Monthly Archives: July 2023

Simply the Best Man

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I met Shane in 1992, and he was a year and a half older than me. I quickly looked up to him as a mentor. My senior year of high school was full of a lot of new and old friends and adventures, but sitting in his studio apartment while he painted, and chatting and bullshitting was probably the highlight.

When I moved New York adjacent, he was there for the first several months. He showed me around, including a method of buying weed that landed us in the middle of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Youth March. While I taught myself how to draw, he was my biggest cheerleader, and the first person to call me an artist.

He and his family moved upstate, which is where I spent my three-day weekends, working on two screenplays, one of which was lost to poor archiving and a then-sixteen-pound Newcastle sitting on my laptop. The other was completed, and because it was absurdly long, he and I spent a week last summer lengthening it into a five-episode series.

Our relationship had its ups and downs, and he’s not the best at long-distance communication, but we have stayed tight. An eternity ago, he was my Best Man. My ex-wife hated him and schemed to keep us apart, and it worked. However, we’ve reconnected since then, and I’m constantly sharing with him some of the many little drawings I’ve been doing.

I’ve prematurely written my memoirs, with each chapter representing an important character in my life, and you can bet Shane got one. With his help, I was able to correct a lot of the misinformation drilled into my head by someone I was married to, and now I have an accurate chronicle of our relationship until June 2022. I should probably update that.

The reason I’m calling you all here is because Shane is an accomplished painter, with shows across the US and a distinctive style I’m proud to say I’ve watched evolve, from awkward (but still beautiful) nudes of Sherilyn Fenn to the Cubist/Outsider style that is his brand, which seem to feature the same woman. I can’t judge because I frequently draw the same woman. Long story short, nobody paints like him.

As artists, we couldn’t be anymore different. His medium is oils and large canvases. Mine is pencil, ink, and watercolors. His subjects are deserts and cityscapes and surreal costumes. My subjects are characters from my writing oeuvre. He’s a painter, I’m more of a cartoonist.

Even though we see each other as equals and have been mistaken as brothers, I still look up to him, and I thought it would be really cool if I drew one of his paintings in my style. The result isn’t nearly as good as the original, but the process was fun and engaging and exactly the reason I’m an artist. (Mine’s on the right, in case you couldn’t tell.)

A Puzzling Experience

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I’m going through a manic period right now, which means I have a lot of energy, I’m in a great mood for the most part, I’m focused, my creative output is on the edge of being ridiculous, I’m chatty, even with strangers, I’m not paying attention to my budget as much, and the slightest inconvenience makes me want to flip a desk. I’m glad I have the tools to recognize when it’s happening, but with the drug cocktail I’m on, they’re usually a lot more subtle. I’ll probably have to get my medication adjusted, which is the 2-1/2th circle of hell.

Meanwhile, for months, there has been a puzzle. I like the puzzle. I don’t ever use it, but I like it. I’m aware of the therapeutic power of a puzzle because my mother is a professional when it comes to them. It’s great to be able to take a break and refocus your mind elsewhere (which is why, for example, I’m blogging at work for a few minutes). The puzzles are fun, from the Vegas-style mid-century Palm Springs poster to the various farms to the ‘Murca one (a bald eagle flying over purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain, with wavy red-and-white stripes in the sky). There’s just one problem: the puzzle space is on the other side of my low cubicle wall.

There’s no chair there, so you have to stand up to work on it. This isn’t a problem with my work friend, who chats with me when I’m not in the zone, but for everyone else, who don’t quite know what to make of me, who don’t even say hi, that means, in my periphery, several times a day, there is someone looming there for up to twenty minutes. It’s distracting, and it’s unnerving, and it makes me tense even when I’m on an even keel.

I am not on an even keel.

After a long puzzle session from someone who doesn’t acknowledge my existence, I restrained myself from snapping and went to Work Dad’s office and explained my situation, starting with the sentence, “I don’t want to be the guy who kills fun, and it’s been great for morale, but that puzzle has to go somewhere else.” Before I could even list my reasons for this, he started brainstorming new locations for it (a chore because where it is now is literally the best place for it), and he gave me a compromise: let them finish Palm Springs, and he will give it a new home. Work Dad has an absurd amount of empathy.

This is the second great victory I have scored this week. The first one was procedural, and I can’t explain it without about four or five paragraphs, just that it was mighty. I have no one to brag about it to, though, especially not my work friend because the puzzle’s current location is right outside her office, and she’s such a crucial part of the staff that she can’t stray too far from her desk.

So I’m bragging to the readers of my blog, both of you. Here’s hoping they finish Palm Springs quickly before I go on a rampage.

Two Strikes; No Outs

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I’ve been in favor of the Hollywood strike for a while now, but for each day that passes, I hear something that strengthens my resolve. For example, did you know that actors make an average of $28,000 a year? And if you don’t remember how averages work, they add up all the yearly earnings of actors, including the ones who make over $30,000,000, divide by the number of them, and you get a figure: $28,000, around minimum wage. Meanwhile, streaming services are pulling all kinds of fuckery to keep from paying residuals. Writers have it worse because studios hire a writer’s room, then fire them before the scripts are finished, and I believe that absolves them of residuals. As a writer, I’m glad I never made it because, if I have to go out stumping for peanuts every few months, I wouldn’t be enjoying my craft or my life.

Now that I’ve got this out of the way, I saw something that really put actors’ plight in stark relief. I like to have bad TV shows or movies on in the background while I draw—I need the noise, and I really don’t pay attention. The one I picked this morning was BAD. The story was terrible, the dialogue was terrible, the lead and supporting actors wouldn’t have passed auditions for a high school production of Our Town. The cinematography (or what I saw when I looked up) looked like it was filmed through a plastic grocery bag. The lead had no charisma, and the plot twist at the end was so unbelievably stupid I was haunted by it. The budget was about as much money as I have in my checking account (i.e., I’m not broke, but if I have to go to the hospital I will be).

