Is there nothing sacred? Have we lost our moral center? It just makes me want to pee on someone!

Here's some stuff:

I attended a wedding this weekend, and I discovered the place that's more embarrassing than being seated at the singles table. It's being the only male seated at the spouse table, as in, you're at a table compromised entirely of the girlfriends and wives* of the groomsmen. I wonder who's girlfriend people thought I was?

Speaking of groomsmen and acting like a girl, I had a thought mid-wedding. Aside from my brother, and Justin (Who is most likely whom everyone assumed I was the girlfriend of) -- I have no idea whom my groomsmen would be. Years back, I would've had a roster-full of choices, but time and many burnt bridges later, the number has dwindled. Though I've been assured this is just a natural stage of growing-up (Which we all know I hate), it still troubles me. I mean, it's not like I'm going to be able to woo them over with the promise of a grand groomsmen gift, I'll have spent all the money recreating the clock tower, and hiring Christopher Lloyd to officiate. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe I need to find a girl who is willing to spend more than a couple of months with me.

Though, the main issue just might be getting a girl to spend more than a couple of minutes with me, of which I am seem to be subconsciously opposed to, as evidenced by this recent encounter:

SETTING: The overcrowded Green Mill bar
(Josh sidles up to the bar, in between two patrons. His body language favors the attractive female)
JOSH. Excuse me, I hope you don't mind me being awkward for a couple of minutes.
(Attractive Female looks up, and smiles)
ATTRACTIVE FEMALE. Not at all.
(Josh orders his beer)
ATTRACTIVE FEMALE. You're not being awkward, you're thirsty. Nothing wrong with that.
JOSH. Exactly! See. You get it. You know what's going on.
ATTRACTIVE FEMALE. Oh, I get it. I mean, I'm sitting at a bar all by myself.
JOSH'S BRAIN. Whoa! Josh! You fool! Hold the eff on! This girl might be dropping hints! That seemed like a hint!
JOSH'S SELF-DOUBT. Are you sure Brain? We've been burned before by more obvious hints than that.
JOSH'S BRAIN. Fine, don't believe me (Brain slips Self-Doubt a piece of paper) Say this. If she is into you at all, it'll be obvious.
JOSH'S SELF-DOUBT. Are you sure?
JOSH'S BRAIN. It's fool proof!
(Josh's beer is delivered.)
JOSH. So, thank you for letting me invade your personal space.
ATTRACTIVE FEMALE. (Smiling bigger still) Anytime.
(Noticeably long pause)
JOSH. Well...see you later!

FIN

The wedding was located in St. Paul, and there was a three-hour break between ceremony and reception. I used that time to explore St. Paul, by foot, because I refused to pay fifteen dollars for parking cause of something called "hockey" The results of my findings? St. Paul sucks. Except for Alary's.

Whenever I finish reading a book, I spike it, as if it were an adversary that I just vanquished. I'm not sure when this started, probably when it took me a couple of months to finish a Harry Potter. Anyhow, lately, I've been finishing a number of books at the gym (I credit my ability to slay a book a week to my reading while doing my forty-five on the elliptical. And yeah, yeah, haters -- not a proper work-out, well, eat me, I've lost weight and can now say I'm well-read without feeling shameful) Spiking a book in public doesn't work as well as it does in the privacy of our own home, so if I do end up finishing a book in public, I "accidentally" drop it instead. It isn't nearly as satisfying.

Quantum of Solace is not The Dark Knight to Casino Royale's Batman Begins. It also could've used more chase sequences. Cars, boats, planes, and pedestrian did not fully satisfy my chasing needs. There's still trains.

7:22 performed another set last night, and let's just say it wasn't one of our finest. Two showers later, I can still feel it on me.

Now, off to more adventures!



*And one mother.

Damn it Creed! I've been up since four!

As the Halloween season approached, friends began brainstorming possible Halloween costumes, a subject I feel brings far more joy to Adult You than it ever did to Kid You. (Back then, costume choice wasn't such a make-or-break factor since your mom was just going to make you wear a jacket underneath it anyway, causing several a dickwad from the greatest generation to make some crack about not remembering the Terminator being so roly-poly.)

However, it soon became clear to me that my friends weren't brain-storming as much as they were pitching me their ideas to see my reaction. When I asked one of them why my reaction factors into anything, they told me they figured I was one of those who came up with really ingenious costume ideas.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

I guess since I'm generally a creative person, it's assumed that I apply extra amounts of that creativity to the holiday that greatly encourages it. Nope. Not at all.

When it comes to Halloween, I'm just in it for the booze and erections. (As opposed to my childhood days, when I was just in it for the candy...and erections.)

I'm ninety percent lazy when it comes to Halloween, which is why I was Austin Powers for three years, Dr. Evil for two, and Shaun of the Dead for three as well. (And the Shaun of the Dead costume was born out of a desire to get more creative on Halloween. Then nobody knew who I was. Essentially wearing a bloody business-casual look, the most popular guess was Scott Peterson)

This year, I decided, like countless others, that I was gonna' be the Joker. But, not regular Joker. I was Nurse Joker. That was my twist...as well as countless others.

I didn't care that I wasn't being original, my shit was off the chain as the kids say.

However, dressing up in drag did give me a better understanding on the plight of the female:

Much of their wardrobe is uncomfortable and inhibiting. I've never worn a skirt before, but it didn't occur me just how much pants I wasn't wearing until I wore a skirt for the first time. I had to don a pair of purple tights just so I felt I had something going on down there. (It also served the much more important job of Junk Containment)

The skirt being so short, I had to adjust my swagger, as I was never completely sure how much of my ass was showing at any particular time.

Speaking of my ass, it was groped by a man at the bar. Leaning over the bar, I felt a hand caress my booty, thinking it was a friend doing a round of Gay Chicken, I turned to see a man I had never met before. Once he realized I was a man, he shrieked, "Whoa! Not what I was expecting!"

Which -- what if I had been what he was expecting? Was I supposed to turn around and tell him that I've been waiting for this moment all my life, now let's away to the bathroom stall for hand jobs? At least buy me a drink.

He had to have known I was a dude, right? I mean, we don't live in a world where that's the ice-breaker?! Seriously? Ladies, is that what I'm competing against? If so, single women at my age are probably grading on a curve, which is going to be hugely advantageous for moi.

All in all, the costume was well executed and well received. I made children and grown women, who are probably legally children, cry. I had fratties tell me I was "awesome." And Justin, whom incessantly mocks my lack of Halloween originality, gave me high marks for authenticity.

Justin, by the by, went with my joke suggestion of the Domino's Pizza Noid, whom you should avoid.

It was hilarious -- if you were born before 1982. Everybody else didn't know what the hell that thing was.

Even when Justin barged into a Domino's Pizza and shouted, "GIVE ME ALL YOUR PIZZA'S!"

He was instead given total fucking silence until a fifty-plus employee in the bank quietly remarked, "Is that supposed to be the Noid?"

We slowly backed out of the Domino's, not bathed in laughter.

See. Too creative and you lose mass-audience appeal. So says me.

And, obviously, Hollywood.

Up there, there is so much room; where baby's burp and flowers bloom; Everyone dreams I can dream too...up there!

I haven't heard the sentence, "Oh, you're in the play?" so much since high school.

The setting of this oft-repeated question, occasionally paired with an exclamation point, is Seasons Restaurant at Bunker Hills. The play is Casting Christmas - the first show in the twenty-first season of the Seasons Dinner Theatre, of which, I have just had my first rehearsal.

The phrase, also much like high school, is said in one of three tones:

1. An astonished, borderline marvel at the foreign, perhaps even mythical creature they see before them. Sadly, this is not the awe-inspiring that causes admiration or warm feelings in the pants, but the kind of awe that's inspired when you see a three-legged dog, or platypus.
2. "Oh, he's one those." This is probably the most accurate of the reactions.
3. By just being in a play, admitting I'm in this play, doing so in front of this particular person, now places them in direct vicinity of an about-to-explode gay bomb. (Oddly enough, the older the person that says it, the more prone they are to this option)

The show itself is pretty much what I thought it was going to be. Family friendly. G-rated. Lotsa' Minneso-tah accents. Thankfully, none of which will be delivered by me. In fact, in a play dominated with over-the-top, extra hilarious characters, I am playing the straight man to all of them. Particularly, I am the romantic antagonist. Think Zach from Wedding Crashers, but with significantly less f-bombs.

The great news about this part is that I don't have to sing (seriously), but there are several references to her only being with me cause I was hot and successful. There's even a couple of references to my having a good body, though don't get me wrong, I've more of a man's body now than has ever been. I know because I watch myself in the mirror as I slowly remove my shirt in the morning.

As for the job that led to this job -- things aren't great.

