Here's hoping these links actually work. Lord only knows if anyone will be able to see some of them as I yanked the URL's off Facebook.

This is how I spent my last Friday. Talking Shakespearian to strangers. I kicked off the day by insulting the entire WGN morning news team, then hit the streets with the other Will's, then over to WBBM radio for an interview, then up to the Water Tower area followed by a Trib reporter, then the Hancock followed by Daley Plaza. My buddy Dan was posting photos all day from his iPhone as we made out way through the city. They're on the Chicago Shakespeare page on Facebook. Now if I could just get them to let me perform inside the building.

Tags: acting, shakespeare
Current Mood: exhausted

Poking around on Google Analytics, I found that all the recent hits on my website were from Brazil.

I have no explanation for this, save perhaps that Rio wanted to hire the other David Wilhelm to lobby the IOC.

Tags: acting, website
Current Mood: curious

Monday morning, and it's cold in the office. I'm guessing it's because the heat goes off at night to save on energy, which makes sense. However, it makes my already gaffe-prone fingers shake over the keyboard, increasing errors and upping my stress level. It also drives me to drink more coffee, something I'm loathe to do both because I quit the stuff last summer because I was drinking way too much of it and having gone through the whole detox thing with the shakes, headaches, and exhaustion, I hate the idea that I've backslid to become dependent on a chemical again. Also the coffee isn't very good.

Lately, I've come to find my inability to write anything frustrating. At the end of the day, after work, hitting the gym, cooking dinner, doing the dishes (I often forget I have a dishwasher in the new apartment, having been here only a week), and preparing my lunch for the following day, I have little interest in doing anything besides shooting imaginary zombies on my 360, or some other ballistic target deemed socially acceptable by the moral code imposed by the game. Free will my ass. If you don't want to get shot, then do not stand in front of the man with the automatic weapon. At some point I feel these MPC's have had their chance and need to accept responsibility for their actions. If a man in a firefight dings your car and your response is to run up and take a swing at him, then you deserve the bullet-riddling you are about to receive and I, the player, should not be punished for giving you what you deserve. But no. Instead, I wind up having to off half the police department and set a major downtown intersection on fire before I can leave the area in my stolen tank. Some people just don't think.

My point is, as entertaining as digital anti-social mayhem can be, it's not terribly productive and I feel lazy when another day has gone by and I haven't produced anything. I feel about writing much the way I do about acting. I'm sure I could do it, and well at that, if I could just find someone to pay me. Problem is, I have to do loads of it for free first, all while doing what people are willing to pay me for, which isn't much. So far, the only financially remunerative thing I've found is monitoring the slow degradation of my own soul, though most job adverts call these, "Administrative/Clerical" positions. Sadly, this appears to be all I'm qualified for. I try to look into taking classes, obtaining some more marketable job skills, but classes cost money, which I don't have because I can't get a better job, which I can't do because I lack any skills because I can't take classes because I don't have money...and so on.

I've become part of a theatre company, the American Demigods, founded by my friend Rory. He's written a number of things and directed me in the past. For reasons that remain unclear to me, he has an extraordinarily high opinion of my acting abilities. He'll be directing the next show I'm in, Monks in Trouble. It's a brilliant show and I encourage everyone to see it. At any rate, I now find myself charged with the job of promoting this theatre company and helping to set up its website, something that adds to my stress and work load, especially since it's all very committee-based. I'm hesitant to do anything without approval from the rest of the board since I didn't start this project. In short, it's not my baby, and I don't feel right teaching it to walk. That's for its parents to do.

On the rare occasions I do write anything, I have a hard time joining it up with the other things I've written. I'll have several plot points, but I won't know where the story is going nor how the points link together. I've got a beginning and an ending as well as several points in between. But I'm at a complete loss for how it all fits together. And while I usually like puzzles, you know looking at one that there is a solution and that if you stare long enough, you will find it. Here, the project is more akin to having a box full of puzzle pieces, some stuck together, some not, some, possibly, from one or more different puzzles than the one you're working on. Unfortunately, you have no idea what the picture looks like as you've lost the box top, so there's no help there. You have to squint at the colors and shapes of the pieces and try to work out which of the thousand bits you can use. And when you're done, the picture could prove to be very ugly, say, one of those weeping clowns, or very boring, say, anything by Georgia O'Keefe. So now you've worked for ages on this thing that turns out to be a giant yak skull on a pile of sand. It's not a very interesting yak skull and the sand is a particularly distasteful shade of yellow. Congratulations. You've invested all your hope and energy into something you're going to throw out.

