January 2012
11 posts
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept...”
– Harvey Fierstein
Adult Advice from Children's Books - 2
“People have stars, but they aren’t the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they’re nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they’re problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you’ll have stars like nobody else.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on...
Adult Advice from Children's Books - 1
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time,...
Children's Books for Adults
Though it’s a fact most don’t know about me, I collect old children’s books. I’ve got shelves full of them and to this day I still can’t walk past an old book store without walking in, heading straight for their children’s section and looking for ‘The Little Prince’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland’. And while it may seem strange to some people,...
“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for...”
– Albert Einstein
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it...”
– Groucho Marx
Set Insights: Number 1
Downtime. You’ll find you either have absolutely none, or an absurd amount of it. I mean full night’s sleep in the middle of the day absurd… Or 16 hours without sitting still, which many would find equally nutty.
Today is a mostly downtime day though…
For example: I just took an hour long nap on a bed in another character’s fake apartment while 5 people ran...
“An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an...”
– Mitch Hedberg
The End of the World
I’ve been thinking a lot about apocalypses recently… apocali? Or is it more like apoc-ellipses.
Anywho, I digress.
No, it’s not out of some emo, poetic, ‘we all die alone!’ sense of self-loathing. Honestly, I’ve just recently found myself pondering, among other things, how little our planet’s decimation (and consequently, that of our entire species)...
Charlie Chaplin in 'The Great Dictator'
I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white.
We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise...
“Faith is no reason for hate, vengeance is no excuse for murder, and hate should...”
– Me, and I will stand behind this until the day I die
November 2011
10 posts
The Good Pains
Today I smiled until my cheeks hurt
Laughed until my lungs hurt
Ate until my stomach hurt
Danced until my feet hurt
Hugged until my arms hurt
Loved until my heart hurt
Sure, only the bad pains seem to leave scars. Sometimes all you want is a permanent reminder of days like today, when only the good pains were felt. But I guess that’s what time spent with loved ones is for: The more...
A box o' negatives
It’s been a while since I looked through my negatives. Months at least, if not a year. I should be more shocked by this, saddened, but I’m surprisingly not. While photography has always been important to me, I’ve found my interests have strayed elsewhere for a while. My focus has narrowed, become more specific to work, life, friends not captured on film.
But upon finding my big...
October 2011
4 posts
“I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own...”
– Antoine De Saint Exupery
A horse is a horse, of course of course
But a house isn’t necessarily a home the second you cross the threshold. Let me explain:
I love my home. Loved it the second I laid eyes on it. Sure it looked like a blind circus clown chose the paint colors (ok, still does… getting to fixing that), and there’s those little remnants from every era that just… stuck their nails in and refused to die. But none of that...
Silver Medal
It’s days like this, and news like what I just received, that serves to put a lot of things into perspective for me. Let me explain:
Though I won’t go into specifics, there’s one highly rated TV show I’ve been up for and nearly booked roles on upwards of 7 times. I’ve met the show creators, producers, various directors and the casting director a dozen times or more...
September 2011
9 posts
Play it again Sam!
Was sent a particularly interesting article today about nostalgia, mostly pertaining to music and how often we played it during different emotional periods in our lives. I don’t know about the rest of you, but a song on repeat for a while doesn’t bug me. Or a record on repeat. If it’s a good one, I could listen to one side all day. I enjoy it actually, and it allows me to listen...
Love Letters
I’m not sure what it is, whether it’s the prevalence of texts as opposed to conversations, or emails instead of snail mail, but it seems like the age old tradition of love letters has bitten the dust these days. I get it though… Why wait for someone to receive something days from now and pay postage for it when you could just text them and have them know immediately? Why take the...
Perchance to dream.
My mom gave me a book tonight, something I’ve been hoping she’d give me for a very, very long time. When I was a child and I’d crawl into bed with her after my startling, frightening dreams, she’d write them down.
They’re now mine.
But as I look forward to reading all those long forgotten dreams I can’t help but think about my present ones as well. Have they...
The Sum
I often wonder what makes up an entire individual, the basis of each unique human being. It can’t be as simple as the way they act or their faith, the people they surround themselves with, the things they like and dislike…
Can it?
Surely we’re made up of more than the sum of the random things we do and inhabit daily; the routines we take on, either as burdens or...
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack...”
– Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre
Rise and shi-... Ok, well at least rise...
I am usually a passable morning person. Im not the sort of bouncy perky early worm that insights murderous tendencies in others, nor am I an angry grumbler. I just… Am. I wake up, I go about what it is I need to do, I sip a caffeinated beverage at some point, I persevere.
Today’s transition from sleeping to waking has been a bit… Well, bumpier.
I will not make excuses for...
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
– C.S. Lewis
August 2011
2 posts
A second try.
I’ve realized something about myself today, something I wouldn’t have thought true until the proof presented itself: I am most prone to creating, retrying or redesigning tumblr when I’m feeling the most alone. Today is one of those days. Los Angeles is a lonely town. I know how cliche that may sound, and to be fair, no one is totally alone in this world, but it is true. Even...