As winter rapidly approaches, golf course attendance naturally drops off. Which means that currently, the only business that frequents the bar are the hardest of the hardcore golfers, which is to say the biggest blankholes (I'm trying to cut back on swears. There be kids in the show and shit. Oh, damn! Aw, hell! Ah, bitchcake!). This means significantly less tips. Monday, for an eight hour shift, I got three whole dollars. And that's just because Bo felt bad for me.

And, with such little revenue, cutbacks in staff are to be expected. So, in the places where servers and bussers would usually be, there's just Josh now. Essentially, the money has vanished in the same amount that the work load has tripled.

Contrary to what people may believe, the single reward in being the service industry. in any way, is completely monetary. I know there's a lotta' bull-honkey about bartenders meeting lots of people, and hearing out their troubles. It's not true. I don't want to hear about your shit any more than you want to hear about mine. And, there's not actually as much character inspiration as you'd think.*

Add this to the anticipation of my upcoming productions, my morale has been rapidly diminishing. Truth be told, I think I'm just getting sick of it, and it's starting to show, despite my best efforts, which I stopped about a week ago. Case in point, I actually said to a customer, in a sarcastic-but-if-I-stop-and-think-about-it-maybe-he-wasn't-being-sarcastic voice, "Hey, let's play a game. It's called 'How Many of Me Are There?' "

And here's the thing: I know I'm being whiny, and bitchy, and selfish, and that my sudden curmudgeonness will only get me scheduled even less than I am now. That's the angel shoulder talking. The one that's saying, "Suck it up Pee-Pants, six more weeks, and you get to be an actor again. Stop trying to chop off the hand that's fed and boozed ya' up."

However, Devil Shoulder, he makes some solid points as well. Everytime I ask someone want fries or tater tots, he wipes his ass with my college degree. He then sheepishly makes eye contact with me and says, "What? You're doing it."

This afternoon, before my shift ended, I was taken aside and properly admonished for my attitude in a nearly word-for-word exhange with Angel Shoulder. Thankfully, I think they realize what's going on, and they're understanding. (Though, my manager did say something to the effect of 'things are going very well for you, it doesn't seem like the usual Josh to want to ruin that.' She was partly right, that's not usual Josh. That's Classic Josh.)

See! Look! Prove I'm growing, cause now I know when I'm being stupid!

For instance, right now, Devil Shoulder just told me "Really Josh? You're okay with being reprimanded by a younger superior who can't stop giggling when they hear the word 'floater?"

But, Angel Shoulder has rightly countered with: "But, Josh -- you're the one that chose to say the word floater, specifically with the intent to make everying giggle."

Okay. Maybe growing up isn't the best way to desribe it.



* Though, there is the occasional gem, such as a couple I overheard at the bar a few weeks back:
GIRLFRIEND. Remember when you used to give me things? You never give me anything anymore.
BOYFRIEND. I could give you a pearl necklace.
GIRLFRIEND. Why would I want a pearl necklace? It wouldn't go with anything.
BOYFRIEND. (Deep sigh) Nevermind.

Remember where you are - this is Thunderdome, and death is listening, and will take the first man that screams.

The Joshtober Fest aftermath usually begins with the first apology tour of my new year. However, my gravest sin this year was calling someone named Andrea Katie. Though, to be fair, the first three people to arrive at Joshtober Fest were Kat, Katie, and Catherine, so I just figured that was the thing now.

All in all, it was arguably the best non-roller coaster laden Joshtober Fest in the entire fictional holiday's history. My reasoning behind that doesn't go much beyond "Nothing blew up.*"

Perhaps it's a sign that I'm growing up that I decided to go the low-key route. The day was spent dicking around the MOA with the lovely Lauren Anderson, who must have been wearing her Angry-Gay-Men-Who-Work-At-Failing-Lotion-Kiosks Axe body spray.

We dined at the tackiest restaurant in the entire enclosure. It's called Kokomo's and it attempts to make you feel as if you're at a Hawaiian resort instead of across the street from the food court. It is so over-the-top, I've decided that I want to make it my break-up bar. You know, if I ever get to initiate a break-up.

I then bought myself some grown-up clothes, because let's face it, the performance fleece ain't getting me laid much these days. Also, Ashlee Simpson finally talked me into getting a pair of Sketchers. Now get off my back, bitch.

Later that night was Joshtober Fest proper at The Independent, so chosen specifically for the proximity of the 1986 apartment, despite the fact that being two blocks from my apartment didn't help too much during Joshtober Fest '05. It was a great time, and when all was said and done, I ended up walking down Hennepin at two in the morning with a giant stuffed Pug named Jack Bauer.**

The most feared guest at any Joshtober Fest, my own personal Mr. Hyde, Honest Josh actually didn't seem as if he was going to show. Then he caught the red eye in the form of a marathon of shots placed in front of me in the final hours of the Fest. However, he didn't cause much trouble, because in all honesty, he doesn't have much to say. I think it may have something to do with my being happy and content, which is something I didn't even realize I was. Happiness snuck up on me, the prick.

And now, I have to live life as a twenty-nine year old, which if the first couple of days are any indication, will be a year of constantly defending that you are actually twenty-nine, and occasionally looking behind you, to see if the thirty-sized boulder is getting any closer.

I've decided not to fear that boulder. Which is how I ended up at the Tina Turner concert last night. Well that, and the free ticket Katie Moen had.

And the best advice I can give anyone who is depressed over aging is to attend a Tina Turner concert. Though the bombardment or Aquanet and leopard print that shouldn't be seen the light of day, especially from that angle, watching a woman who's nearly three quarters of a century, spryly bound about the stage kicking the collective asses of her four twenty-something back-up dancers makes you feel like a complete jack-ass for thinking that somehow still being in your twenties is the time when you start calling yourself old.

Also, whenever possible, you should be someones private dancer, their dancer for money. It's not much, but we don't need another hero. I have a friend named Mary who does that, and she's quite proud -- Mary is. Says it's simply the best.

Be thankful you weren't at the concert with me, because I played that game before, after, and during.

*Metaphorically and, in one case, literally.
** Seriously. He has a personalized collar. It's for the real dog, when he starts existing.

If you can't hold it, you take your ass to the men's room and cry in private on the toilet… like a man!

I love Fall. It's the greatest.

I love the wearing of layers, I love leaves on the ground, I love that I get to use words like crisp and brisk. There's something about a brisk fall sunset that makes me want to attend a fall football game, do my homework, and go Halloween shopping. (Incidentally, anyone know where a fella' can get him an old-fashioned nurses uniform? Probably one that previously hung from a woman that would be politely described as husky.)

In other news, I've told Crazytown that I don't intend to dwell in her Coo-Coo cave past December. That apparently was the key to stopping the constant phone-calls and e-mails. This somewhat rashly made decision once again finds me homeless during my busiest month in a great long while, but as luck would have it, the fates found me a new place nearly the same night. I don't want to get into great detail, as that tends to jinx things, but I'll just say that I'll be living with my favorite politician, ever. Speculate away.

I was shopping in Magers and Quinn the other day. I was in the middle of reading The Road and looking for something a little more light-hearted for my next literary adventure. I knew I was in trouble when the clerk asked if I meant funny, putting the emphasis on both syllables. He proceeded to recommend several books he had heard were good that he didn't read himself, however, I've already read. At which point, the exasperated clerk said, "Dude, you read too much." So, essentially, the independent bookstore clerk called me a dork.

Reading too much doesn't make me a dork! What makes me a dork is that immediately after getting a new book, I check to see how many pages are in it, divide that number by four, so I can correctly gauge when I am 1/4th, 1/2, and 3/4th's of the way through that book.

If you're not watching Chuck or Pushing Daisies, your life is all the more empty for it.

Since my schedule is going to be working my bar-tending job, rehearsing the dinner theatre show, and then rehearsing Tony and Tina's, while bartending and performing the dinner theatre show, it is unlikely that I'll be able to acquire pug-puppy Jack Bauer until January, when Tony and Tina opens. Or, you know, Christmas. Just in case any of you want to know what to get a guy that has virtually nothing.

Besides a nurses uniform.

More later!

"You're about to experience the hard knocks of a free market, bitch. Get ready to feel it where it hurts." "Your dick!""No, not his dick. His--wallet.

Stuff be happening. Here are some reactions to that stuff:

It took four years and some change, but I finally made my triumphant return to the Brave New Workshop stage. Granted, as an understudy, and an understudy chosen in the same manner in which Harry T. Stone was appointed the judge of Night Court. ("I was home.") With four days notice, I jumped in for Fotis -- and the results were very well received indeed. Just look at this printed and spoken praise:

"[CARSON] absolutely killed. It was darned impressive. " - Joe Bozic

"Virtually seamless!" - Lauren Anderson

"Fuck off, Josh." - Mike Fotis*

Highlights included my impression of an overzealous pirate doing an impression of Jesse Ventura, performing fake wrestling all too realistically, and spending a good twenty minutes of the show hitting on a smoking hot girl that normally wouldn't give me the time of day.

