Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Trails.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Trails.: "My wife took Simon the horse out for a ride yesterday. Simon is the new horse in our backyard. He's the culprit responsible for eating my ..."

New Trails.

My wife took Simon the horse out for a ride yesterday. Simon is the new horse in our backyard. He's the culprit responsible for eating my carefully tended corn right to the ground a couple of weeks ago. Somehow he got out of his stall and went right for my corn that I'd planted some two months ago. It was the middle of the night and his stall hadn't been secured and the corn was right there and...well, he was hungry.

Simon is a gentle horse. He's been smacked around in the herd quite a bit and has lots of bite marks around his neck (that's how horses keep each other in line, apparently...they bite each other on the neck). I know how he feels because I've got a lot of bites around my neck, too, remnants of a lifetime of getting out of line. Anyway, Simon tried at one point to buck her while crossing the swinging bridge that leads into the trails behind the equestrian center near our home. He wasn't used to being alone (without our other horse, Petrone, that is) and wandering into uncharted territories. Again, I know just how he feels.

Yesterday, I turned down a beautiful role in a very complex, intense play called 'Way to Heaven' at The Odyssey Theatre here in LA. It's where I did 'Adding Machine.' It was a tough decision, but one that had to be made. I don't like turning down roles that I like. But, as my manager pointed out to me, it is a bad time to tie myself down to a long run at this particular moment. Things are heating up considerably in the film and TV world and to take myself out of the game right now would be a very bad decision, financially and otherwise. Still, it irks me.

I have so many irons in so many different fires right now to comment on them all would be exasperatingly premature so suffice to say, the decision to not do the play was definitely the right one. Although, I must say, the play's subject matter - the Holocaust - is one particularly important to me. Back in the mid-nineties in NYC I adapted the writings of Primo Levy into a play called 'If This is a Man' which ran for quite a while at The Kraine Theatre in the East Village. Primo Levy was a Jewish, Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz and wrote several books about it subsequently.

Later this month Angie and I are heading down to The Old Globe in San Diego to workshop a new play of mine. Also we're catching our good friend, Hershey Felder, and his opening night of his new one-person show about Leonard Bernstein. Not coincidentally, Hershey is producing my new play.

But back to poor Simon and that journey over the swinging bridge into the undiscovered country of new trails leading into the bowels of Griffith Park.

I've never liked change of any sort. It's part of my chemical make-up. I like things to stay exactly the same, always. Which is an odd character flaw for a guy who has spent his life in the theatre. Everything begins and ends quickly in this business. People float in and out of my life like shadows at dusk; best friends for three months and then not a word for years. It's part of the lifestyle. Nothing to be done about it.

But I don't like it. Like many, I've discovered, especially as I get older, that I'm a creature of habit. Anything that disrupts my carefully negotiated little schedule and I begin to feel adrift. I've often thought I might have made a very good assembly line worker. I would have been, if nothing else, comfortable with that line of work. Getting up at the same time everyday, doing the same work, coming home at the same time, only now and then, perhaps on the weekends, would I venture into the world of the unplanned, the vicarious, the unexpected. And as Sunday night approached I would feel the safety of knowing that Monday would bring a re-entry into the mundane. Change, for all its brew-ha-ha, makes me nervous.

It's a Rainman kind of streak in me that I've grown satisfied with through the years. And oddly and weirdly I find myself now, at the grand old age of fifty, in a position of not having any of that premeditated comfort of sameness. I hardly ever know what's going to be my life focus from one month to the next. My passions are scattered often and relentlessly.

Fortunately, and possibly life-saving, I have my base, my home, my family (and when I say 'family' I mean the one I chose, not the one I had thrust upon me like a practical joke in particularly bad taste). No matter what swells I have to endure on that fickle ocean outside my front door, once I'm within my chosen walls, all is well again. Like Simon, I don't like swinging bridges leading into a bunch of mysterious, dusty trails that I'm not familiar with. I don't like taking roads less traveled. And I don't like knowing I have to. I want to buck a little, like Simon did, and dig my heels in and demand the same trails I've always walked. I don't like looking ahead and seeing all the different ways I might go and not having the slightest idea which one is right.

