ANNOUNCER: It's time for...

GAME SHOW STUDIO AUDIENCE (IN UNISON):  "Is...This...A...Coincidence!?!"
WILD APPLAUSE. 
CUE MUSIC: THEME "MEXICAN BREAKFAST"

Our host Mr. Chris, takes the stage.
Mr. Chris: Thank you ladies for that boffo dance! Que estaba muy caliente! And welcome everyone to Is This A Coincidence?!?, the gameshow where we ask you, the audience, to determine if something is a random coincidence or not.
​So here goes...it's a photo DuJour Daily:

Now that's a still from 2021's Hulu Production of Only Murders In the Building.  Great show!  Just started watching it.  This is from episode two, where Selena Gomez is snooping around a dimly lighted room and comes across a shelf of Hardy Boys books.  I love the Hardy Boys!  Couldn't get enough when I was a kid.
And here's a quote from a novel from 2015, entitled 83 In the Shade by a Mr. Christopher F. Reidy.  From page 350 of the first edition: Chapter 11: Pahlah Games:

"...I glanced around the room.  His office?  On one of the bookshelves was a near complete set of Hardy Boys books; their unmistakable royal blue bindings clearly visible in the soft light from the antique desk lamp."

Now I ask you again audience..."Is This A Coincidence?"!
And your 30 seconds starts now!

Mr. Chris: Hello Uncle Walt!
Uncle Walt: Hi Chris!
Mr. Chris: Well, we're all wondering Uncle Walt...is it a coincidence...or not?  Did Hulu pull a fast one?
Uncle Walt: What's a "Hulu" Chris?
Mr. Chris: It's a streaming service!
Uncle Walt: You mean, like, for fly-fishing?
Mr. Chris (Chuckles) Oh no!  It's a signal that streams over the internet to your device and you can watch all sorts of entertainment programs! 
Uncle Walt: I don't understand any of that...
Mr. Chris: For a fee, of course.
Uncle Walt: That I understand!
Mr. Chris: Okay, do you remember how your first TV show aired on the ABC television network?
Uncle Walt: Of course!
Mr. Chris: Well, your company eventually bought the network and then scientists invented this thing called the internet which was kind of a computer network that eventually became integrated into television with it's own networks, one of which your company created and named Hulu.  And now it's all kind of one huge thing...an entertainment monster that needs around the clock feeding.
Uncle Walt: Like Bambi?
Mr. Chris: Sure...
Uncle Walt: Why did they call it Hulu?
Mr. Chris: I don't know...
Uncle Walt: And you feel someone at this Hulu place used a piece of your prose in their work, without having the courtesy to even ask you?  Let alone pay you?
Mr. Chris: You said it, I didn't.
Uncle Walt: Well, The Hardy Boys are pretty integrated media.  Culturally embedded, as it were. In fact, I serialized it for The Mickey Mouse Show.

Mr. Chris: Huh...Tommy Kirk.  He was gay you know...
Uncle Walt: A very happy boy!
Mr. Chris: Okay, sure...yes, The Hardy Boys are not exactly a rarity.  But still, the context of that scene...the writing of the sentence: it could've been stage directions in the script...
Uncle Walt: Or not.
Mr. Chris: So Uncle Walt, what's your--
Uncle Walt: Coincidence, of course.
Mr. Chris.  Of course!  All right.  Well thank you Uncle Walt and thanks for tuning in Streaming Land!
​CUE CLOSING MUSIC: 

CFR 6/29/22

I love Woody Allen movies.  In fact, I watch Manhattan almost every night.  I might as well have it on a continuous loop. I find it comforting, even though it's about neurotic people in perhaps the world's most neurotic city.  Although, in Manhattan, Manhattan itself is presented as a kind of magical wonderland.  A wonderland that I can only assume is not a true reflection of what NYC was like back in 1978.  But has Woody's work ever really reflected a realistic world (or worldview for that matter).
He's been making films for over fifty years....more or less one a year.  That's a lot of movies.  And I've seen a good chunk of them.  Not lately however.  Let's just say Woody started churning things out for the past fifteen years or so.
Anyways, I was thinking about his movies and I realized I couldn't think of any of them that had non-Caucasian or non-heterosexual characters.  The only one I could think of was "Petronia" who appears in Annie Hall.  Petronia is right behind Paul Simon in the above still.  She doesn't even have a line.  Petronia is the only African American I could remember from a Woody Allen movie.  You'd think there'd be more than just Petronia.  I mean, most of Woody's movies are set in New York City, right?  It's like the melting pot of the melting pot.  And "Petronia" is credited as Petronia Johnson in the credits; so she wasn't even playing a character.  That she got a name and a one word line and center frame is something of a miracle.
Okay, so I did a little research and Woody did hire a black actress named Hazelle Goodman to play a character named "Cookie" in Deconstructing Harry; which is one of Allen's movies that I have not seen.  She played a hooker, apparently.

