Mattress

I was out sick the other day, and spent a good bit of time considering the mattress situation. The mattress, along with the bedframe, was a generous donation from my friends the Steibs, way back in the late nineties. It had been a guest bedroom bed, and everyone in my social circle has had carnal relations on it, excepting myself. I've often joked that I feel close to my friends when I sleep on this bed because it has so much of their DNA soaked into it. That mattress had a liquid center, although under my stewardship it has no doubt gone dry. It is an unattractive affair by now; it has worn down until it looks like part of an art installation. I've considered writing a monologue about it, simply because the thing would look so stark hanging on the wall behind me in some little venue like Birmingham Festival. But how would one keep such a monologue from turning into a deadening exercise in solipsism? Kind of like this blog, only with the blog you can skip around or stop reading without my noticing.

Anyway, the mattress: I'm about to replace it, but I'd rather have the replacement delivered than tie it to the hood of my Saturn and try to lug it inside myself; furthermore I want to fix up the joint a bit more in terms of bookshelves, etc. I've been abstaining from such accouterments of baseline civilization under the theory that squalor both costs less and encourages me to move. Moving is essential in the long run because I want to make a go of a real acting career before it's all dust and ashes.

Everything changed recently when a friend insisted on seeing my home, ran her white glove over the place, and told me in no uncertain terms that my lifestyle was unacceptable. This was a conclusion I'd been tiptoeing around for years, and now I'm trying to come to terms with almost a decade's worth of squalor accumulation. Buying a mattress that doesn't have springs bursting out and open tears in the material will be a big step in that.

Anyway, here's some instructions for easy DYI Punk Rawk Majickque from one of my favorite comics pros who still works with superheroes, Grant Morrison. Apply at will, particularly to my aforementioned troll neighbor. Don't use it to ask for his death, though; I'm drawing back from the earlier call for the guy's death because I don't want a big karmic blowback. Just ask for what I need, which could be phrased as "He moves or is evicted."

Nashville Cabaret

This went way better than I feared it would. Bongo Java is a teensy performance space, and I like it that way. OTOH it's too darn hot; I thought I was going to collapse from heat prostration right in the middle of my first song. I wanted to trade costumes with the dancing girls; ya'll wear this heavy jacket, I'll wear the skimpy fishnets. Anything to stay cool. Anyway, if you go to Bongo Java, try the granola. Yum!

The feedback I got from the family and friends who saw it was that it was quite good but about three weeks too long. "Leave 'em wanting more" is not the credo of our little group. More like "Pound 'em into submission." But it turns out I enjoy the stress and payoff of taking the show on the road. My voice is shot (mostly because of the transition from cold weather to hot) but now I'm looking forward to doing it again in Atlanta.

Also I publicly (and onstage) declared my big crush on fellow cabaret performer Kimberly, regarding which the reader is referred to this post.

Meanwhile, the prayer vigil for my neighbor continues. Never before have I heard him when he was in his apartment and I was in mine, but last night I clearly heard him doing what he does best: cussing real loud, apparently into his phone. Does this burst of renewed vigor indicate that he's in better health than ever, or is it the Thorn Bird's Song? Here's hoping it's his dying throes. Keep praying

The Hardships of Life on the Road

For some reason the trip to Nashville this coming weekend has been preying on my mind; I'm not used to travel, and my usual rule of thumb is to never do a show anywhere I can't walk to. Nashville violates that rule by a nasty margin. I always get lost when I go anywhere outside of Jefferson County, we're on a tight schedule... you can see the potential for trouble here.

Anyway, please notice I've been adding labels to this blog, so if you want to read, say, all my posts about theatre, you can live that dream. (It's not done yet though). It's distressing how many posts are filed under "boo hoo," representing all my weepy self-pitying posts. I don't think of myself as a weepy or self-pitying person, but the labels speak for themselves. So I'm going to make this the last Boo Hoo post for a nice long time.