So Angie got back from her ride and told me about Simon's little episode of bucking. I asked her how she dealt with it. Did she fall off? Did she turn back? Was she scared? No, none of the above. You know what she did? She talked to Simon gently and quietly and had him walk in a circle for a little while, just a few minutes, and let him know everything was alright. Just walk in a circle for a bit and get his bearings back.

And I realized suddenly that that is exactly what she does with me. She brings me back to a place of safety and has me sofly tread about in a field in which I'm comfortable. She takes me back to the meals I like, the couch I sit on, the home and hearth I've come to know as mine. Fortunately for me, my wife understands that, like Simon, I don't like change. So she dresses change up and makes it look like something I might like. She disguises the peas and mixes them in with the potatoes. And she does it so subtly, so naturally that most of the time I don't even know I'm in the middle of change until it's nearly over. And like Simon, my fears are allayed before I have a chance to dwell on them. When I'm frightened of the unknown I am guided into a well-known emotional and mental circle all the while listening to soothing and practical advice, quietly given. And again like Simon, after a short while, I'm ready to try the new trails, the roads never traveled, the unforseen future.

I think everyone needs to do that now and then. Just slow down and maybe walk in a thin circle for just a few minutes. Be reassured that although the bridge might be swinging a bit, it's still a bridge and it still holds us up. Hear whispered encouragement about the myriad choices before us. Because those trails are not so scary, really. Not at all. We just haven't been on them yet.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: A Lesson in Humility.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: A Lesson in Humility.: "Yesterday I had a long rehearsal for a short film I'm shooting soon, tomorrow, in fact. It's an odd little script, but quirky and amusing. ..."

A Lesson in Humility.

Yesterday I had a long rehearsal for a short film I'm shooting soon, tomorrow, in fact. It's an odd little script, but quirky and amusing. Something I don't get to do too often on film: absurdism. It's being directed by a very nice, polite to a fault, young graduate student. He had seen another film of mine at some point and asked me to do a role in his film. We quickly got the business stuff out of the way (it's just a short film, not much time involved, so I didn't even bother to forward anything to my agents - besides, I was flattered) and set the time for filming.

But then, much to my mild irritation, he called a rehearsal. At first I said no. I hadn't agreed to a day of rehearsal. For a short film? Nah, I thought, not worth it. But he persisted. Very politely. So I finally said, okay, I'll give you a couple of hours, but not all day as he originally wanted.

So around noon yesterday I traveled over to Pasadena and sat and did a table read of the piece. I was clearly the 'ringer' for the project, brought in to play the part of the loopy, silly, antagonist in the script, the 'working pro' around the younger, fellow graduate students also asked to do the piece, being treated with entirely too much cautious respect.

And as I sat there going through the eight page script, I realized how important this was to all of them, how passionate they all were about it, how grateful they were of my participation. And I had a very clear flashback of my days in school. I had written a one-act play, not a very good one but I didn't know that back then. I was directing it myself and had obtained permission to present it one-night-only in the studio theatre at college. I cast my buddies Robert Fiedler, Jeff Cummings and Dwayne Butcher in the play, all good actors. The play was about a half hour long. I rehearsed them hours and hours for it, days in fact. We poured over it. We discussed it. We placed every line under a microscope. We dissected it. We treated it as though it were Lear, Hamlet and Othello all bound together in one play. We wore our passions on our sleeves like undisguised war wounds.

And I remembered all of this and suddenly I felt very arrogant for being such a prick about reluctantly agreeing to their rehearsal. After a bit, the young director (who also catered lunch and had sent me several emails asking what I did and didn't like so he could get exactly the right thing) said, well, I guess we've taken enough of your time. They were going to keep rehearsing, continuing to go through the script, find every comic beat, over and over. I thought about that play, that little one-act that Bob, Jeff, Dwayne and I had done back in 1983, and I said, nah, no worries, let's just keep working till we get it the way you want it. And we did.

I wish I had one tenth of the single-minded devotion these young guys have for their craft. I envied them their naivety and confidence about what they were doing. They were making Citizen Kane, The Searchers and The Godfather, they were writing the final word on films. The fire flared in their eyes as they set shots, laughed at timing, brainstormed ideas, tried different camera angles, all as if none of it had ever been done or tried before.

