on the rocks, no salt

Hear me now City Mouse. I will go and see Two Rooms this Saturday afternoon. I will get to The Monument a little later on.

I am so sorry to have missed A Bright Room Called Day but hope to get to Arabian Night.

I also want to get to A Body of Water and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and the Capital Fringe Festival.

My current show closes in a few weeks and I am not doing a show this summer. I ping pong back and forth between excitement (time for camping, vacation, the pool, and margaritas) and regret (getting itchy not working on a role). When I feel like the latter my biggest solace is knowing that I will have the evenings free to go and see some of the great work that DC theatre is doing.

marriage amended...how does one do that?

If you live in Virginia please think about helping Equality Fairfax in their fight against the marriage ban amendment.

commercials are for soda

I am not a person with a 30 second attention span.

I can handle a complex idea being explained to me.

I have the ability to understand that problems might not have easy resolutions.

I am willing to sacrifice what is easy for what is right.

We have been inundated with the idea that Democrats are lost and have no clear vision ever since Clinton left office. There is almost a weekly article in all major magazines reinforcing this misconception. Lastly I read this article pointed out to me by the Hairy Ape, and while the article has many, and I mean many, great points and interesting perspectives, I still don't like the perpetuation of the idea that Democrats are lost.

The Democrats that I volunteer with are still very much the party of the people. The face of America has changed a lot and I agree that there is a definite 'me first' mentality in this country; but as a party we still stand for many of the same things. The difference is that while we continue to become a more televised/media central/fast food/sound bited nation the Democratics are unable to shrink their message to fit into a 30 second ad. The Democratic messages have always been ones that need at least an hour long documentary, because we are attacking what is complex about our problems as a nation, and as a people. Shrinking the amount of time to get a message across is very advantageous to the Republican Party. It enables them to skim the surface. Say these sound bites out loud and see how they play:

Marriage is sacred.
Every American deserves to keep more of their hard earned money.
It is your right to protect yourself.
Pro life.

Now try these:

Every person has the right to healthcare.
Every child deserves a good education.
Protect our planet.
Pro choice.

The first 4 are insular and about you as the individual. The second four are about everyone. So they beg the question - How much do we have to give up in order to get them?

The reason that democrats don't fair well with a concise message is because there isn't one. There are many. There is no one answer either. The issues are complex and the solutions are not easy. It will be hard to become environmentally friendly -hard for everyone. It will be hard to make healthcare universal and education better, and there is no quick clear road to it. What is not hard is allowing two consenting adults to get married, but it is very difficult to fight ignorance and bigotry; and Democrats are the party that have the tenacity to invoke that kind of change.

What we don't have is a poster boy/girl. We need a new JFK, Clinton, FDR. We need someone who knows how to demystify the big issues for the public. What we also need are real debates. Ones that are not rehearsed, ones where they talk directly to each other and duke it out, ones where the people in the room are not required to submit there questions beforehand. We need to make our politicians become thinkers, not speakers. We need free and equal media coverage for elections. Most of all we need politicians to own up to our true America. We need them to say, 'I need more than two minutes to answer this question.'

open the box

I started using this a few months back and cannot explain how much I love it.

If you have not yet discovered Pandora then go there now. Yes, I am telling you, not asking.

sex toys or why i should not run for office

I feel for any cast that works with me because at some point, no matter how hard I try to keep myself from doing it, I go on a political tirade that rarely leaves anyone in question of where I think they should stand on the subject about which I am ranting.

I apologize to my current cast for my tirade about how uptight America is about sexuality - it was spawned by Bill Maher's comments last week and I kept the ball rolling through the weekend. The crazy part was that when the rant ended all we continued to discuss was butt plugs. I have never had an actual conversation about them. The dressing room discussion quickly devolved into us inserting the words 'butt plug' into our most dramatic moments of dialogue, ie. to butt plug or not to butt plug...until we were rolling around on the floor, weeping with laughter at our new mantra 'my subtext is butt plug'.

I act like an adult, but inside I am an adolescent boy.

I will post something of more substance next time. I promise.

the list keeps growing

This post made me want to share my own list of possible summer reading, especially since two of the three were already on my list as well.

-The Idiot
-Absurdistan
-American Gods
-Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By
People Who Think You're Stupid
-Infinite Jest
-Brideshead Revisited
-Don Quixote
-*Bug
-*Bloody Sunday : Scenes from the Saville Inquiry
-*Shaplin: Three Plays
-*Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Other Plays

* Plays

These are books that I feel I should reread, because I read them back in high school and that was a while ago.

-On the Road
-Tropic of Cancer
-War & Peace
-The Brothers Karamazov

If anyone has any of the plays or the newer books and feels like lending them to me I would greatly appreciate it. I would also love to hear from anyone who has read any of the above and wants to spout.

wouldn't eat that if i were you

It has been a stressful, hard week. Stressful. Thank goodness I get to have conversations like this to keep me grounded.

Smaller: Babies are so cute. Do you wish you had one?

Me: No.

Smaller: Why not?

Me: Well, babies are cute; but all they do is eat, poop, and sleep.

Smaller: Don't be silly. Babies don't eat poop.

sooooo goooood

Stephen Colbert has major balls.