All in all, it felt good to be onstage. Really good. Like I was finally back home.

And where I'm very much feeling not at home is my apartment.

Sure, the neighbors have stopped stealing my magazine since I labeled my mailbox, and their fights often contain better dialogue ("You barely respect me!" "I respect the shit out of you, retard!"), but I'm afraid 1986 Landlady has plummeted off the deep end of being a fucking nutbar.

It's the entire mail issue. As you may recall, she wants to me to call her, tell her what she's received in the mail, and she will tell me which mail she would me to send on to her current location.

I flat-out told her that I didn't feel comfortable, sorting through someone elses mail -- which is most definitely illegal even with her so-called permission -- and I inquired as to why, if she valued her mail so much, she didn't just forward it to her current location. You know. Like a human.

Well, forwarding your mail simply does not work.

Oh. Okay.

After several voice mails, one of them completely unrelated to the topic of her mail and in which she addressed me as Michael and spoke to me of issues I've never heard of because my voicemail that clearly told the caller you've reached Josh's number was not enough of a hint, she finally laid on the guilt trip about how she was expecting checks and such, and I was now interfering with finances and personal life.

So, I e-mailed her a list of the mail. She said, "Hmmmm, I may need you to open some of these letters so I can find out if they're important or not, and from there, we'll decide what you need to send to me." And she was very adamant about me getting all of this accomplished by Sept. 30th, when she leaves the country. Another place where mail can't reach her.

I told her I wasn't doing that, and I was just going to send her the mail, so I don't have to deal with it. So, Tuesday afternoon, I sent her her mail. I left her a message indicating that I did as such, and late last night, I received the following, word-for-word voicemail:

1986 LANDLADY. [LOUD WHISPER] What the fuck!? [NORMAL VOICE] Josh, I just got your e-mail. I'm stunned. I'm REALLY stunned. I'm leaving town on Tuesday, as you know, and we don't know for sure if it's even going to get here. And I think you sent it to the address I left you, but I just don't know for sure. It would be really nice to know! Sorry if I sound aggravated, but, by all means, I am just being driven crazy by this kind of thing. It's a minor request I made. I have asked you many times. I'm really sorry if you think this is too much. It is too much. I HAVE to know what you're doing. I need you to communicate with me. And this last e-mail is just too late, you know? And I'm not asking you to send me my mail regularly until NEXT January. So, please, LET ME KNOW via e-mail where you sent it, and there better be a tracking number. For all you know, there's six-hundred checks in there! And believe me, the post office is not reliable at all! I don't care what they've told you, they are NOT reliable! So, excuse me if I sound exasperated. I'm very tired. I have a lot of issues. People telling me they wanted a dog. They don't want a dog in my unit! ETC!"

And she goes on to further elaborate how to send an e-mail, and how every e-mail I receive from her, should be replied with another e-mail indicating that I received the initial e-mail, which I will now review and reply to.

....

1986 Landlady's name has officially changed to Crazytown. Because of this, and various other reasons:

A. I sleep in a sofa-bed.
B. With an air-mattress that just popped.
C. While my downstairs neighbors are no longer stealing my mail, they are looking at it, and placing it directing inside my door, I think at the behest of Crazytown.
D. When December rolls around, Crazytown wants to be admitted into the apartment regularly to work in her Forbidden Cave of Mystery.
E. The simple fact that I'm not house-sitting, and I'm paying rent

And rest assured, that's an F through Z as well.

When I signed the initial lease, I was given out in December. Apparently, she's had a history of tenants who suddenly want to be as far as away from the apartment as possible. Not knowing I'm color-blind due to this obvious red flag, I'm sure as hell going to act on it now, maybe sooner if I get the chance.

It's a shame, because I love the neighborhood, and everything would be great, if I was allowed to have a bed, and not deal with a mentally unbalanced AARP member.

So, if anybody knows of anything, drop me a line. Given my future Tony and Tina-ness, as well as my equal love of partying but only until I want to go to bed, I've-- I've-- I've been thinking about looking in St. Paul.

I feel shameful. And a little AARP-ish myself.

*That's an unrelated "Fuck off," but in this context it takes on a different meaning. That's marketing kids!

"You're a very handsome man." "Thank you Mr. President" "Just get rid of the grin; you look like a schmuck."

Tonight I understudy for the hilarious and bear-like Mike Fotis in the Brave New Workshop's election show "The Lion, The Witch, and the War Hero, or is McCain Able?"

Understudying is a strange beast, because you're stepping into an already established show. When I'm an understudy, I feel as though my job is to re-create the performance as is. This probably goes against all the actor-y rules of "making the role your own," but that's simply not a luxury an understudy has. After all, it's not my role, words, or anything -- it's their show, their performance, and I have to do my best to emulate that (Even more so in this case, given the proximity between getting my script and places). It's not the time for me to rub my Josh stank all over it, there'll be plenty of time for Josh stank in the coming months.

That's why I've spent the last four days researching and truly understanding the importance of being Fotis, which is why I've decided that today's blog will be done in the style of Mike Fotis:



Holy Thursday everybody! We made it!

1. Last night, my family and I celebrated my being cast in Tony and Tina's Wedding with dinner at Buca di Beppo. (We celebrate thematically) At the end of the meal, the waitress arrived with the check, and an addendum that if we call a number at the bottom of the receipt and fill out a three-minute survey, we would get ten dollars knocked off the bill. I think the speed at which I had my phone out and number dialed both marveled and disgusted the waitress. Whatever. I'm never going to see her again. Until she told me if I kept filling out surveys, I'd keep getting ten dollars off. Well played Danielle.

2. I could never explain why, but I think that spiders and bees are plotting against me. I don't want to say too much, in case they also blog.

3. I don't understand why people seem to think joining a gym is a good way to meet people. Whenever I'm at a gym, and I see other people working out, all I can think is: 'Is that their sex face? Cause it's always my sex face.' And then I think by thinking that, I somehow told everyone out loud that it is, indeed, my sex face. And then I go home without working out.

4. A lot of people think that eating spray cheese directly from the can is disgusting. A lot of people are retarded.

5. I drove across the 35W bridge today for the first time in two years. YAY! Well done bridge-makers (Though I unbuckled my seat belt so swimming out would be easier). It occurred to me that this is probably the only time I will acknowledge driving across that bridge as much as I did, and I felt as though my reasons for going across the bridge should be much more prolific, like delivering a miracle tonic to a hepatitis infected village and/or compound. I was just going to my mom's to do laundry. Cause I'm a thirtysomething college freshman.

6. Is it too early to start thinking about my Fringe show? Probably. Probably not. Well, maybe. But, kinda' not. Sure. No. Okay. What?

7. Did you guys get to watch any sports last night? I did, and I feel awful about it.

8. I'm beginning to think I've bitten off more than I can chew in my home improvement projects. I think that because I still have two stories in my house, but no stairs connecting them.

9. Hey! What are you doing tonight? If your answer is any answer besides checking out the one and only night I perform in The Lion, The Witch, and The War Hero, or is McCain Able? at the Brave New Workshop, not only is your answer, it's intentionally malicious.

And that's Thursday. Sorry.

Mike/Josh

People say, You must have been the class clown. And I say, No, I wasn't. But I sat next to the class clown, and I studied him.

Thursdays at Bunker Hills golf course is, by far, the most hated night of the week among every employee, no matter what the position. This is due to the combination of the three most obnoxious leagues to ever smack a ball around with a stick.

Those leagues are:

1. Ladies League - This is the most reviled league among all the waitress' because for some scientific reason, females have embedded in their DNA a passionate desire to destroy one another. In this instance, they choose to act hostile and extremely difficult*and spew forth complaints both ridiculous ("That man just swore. I shouldn't be forced to put up with this ear pollution!") and impossible-to-achieve threats ("I'm going to buy this entire place so I can fire you and then sell it back!")
2. The Summit Guys - These are some old farts who enter the bar around seven or eight, grab a pitcher of Summit, and proceed to drain and refill the same pitcher over the next three hours as they solve the worlds problems and refuse to leave at the end of the night, because apparently, they don't have their own garages to hang out it.
3. The Snakes - I shouldn't have to elaborate any further than the simple that they're a golf league that calls themselves "The Snakes." If you just pictured a polo-wearing, chest-bumping, Anderson account nailing, Citron Red Bull swilling douchebag parade that despite any success or talent they may have, you still pretty much get the impression they're just playing house -- you're not wrong.

The saving grace of Thursday nights is after the pro-shop closes, one of the employee's heads over for dinner with his wife. They're a pretty cool couple around my age, the kind of couple that I'd want to double with in the event of a woman deciding that she's lowered her standards so much there's just no possible way of going back. In the meantime, I spend a majority of my time talking to them, joking, and so on and so forth.