I finally did have to leave after a few hours, but the truth is, I would have stayed all day if I could have. To be in the center of that unbridled pureness of intent, completely devoid of cynicism, clear-eyed and certain, not ashamed to show how important this was to them. Well, it was a dose of humility. And I was the one grateful in the end. Because it made me remember when I was that age and unafraid to wear my passion openly. I had not yet suffered the slings and arrows of the oft-repeated word, NO. No one had yet to say to me, 'you can't do that.' So I didn't know I couldn't.

In my blog yesterday I lamented the idea of 'working for free.' And yes, sometimes it is necessary to say no, I'm sorry, but I don't do that. But sometimes, sometimes, as in yesterday, working for free pays for itself. It pays for itself by being allowed to breath in that idea of work for work's sake. Excellence for the sake of excellence.

Now I haven't the slightest idea if this little film will be worth anything. Doesn't matter to me. The point is we're trying, me and these idealistic, young graduate students. We found ourselves believing in something, even if for a few hours. And most importantly, I found myself transported, quite unexpectedly, back to a time in my life when the work, the work itself, was the goal, not something to 'get through' so as to justify the paycheck.

Well worth it. Indeed, a welcome and humbling trip back 28 years or so when I, too, thought nothing was impossible.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.: "www.cliffordmorts.com 'What's hard is simple. What's natural comes hard.' A lyric from Sondheim's song 'Anyone Can Whistle' and proba..."

Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.

www.cliffordmorts.com

"What's hard is simple. What's natural comes hard."

A lyric from Sondheim's song 'Anyone Can Whistle' and probably as good a phrase as any to have carved on my tombstone.

Couple of interesting projects coming up. One is a one-night-only, invited audience to a reading of a new, comedic screenplay by Jeremy Dylan Lanni's 'Used Books.' I'll be reading about eight or nine roles in it and will share the stage with Powers Boothe and Edie McLurg, both actors I admire. Also Bruce French, Peter Jason and my buddy, Larry Cedar. Should be fun. It's a very funny script.

Powers' work as Jim Jones in a 1980 TV movie called "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones" is still stamped permanently in my brain. Powers won an Emmy for that one and deservedly so. And Edie's work as the principal's secretary in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" still makes me laugh out loud all these years later.

On the 30th Angie and I are heading down to The Old Globe in San Diego to see our friend, Hershey Felder, open his new one-person show, 'The Art of Leonard Bernstein.' Big to-do with a formal, sit-down dinner afterwards. Angie's brother, Kenny, lives there with his family so we'll kill two birds with one stone and hang out with them for a bit, too. And being the sucker I am for a good zoo, maybe I can convince her to make a day out of that, too. The San Diego zoo is one of the best in the world, I'm told. I was last there in 1984 during a long, fun, chaotic, nihilistic trip to the west coast with a buddy of mine.

I'm shooting a short film on Monday and today get the rare opportunity to actually rehearse it for a couple of hours...a rarity when doing film. So I'll take a jaunt over to hot and beautiful Pasadena today.

Another full house last night for 'The Interlopers,' the play I'm doing for a couple more weeks at The Bootleg Theatre downtown. I must say, this cast and crew have thoroughly spoiled me. I adore them. I've mentioned this before, but it's one of those very seldom moments in the theatre when everything came together and clicked. Great actors, funny people, sensitive direction, great script, good space, satisfying experience. It just doesn't happen that often, unfortunately. I have a small role in the piece and I couldn't care less. I'm having too much fun.

I recently learned (I'm always the last to know anything) that Chaz Bono, perhaps the most famous transgender in the country at the moment, came to see the play the other night. He left quickly after the play and had some problems with the language, I'm told. Said to someone that the term 'pre-op' is not used anymore. Huh?

Other members of the transgender community have seen the play (a lot, in fact) and have had the exact opposite reaction, weeping by play's end and testifying to its authenticity. So, who knows?

Tuesday I have a callback for a Sci-Fi film that could be a lot of fun should I land it. Fingers firmly crossed. I would get to shoot a scene in a helicopter. That would be one for the diary.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my cast members last night. She told me she's 'getting itchy to do some real work again.' She was talking about film. I'm always a little surprised to hear sentiments like that. I've always felt exactly the opposite. The 'real work' for me has always been the stage. The money work has always been film. Granted, I'm a walking anachronism.