Hazelle herself has defended Woody's casting choices. And that's great.  She's right. He does have the right, as an artist, to put forth whatever it is that is his vision.  But it just seems, by this point, rather bizarre that his films are so lacking in representation.  He lives in New York city.  He's married to an Asian woman.  I can't think of any Asian characters in his movies either.
And thinking back on his movies and the inclusion of gay characters; again, the only ones I could think of were (again) in Annie Hall.  And (again) they barely even count as characters.  A gay couple flit by the camera and Woody basically makes fun of them.  And then he takes another pot shot at gays by dissing Truman Capote.  It's actually kind of shitty.

"Where the hell does that little Radcliffe tootsie come off rating, mmm, Scott Fitzgerald and Gustav Mahler and then Heinrich Boll?"
Maybe the same place you get off rating strangers in the park Woody.
Clearly, Woody lives in a bubble of privilege.  A very white, wealthy, straight bubble at that.  To say he's out of touch would be an understatement.  And sadly, his movies; or rather the "world" of his movies seems entirely dated now.  It's like the planet Earth moved on and Woody is stuck in some time warp where people just naturally live in five bedroom apartments that face Central Park and write novels and drink wine and have mistresses.  I mean, how many times have we seen that Woody Allen movie by now?  His aesthetic has grown stale.  More like petrified.  Like dinosaur bones.  He and his art have become fossilized.  And he oozes superiority and the sort of arrogance of wealth.
I would say his last "great" movie was Bullets Over Broadway.  His last good movie, IMHO, was Midnight In Paris.  Thinking on the latter, which was set in Paris in the 1920's and a bastion of black artists who flocked there at the time, I can't remember any actors of color in that one, either.  I mean shouldn't Josephine Baker have been in that one?  Wouldn't you have thought that was just a given?  Oh wait...maybe she was in that one.  Score one for Woody.

We enjoy tearing down our idols, don't we.  But maybe we're supposed to.  Otherwise, we end up with sacred cows.
But there's no denying Woody is a great director.  I'd just like to see him direct something he didn't write.  To bring his eyes to someone else's vision.
But he's sort of director non grata nowadays, right?
Will he ever get out of the doghouse of his own device?  Or does he even care to?  It's a pretty cushy doghouse.

CFR 6/24/22

I hated Seinfeld.
Not Jerry; but his show.
To crib from Roger Ebert: I HATED, HATED, HATED this sitcom.
I felt like I was the lone American who loathed this show.  "It's a show that's about NOTHING!" so many people in the 90's enthused into my ear canals.  "Nothing! Can you believe it?"
Yeah, I could believe it.  It was nothing all right.  Nothing to me.
I remember it well.  It was 1993 and I was between real jobs.  I'd been fired from my job at Robinson, Weintraub and Gross, boutique literary agency.  I'd been perfectly happy just being the receptionist.  I managed to write a screenplay between answering the phone and doing "coverage" on scripts.  The screenplay, entitled The Secretary, was a "suspense-thriller-murder-mystery" very much inspired by Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren.  It was about a secretary, natch, who....what did she do?  She was involved in a murder and was having an affair with her boss.  It was fun.  Kind of campy.  It was concentrated effort to write a kind of movie that was extremely popular in the late 80's/early 90's: think Basic Instinct.  Every studio wanted a Basic Instinct.  As a matter of fact, right after I finished The Secretary, this movie came out:

So, I got zeitgeisted right down to the profession of the heroine. Sigh.
And speaking of temps; I myself was a temp after I got fired.  I may have actually been a Kelly girl! Why did I get fired, you ask?  Well, I was pressured to become an assistant agent to an agent who decided to push all of his work off on me.  I resented this and didn't do the work...so, there you go.  I didn't want to be an agent anyways.
​In any event, I wound up at the Glendale Federal Bank Loan File Vault.  Myself and three other people.  We could've been a sitcom ourselves.  Our job was to go through the loan files and check them for certain documents before refiling them.  It was mind-numbingly boring.  The four of us would chat all day.  It was me.  A girl named Jennifer.  A second young woman who had a very Eastern European name...I think it might've been "Ilka."  She was a female body-builder.  And then another guy whose name is lost to the mists of time.  He was your average Joe type; so let's call him "Joe."  He was very nice.
The loan file vault was two stories...oh my God, it's all coming back to me now.  It was a windowless room with a table and rows of ceiling to floor shelves, containing the files.  Of course, I was always trying to do anything but what I was being paid to do.  Lets just say my "yield" was a lot less than the other three kids.  Thank God we didn't have quotas.
One of the things I distracted myself with was "The Flight Simulator," which I concocted.  What you would do was plunk a co-worker into a rolling office chair, with all the electric fans on high and pointed at the chair.  Then, someone would flick the light-switch up and down real fast and then you would push your co-worker down the aisle of file shelves as fast as you could.  I could've done it all day!