About a month or so back, I said something hilarious** and the wife laughed very hard, and afterwards she said, "Have you ever thought about being an actor? You're very funny!"

Two thoughts occurred to me that Thursday:

THOUGHT NUMBER ONE
Holy shit! I've been working here six months, and these people, whom I see pretty much everyday, barely know me! They have no idea I'm an actor/writer.

THE MORE IMPORTANT THOUGHT NUMBER TWO
Holier shit! I've been here six months! My Getting-Back-On-My-Feet job has knocked me off my feet in the other direction! I don't think I am an actor/writer anymore! I go to the BNW now, and say "Oh, another Josh." NOT "ANOTHER" JOSH! I was the first Josh! THE Josh! I kicked off the whole Josh epidemic!

That was the night I decided that it was time for me to get back in the game.

Soon after that, I had lined up three auditions for myself:

1. Seasons Dinner Theatre
   What happens to a golf course during blizzard season? They put on self-written holiday musicals. The few co-workers who knew of my creative past kept insisting I try out, but I refused, due to the musicalness and the whole churchy feel the posters gave me. However, after being informed of the pay rate and that the majority of drinks served during the shows are Brandy Alexanders and Pink Squirrels and various other bullshit blender concoctions. Dude, fuck blenders - I'll dance your dance.
2. Six Ring Circus
   I missed being able to perform regularly, and Six Ring has improved dramatically since I was first a member five years ago. And, on the plus side, maybe I'll accidentally learn to be a team player.
3. Tony and Tina's Wedding
   The interactive juggernaut (Which I've never actually seen) was coming back to the Twin Cities. I had improv experience. I'd get to be the loud, obnoxious at the party and get paid for it. And this is a situation where The Mascot Rule applies, and I can pretty much get away with anything. And the last time this show was in town, it ran, every night, for twenty-eight years or something.

And then I attended the first auditions I've been too since college. I recited monologues (From my own shows. Don't let this slight ambition fool you, I'm still lazy). I sang a little ditty from The Music Man (My go-to musical theatre number, because it's basically talking fast, and they refuse to hold these auditions at a karaoke night).

I approached these auditions with my time-tested and slightly proven secrets of success:

• Throw enough shit at the wall, eventually something will stick.
• Double-book yourself so you're later forced to make an awkward decision that'll screw somebody over, but at least you're covered.

I found out that I was returning to Six Ring the night of the initial audition, and that's been going well, even though the number one note I receive*** is to not be onstage as much as I am, it's been going very well.

For the other two, there was a waiting game, and multiple callbacks.

First, I got into the Christmas musical. As a lead. A romantic lead. With my face. In a musical. About Christmas. Where there's singing, and I'm not playing the Mute King, or the anvil salesman whose only in the first and last ten minutes of the three-hour show.

I had to delay my acceptance, as I had a callback for Tony and Tina. Then after the first callback, I had another callback.

Then, last Thursday, I got the call telling me that I will, indeed, be spending a majority of 2009 at a wedding reception. And, given the timeline of rehearsals and openings, I didn't really double-book myself, since there was no conflict.

Starting in Mid-October, I'll either be in rehearsal for, performing, or doing both everyday until about Mid-January.

And just like that -- I'm a professional actor again.

So, hip wife, answering your question from a month and a half ago, "Yes, I've thought about it. And I'm going to do it. And I'm doing it."

Whatever game we're playing, I'm back in it.

And don't call it a comeback, I've been here for -- aw, fuck that, no I haven't, it's a comeback.

*Except for one group I call my Cougar Club. They are wonderful and can teach me any lessons they want whenever they want.
** I mean, obviously, my mouth was open.
*** And then ignore.

Let's get one thing straight, kid. The only reason you're still conscious is because I don't want to carry you.

Thirty looms over my head like a gigantic ACME anvil in a not-entirely-thought-scheme in order to capture the Road Runner, but will likely backfire in my face,* crushing me through the ground and I will plummet down a sudden ravine I had no idea was directly below.

And then that dick-licking bird will eat his bird seed, and say "Beep, beep" which is asshole for "I'm also f*cking the one you let get away."

However, numerically speaking, before thirty comes the number twenty-nine, which for me, is just over thirty days away. Take a second, let the math settle in.

I have given my twenty-ninth year a theme, and that theme is "The Last Year I'll Ever Be Happy**" See, among the senior citizens I've spoken with on the wrong side of thirty, I've discovered that twenty-nine is the rough period, but they are more than prepared for thirty when the time comes.

In related research,*** a dystopian society in the not-too-distant future will manage and maintain the population and the consumption of resources in equilibrium by the simple expedient of demanding the death of everyone upon reaching the age of thirty.

To prepare for either contentment or death, I have began compiling my official "Last Year I'll Ever Be Happy" list. It's a fairly standard list of wants that you'd expect from any healthy young adult. You know, water park vacation, sky-diving, taking a punch on national news.

I believe the first item on the list however is the most attainable, and likely to provide the most happiness:

I want to get me a pug dog and name him Jack Bauer.

I know what you're thinking.

But Josh, thinks you, just last weekend you drank so much out of a whiffle ball bat that you passed out by four! And didn't you sit on a baby once?

First of all -- big people chairs are for big people. Secondly, I got this holmes, ya' dig?

I will tell you my various reasons:

• 

COME ON!!!!!!

• In LA, my first roommate Molly had an adorable pug named Chloe, whom always cheered me up and made me laugh. And she would lay on the couch with me and not judge me for watching Greek. And occasionally, I slipped her some beer, and then shit really got fun.
• I'm pretty sure I have exhausted all chances of making a human relationship work.
• In the event that I haven't, look at the photo above, and try saying no that it. It's impossible, and therefore, I will add ten hotness points with the ladies, and likely ascend an entire level. Seven to eight. Don't ask me how science works.

• 

COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Sometimes pugs have trouble breathing bounding from room-to-room. I will always feel physically fit.
• With a dog named Jack Bauer, I will eventually get to meet the first black President, because Jack Bauer will have saved his life and they'll go golfing together and such.
• If Jack Bauer gets into trouble, I get to yell at him. I get to scream, "Damn it Jack Bauer! Get in your kennel!" And Jack Bauer will listen, which will make me the boss of Jack Bauer, and therefore, the most dangerous mother fucker on the planet.
• COME!!!!! ON!!!!!!
• I will finally have an excuse to make a YouTube video.
• I can hop-on-board the extremely rare Dog improv trend.
• I will teach Jack Bauer how to have random dance parties whenever good things happen.
• It's likely to be the cutest offspring I'd ever have.
• You will all get the greatest Christmas card you will have ever received.
• COME THE FUCK ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!****

It has been decided. Well, seventy-five percent of it has been decided. I have to see how some upcoming jobs shake-out, and whether or not 1986 Landlady eats or uses dogs for fuel.

In the meantime, my birthday is Joshtober 7th and it is around that time I would want to meet Jack Bauer, so if anyone has any intel on where I can locate a pug puppy by the name of Jack Bauer, it would be most appreciated.

Okay, one more:


I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT HE ATE ALL THE BISCUITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


*Quite literally. It's also wrapped in dynamite.
** A phrase coined by Andy, when we were trapped in the eighties cause we didn't have enough plutonium to get back. Or at a Miami Vice bar. There was whiskey.
*** Logan's Run
**** SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I need to use your bathroom." "No." "What am I supposed to do, shit outside?" "Lincoln did."

The most consistently learned lesson over the past four or five years that the only time you should trust a man named Craig and his list, is when he's a well-known neighborhood maven of sorts who keeps an actual list as a hobby, and because helping people is his purpose in life. If you replace the word "man" with Internet, and conjoin the two key nouns, it's a recipe for disaster and usually the answer given where your exasperated mother asks where you find these people.

I've been in my new dwelling just over a month, and let's take a looksee in how it's going:

*I am convinced that my downstairs neighbors are stealing if not all of my mail, at least my Entertainment Weekly. I believe this because on CNN of all places, there was a story about how Harry Potter graced the cover of the EW Fall Preview, which hit news stands the exact same day it was delayed for another nine months. The reporter than informed me that anyone that has that issue is now has a collectors item. I did not have that issue.

However, one evening, I was getting home from work, and walking to my door. And you know how it, dark outside, lights on in, shades open -- you can't help but look. What if there are people having sex? Always eager to learn something new, I sneaked a peak, and lo and behold, on their floor sat the Harry Potter-tainted Fall Preview of Entertainment Weekly.

Now, take piece of information, combined with the fact that my subscription is no longer arriving at my previous mailing address, the EW website has the correct current mailing address on my account information, and the only time I've received a piece of mail here, it was in THEIR mailbox. I know it's enough for a conviction, but I've put enough Law & Orders to fall asleep to on my television to know that it'd at least get me a warrant.