And yet, the top-billed actor in the movie, like Anthony Hopkins was top-billed in The Silence of the Lambs, was Morgan Freeman. Let that sink in for a moment. This was not a B-movie. It was a D, maybe a D-minus. There are a couple of explanations for this. Maybe he owed the director a favor. Maybe he had signed a contract that locked him into it. Most likely, it was the same reason Harrison Ford made an Indiana Jones movie at eighty years old: he needed the money.

Morgan Freeman has way more money than me, I know that. I know he gets paid more cash than I’ve ever seen for each role that he plays (and his presence in this rubbish film probably used up most of the budget). But I learned something when I went to Doha ten years ago. You expand. Kate and I went from a thousand-square-foot apartment to three thousand square feet. When we returned three years later to 1,200 square feet, we couldn’t fit. Likewise, prior to moving there, we had some debt, but mostly we were living comfortable off of her good salary and generous stipend from her father (which he gave to her as a way of getting out of paying taxes because he’s wealthy, and that’s what wealthy people do). We moved to Doha, where we didn’t pay rent, everything was cheaper, her salary went up dramatically for overseas pay, and since Doha was considered part of a war zone (it was not), we also got hazard pay. When we returned to the United States, all we had left was the salary and stipend, and we went broke. It took a couple of years to stabilize our finances (then she kicked me out).

Before I got married, I lived on half of what I’m making now (about two-thirds adjusted for inflation), and these days, I’m spending slightly more than I make, mostly because of the geriatric cat. You get used to it, is what I’m saying.

Imagine being one of the most acclaimed actors—and an actor of color no less. Imagine you played God in a big-budget Jim Carrey movie. Imagine starring in a movie (The Shawshank Redemption) that’s so iconic, everyone wants you to narrate your life. Imagine being a meme. Imagine not being able to find work anymore, and being broke. Imagine having to play a small important character in this turd of a movie. He did a good job, but clearly his heart wasn’t in it.

Part of the reasons actors are paid a lot, even the little guys, is a lot of time passes between projects, unless you’re Antonio Banderas, who appears to make a movie a month. I don’t know who his bookie is. Scarlett Johannsen sued Disney because Black Widow was mostly streamed, and her contract only covered theater sales. Nobody feels sorry for the actors, despite that most of them are barely getting by. This is exactly what the millionaires and billionaires in the studios want you to feel.

Acting is a hard job, even for the stars. Can you imagine being one of the Marvel’s Chrises and have to work out for hours a day and have a strict diet just so you can do a two-second shirtless scene? Does anyone remember when Chris Pratt was fat? He will never enjoy a donut again.

Meanwhile, execs are getting paid millions when product that’s fattening them up is not getting adequately recognized for their efforts. Do not listen to them. There are millionaires on both sides, but the difference is, on one side, they’re showing solidarity (except for Matt Damon).

I haven’t even brought up AI, which fills me with rage as a writer and artist and as someone who doesn’t want to see his favorite actors digitized.

In a few months, we’re going to see the movies and TV shows in the pipeline run out. A lot of people, including people I know, are mad that there will be no new content. To which I say, out of the dozens of streaming services out there, are you really going to tell me you’ve seen all the TV shows and movies? What about all the TV shows and movies you own? Read a book. Go to the park. This is not quarantine anymore.

Oh yeah, also in the awful movie was Peter Stormare for about one minute. He chewed scenery like we’ve come to expect from him. I suspect he didn’t even know he was in a movie.

Coffee Shopaholic

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Twenty years, when I lived New York adjacent, there was a spot on Eighth Street near Astor Place where you could look at a Starbuck’s, turn to your left and see another Starbuck’s, and turn to your right to see another Starbuck’s. It was like you entered some kind of vortex. There was a Starbuck’s in the Container Store when I worked there. When I visited Shane in Binghamton, the only place we could go was Starbuck’s. In the early nineties, it was a magical, distant place I’d only hear about in whispers, but by the late nineties, it was like mold.

It’s been years since I’ve been to a Starbuck’s. (Except for in airports because they give you no other options.) I prefer the smaller places that don’t bust unions, and they don’t serve you coffee that tastes like it’s been on the burner for a month. I found one a short distance from my place, and I’ve started going there regularly.

I bring one of my three sketchbooks and something to draw and color with because I work best in noise and the occasional distraction. I don’t see a lot of repeat customers, except for one.

The cafe consists of some booths and two couches with tables in front of them. I always sit in one corner of the couch. On the other corner is always a customer, about my age and not dressed in athleisurewear like every other woman who patronizes the place, and she is there every Saturday morning. She tends to sit on the other side of my looong sofa, and she spends all of her time drinking her iced beverage and reading her phone.

When I saw her this past Saturday, I thought about saying hi (not ask her out), but I got the yips. I’m naturally shy, I’ve got a mean resting bitch face, you can’t tell I’m not dating just by looking at me, and the most important part: I am pathologically afraid of being a creep.

I’m large, with hair that doesn’t stay nice and a beard that grows back as soon as it’s trimmed, my inability to start a conversation, and the aforementioned mean resting bitch face. I assume the sour looks on faces I see on the sidewalk is because they’re disgusted with me, as opposed to the fact that nobody ever looks happy on the sidewalk. This is called confirmation bias.

So my therapist and I talked about it, and she pointed out that if she were creeped out by me, she wouldn’t sit on the same sofa, over and over. She may not want to be a friend, but she’s definitely not disgusted with me.

My homework is to say hi, and if she is friendly, tell her my name. Maybe even get hers. I see my therapist once a month, giving me four Saturdays to get past the yips.

Wish me luck!