As a matter of fact, the four of us got so off-topic (okay, maybe I dragged the other three off-topic) we ended up putting on a show at lunch-time one day.  It was called "The Glendale Federal Loan File Vault Follies."  I'm not making this up.  Initially an invitation only event, word spread like wild-fire, and other employees actually came to see the show.  Myself, Ilka and Jennifer sang "Sunshine Day" from the Brady Bunch.  The crowd loved it! We actually wore costumes. I'm not making this up.​

There were a lot of people like me temping there.  Jennifer was an aspiring screenwriter.  She actually ended up being Martin Short's assistant.  One of the guys there had won a Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship prize.  I just looked up Jennifer (her last name is Barrow) and I'm delighted to see that she went on to success as a writer.  Congrats Jennifer.  I knew you when!   
But back to Seinfeld.  One day the show came up in conversation.  I'd heard of it, of course, but had never seen it.  I wasn't watching much TV at the time.  Joe was enthusing about how much he enjoyed the show.  It was from him that I first heard the "It's a show about nothing!" bit.  I remember thinking..."How could it be a show about nothing.  Every show has to have a plot..."  In retrospect, I find that's it's not a show about "nothing."  It's a show about a lot of "somethings."  It's a show about complaining.  Complaining in a very specific way.  A very Jewish way.  They might've called the show ​KVETCH!
Now, as I'm 1% Jewish, I feel I can discuss the Jewishness of the show if not with authority; then at least a modicum of confidence.
So, TV has had a long history of Jewish characters/families/sitcoms/etc. which makes sense, since so many comedy writers, particularly in the early days of TV were Jewish.  Almost from day 1 of TV we had a sitcom about a Jewish family.  The Goldbergs.  Not to be confused with ABC's current The Goldbergs.  The original Goldbergs appeared in 1949 and ran for five seasons.  It's more or less forgotten now, lost to the mists of time (I've never come across a single episode and I watched/watch quite a bit of TV).  Then Bridget Loved Bernie (he was Jewish) and then Rhoda Morgenstern came along on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (she got a spinoff and she was Jewish).  Then, along came Fran Fine as The Nanny.  And of course, Seinfeld, which was about a Jewish guy and his gentile friends; but come on...they were all Jewish.  George and the Costanza family were supposed to be Italian(?), right...yada, yada, yada.  Kramer wasn't Jewish?  Yada, yada, yada.  Elaine was a "shiksa"?  Yada, yada, yada.  And of course, the current Goldbergs.  The thing that bugs me about these shows that feature Jewish characters is the nearly complete lack of Jewish culture and religion in the storylines.  I mean, I can recall the Goldbergs mentioning Hanukkah once in nine seasons.  Now, The Nanny actually got into Fran Fine's Jewish life, fairly regularly.  I can recall at least one episode being set in the temple she went to.  And it made that show better.  It enriched it.  Deepened it a little.  Sitcoms have a tendency to be a little on the shallow side.
And you probably couldn't have gotten more shallow than Seinfeld; which was one of the reasons I disliked it with such intensity when I finally watched it.  I decided to give it a chance after loved ones nearly berated me for not watching/loving it.  One day I was visiting my parents and my Dad said, "Find Seinfeld for me, will you..." as he offered me the remote.  "Seinfeld?" I scowled, "you watch Seinfeld?  Why?"  "I love it.  It's funny!"  This was a man who never watched sitcoms in his life.*  Now he was into Seinfeld?  What was happening?

Back in the day I couldn't get enough sketch comedy shows.  SNL, SCTV and even Fridays which was a blatant rip-off of Saturday Night.  Larry David was one of the writer/performers on that show.   Frankly, I don't really remember him on it.  But I do vividly remember Michael Richards on it; particularly because he took his shirt off a lot and he had a pretty hot bod.  His face, not so much; but sometimes that can be a very thirsty making combo: especially for a horny 14 year- old gay boy.

​Back in 1998, when I had moved back to Massachusetts from L.A. for a year, I went out one night to a bar called "Luxor."  It was a gay club, on the second floor of a restaurant.  It was the go-to gay "video bar."  Remember video bars?  You'd go to them and they'd play videos.  Music videos. A movie night.  And old clips and stuff.  It was kind of like Youtube, before there was Youtube; but with cocktails.  And cock(!).  Just kidding. It wasn't really that kind of bar.
So anyways, I go there on a Thursday night: May 14th, 1998 to be exact; and the place is packed.  "Hmmmmm," I wondered, "what's going on?"  There seemed to be the buzz of anticipation on the air.  People were excited about something.  And then I found out what.  Everyone was there to watch the finale episode of...you guessed it...Seinfeld.​
So, I threw my arms up, ordered a beer and watched.  When it ended, I thought: "Not only is this an awful television program; that was one of the worst episodes I've ever seen of any television show..."  Even the eager watchers around me seemed to be disappointed.  It wasn't until much later, when I knew more about the show, that I realized the disappointment was real.  Apparently even fans of the show hated the last episode.