Direct confrontation seems to be the best course of action, however I thought about my last encounter:

JOSH'S LAST ENCOUNTER WITH DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR

TWENTY-TWO YEAR OLD TATTOOED WOULD-BE HOTTIE IF SHE SHOWERED. Hey, why you all dressed up?
JOSH. I've got an audition for Tony and Tina's Wedding.
TTYOTWBHISS. Weird. Why would your friends make you audition for their wedding?
(Josh stares into vacant eyes, awaiting irony or sarcasm, or anything other than the stone-cold serious that greeted him)
JOSH. Yeah...I don't know.

To solve this dilemma, I've labeled my mailbox with my name, and my apartment number, and I've made all the necessary changes to my contact information.

* Speaking of mail, my landlord, hereafter referred to as 1986 Landlady, wants me to call her, and read her mail to her. She has important mail coming and would like to me to keep her adrift of what mail arrives. I looked into it, and apparently, forwarding your mail to the address you're currently at was invented in 1989, so it makes sense that 1986 Landlady has never heard of it.

Since I've refused to make contact with her via telephone, because any form of talking with her, be it conversational or voicemail, is like reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book and choosing every adventure (Her last voicemail broke the eight minute mark), I politely e-mailed her and said that I barely have time to read my own mail, should I ever receive any. Also, there's the whole illegal thing.

She replied by telling me that she's merely expecting a check, then upon arrival she would like me to take to her bank and deposit into her account. A fool-proof plan that relies solely on the linchpin that "hopefully the one teller that knows me will be working. I forget their name."

* Speaking of accounts, when I moved in, I was given a handful of deposit slips and told to go to Wells Fargo to deposit my rent when the time comes. When I went to deposit the rent, I was informed the account I tried to deposit money into was closed. That very afternoon, the inept teller accidentally informed me before telling me he wasn't supposed to tell me that.

E-mails were sent, and she replied, addressing me as Tim, that should he had to change the account, due to a problem tenant, an ever growing list I hadn't been aware of until after the lease was signed. She gave me the last four numbers of the new account, and said hopefully, I can figure the rest out.

Yup. This all happened.

* One of the main selling points of this apartment was the fact that it was fully furnished, because I have accumulated many things in my life -- debt, regret, a string of increasingly angry ex-girlfriends -- but never furniture. And I thought I could make anything work.

I thought wrong.

The couch was not so much a couch, as it was two randomly stolen pieces from a bigger, uglier, 1986-ier couch. So, to solve that, I purchased an on-sale dorm room couch. And while that solved part of the problem, I still didn't have the comfy, naptime couch and/or barca lounger.

My mom helped me solve that problem. See, every year, at the State Fair, in the grandstand, I visit the hammock outlet. I sit in the hammock, and think to myself how wonderful life would be if I had my own hammock. I always without a hammock though, knowing that 364 days later, I'll sit in a hammock one more time. Not this year. My momma' bought me a hammock, and now, I have a hammock in my living room. And oddly enough, whenever I sit in it, someone gives me a Corona.

However, the one piece of furniture that is the current bane of my existence, is the sofa-bed. 1968 Landlady sleeps on a pullout sofa bed, because she's not, and this is a direct quote "one for comfort or warmth." When asked if I could simply fold-up the sofa bed and use it as a sofa, I was told it was the one piece of furniture that was off-limits in rearranging, because it's so old, presumably at least as old as 1986, that she fears it'll be broken if moved.

In an attempt to honor her wishes, I've tried everything. The egg-carton foam stuff, an air mattress, couch cushions on the floor -- it's the most uncomfortable sleeping arrangements I've ever had. 1986 Landlady fails to realize I've got a good eighty pounds and nearly a foot on her, so the shrunken bed and couch that suit her might be up my alley.

At this point, it's effecting my sleeping patterns, and therefore health, and I'm sure I could find a lawyer that could attribute those very factors to my recent golf-cart collision*. I'm nearly twenty-nine years old -- air mattress' should no longer be a regular part of your life!**

So, somehow, someway, I'm bringing the bed back, and I'm making it work. no matter how much furniture I have to re-arrange.

Speaking of which, any award winning Tetris players out there?

*PS, I crashed at least three golf-carts the other day. Maybe four.
** Hammocks however, completely okay. Oooh, Corona!

Skip to the End.

Last Tuesday evening, Jansen and I took a stroll through Uptown, awaiting to hear whether or not our big city improv training impressed the brains behind Six Ring Circus. The conversation turned to Hippie Girlfriend.

Jansen officially gave her seal of approval, and as much as she was shocked that someone this cool was dating me, she was even more surprised that I was dating her. I agreed that it was the unlikeliest of matches, but we had something that worked. More than that, I confessed that Hippie Girlfriend was hands down, the coolest and best relationship I've ever been apart of.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I guess due to the position of the sun, I was casting four shadows on the street below.

Thursday morning is when I got the text that said, "I have a lot on my mind, can we get a drink after you're done with work?" which is text message for "We need to talk" which is girl for "You need to stop calling."

Hippie Girlfriend is now just a hippie. (That's a term of affection, she's really not a hippie...or my girlfriend anymore for that matter)

I won't get into any detail except to say that it was sudden and unexpected, like one of those car crashes that happens three or four times every season of Lost.

I wish I could tell that there's no hard feelings between the two of us, but if I'm being honest, there are. Again, using the car accident metaphor, things are hurt, broken, smashed in, and need to be repainted. Not to mention that my eyebrows are going to start growing together again. There will come a day when there'll be no hard feelings, but that day is not Monday.

Silver linings include the finest hour my improv group 7:22 has ever seen. Partly because I told them that last week's set was so bad, Hippie Girlfriend left me. Mostly however, due to the fact that for the first time our group had been together, we were all on the same page, paragraph and word with what needed to happen. In fact, in creating our faux-sitcom scenarios, we (By which I mean, me) accidentally created a real one.

Due to the break-up, and the knowledge that my dad whisked away to the Bahama's to marry a woman with a tramp stamp, I actively made a choice not to have an angry character. I was angry enough already, so I used that energy to create someone positive, likable, and apparently Australian.

It was some of the most fun I've had improvising. The last set I was that proud of took place the night after the Joshtober-Fest that ruined my life. Katie suggested that perhaps I should have a horrible week before every set, to which I replied, "I kinda' already do."

After the set, I decided to buy a beer for everyone in the cast as we went over notes. I purchased four beers, and turned around to see Amanda, my High school, ummm, I want to say crush, but obsession is probably more accurate, and how the courts would describe it.

We hugged. She praised. I pretended I didn't agree with the praise, but secretly I thought she was underselling us. She asked if my mom was at the show. She wasn't.

"What about your girlfriend? I want to meet her!"

"Yeah, we, uh, broke up this weekend."

"Oh, no," she said as looked down and saw me clutching four beers in my two hands. "Not taking it well?"

"These are for the team! We're celebrating!"

She believed that....I think.

See, look at that, getting right back on that awkward horse already.

Sigh...

Hi, I'm Martin Blank, you remember me? I'm not married, I don't have any kids, but I'd blow your head off if someone paid me enough.

LESSONS LEARNED AT MY TEN-YEAR REUNION:

1. Sure, I was dragging my feet in deciding to to check "Yes" in the well-sent in advance invite, but I had my reasons! After all, I'm a hitman completely detached from society and afraid of confronting of my last remaining shred of humanity in the form of my high-school sweetheart, whom I ditched on the night of our senior Prom. There's also the fact that the lives of my best friend and I are not as super-awesome as we thought, so we planned on purchasing business suits and epically huge mobiles and claiming one of us invented Post-Its, while the other decided to make them yellow. And on top of all that, my old high school band, The Darnells, want me to perform with them onstage, but I'm worried that everybody will make fun of how fat I've gotten. My wife Harriet has a fool-proof diet that'll help me out, but it won't get to the core of my real problem: Stage fright. Of course, I may be confusing all my problems for not wanting to go with the plots of movies and one episode of Family Matters, but all reasons are just excuses, and the real reason is that everybody is nervous about attending these things. And there you go.
2. Indecision leads to getting scheduled at work when you should've had the forthright to take the night off well in advance, and that ends up pissing you off. However, it all ends up being a cosmic lesson, since the wedding you're scheduled to bar tend is wall-to-wall Preggo's, and you make it to the reunion in time for dinner anyhow. So, you know, make up your mind quicker...if you have time.
3. While it's been ten years, fill a room with alumni of your high school and tables, they will only see the cafeteria, and place themselves accordingly. The cliques you thought long since passed will emerge once again, despite the fact that we're just a buncha' a-holes with debt now.
4. Much like the real-life President, our class President has no business speaking in public.
5. While I can speak publicly, oftentimes I shouldn't, because I'll end up joking about the many stabbings that take place at Time Out in Blaine, directly after someone just won a gift certificate to Time Out in Blaine.
6. Everybody vocally wondered why I wasn't famous yet. Several times. In varying degrees of awkward social situations.
7. While most reunions will have contests like "Who's Been Married the Longest?" They really want to be having contests like "Who's Had the Most Marriages?" Those contests are held in secret at every one's table.
8. Just because there's a twelve-year-old DJ, don't mean anybody gonna' bust a move.
9. Michael Phelps has the ability to make the world stop. Don't tell me that guy's not a supervillain. Why a villain? Have you ever seen a superhero with a male Butter Face?
10. Though well known in high-school, I thought it was for all the wrong reasons, and I never considered myself popular. Apparently, there were groups of people who considered me a part of the popular group. I took that as a compliment, and not a horrible judge of who the popular people were.
11. I was making fun of my Waterama friends for being busted on the "I bet you don't even know my name!" encounter. I mocked and told them they deserved it. Apparently, I deserved it as well.
12. I have no idea what the hell I was writing about in my Senior Will back in 1998. I'm sure it was fairly hilarious at the time, but the only incidents that I still had vivid memories about involved nudity. You always remember the naked people.
13. There are so many fucking babies now. Literal ones, not metaphorical.
14. Though everyone still pretty much stuck around, you can tell we all intended on partying hard in Blaine that evening, as we all called our Moms at one point asking if we could couch in our old room/couch/floor of the computer room where we would later pass out.
15. If getting a cab isn't an option, it's good to have a buddy who's a cop. A buddy that's an off-duty cop.
16. You can tell he's off-duty, because he does nothing when a man breaks a bottle over the head of another man at the table next to you. Apparently, it was too crowded at Time Out in Blaine.
17. Our Facebook friendship requests have sky-rocketed!
18. After drinking all night with your nearly thirty-year-old classmates, it's not wise to bitch about your hangover at work the next day by saying, "I feel like I'm still drunk." Because the passage that will hold resonance with your co-workers and superiors is "I'm still drunk."

All in all, the reunion was an unexpectedly great time, and I look forward to creating excuses about not going, but eventually attending at the last minute the fifteen year, with even more babies and second and third marriages.

"So what do you want to do, bonehead? Just sit around and wait to see who drops next?" "I don't know...Phonehead!"

Technology has made us seventy percent more 'tarded.

Case in point: the other morning* as I was leaving Hippie Girlfriend's new apartment in yet another neighborhood where you have to walk outside using your car keys as faux adamantium claws, I realized that I left my cellular telephone on her nightstand**.

No problem, I can just call her later and inform her. Only...I have no idea what her phone number is. I have no idea what anyone's phone number is. The only phone number I know off the top of my head is my Joyce, my babysitter, and she's been in heaven for five years, and I haven't needed babysitting for three.

The Contacts feature has ruined me for phone numbers. I used to be able to recite phone numbers as if they were the alphabet, but my brain capacity can only hold whichever speed dial I assign them, and I'm pretty sure Hippie Girlfriend's number isn't really four.

Fine, Plan B. I'll e-mail her. Only...she just moved. She has no internets yet.

Holy crap, Plan C. I'll just wait until she's almost done with work, whatever that work may be, and wait outside her place. Only...I've been to the place once, and I only accidentally found my way the first time, because my new GPS seems to think getting within a three-block radius is good enough before it starts speaking Spanish or some shit.

She is officially off the grid. There is no reaching her. She could leave me that afternoon if she so chose, which is exactly the way I think she likes it. I'm gonna' have to track her by tasting dirt and surveying the broken twigs and leaves (And that's only if I were tracking her in a jungle setting)

But, before I could begin tracking her -- I had to survive the rest of my day. Forget all the important, life-altering phone calls I was inevitably receiving that afternoon, how was I going see my friends and family again?

Honestly, how the hell did people meet for dinner or drinks or golf in 1987? What did they do when they got there, and they didn't immediately see the person they wanted to see? How would they be able to find out if they were ten minutes away, or just sitting in the back corner behind the server's station? Did they just enter the meeting place and start screaming the name of their desired company? HOW DID THEY LIVE!?

In the brief instances I made contact with the outside world, being unreachable cancelled plans of both business and leisure. Setting up a specific time proved be too much, as we live in a society of "ish," as in "Let's get together about six-ish. Somewhere downtown-like. I'll twitter you the address, oh, and btw, funny status on Facebook."

I felt like that over-privileged dick in Into the Wild, only I was exiled to the stone ages, as opposed to being an ungrateful fuckwad that gets whats coming to him in the end.***

I needed to track down my phone. I'll admit it outright, I don't own the phone, the phone owns me. I had to find out what my girlfriend's phone number was.

I went with the Kevin Bacon approach, by calling a friend of hers, or the boss of her friend, or the friend of a friend that may have the phone number stored on their SIM card.

It was at this point I realized that when my cell phone rings, unless that name's already in my memory -- I screen. Why should anyone else be any different? (I don't do it cause I have some sense of importance, I just like the surprise of the voicemail. If the mystery number doesn't leave a voicemail, I will call the number and demand to know why.)

All was lost. I was never going to speak to my loved ones ever again. I would lose all jobs and opportunities, as one missed call throws me onto their "Dickhead Who's Too Good to Answer or Call Back" list. For all I knew, Hippie Girlfriend's scheme went exactly as planned, and she was well on her way to some Compost/Pot Farm, free of her underachieving shackles.

I had yet to try Plan Z. Calling my own phone. As I lay there dying, with my final gasp, I plug the only other number I have memorized into a borrowed mobile device, praying that somewhere, somehow, somebody was hearing the Sanford and Son theme, and realizing they have to answer that call, and not dance.

That's when I heard the sweet sound of Hippie-Girlfriend's voice: "Hello?"

"Oh, thank God! You answered the phone! ::slight pause:: Why the hell are you answering my phone?!?"

EPILOUGE
I did miss several calls that day, the only one of importance being my agency calling me to inform me the audition I woke up early and went to anyway was cancelld.

While I did have missed calls and texts into the double digits, most of them came from Justin, and most of them were of this variety:

"Did you see Tropic Thunder?"

"Don't you like me anymore?"

"This isn't Corey Anderson, call me back!"

"What did I do you?"

"Don't you like me anymore? God!"

"Let's talk, that's what best friends do!"

Had this been a Tennesse Wiliams play, I would've gotten home to find Justin, adorned in a torn wife-beater, screaming out my name in the rain.

*MOM APPROVED VERSION: the other day, just before dusk
** MOM APPROVED VERSION: on her chastity shrine
*** Why do you think the high school's put that book on the curriculum now?

No Mr. Connery, that's "Therapists," not "The Rapists"

My internets isn't as connected as I'd like it to be these days, so the only access to the world wide webs is when I steal some precious, precious bandwith, or wander into an Uptown coffee shop for as long as I can stomach the patchouli stank, therefore I'm forced to truncate a few entries into one, so here goes:

"The Game Show"
I always used to tell people that I'd simply just win the lottery when they asked what I do for money if I were to pursue a career in the arts (Which is a question I get less and less the closer I stagger to thirty, because...I guess I'm doing what I'll do for money) Of course, winning the lottery was never really the plan, merely a flight of fancy on par with what I would do with the power of invisibility*. No, the REAL plan was to win all the money on a game show.

Which is why I sat in a three-hour line at Mystic Lake Casino for Netflix and Who Wants to be A Millionaire's special Movie Week! I felt like I was an American Idol audition, but replace "singing ability" with "goofy looking bastard-ness."

We were hauled into a room where we were given two tests, the general knowledge test and the movie knowledge test. The MC then delivered the most specific and detailed instructions on how to handle a Scantron test I've ever heard, and in one case, helped someone spell their name. My confidence soared, as I knew how to do all of this, and have only misspelled my name once in my life*.

The tests themselves struck me as easy, especially the movie one. Finally, wasting my life would pay off. The general knowledge test went better than I thought as well, and any questions I didn't know, I would talk it over with Meredith Vieria in my head. Afterwards, a gentlemen beside me consulted his Iphone for all the questions we were unsure of, and I was pleased to see I had guessed about 85% of them correctly.

Then, the list of those who passed was presented, and my number was not among them. I'm not smart enough for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

The noose was about five knots deep when it was brought to my attention that it's never revealed what the producer's criteria is, however, when the end-product is a million dollars, who would you want sitting in the chair? The one that got all the test answers right, or the one who thought Megatron was the bad guy in The Godfather?

Alas, my never being wrong has screwed me again.

"The Book"
I recently finished I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by self-proclaimed genius Tucker Max. I’ll let the back-flap of the book tell you what the pages within contain:

My name is Tucker Max., and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women then is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world.

