"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!