular has been a bit of an obsession for over five years.  You may have heard of a game called “Halo.”  (This is not the game I’m talking about here, but I figure it’s the one you might have heard about.)  Halo was created by a studio that has made games that I love for over 25 years, but “Halo” was probably their most famous.  They sold the Halo franchise to Microsoft some years ago so that they could focus on a new science fiction game, called “Destiny.”  Destiny is now the number one game on the Steam gaming platform.  It’s played on PC, on Xbox, and on PlayStation. Over 15 million people play it, with about 3.5 million online at any given time.  So far over 4.5 million hours have been spent playing Destiny, a bunch of them by me.

Like most very popular things, Destiny has an active fan community online.  This past year saw the first conventions of fans.  There are online comic books, fan fiction sites, and volumes — literally, volumes; three and counting — of lore, history and back story for the Destiny universe.  You can play alone, or with other people, or against other people, or with a team, or against other teams.  There are a lot of options.  There are also lots of options with regard to the kind of character you can play as.  D and D players will recognize the categories of Tanks (big strong fighters), Magic Users and Rogues.  In Destiny they are called Titans, Warlocks and Hunters.  (I am a Hunter.)

One particularly dedicated group of fans and players has worked with Bungie, the studio that made Destiny, to create an animated series based on the Destiny Universe.  The animation is tentatively called “Termino.”  A call went out early in December for writers, voice actors, character animators, and so forth.  Since I play the game every day, I was interested, and submitted an audition to be a voice actor.

I learned yesterday that I was cast in a role.  My audition recording arrived later than most because of some technical difficulties I was having, but the producer/director informed me that even though they had cast most of the major parts already, they were so impressed with my audition that they created a role just for me, so that I could be a part of the project.  This is unheard of, and I am ridiculously pleased by this.

The project is in pre-production now and recording will begin in January 2020.  I’ll keep you posted as much as I can, but I signed a LOT of non-disclosure agreements.  This project has a lot of potential, and a big ready-made audience, and I could not be happier!


Saturday, June 1, 2019

Things I Will Never Understand About Living in Central Pennsylvania

There are some things I will never understand about living in Central Pennsylvania, in spite of having lived here since 1988.  (Also, I grew up in central New Jersey, which you wouldn't have thought was that far from here, but in fact, in many ways it's like night and day.)  Anyway, here's a short list:

• The abomination that is chicken and waffles.  What the serious hell.
• Not using a turn signal until after having begun the turn. Or the lane change.
• Using the expression "a while" when you mean "now," as in a food server asking you, "What can I get you to drink a while?"
• Taking three times as long to make a left turn as it does to turn right.  Like it's a separate career.
• Sauerkraut
• Pennsylvania Dutch everything, especially those coded hex signs.
• The incredibly divisive issue that is Shoo Fly Pie.  Wet bottom, or dry?  Choose carefully.
• The deep south Bible-belt flavor of the area, sandwiched as it is between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
• Holding the State Fair (aka the Farm Show) in January.
• Chicken Pot Pie which is neither pie, nor in a pot, nor does it have a crust.  It's chicken and veggies in a cream sauce with big fat noodles.  At least it's chicken.

This is my home.  I do love it.

Monday, December 17, 2018

34 Years


This week I celebrated my 34th wedding anniversary, to a girl I met in high school.  She was not my high school sweetheart, although I loved her madly from afar from the first moment I saw her.  She did become my friend while at school, and years later, we started dating.  It took us until we were 31 years old, but we were finally married.

One of the hardest things I ever had to do happened a couple of years ago, at a choir recital we called "Music for the Soul" based on the writings of Robert Fulghum.  My health over the years has taken a lot from me.  I have trouble walking.  I suffer from neurological disorders that cause pain in my arms and legs, which can be acute at times.  Once upon a time I was a working actor with the various skills you might think an actor should have in their toolbox.  Now all I have left is a decent speaking voice.  My choir director generously called me the James Earl Jones of the chorus.  Whenever we needed to incorporate a reading into a performance, I was usually called upon to deliver it. 