A buddy of mine, a guy who works constantly in film and TV, a very recognizable face, once took me to task for a blog I wrote over a year ago about the difference between film and stage acting. He said, "Don't slight film work, it's very, very hard. You'll realize that someday."

Well, I've done quite a bit of film work since that conversation. And I stick by my earlier assessment. Film work is a hundred times easier than stage work (gasping and wide-eyed disbelief from the peanut gallery). I realize it's very unpopular to say that in Los Angeles. Whatever. It's still true. I maintain that the difference between stage acting and film acting is tantamount to reading a novel or reading a comic book. One requires a commitment of time, thought, care, premeditation, interpretion, stamina and grit. The other requires a certain amount of luck that what you're rehearsing (essentially all film acting is rehearsal caught on camera) gets captured on celluloid (or digitally). And yet...and yet, to say out loud that stage acting is the 'real work' is met with undisguised reactions of horror not unlike saying something critical about the Catholic Church in 14th century Europe. It's just not done. It's out and out heresy. Los Angeles worships at the altar of the Great God Cinema. And rightly so. It's big business. And, to be fair, every now and then it is art. No other word for it. I defy anyone to watch, say, The Deer Hunter or Citizen Kane or The Searchers or Jaws or Cinema Paradisio or Magnolia or On the Waterfront and say that's not art. It's a group effort, yes, but the final product is art. Movies like that, as rare as the Hope Diamond, transcend the human experience. They move and provoke thought and demand opinion. They leave you a different person, for good or bad. What better definition of art? And continuing to be fair, at its very, very best, the theatre can't really even compete. But films like that are almost accidental, it seems to me. They very nearly fall under the category of the monkeys and the typewriter. Eventually, given infinity to do it, they'll write Hamlet.

Again, a very unpopular assessment in this town and one that will probably someday bite me in the ass. So be it.

I got a call yesterday, out of the blue, and this producer guy wanted me to come in and do a quick scene for a film he was doing. One scene. 'Very quick,' he said. 'No more than five minutes,' he said. No money involved. And this is a budgeted film with a few major stars attached. He just needed a pick up scene. I have no idea how he got my number. Anyway, I forwarded the request to my management company. They quickly called him on my behalf and asked about the money. He said he had none, that he was 'at the end of his budget.' He just needed a small favor.

My manager wished him luck and said no. He got agitated. Said, "I don't want to work with him anyway." What the hell? What are these guys thinking? Try that with a plumber. "Hi, listen my name is Bob and I need my plumbing fixed. It's not a big problem. Just a little toilet issue. Won't take you more than five minutes. Just a quick job. As a favor. But I can't pay you anything. I've used up my plumbing budget for the month. So if you could just take a few hours out of your day and come over and fix this toilet for free, I'd be grateful."

And THEN...and THEN...when the plumber says no, this guy gets upset. "What?! You won't fix my plumbing for free? Why, you bastard!"

Good Lord. Hollywood.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: This Goofy Business.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: This Goofy Business.: "www.cliffordmorts.com I have been lucky enough to have a whole flurry of auditions sent my way via my various agents the past week or so. ..."

This Goofy Business.

www.cliffordmorts.com

I have been lucky enough to have a whole flurry of auditions sent my way via my various agents the past week or so. Plus a couple that simply landed in my lap. And one producer called me in and just offered me the job (I particularly like those).

This ultra busy period started about two weeks ago. I had two back-to-back auditions down around the Culver City (Sony) area and I walked out of both in a bit of a huff. I don't usually do that. In fact, I'm fairly forgiving, I'd like to think, when it comes to auditions. But in both cases (and it was purely coincidental that they happened on the same day) I arrived (both were 'agent submissions' which, in effect, means you've been given an exact time to read) and was told I would have to wait a 'couple of hours' because they were running behind. Well, I have a long history of intolerance when it comes to this sort of thing; the idea, however unpremeditated, that 'your' time is more important than 'my' time. So in both cases I gave the monitor my pic and res and left, essentially saying 'a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an entire day of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a lobby on my part.'