It all reminds me of something Hunter S. Thompson wrote. "Every now and then you run up on one of those days when everything's in vain....a stone bummer from start to finish; if you know what’s good for you, on days like these you sortof hunker down in a safe corner and watch. Maybe think a bit." I find I have more and more of these days lately.

I just got my flu shot. I find a part of myself hoping I get the flu so I can take a few days sick leave. Given the choice, I'd rather be at home curled up under the covers wishing I were dead that feeling the same sentiment while sitting at my desk.

Tags: personal life, work, writing
Current Mood: frustrated

My old and dear friend Mike Klaas has a photo in the finals of a competition over at Panda'sThumb. It's called Painted Hills and it's really impressive.

If you have a minute, do me a favor and vote for it. You don't have to register for anything or even give an e-mail address. Just go there, pick the photo, and click "Vote."

Thanks.

Current Mood: hopeful

So some Canadian guy was auctioning off an Xbox 360 signed by Sarah Palin. I was going to post a link to it, but in the last five minutes, literally while I was writing that last sentence, it was pulled down. So here's the page cached on Google. That's right. He was asking $1.1 million dollars and had one bidder. Not sure who it was, but I'm guessing it was his mom as the buyer had almost no bid history.

In my search for the item, though, it led me to this piece of genius. A "replica" of the signed Sarah Palin Xbox 360, "Guaranteed not to quit for two years." The Question and Answer section is particularly entertaining, including this exchange.

Q: YOU HACK! GET YOUR OWN IDEA YOU UNORIGINAL BASTARD! HOW BOUT I MAKE A REPLICA OF YOUR REPLICA. WAY TO KEEP IT CREATIVE. HERES AN IDEA, Y DON;T U GET AN ORIGINAL NINTENDO AND GET IT SIGNED BY DICK CHANEY. YOU HOMO

A: I wholeheartedly appreciate your fervor! If I receive no bids, I will certainly contact you first when I repost this item! A few side notes: 1. The ; key is located to the left of the ' key on most U.S. keyboards. 2. Dick Cheney (not Chaney) refused to sign my Nintendo Entertainment System. This is a sore point for me; I have birdshot in my chest as a result of asking him. 3. Your use of "homo" as a pejorative leads me to believe you are a "very special person" thus I'll include a copy of "Viva Pinata Party Animals" if you are the winning bidder.

This auction probably amuses me a lot more than it should, but I don't care. Linking politics and gaming, this hits right in the central nexus of my Venn Diagram of Personal Geekdom.

Tags: humor, politics
Current Mood: amused

That'd be a good name for a blog of some kind, if it's not already taken. Maybe I'll start it. I've been writing political satire for a site called The Daily Blank. Unfortunately, they seem disinclined to post anything I write in a timely fashion, and as such, I am left with a load of jokes no one will ever read, at least, while they're still topical. Seriously, the only thing they've posted was a draft I saved and never published. I left it as a draft with good reason, specifically, I didn't think it was done. So I think I'm going to start cross-posting it here. It'd be nice if I could just post a link to the article on their website, but since they haven't posted anything I've written, there's nothing for me to link to.

For those of you outside Chicago, here is the story that started this.

Horizon Group to Sue Estimated 5,000 Bloggers & Commenters

Recently, Horizon Realty Group made headlines when it sued former tenant Amanda Bonnen for a tweet that suggested her apartment had mold in it. Now Horizon his amping up its campaign against its growing negative image.

In papers filed today with Cook County Circuit Court, the company filed defamation charges against an estimated 5,000 bloggers, twitterers, and internet commenters, many identified only by their screen names. "I said it before and I'll say it again," stated Jeff Michael of Horizon. "We're a sue first and ask questions later kind of organization."

The court papers stipulated that the accused had referred to both Horizon's apartments and management in disparaging terms on a number of public forums including Digg, Reddit, Buzz, Facebook, and Fark as well as the previously cited Twitter.

James Sawyer of Rockford was surprised to find himself among the accused. "A friend of mine posted the story on Facebook," said Sawyer. "I saw a couple of their places when I started at Columbia and I mentioned that I thought they were kind of kitch."

Responding to Sawyer's remarks, Michael said, "Horizon prides itself on the modern and up-to-date apartments it offers. To suggest that any of our properties are 'kitch' damages our image."

Other cases were more abstract. One defendant, named in documents only as "monkeydude69," referred to Horizon as, "a bunch of jerks, corprate suits (sic), and hose-beasts."

"While it's true many of us wear suits," said Michael, "none of us are hose-beasts. And I have sworn affidavits from our friends and significant others stipulating that we are not jerks."
Michael defended the new wave of lawsuits arguing, "Horizon has a good reputation in this town that we want to preserve it. Our lawsuit aims to stop those people who are ruining our reputation." No word yet on whether Horizon will be suing itself on the same grounds.