So, flash forward twenty years or so.  My boyfriend (now husband) and I channel surfing through our terrible basic cable package trying to find something to watch.  I still abhor the show.  He's a long time fan.  However, it's on five days a week, numerous times a day on at least five different channels.  It's impossible to avoid.  "Just give it a chance..." he says.  So I give it a chance.  And then another chance.  And another.  But I STILL hate it.  Oh my God....that ridiculous theme and incidental music that sounds like a drunk circus clown wrote it.  Jerry's stupid cereal collection.  Elaine's mugging.  Jerry's mugging.  George's whining.  Kramer's everything.  The supporting characters that are brought on and are so clearly fodder for the supposed "nothing" plots.  Make it stop.  Make it STOP!
And then one episode had Patrick Warburton with his shirt off.  So I watched.

​Actually, I've yet to see this one!

So was it Warburton's "David Puddy" (as in "pud" the Yiddish(?) slang for dong; get it?) what finally hooked me?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I still actively disliked the show.  And then...about a year ago...I was channel surfing and there was nothing on (including? except?) but Seinfeld; so I watched.  And suddenly, it was like some veil was lifted.  I finally got it. I was finally finding it funny.  I don't know how it happened, because all the other opinions I held of the show were still firmly in place.  Had I come to realize on some subconscious level that the humor of Seinfeld was about the absurdity of life?  The possible meaninglessness of it? Was that the "nothing" that this show about nothing was about?
Was Seinfeld actually Waiting for Godot as a sitcom...or Sartre's No Exit?  Was it a kind of dark, dark, meta-textual gallows humor?  That all the Kvetching! was Rage! against the dying of the light?  Is that why the characters end up trapped in a jail cell, oblivious.  That it didn't matter because they were already trapped in Manhattan.  I mean if you think about it, Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer are stuck.  They never move forward.  They can't form successful partnerships.  They would rather find a great apartment than life partner.  They have no self-awareness of their emptiness.  Pretty heady for a sitcom.  I wonder if this was the original intention...and why people rejected that last episode.  Because, when you think about it; it's pretty bleak.  We want characters to find redemption; or at least some kind of emotional growth.  But not Seinfeld.  Which is perhaps what makes it a classic and so darkly funny.
So, could the four main characters of Seinfeld actually be archetypes, like say, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  I mean, there's a theory out there about Gilligan's Island: that the seven castaways actually represent the Seven Deadly Sins...

Gilligan: Gluttony
The Skipper: Wrath
The Professor: Pride
Mr. Howell: Greed
Mrs. Howell: Sloth
Mary Ann: Envy
Ginger: Lust

A very intriguing theory; and, if true, I can only think it is one of the reasons that show has had such longevity.  Did Sherwood Schwartz consciously plan it that way?  Who knows?
In any event...I now actively seek out Seinfeld to watch and laugh at (with?).  The show produced 180 episodes!  I've only, thus far, seen a fraction of them.  The show airs at 10 pm on my local CW affiliate.  For some reason, I only like to watch the show at night.  If it comes on during the day, I won't watch.  Why?  Who knows.  I'm weird.  I think I read somewhere that the rights to the show are split between two entities: someone has the rights to a certain batch of shows.  Which would explain why I've seen the two-part "Jerry's Pilot" episodes a dozen times thus far.  But it also means I have a lot of Seinfeldian shenanigans in my future.  Everything old is new again!
In my world, anyways.
It's a show about nothing!  NOTHING!  Can you believe that?  Nothing!
Yada, yada, yada.

*Maybe the occasional episode of All In the Family.

P.S.  I have to say that I do find Seinfeld more that a tad on the misogynistic side.  I mean, you could argue that the whole enterprise is misanthropic; so it includes women.  Yeah, you could.  But still, it seems to me that women get the much shorter shrift in the proceedings.  I mean we know Elaine (charming as she is) is pretty much a sociopath: that's a given.  But even the endless stream of Jerry and George and Kramer's "girlfriends" and office assistants and store clerks and female executives, ad infinitum...the female characters are almost always shrews or buffoons or harridans or connivers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Oh wait, there kind of is.

P.P.S. So, watching the show, I'm picking up a lot of faces from the Fridays cast.  Maryedith Burrell, for example.  Also, David Naughton, who once hosted Fridays.  Fridays was an ABC show.  Did ABC have David Naughton under some iron-clad contract? (Please see my blog: "Career Paths, Vicissitudes, Makin' It Or Not" from July 2021 for more info.).

​CFR 6/30/22

So this one works either backwards or forwards; but I'm gonna do it backwards.

Remember the opening of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus"?

When reading this, I ask you to hear it in the voice of the narrator from the song.  That's how seriously I want you to take it.

In 2015 I self-published my first novel: 83 In the Shade.
In 1973, Thomas McGuane published Ninety-two in the Shade.

Ninety-Two in the Shade was made into a movie in 1975.  It was directed by Thomas McGuane.  It starred Peter Fonda, Warren Oates and Margot Kidder.  Kidder and McGuane became romantically involved and had a daughter.

My favorite TV show in the late 70's was Soap.  One of its stars was Jennifer Salt, daughter of Waldo Salt, legendary screenwriter.

One of my all time favorite movies is 1978's Superman where I and the rest of the world fell in love with Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.