I hate this douchebag. I want to punch him directly in his much beloved dick. Here are a few of my reactions to a book I truly hated, yet didn’t, or couldn’t stop reading:

1. I realize that hating a writer whose intention is to be hated is falling right into his hands, but I hate him for different reasons. When a personality has such a vulgar persona, it’s usually an act. That’s the routine, the show. I realize that. Yet there’s many that don’t. He’s playing to the lowest common denominator, and those little frat fucks are gonna’ worship the dude who bangs a fat chick on a bet, and then throws her clothes out the window so she’ll leave, or upon hearing the news that he impregnated a girl who at the same was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, he had to “fuck it out” with the girl he had in the next room, while the pregnant girl cried in his living room.

2. He’s a liar. It’s human nature to deny one’s true state. If we’re hurt, we act like we’re not. If we’re an alcoholic, we vehemently deny it. So anybody that claims to be something is either a liar, or has some other agenda to tend to. A person can’t claim themselves to be creative, that’s just going out of their way to let you know they think they’re clever. When a girl says she’s complex, she’s not complex, she just wants an excuse to be a C-word. And when a guy in a bar tells hundreds of stories about how awesome he is, because of how drunk he got, or who or what he laid, or how he put some “poser” in their place, he’s really an insecure twat keeping a running tallying of how people out there like him, while at the same time being the only person who truly doesn’t like him.

3. This blog turned book, which has itself become a new bullshit phrase called “blook,” cements my theory that assholes rule the world. Not because of his exploits, but because of his exploitation of his exploits. This is some spoiled brat, who was bored by law school, and decided he had a calling in becoming a terrible writer. Now, his bullshit stories are being idolized by the drunken masses, and he got a movie deal, and he never has to worry about money again.

For all my problems with the book, I still bought it, and I still read it, so the asshole wins. I’m kinda’ worried about the influence this book will have on me, so before I go make a fat girl cry, and then use her tears as lube so I can nail her until she pukes, then rub her face in it, and somehow make her apologize to me, I decided to read something a little less hyper-misogynistic and/or depressing.

Then, in the first five pages of my next book, the girl is raped, murdered and dismembered. This is the fuel I’m putting into my brain tank.

”The Tribute”
Summer of 2008 has not been kind to comedy. Harvey Korman. George Carlin. Bernie Mac. And though, not as widely known as all those, Minnesota has suffered its own loss in that of Joe Kudla aka Snot.

Puke and Snot are a comedy team that began their little vaudeville act at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, and have become a stable of that festival ever since. Theirs was the first comedy routine that I memorized, from the lines, to the delivery, to the supposed flub that causes both actors to break into “unscripted” laughter. These guys were pros, Puke, the more suave of the two making him the mentor, and Snot, the funnier, sloppier, cruder protege.

I would also run into Snot, this time as Joe pretty regularly at Shaws Bar and Grill on the religion that was Wednesday night karaoke. Joe performed two songs, and two songs only: “To all the Women I’ve Loved Before” and Bob Marley’s “Is This Love?”

I never spoke to him, save for the occasional raise of the glass after one of our American Idol worthy performances, and in a sense I regretted it, but I always regarded it as any other celebrity encounter, even though outside of the small faction of Ren Fest attendee’s in this or some other state, he was just another guy, and I looked on it as a pleasure to receive a rare performance outside of the pirate stage.

And despite not knowing him aside from his work, I feel as though that work warrants a raise of the glass, and an acknowledgment that the Ren Fest, Minneapolis, and the world itself, just got a little less funny.

So, thanks for the laughs Joe, on and off the stage. And sorry I keep calling you Snot when your name is Joe.

*I know a lot of people say locker-room, but there are a lot of fat people at the gym. Really, I think I'd use it to spy on other people and prove that I'm not paranoid, cause they ARE plotting against me.
** YOU try filling out all those forms when you were working at the Carlson school not getting mixed up!

It's Not HBO, it's TV.

MITCH! is an improvisational comedy team compromised of myself, Katie Moen, and Jim Moen. It is so named because the Moen patriarch Terry, who has met and spoken with me many times, and is well-aware of my name, greeted me one evening with an enthusiastic:

"Hey Mitch! (Short pause) You're not Mitch."


And then he walked away.

And the name of an improv group was born. Just as the group was picking up steam and gaining Go-Go fandom, I went crazy and moved to Los Angeles.

Upon my return, we had hoped to bring MITCH! back to life, but conflicting schedules, past-deadline Go-Go lotteries, and Jim Moen falling in love with a team of sled dogs and following them across Alaska in the hopes that eventually society will one day accept their inter species and interracial polygamist relationship have all suffocated MITCH! with a pillow.

That left myself, and the hotter yet less feminine Moen (Before you leap to Katie's honor, reread that and realize which Moen I'm really taking a shot at) with three MITCH! slots to fill in August, but no MITCH! to present.

Go-Go has served up some pretty incredible improv sets in the last couple of years, and there's been no shortage of improvisors daring to branch out and try something new, ala Police Cop Detective PI, Staredown (The Quentin Tarantino improvised movie) as well as pre-existing heavyweights finding new ways to reinvent themselves.

I've always been spotty with improv.

No, no -- it's true.

::ALL OF MINNEAPOLIS AND CERTAIN SECTIONS OF LOS ANGELES. Uh...., we didn't say anything.::

I'm too self-aware, too concerned with being "the funny guy," too desperate to be liked, too willing to put an entire box of DOTS in my mouth and try to carry on a conversation (On second though, that bit's pretty solid) As a result, I've never felt like I truly fit in to the improv community. (This was my own thinking. Nobody in the improv community ever made me feel unwelcome. Well, nobody but Butch.)

So, with these open slots, I wanted to aim a little higher than a buncha' scenes until they turned the lights off, or trying to take off Jim Moen's pants. I wanted to make my own contribution that could stand proudly among the quality sets that frequently pack Go-Go from Sunday to Sunday.

So that's when I called up several improvisers I was keen to work with, as well as not being showcased themselves nearly as much as they should be, and told them about a little idea I had:

An improvised sitcom. Not just sitcom, specifically late eighties, very early nineties. Think ABC in its Full House, Perfect Strangers, Growing Pains, Family Matters, Who's the Boss*, and to a lesser extent Just the Ten of Us, hey day.

The group was to be named 7:22, so named because a book on sitcom writing had an entire chapter devoted to writing towards the "22 Minute Moral." And I added the seven, because we're in central/standard time.

With the rag-tag group of improvisers assembled, we set out do the simplest of tasks; create an entirely new improv structure from the ground-up, without a common group knowledge, or even rough plan of what we wanted in the end.

The wind was set out of our sails a bit when research revealed that there's a group in Chicago that already does an improvised sitcom, or at least did perform that structure back in 1996, but Chicago Improv is to Minneapolis Improv as The Simpsons is to every other animated sitcom of the last twenty years. They did everything first.

The Chicago group sent along some literature that aided in building our foundation. Rehearsals of varying success and attendance followed, members of the group were born and perished before there was even officially a group to speak of, and rehearsal sitcoms contained everything from an affirmative action prom with guest speaker Morgan Freeman, to two-men in drag trying to lead a girl scout meeting, meanwhile, one the men's wife and daughter stole his basketball tickets and went to the game instead of them.

Eventually, all the days before August 10th were crossed out, and our debut had arrived. A form still hadn't been found, a tone hadn't been reached, and a set had yet to reach completion. We had thought it best to hold off the debut of 7:22, and appearing for one night only as Here's A Buncha' Scenes Until the Lights Go Out.

But, one of the IO mantra's is that if you're going to fail, fail huge. And if there's anything I can do, by God, I can do that!

So, 7:22 took to the stage, and who knows why, but it worked. It was possibly one of the best sets I've ever played (One of the best sets I've ever played. In all-time improv history, it's probably only in the top five.......thousand).

Perhaps it was the right combination of nerves, lack of expectations, actual ability, and the two-giant Red Bulls I drank, the second I had to sneak in like some sorta' addict. (Even the Super America guy paused before he rang it up. "You're sure you wanna' do this son? This is a big drink." I slam my money on the counter: "I'm a big guy.") (Also, never drink two giant Red Bulls, which are equal to four regular Red Bulls. Lights begin to have trails, and you'll see more dragons than you ever thought possible.)

Our sitcom of the evening was called Bowl of Feathers, and I'm pretty sure it was about an excitable (Four Red Bull excitable) college professor who attempts to keep his sanity when his entire family, compromised of his over-bearing mother, her greasy new boyfriend, his inconsequential sister, and his possibly wise, possibly insane grandfather, are forced to share his tiny one bedroom apartment.

There was laughter, applause, and for the first time in my history as an improviser, I was unaware of the audience for the entire set. I played, I joked, I stuck to my guns, I probably still talked too much, but nothing short of a direct hit is going to take care of that.

In the end, we launched a new group. One that performed solidly, but has room for improvement. Which means more than getting the laugh, because it means there's a future for 7:22.