Tags: satire
Current Mood: listless

Admittedly, I've done a lousy job of keeping this thing current in any sense.  So, here's some bullet points.

At this point, I've been seeing my girlfriend Lisa for longer than I've ever managed to date someone without screwing things up or getting dumped.  I feel pretty good about the whole thing.  We've talked about moving in together, but I don't much want to move again this year.  I'm thinking about it, but neither of us wants to rush anything.

Bad Guys In Suits finished it's run at the Apollo Studio in Chicago where we sold out 7 out of 8 shows.  We did one show in Iowa at the Des Moines Social Club.  The theatre had 100 seats in it.  The final house number was around 160.

I'm working on a new show called Yellow, an original work set to go up at Gorilla Tango in August.  After much work and some rewrites it's looking much better.

I finally finished building the computer I started a year ago.  I am pleased with it.  It works.  It is awesome.

Driving out to my parents' house I went past my high school.  The big light-up sign in the parking lot informed me that my ten year high school reunion was coming up and where I could go for more information.  The website noted gave me details of the Class of '89's 20 Year Reunion.  Nothing on the class of '99.  I feel pretty ambivalent on the subject.  On the one hand there are a few people I'd like to see and several I still hear from now and then that it would be nice to see face-to-face and if you're reading this then I'm probably talking about you.  On the other hand, I'm not really motivated to do much lately. There's the district website which has no information on it, and there's a Facebook page for the event, though there's no date and no location.  Just a long series of comments each as inane or idiotic as the last.  The only vaguely-intelligent one that stands out read, "Wow...were we always this disorganized?"

I'm running a 6k in just under 2 weeks.  It's called the Warrior Dash.  There's a pretty cool interactive map on the site.  It's a 3k run followed by a 3k obstacle course.

I'm planning to take classes at Act One Studios this fall in voiceover and I want to take aerial classes again at the Actor's Gym.  I'm hoping to find the time to work on my poi skills and to get back into the habit of fire eating as it's been a while since I did that.

I hate my job.  Really.  It makes me fantasize about the prospect of getting hit by a car as broken bones would be preferable to this job.  I work in human resources.  I do office work, maintaining the moderately-sized yet complex bureaucracy that constitutes my department.  The benefits are good, the pay is not great, the job is terrible.  People tell me I'm lucky, that at least I have a job.  I liken this to being kicked in the face repeatedly by an angry man and, upon stating how unpleasant it is, to be told, "Hey, it could be worse.  He could be kicking you in the balls."  And while that's a valid point, it doesn't take away from the fact that I'm being kicked in the face.

In this atmosphere, it's hard to motivate myself to do much at the end of the day.  I don't write as much as I'd like to.  I don't read plays as much as I should.  I have more ideas than I have words to express them, and I can't find the will to find the words.

Tags: personal life, theatre, update
Current Mood: confused

I'm not going to make any jokes on that front, about how conservatives have swung so luddite they can't run a simple search on Urbandictionary.com to work out why everyone keeps snickering every time they talk about how badly they want to teabag Obama.  The irony that a traditionally homophobic movement is inadvertently invoking homoerotic imagery is sufficiently delicious to let me forget for the moment that I hate my job and have no prospects for the future as a direct result of their own selfish greed.  Ignorant shits.  But I digress.

Instead, this is meant to be a brief history lesson.  It seems fitting that Republicans should be in need of a history lesson as they have, again, traditionally, opposed funding public education, particularly since Reagan eviscerated civics and history classes on the grounds that the teachers, union members so they must be communists, were indoctrinating children in evil liberal ideas found in things like, say, the Constitution or, God help us, the Declaration of Independence.  You'll see this meme trotted out today against "liberal" college professors.

In the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, conservatives are holding tea parties across the country, and Fox News will be there as everyone drink the Kool-Aid - er, tea and protests the Obama tax plan...the one that cut taxes for 95% of Americans.  So they're all in a huff about taxes not getting cut for the richest 5%, which is, yet again, ironic, because the original Boston Tea Party was a protest against a tax cut for rich corporations, or rather, one rich corporation.  Specifically, the East India Tea Company.

Way back when, most areas had their own mom and pop style tea shop.  Larger areas might even have a couple of them.  When you ran out of tea, you went down to the tea shop and bought more.  Under the Tea Act of 1773, a tax was levied on all tea sold in the colonies.  However, in an effort to help the East India Tea Company, the British gave them an exemption from the tax.  Now the small tea sellers were doing a fair amount of business in non-British tea, be it grown in the colonies or imported by independent procurers (whom the British dubbed smugglers).  This was due in part to anti-British sentiment already stirring in the colonies as well as the fact that the East India Company's tea was more expensive.