In the early 90's I found myself living in Los Angeles.  Through a friend in "the industry" I found myself at Greenblatt's Deli on Sunset, having a post-screening nosh with Margot and Jennifer, who, it turned out, were besties from back in the day.  They paid for dinner.  Thanks ladies! (I forget what the screening was).
Now, when I was trying to come up with the title for my book in 2015, I had never read or seen the movie version of Ninety-Two in the Shade.  But I must've come across it somewhere and it lodged in my brain.  So thank you, Mr. McGuane.
Margot and Jennifer were the stars of Sisters, Brian De Palma's first commercially successful film.

It was Brian De Palma who really piqued my interest in "the cinema."  Particularly Carrie which I first saw on network TV.  I was mesmerized by it.  And then I started watching his movies: the ones from the late 70's through the early 80's; which I consider his "golden" period.  Obsession, Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out.  Even Body Double. (I can't stand Scarface!).
And it was De Palma who put John Travolta in his first hit movie: Carrie.

And it was when John Travolta posed for the cover of Rolling Stone to promote Staying Alive, in 1983, that I found myself trekking to the local bookstore with someone I barely knew because he wanted to buy the magazine to oggle John.

And it was that event that inspired me to write my first novel.
So now I've written a sitcom pilot and one of the characters is a commercial airline pilot.  And John is licensed to fly a 737...just saying...
It's all connected.

CFR 6/11/22

When Diana Vreeland was the editor of Harper's Bazaar, she had a column (of advice, I suppose) entitled "Why Don't You?"  Her queries were entirely ridiculous; but I suppose that was the point.  Here's a good one: "Why don't you wash your blonde child's hair with dead champagne, to keep it gold, as they do in France?"
Really down to earth.
​So, since Ms. Vreeland is no longer with us, I have no qualms about ripping her off.  However, I'm just going to steal the "Why don't" part.  Putting the "you" pronoun, I think is a bit limiting.  But my first entry will be a "you" one. 
Here we go...

Why don't you put some gold leaf on your nipples and go to the grocers; purchase a turnip, return home, cook and mash the vegetable and involve it in a sitz bath?

Well, why don't you?

Cat Grand-mom:

Now that I have your attention...
That's Nichole Hiltz again.
And here she is when she was in Off Hollywood (Bottom row, first on the left):

Nichole was the cat-mom from whom I received a pair of kittens; a tabby and black.  I presented them as a present to my boyfriend who had just moved in with me.  It was an apartment on Franklin Ave. in Hollywood...that didn't allow pets.  I knew it was a matter of time before we were found out; because we had one of those kind of neighbors on the first floor.  We were on the second.
Anyways...here's one of the first photos of Paco and Frances:

Everybody poops!

So, the pair were at Franklin long enough to grow up.  And, as cats are prone to do, sit and look out windows.  We also had a small balcony which Frances particularly enjoyed.  She fell off of it a couple times (it wasn't that far to the ground).  And of course, our nosey neighbor happened to have a parking space right below our balcony.  So, it wasn't long before he took notice of the cats and even less time to rat us out.

But FATE intervened.  Because we were found out about the cats and told it was "us or them" by the manager of the building, I ended up in my first house in Los Angeles.  My boyfriend (now husband) is a Man of Action.  When my roommate at the Franklin Ave. Apartment left and left me high and dry; my boyfriend said: "Why don't I just move in?"  So, he did.  Then when the cat ultimatum was laid down, he said: "Why don't we buy a house?"  I looked at him.  "You mean, you buy a house..."  So, he did.  And we all moved in together.  When I think about it, those cats and Ms. Hiltz influenced my life, Big Time.  And it's a wonder we had Paco for his entire natural lifespan.  He was always getting out of the house and exploring our North Hollywood neighborhood.  It's really not a good idea to let your cat out when you live in a big city.  There's so much that can go wrong.  But that's true of anywhere.  One night, here in the Southwest, Virginia woods, Paco didn't come home.  I put out a notification on the neighborhood watch email chain and got a response almost immediately.  He was up in a tree, a block away.  He was safely retrieved.  I often wonder how he got up in that tree.  He must've been chased by some apex predator.  

The above is Paco when he was much older.  His eyesight was starting to go, thus the hugely dilated pupils.


To be continued...

PLEASE NOTE:  This blog is more of a therapeutic piece of writing to help me get out of a downward spiral.  It's kind of a bummer: so, if you're looking for fresh, fabulous, fun-loving Chris; you might want to skip it.  Look instead for my next Cat-A-Blog entry.

So, I stayed in bed until 3pm today.  You may ask why.  Why Chris?  Why did you stay in bed until 3pm today?  Because I was hiding.
Hiding from what Chris?
Personal demons.
Personal demons?
Well, you see, I take Zoloft for anxiety and OCD and now as I've gotten older I've developed nasal allergies which make me snore; so now I take Claritin to combat the congestion.  Apparently, when Zoloft and Claritin get together, they form some kind of hallucinogenic.  So my sleep was troubled by bizarre waking dreams and then when I fell asleep, actual nightmares.