The hard thing I mentioned was reading this excerpt by Fulghum about the actor, Charles Boyer, who is pictured above.  It was almost impossible for me to get through the piece, because it describes perfectly exactly how I feel about the woman I married 34 years ago.  This was it:

"This is kind of personal.  It may get a little syrupy, so watch out.  It started as a note to my wife.  And then I thought that since some of you might have husbands or wives (or life partners) and might feel the same way, I’d pass it along.  I don’t own this story, anyway.  Charles Boyer does.

"Remember Charles Boyer?  Suave, dapper, handsome, graceful.  Lover of the most famous and beautiful ladies of the silver screen.  That was on camera and in the fan magazines.  In real life it was different.

"There was only one woman.  For forty-four years. His wife, Patricia.  Friends said it was a lifelong love affair. They were no less lovers and friends and companions after forty-four years than after the first year.

"Then Patricia developed cancer of the liver.  And though the doctors told Charles, he could not bear to tell her.  And so he sat by her bedside to provide hope and cheer.  Day and night for six months.  He could not change the inevitable.  Nobody could.  And Patricia died in his arms.  Two days later Charles Boyer was also dead.  By his own hand.  He said he did not want to live without her.  He said, 'Her love was life to me.'

"This was no movie. As I said, it’s the real story—Charles Boyer’s story.

"It’s not for me to pass judgment on how he handled his grief.  But it is for me to say that I am touched and comforted in a strange way.  Touched by the depth of love behind the apparent sham of Hollywood love life.  Comforted to know that two people can love each other that much, that long.

"I don’t know how I would handle my grief in similar circumstances.  I pray I shall never have to stand in his shoes. (Here comes the personal part—no apologies.)  But there are moments when I look across the room—amid the daily ordinariness of life—and see the person I call my wife and friend and companion. And I understand why Charles Boyer did what he did.  It really is possible to love someone that much.  I know.  I’m certain of it."

And I do know.  And I am certain of it.  I used to say, the heck with Romeo and Juliet; I want a love like Gomez and Morticia.  I got even luckier than that, though.  I have a love like Charles and Patricia.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

In Memoriam: Stan Lee

This is a hard one.  I had the privilege of meeting Stan Lee at the Baltimore Comic-Con in 2012.  I only got to spend a minute or two with him, but he was absolutely wonderful about it.  I had a little elevator speech for Stan, down to under a minute, but I guess his handlers thought that was too much and tried to move things along.  Stan interrupted them with an, "Excuse me, I'm talking here!" like the good Bronx boy he was and we got to finish our little moment and have our picture taken.

Getting to have that minute with Stan was very important to me.  You see, Stan's work at Marvel Comics in the 1960's had a huge influence on me.  Everything I learned about how to be a man, how to be a good person, I learned from Stan Lee.  Not just "with great power comes great responsibility" (although that is itself a powerful lesson for a 10-year-old kid) but also that real heroes do what needs to be done without regard to cost to self or to inconvenience.  You stop to help that lost kid even if it means missing that job interview.  You help that little old lady even if it makes you late for a date and costs you a relationship.  You do the right thing.

I'm saying all this incredibly poorly.  I grew up in a house where my father, my one male role model, was a violent and abusive man who lied to his family and stole from his work.  On several occasions he lost his job because he was caught stealing from the company, petty stuff we could have afforded to be honest about.  I could list his sins for pages, but the bottom line is that I didn't learn much about how to live a good life, or to be a good father or even a good person from my own dad.

But I did learn that stuff from Stan, and I got to thank him for it.  He seemed to be appreciative, but I know I am only one of many, many fans who told him much the same thing.  Stan made the world a better place for his being in it, and I'm glad I got to meet him.

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Eastern Stupid, er, Standard Time


So tonight we once again set ourselves up for Springtime jet-lag by messing with the clocks.  I used to think this was absolutely the dumbest thing we did as a society.  Then we elected Trump.  But I digress....

Every year I hope this is for the last time.  If our fearless cheeto-faced gibbon of a leader really wanted to make a difference in our lives via an executive order, he would end this stupidity and just keep us on Saving Time year-round.  I don't need the sun to go down at 4:00 PM here.  Ever.  Yet, here we are.

Write your legislators, folks.  This is actually one stupid thing that we can fix.  Morocco this year (Morocco!) agreed that the whole idea is stupid and is not changing their clocks.


Surely we are at least as smart as they are?  Please??