After they got this exemption, however, they were able to sell their tea at below market value, a move that threatened to drive all small producers and distributors out of business, much like what Wal-Mart does today.  This engraged those colonists who took part in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.  The participants who engaged in what was seen as an act of vandalism, by the both the Brittish and the company, swore an oath of secrecy.  As such, there is only one written account of the events that took place, recorded by George Hewes many years later.  The account he wrote and the resulting book has been out of print for some time, possibly because the title was the wholly unmarketable, A Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party, with a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes, A Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773.  However, someone has taken the time to digitize a copy, available for free via Google Books.

To all the teabaggers, have fun at your party.  When you get home, read a book.

Tags: history, politics, teabagging
Current Mood: amused

It’s late and I‘m short on time. So here’s a quick list of my Oscar picks this year.

Best Actor: Micky Rourke, The Wrestler
The buzz sounds like it’s Rourke vs. Penn who was phenomenal as Harvey Milk. But Penn already has an Oscar which makes it a lot less likely they’ll give it to him. Also, Michy Rourke is astounding as past-his-prime wrestler Randy “The Ram.”

Best Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Six nominations and no Oscar. They’re going to give it to her or this will be a huge upset.

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Even though he deserves it, they never would have nominated him if he hadn’t died. Nor would they have given it to him. The Academy are a load of nose-in-the-air dicks when it comes to comic book movies, which, in their mind, are only eligible for technical awards.

Best Supporting Actress: Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt’s double nomination in this category will split the vote for the film. Also, I know no one who saw Vicky Christina Barcelona, and this is the film’s only nomination, which rules out Cruz. As for Marissa Tomei, I didn’t think her performance was that astounding. She deserves some credit for being very natural and at home on camera while wearing roughly two square feet of clothing for much of the film, and while she’s recently hit forty-four years old, she still in amazing shape, so I don’t giver her nearly the credit I do to someone like, say, Kathy Bates in About Schmidt.

Best Film: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
If you haven’t seen it there is nothing I can say to drive home what an astounding film this is. Moving, funny, beautiful, it fully deserves to win.

Best Animated Film: WALL-E
This was a brilliant film. I didn’t see Bolt, but I can’t imagine what it would do to beat WALL-E. Kung-Fu Panda is just too silly to win regardless of its merits.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Frost/Nixon
This is the only adaptation for which I’m familiar with the original. I found this somewhat more compelling than the original. Don’t really know what else to say.

Best Original Screenplay: In Bruges
Moving, hilarious, violent. Go see this. Seriously. Now goddamn you!

Best Animated Short: La Maison en Petits Cubes

Best Live Short: Speilzeugland

Best Art Direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Costume Design: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Documentary: Encounters at the End of the World

Best Documentary (Short): The Conscience of Nehm En

Best Film Editing: The Dark Knight

Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz with Bashir

Best Makeup: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
For the record, this should go to Hellboy II without question. Fuck you making Brad Pitt look old. They made horns grow out of Ron Fucking Pearlman!

Best Original Score: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Song: WALL-E
Slumdog Millionaire will split the vote and WALL-E will take a plurality.

Best Sound Editing: The Dark Knight

Best Sound Mixing: The Dark Knight

Best Visual Effects: The Dark Knight

UPDATE: 12 out of 24. 50% is my average.

Tags: oscars
Current Mood: cynical

As a rule, I hate Valentine's Day. It's another point in the year that exists only to remind me of all that I've failed to accomplish over the last 365 days, much like New Year's and my birthday. Usually I'm single and thus irritated by the opportunity the world takes to grind its heel on the salt it just jammed into a gaping flesh wound. A regular sex life and a better apartment isn't enough? You need a whole day to point out how much better than the rest of us you self-absorbed fuckers are? This year, however, I am seeing someone, with whom I'm very happy. I mention this, not to rub it in, but to provide proper context for what follows.
Sitting and watching some movie or another, she asks if I had any plans for Valentines Day. I say I don't really have anything in mind, at which point she throws out the greatest declarative sentence a woman has ever said to me. "I think Valentine's Day is 95% bullshit."
Even in the context of a relationship, Vaneltine's Day feels neutral, rather than a positive thing. The only people who are really getting a buzz off it are the sort of supercilious pricks who get upset when someone breaks out the dead baby jokes. Or just a dead baby. Either one. Fuckers.
So I'm proposing that everyone celebrate Valentine's Day the way it was originally celebrated. Get a bunch of friends together, find a Christian, drag them out into the street, beat him senseless with sticks, and cut their head off.

Current Mood: evil