Melatonin can also create a sort of unwanted LSD micro-dose kind of experience.  I discovered that nicotine can abate the problem.  I haven't had a cigarette since last October.  Luckily, I had some nicotine pills (from one of my numerous attempts to kick the habit) and it helped immensely.  But it couldn't help some of the over-reaching angst of the last week or so.
Chris, you ask, what "over-reaching angst" do you speak of?
Well, how about the deaths of some thirty-odd people including fourth graders in mass-murder gun violence?  How about seeing a bumper-sticker on an Escalade of "Co-Exist" being spelled out in fire-arms? 

How about living in a world where somebody can put a bumper sticker on their car like that, right next to their NRA sticker?
I also have a problem with rabbit holes.
What is your problem with rabbit holes, Chris?
I sometimes get on the web and delve into some dark topic, like a conspiracy theory, say.  Or like a creepy true-crime case or whatever...and then I get sucked into it and freak myself out and put myself in a days long funk.  Like my latest one.
What is your latest "funk" about Chris?
Japanese War Atrocities.
What on Earth are you talking about Chris?
You don't want to know.
I can take it.
​Can you?
Yes, I think I can.  But let's back up and start at the beginning.  What happened?
Well, I was looking at my email and then some threads about narcissism on Quora.  I scrolled down.  There was a topic line:  "Here's a historical fact you might not know about!" and below that was a black and white picture.  I peered at it.  Wait, is that a man being beheaded by another man with a sword?  Why yes, it appears to be exactly that.  And then I read on.  And on.  And on.  I will not go into any more detail about what I read.  If you're interested, start with a search of "Unit 731" or "The Nanjing Massacre." Proceed with caution.  You can't unread it.
Now, I have been a Japonophile since childhood.  I have always dreamed of visiting the land of cherry blossoms, Buddha statues and bright red pagodas.  And as an adult: the food: sushi, sake, sashimi.  Karaoke.  Anime...not so much.  Mt. Fuji. Godzilla. Bullet trains. Sliding paper doors.  Rice mats.  To say there were some "historical facts" I didn't know about is an under-understatement.  I mean, I'm not naive.  I know the Japanese did some terrible things during wartime.  Every country does terrible things during wartime.  And this is not some diatribe about the Japanese.  I'm just reeling about some information that I did not know about.  Shocking information.  I think I'm not just shocked; but shocked that I could be this shocked.  And surprised.  Like, how did I not know about any of this.  Why am I just finding out about it at the half a century plus six mark?

Well, in great part because it was hidden from me.  Hidden from me by my own government.  My government that wanted to put Japan in its plus column and proceeded to put forth propaganda under the guise of cultural largesse.  Why else did I have an entire study unit devoted to Japan when I was in the second grade?  There was certainly no German study unit.

1948: Gee, isn't Japan swell!

One of my first reports in grade school was about Japan.  I still have it.  I'll post some pics of it later.
So that's it.  I've vented and I have to say I feel better.  Do I still want to visit Japan?  You know what?  I'm not sure.  Learning what I recently learned, it has changed my thinking about the culture.  It's made me question my relationship; my feelings about Japan.  If I win a trip there on a gameshow, yeah, I'll go.  But I'm not going to put a visit on my bucket-list anytime soon.
Well, I couldn't find my report from the second grade on Japan.  It's not where I thought it was; but it's around here somewhere.  I just want to reiterate that my feelings are not anti-Japanese or anti-Asian.  I just felt a need to express my profound disappointment with humanity.  That human beings can do shit like death camps and human experimentation.  Humanity has a long history of the cruel and unusual.  And it's easy to say that, well...that's the past.  Or that our barbarism is behind us.  But I think it's also important to remember that these particular atrocities happened historically recently.  I mean, these things happened in my parent's lifetimes and my parents are both still alive.  I think we need to be vigilant in seeing that these things don't happen again.  Because, sadly, we know they can and probably will.
What's happening now.  We're sending our children to school where they have to learn "active shooter drills."  There are people...our politicians...advocating the arming of teachers.  Have our schools not become death camps?  Is what we are doing to our children psychologically by forcing them to live with the threat of gun violence not cruel and unusual.
​Is that not barbaric?

CFR June 6, 2022

I will be giving away copies of my novel 83 In the Shade, (signed by moi) for several readers to kick off their summer reads!  Why, it's literally got a beach on the cover!  

It's really interesting to me to see what people gravitate to when they look at my blogs.  I mean, somebody out there is reading this because there seems to be an "internet footprint."  Apparently, the Renuzit Roommate commercials that I featured in my blog about New York City are one of those gravitation points.  I posted two of the commercials; but there were more.
As you may recall, our nameless, fresh-air obsessed hunk, played by Mr. Craig Stepp, has moved a new roommate into his apartment.  He's stoked because this time, "it's gonna last a long, long time..." between him and his new "roommate."  But in the next commercial, it seems his new roommate is a bit of a slut:

I mean, like, what were they going for here?
It appears as though he's caught his "roommate" in flagrante delicto.  "Don't you ever quit?!!?"  Quit what?  Is his roommate having an affair?  And then he seems kinda turned on by being cuckolded by his air freshener.
Then there was a fourth commercial!