A relationship recently flared up out of nowhere and after a burst of heat has cooled into a distant friendship. That's not a bad thing, per se; one more good friendship than I had before, and a lot of overdue personal growth has been triggered by the brief attempt at, well, at figuring out what it was about. But I'm finding the cooling process to be awfully distressing; I'm just a little boy who wants his mommy. That's true of every guy, but we have to learn to modulate it, don't we?

Okay, that's my last boohoo moment. For now.

Dangerous Game

Mary Weiss is back! The lead singer of The Shangi-Las is responsible for the title of this blog; the way she intones that startling instruction reverberates around my spinal cord. So I'll be scooping up Dangerous Game, her new CD. She's being interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR today. I'll for durn sure be listening.

We're taking our Cabaret to Bongo Java in Nashville for one Saturday performance, this weekend. Experience shows that people who drink a lot enjoy the show, while people who don't drink a lot tend to have a muted response. How will a coffee-sipping audience respond to a show that's best enjoyed drunk? We'll find out.

Let Us Prey

I saw that awful neighbor the other day. He looked really bad but he's still alive. You people are not praying hard enough. Oh ye of little faith. Here's the new prayer:

Oh Lord, kill the bastard already. Just take one of those deaths You're planning to ship to someone in Darfur and hit him with it instead. Make it look like an accident, oh Lord, so law enforcement won't read this blog and think I had anything to do with it.

Selah

Kill him, oh Lord, and he will be killed. I know You don't make no trash, but some of what you make becomes trash, and that horrible neighbor of mine is a case in point. I've had bowel movements that deserved more respect than him. Flush him, oh Lord.

Storm

A storm passed through last night, so we were sent home early from work. I got home, and since it was grey but dry I went for a walk. Of course I got caught in the storm, but I always enjoy that; the cold pounding rain makes me feel like I'm in touch with the elements in a raw way, like the world is forcing me to engage it in an unprotected way. It's like being touched by God. EDIT: I didn't know that twenty people, some of them Alabama schoolchildren, died in this storm when I wrote the proceeding. It was much milder around my way. I'm sorry for the dead and their loved ones, and grateful that my blithe stormwalk didn't have any consequences beyond a cold soak.

Anyway, Ken Hite has begun a series of blogposts on H. P. Lovecraft. There's a lot to disdain about Lovecraft (clunky prose, all kinds of bigotry, lousy characterization, way too indebted to his influences) but there's a lot to love, and Hite's the man to tease out the good.

I'm listening to an Acid Jazz compliation. I've slowly fallen in love with acid jazz's blend of hiphop and horns. Anyway, lyrics in this stuff tend to be pretty nominal, but there was one song with the lyric "Give it all you've got, don't give up, life's a game and you've go to play to win!" Once I thought that was trite, but now it's the kind of motivation I need, so it added fresh cheer to my day. Sadly the next song's lyric was all about making love tonight. I won't be making love tonight, so that stripped my fresh layer of cheer right off. I'm ready to join with Tipper Gore to get all these sex lyrics out of songs, but only so I won't be constantly reminded that they're writing songs of love, but not for me.

A Man's Home is His Castle.

I live in a teeny apartment. I like it there; it's a lovely, safe neighborhood, and as soon as I clean up the mess I've been accumulating, it's going to be a pleasant home. Only one problem. The Crazy Scumbag Upstairs And Across. He usually lies low, but tonight, not for the first time but for the first time in a while, he stomped downstairs and loudly pounded on the door of the woman who lives under him and across from me, hollering profaine demands that she keep it down. I was sound asleep until Dr. Douchebag started carrying on (around two in the morning, per his own hollering). Ponder the psychology of someone who is outraged to have been awakened, but who deals with his outrage by waking everyone else.

So I've written a little prayer for him. I ask that you pray along with me if you are so moved.

Dear Lord, Creator of the Universe and Lord of Love: please kill this guy. We don't need his worthless ass around here, o Lord. Please kill him. I'll give You fifty bucks. And I don't mean kill him "in Your good time," I mean TODAY.