The direct future is our last two Go-Go dates of the summer - Aug. 17th and 24th. 8:00pm. One dollar. Come on by, and check it out.

We'll maybe even let Laura talk in this next one. Maybe.

*A lot of people seem to think it's boy-crazy Mona, but in truth, Danny Pintauro . Don't believe me? Go back and watch it again, and sense how much Danza's voice trembles when says "Jon-A-Ton"

I remember what the wonderful Bobby De Niro said to me. Well, not to me, I read it in an article.

When not directly involved and having in my possession an artist's pass (Which I hear is now something fascist called a "Rush Pass," and it doesn't even guarantee you admission. For a supposed festival celebrating art, they do seem to get more and more creative about shafting the actual artists) my Fringe limit seems to be about five shows as I run out of Fringe gas after that.

The fifth and ultimately final show if my work schedule speaks for anything:

Shakespeare's Land of the Dead
1/3rd Shakespeare in Love, 1/3rd Shaun of the Dead, 1/3rd The Final Project That Would Make Every English Teacher in the World Simultaneously Lose Their Shit - this is an excellent, excellent play all around. Solid acting, more-than-solid writing, sleek, professional presentation. Its only fault is that, often times, it's perhaps too clever for its own good, and a lot of jokes are aimed at the 1% of people that would get it. The trouble is, true one-percenter's don't laugh out loud, they knowingly chuckle and nod approvingly. Don't think that means they're playing to a silent crowd, because the faux one-percenters roar with laughter, maybe because they got the joke, or maybe because they want everyone to know/think they got the joke.

Here are some other Fringe experiences I've had this week:

• I feel as though these last five months haven't counted, and I've JUST moved back to Minneapolis, since I ran into numerous people that assumed I was just visiting Minneapolis to go to the Fringe. And after I told them I was back here, bar tending at a golf course in Blaine, they reacted as if I told them I had a brand new disease, so deadly and incurable and mutant-like they had to name it after me.
• Most of the shows I attended were at my old stomping grounds at Rarig Center. I even ran into several of my former theater majors, current baristas. I haven't seen a handful of them since leaving that building, so I like to imagine they all live in the basement somewhere. Many nooks and crannies for the homeless and starving (Both artist and just plain lazy) to hide in.
• I heard several rumors about myself while waiting in line at a lot of these shows. Some were spoken directly to me. A former classmate asked me how life was in Arizona. I replied, balmy I'd imagine, and then after I told them I haven't spent much time in Arizona, they asked, "Then how can you live there?" Then we just stared at each other until they let us into the show.
• My second favorite is when I was asked how my little girls were. The tone implied children, and not a harem. I laughed and said, "Oh, no, I don't have any kids.......do, I? Are they in Arizona?"
• I ran into my eleventh grade English teacher who was always one of my favorites. (Mr. Kuzma, for those of you in the know) I spoke with wife, son, and daughter-in-law, and I informed them it was the encouragement of Mr. Kuzma that led me to pursuing a life in writing, and, for that, I've hated him ever since. (And just in case you're wondering, Kuz is definitely a true one-percenter. Guess what show I ran into him at?) Also, while he did stop and say hi to me, having recognized me, he completely forgot my name. So, remember that one teacher that inspired you and you owe your life to? They've forgotten you. Accept that.

And finally, perhaps it's the mixture of nostalgia in the ol' theatre building, or the genuine happiness I had with theatre, or just being plain ol' Fringe drunk -- but this week has awakened the creative beast within. I'm crawling out of my cave and getting back in the game and many other cliches! Don't believe me? I've already got five auditions lined up, and a semi-completed outline for a brand-new, non-remount Mainly Me show.

Anybody know where a brother can get him a venue?

So here's us, on the raggedy edge.

Like all of my human relationships, my relationship with the Fringe Festival is complicated.

It began with brief flirtation. Then intense infatuation. Then a whirlwind courting period in which everything moved so fast, but felt so right. Our benefit to one another seemed unlimited, the future was ours for the taking.

Slowly, we both realized that what you saw, was what you got, and our acts grew stale in one anothers eyes as quickly as had convinced ourselves that fate had finally brought us our other half. Then the bitter fights, both drunken and sober. The inevitable split-up, the seeing of other Fringe Festivals and venues. The jealously and anger of realizing the other was moving on faster than you.

Then the Fringe and I show up at the same party, and the Fringe has to awkwardly explain the tension, but qualify it with a "He's a great guy, and he's capable of so much. He just needs to find whatever it is he's looking for. And sure, let's make-out."

I use the word complicated, but it's a fairly open and shut case that the Fringe just hates me and wishes I would take the constantly being sent to voicemail as a hint, but I just keep on hanging around.

That was my quirky way of telling you that I've been Fringing over the weekend, and here are some of my reviews and thoughts of what I've seen thus far:

Waking in Minneapolis
This show is a symphony of maybes and almosts. It's cute, fun, oftentimes funny, but doesn't come together as a whole. The shift in tones is often jarring and whiplash inducing, as is the constant use of blackouts, or what I like to call "Momentum Cancer"

However, there's talent behind the show, and I've no doubt that a great show is in the future for the creative team involved.

When I saw this show, I sat next to St. Paul Pioneer Press critic Dominic Papatola, who seemed excited to see me, despite telling me I should have a shredder near me the next time I wanted to produce a play. I watched him as much as I watched the show, and his intense expression, furrowed brow, and feverish note-taking inspired me to warn my friends in the production to brace themselves, as those acts foreshadowed not only a bad review, but one of his "funny" ones.

Both came true.

An Intimate Evening With Fotis: Part 2
Mike Fotis is a great writer, and engaging story-teller. I hope one day to purchase a collection of these stories in novel form, though despite his skilled verbage, the power of the piece would be lost without his delivery. The book-on-tape would sell like fucking hot-cakes though.

While watching the show, I found myself thinking "Man, hanging out with this guy is probably a laugh riot 14/7." I then realised that I consistently hang out with him, and he hates attention, so usually just blends into the background. Huh.

Mortem Capiendum
Another stellar piece of work from the always consistent Four Humor's team. Their love of theatre and daring is infectious (in the good way) and only matched by their ability to crank out juggernaut-after-juggernaut that is embraced by brows both high-and-low.

Musical The Musical!
I didn't really know what to expect from this show, aside from a musical. I've long said that the surefire way to a successful Fringe show is including the word "musical" after some random noun. If that random noun is also "musical," you're either going to create the greatest success story the Fringe has ever seen, or rip a hole in the dimension, allowing all other dimensions to bleed into one another, and destroy everything.

I'm happy to report this show was one of the most delightful surprises I've ever seen at the Fringe. A brilliant script from two hilarious people, Dough Nethercott and Hannah Kuhlman, that doesn't shy away from telling all the jokes that most shows would just allude to, as well as the most, forgive the somewhat unintended pun, pitch-perfect cast I've ever seen assembled at a Fringe show.

If you don't get a chance to catch this show in it's Fringe run, no worries, there's no doubt in my mind, that it will have a long healthy life afterwards.

[SIDE NOTE: After the show, Doug was giddy with excitement, which not to sound all Nethercotty was worth the price of admission alone. Anyhow, he jokingly ran up to me and announced, "I wrote a hit play! This what you felt like!" I told him that he can ride this feeling out for the next three years, it's at that point you realize you only had the one in you, and you'll ever be chasing the dragon that is the aftermath of your first show. Then we patted each other on the back, pretended we had monocles, and repeated the names of our plays to each other.]

ACK! Look at the time, I've gotta' run. More Fringe stuff later as I'm not done Fringing yet, and I didn't even get a chance to write about all the rumors I heard about myself waiting in line for these shows.

APARTMENT UPDATE:

- I have twenty-year olds who like to move it, move it directly under my bedroom. That means they party and drink all night, not humping. Haven't heard that yet. They kept me up most of Saturday, and the only thing that prevented me from walking downstairs and asking if they had any beers to spare was opening the bar at six am.

- I bought some of that egg-cartony foam stuff and it's the most uncomfortable bed in the world into a real bed. One that lets me sleep on it now.

- 1986 Lady apparently has a policy with the cable company that cable and Internet* cannot be installed without her written consent. This would've been great news to hear from anyone other than the cable guy explaining why I wasn't minutes away from having cable or Internet. All the more frustrating is the fact that 1986 Lady specifically asked me if I planned on getting cable, to which I replied yes.

Adding another element of shady to the entire ordeal, the cable guy and I attempted to find out where the cable could be installed, and from our brief investigation, it looks as though the cable can be installed via The Forbidden Cave of Mystery and Danger.

Will Josh get his cable, or is he going to have to keep going to coffee shops, kicking off his shoes, and sprawling out on the couch like he owns the place? Stay tuned.

*I just wanted to point out that I didn't feel the need to capitalize Internet, but spell check did. The computers are not only going to take over one day, they're pretty pretentious about it.