I guess the novelty of being cuckolded by his cute roommate wore off, so he got another one.  And can you blame him?
This campaign must've sold a lot of air freshener because the fine folks at Renuzit were at it again in the 20-tens with this print campaign:

I don't know, I prefer the 80's version.  They managed to make a little mini-series with those four spots.  I would actually watch a show about a man and his relationship with an inanimate object.  I mean, it worked for Tom Hanks!  Who doesn't love Wilson the Volley ball?

And I'm happy to report that Mr. Craig Stepp is alive and well and I assume, smelling sweet.  And giving off a lot of silver daddy hotness.  I'd be his roommate in a heartbeat!

Oh, it's gonna last a long, long time...

CFR 5/27/22

So, yesterday I met the cast of Rumors for the first time at a private home at Smith Mountain Lake.  It was not for the first read-through of the play, as you might expect; but rather for a crash-course in "Improv."  Yes, it was an acting class/improv workshop, taught by a gentleman by the name of Matt Karris (generally, I will not supply last names, to protect people's privacy, however, Mr. Karris is a teacher and actor and more or less a public figure, so I will give you his name, and his pic).  Here he is:

Now, this is the man I met.  He was wearing a ball cap; but I'm 99 and 44/100ths percent sure this is Mr. Karris.  However, when I looked him up on line, I found pictures of him without a beard and he looks like a different person.  I mean, like another person.  Somebody else.

Now, would you think these two men were even related, let alone the same person​?
It really is sort of amazing how much facial hair and hairstyles can completely change how you look.  Also, he's an actor, so I think he just naturally has that "chameleon" thing that so many actors do.  In any event, this was the fellow who was teaching the class.
Now, generally, when I hear the word "improv" I start grinding my teeth and looking for the nearest exit.  Improv, it always seemed to me, attracted the most attention seeking "LOOK AT ME!!!" kind of thespians.  Those that are the most in need of being in the spotlight.  The show-offs, right?  Like that show Whose Line Is It Anyways?  I would rather swallow a handful of thumbtacks than watch that show.  When I lived in Los Angeles people were always ​enthusing over The Groundlings.  "Oh, The Groundlings, this" and "The Groundlings that" and "Oh, have you auditioned for The Groundlings?" "They don't let just anyone in you know!"  The Groundlings could go eat my--shorts, as far as I was concerned.

My thought was, "why the F do I need a school to tell me I have a sense of humor and then pay them for it?"
Needless to say, I was never in an improv class.  Until yesterday that is.  And I didn't want to do it.  Really.  I really didn't.  But I'm glad I did.
And I'll tell you why...
So, I have a bit of a reputation for being late.  I know it's not cool.  I know other actors frown upon it.  "You're being late to rehearsal is a sign of disrespect for everyone else!  You're sending the message that your time is more important..." And so on and so on.  I'm never really more than fifteen minutes late.  And it's not always.  But once I'm there I will rehearse my ass off for you.  I will give you my all.  I will know my lines (by opening night, anyways) and I will work with other actors.  Even actors who think they're better; the ones who may even be openly antagonistic or passive/aggressive.  Those types fascinate me.  They also make me a better actor.  Sometimes you have to act around those people: it's a challenge.  Those people, ironically, bring out my milk of human kindness (ewww). 
So, when I first met the director, Nancy, at her house at the lake, I literally ended up at the lakeside.  The road I was on finally ran out.

So, I called her and she redirected me and I was about ten minutes late.  Yesterday, I was looking for a neighborhood off of this same road and I ended up at the same dead end.  My phone rang.  It was Nancy.  She asked me why I wasn't at the improv.  I explained that I'd ended up in the same place.  I had driven right by the turn.  I was ten minutes late again.  I was starting to think that Nancy might think I was a blithering idiot.  And who could blame her?  Ever hear of GPS Chris?  But, I like to do things the old fashioned way.  Or the hard way, if you will.
So, when I finally arrived, I was escorted down to the basement of the house.  It was quite a large space and I believe it's going to be where most of the rehearsal are taking place.  Matt was seated on a sofa facing the cast who were seated in a semi-circle.  It was a, shall we say, mature cast, as I had expected it would be.  But then, I'm no Spring chicken.  I'm 56 and most of the rest of the players skewed about ten years older than me.  One person is probably half my age.  Wendy, who is playing my wife in the play is about the same age as me, as is (I'm guessing) Matt.
As I entered and sat down the class was in progress and Matt was going over some of the basic tenets of improv and acting in general.  With a focus on Meisner techniques: e.g. repetition and improvisation.

One of the exercises was an interaction between two actors.  One asks a question of the other and the other responds with another question and so on.  I was partnered with a lady, I'll call her Monica.  So I went first.  The first thing that popped into my head.  So I asked: "Did you see the news today?"  And then she said something like, "What was on the news today?" and then I said, "Do you watch Fox News?" and then she said  something else and then I said "Do you watch Fox News?" with a little more emphasis, which I hadn't intended, perhaps accusatory?  And then I thought, Oh shit, this lady is gonna think I think she's like a MAGA person and I'm being confrontational. I mean, a lot of people around here are total Trumpers, especially rich white people at the lake. I realized that this improv stuff was kind of on the raw side.  Like a little dangerous.  Matt explained "The Cinderella Complex."  That is when people are too polite during these exercises and it keeps them from getting to the nitty-gritty.  He mentioned some of the things people had said to him during "The Blue Shoes" exercise.  The Blue Shoes exercise is when you sit facing someone and then you use a two-word phrase based on some aspect of their person, like, "nice shirt."  Then the other person repeats "nice shirt" as accurately as they heard it.  And back and forth.  But you're supposed to inform the two-word phrase with an opinion or implication or subtext.  When I did it, my partner was an older gentleman with gorgeous brown eyes.  So I said, "brown eyes" and it became clear in the repetition that I liked his brown eyes and he liked them too and liked that I noticed them.  It started to get really intimate, really fast.  This man could've been my Dad. Matt had received some rather personal and insulting two-word phrases.  I suppose when The Cinderella Complex wears off, some actors would be willing to say anything to "get to the truth."  But that's where I draw a line.  Insulting people in the name of art, I think, could never be a good thing.  Unless they work at Fox News.  I'd love to play Blue Shoes with Laura Ingraham.  My two word phrase for her would be: "Dead Eyes."

But, let's not dwell on the negative.
So, we finally moved on to actual, classic improv scenes, where Matt provided the suggestion and then pairs of actors took it from there.  It was fascinating to watch.  Really interesting to see who excelled at it and who sort of had The Cinderella Complex.  One of the suggestions was: "You're the CEO of a TV news station and you're firing your anchor because she slept with your son...and go..."  So, the gentleman playing the CEO was a natural.  He immediately started spinning this elaborate scenario of what happened between his son and the anchorwoman.  It was also hilarious.  During the initial exercises, however, he had been having the most problems and seemed the most closed off.  Which kind of made me think about the idea of teaching acting.  Is it really something that can be taught?  Or do you just either have the talent or you don't?  And things like Meisner and The Method and Improvisation are really just pointers?

I'm not sure.  Some actors, like Jodie Foster, say they don't believe in acting classes because they don't want to mess with the gift they know they already have.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?  Michelle Pfeiffer was being interviewed by James Lipton and he brought up improv.  She scowled and admitted she hated it.  She prefers to just be given a script, memorize the lines and then go and play the part.  I'm kind of on the fence.  I've been to acting classes and watched people do scenes and then the instructor gives notes and invariably there is improvement.  I think acting classes and improv exercise do help actors to break the ice with one another.  It helps the cast bond.  At the very least, it helps a group of strangers be more comfortable with one another and thus be able to get to more "truth" on the stage.  Whatever that is.  I mean, how much "truth" could there be in a glib Neil Simon comedy?  And I say "glib" because he is.  Neil Simon wants to get laughs and not a lot more.  But is there not a lot of "truth" in what makes us laugh?
So, I was paired with a woman (not "Monica" this time!) and Matt took me aside and whispered the prompt.  "You can't contain you guilt any longer and confess to her that you were the one that stabbed her cat..."
So, I walked over and told her that I'd killed her cat and then she demanded to know why I did it.  And it spiraled out from there.  I hated cats, you see, I was compelled to stab the cat and leave it on the driveway.  She was going to call the police and I told her that she couldn't.  She wanted to know why.  "Because I'm your son!" I cried.  And then I started wondering to myself, being a cat lover, why I would ever stab a cat.  Because they haunt my dreams, you see, like some demon cat from a Poe story. One that keeps meowing and meowing!  That devil cat that must be silenced!!!

So, I really wasn't all that surprised that I took to improv like a cat takes to catnip.

So, I'm playing "Ken Gorman."  He's a lawyer.  He and his wife "Chris" are the first on stage.  They arrive at the home of their friends Charley and Myra for a tenth anniversary dinner.  Myra and the servants are missing and Charley is in the bedroom with a gunshot wound to his earlobe.  Ken orchestrates a cover-up, not wanting news of this attempted suicide(?) to get out.  Of course, when the other guests start arriving, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the ruse.  Hilarity (hopefully) will ensue.  The role of Chris Gorman won Christine Baranski a Tony.  My role was originally played by Mark Nelson.

I would say that myself and Mr. Nelson are quite similar types.  Of course, my ears are smaller and my nose is more subtle; but same general ball park.  Online info about him is sparse, but there's no mention of a wife...hmmmm.  He's a Libra.  I get along really well with Libras.
Anyways, I play much of the show not being able to hear anything, so there's a lot of misunderstanding what people are saying bits.  There is also a two-page speech towards the end of the show, which, thankfully, I do not have to deliver.
So, tonight we're blocking the first scene.  I hate blocking right out of the gate.  I have a terrible short term memory.  Oh well.
I'll keep you posted with further developments.
Ciao for now.
CFR 5/25/22