But then things took a turn for the better. A week or so ago I read for a new Sci-Fi movie set in the future after a military Armagedden of sorts. I read for the world-weary leader of a bunch of scrambling, amoral band of thieves. It was at a place I've auditioned before, a place I don't particularly like. This place just seems to suck the energy out of me. There are a bunch of rooms there, all rented out by various production companies, and one has to sit in the lobby area in the middle with dozens of other actors waiting to get in the door of the assorted projects being cast there. I like to think I'm fairly empathetic. And this lobby is just filled to the brim with a chaos-theory crashing of id, ego, insecurity and desperation. It unnerves me and consequently I don't ever recall having a good read there. But for whatever reason, this time I did. It was a fairly long scene, read with the PA, and they asked me to do it three separate times. The second time they asked me to read it 'like Michael Caine' complete with cockney accent. So I did. It turned out well and yesterday I got the callback notice through my agents.

A few days ago I ventured over to Pasadena for a short film. I walked into the room and the director had a tall stack of resumes in front of him. I took a seat so we might 'talk a little' about the role. Finally, he said, 'I know your work. No reason to read this. Would you like to do it?' I said, sure, and that was that. We start filming next week.

The business has changed enormously in the past five years, I'm told. Actors who are household names, who used to only accept 'offer only' meetings, now have to read and audition just like the rest of us poor schmucks. The jobs are getting scarce. Which bamboozles me because it seems to me there are about 500 channels now and one would think the exact opposite would be true. But it's not. The 'stars' have to get in the trenches and battle it out for parts just like the rest of us. And when I say, 'stars,' I don't mean people like Johnny Depp or Jennifer Anniston, of course. I mean people who have done a ton of work before, people easily recognizable by the average citizen, people with a buttload of TV and film stuff under their respective belts. I sincerely doubt Depp has to auditon for much anymore.

In any event, there are inevitably auditions that go well and others that don't. That's just the nature of the beast. Who can say why? And they can turn on a dime. The energy is just wrong sometimes. Or something in the room is not right, a feeling, a vibe, whatever. And the reading just falls flat and lifeless. And other times, again for no apparent reason, it all just clicks and everything feels right. It's a funny business.

Yesterday I had a singing audition. Went in, sang my little ditty, which went quite well, and then committed suicide on the read. Why? No idea. Just happened. Was the text bad? No. Was I unprepared? No. Was I too nervous? Not really. Who knows. It simply is.

And then there are the ones that are just weird. Couple of days ago I had a read in Hollywood. I got there at my appointed time and signed in and looked around. It appeared to me as though someone had posted an audition notice at the nearest drug and alcohol homeless shelter. There were four or five guys sitting around, approximately my age so we were all reading for the same part, waiting to be called in. They were running a tad behind so the actors were piling up. Which is common and no big deal. But as I looked around I began to wonder what in the name of Zeus was up. One guy, around sixty or so, had a dirty t-shirt on, some daisy duke shorts and flip flops. Another was wearing an ill-fitting suit and had no teeth. Another was trying desperately to chat up anyone who walked in the door. He had the entire script written in tiny scrawl on the back of a Chinese food menu and his pictures and resumes bound together with duct tape. He was wearing dirty shorts and some old tennis shoes with holes cut in the front of them so that his toes stuck out, sort of hand made sandals. Another guy, also in his sixties, was in a corner doing a sort of marching in place thing, trying to simulate riding a bicycle (which the scene required) and shouting, and I mean shouting, his lines. He was standing there doing this little aerobic thing and shouting his lines and then, in a squeeky, womanly voice, saying the other lines in the scene (which, frankly, I thought he did better than his own). At one point he turned around and saw me gaping. "What!" he said. I turned my head and bit the inside of my mouth.

The toothless guy came over to me at one point and asked if I'd like to read through the scene.

"Um, well, there's only one part."

"Yeah, well, you read the other part."

"No, thanks."

He glared at me and then sat beside me and said, "I never seen you before."

"No, probably not."

"Hm. Nope. Never seen you before." He kept glaring. Thankfully, they called me in right about then and I was spared his goofiness.

When I came out after my audition the door banged against the old man with the daisy dukes. He had been listening with his ear pressed against the door.

"Excuse me," I said as I opened the door.

He gave me a wild-eyed, crackhead stare and rubbed the side of his head where the door had popped him.

"That's not how I'm gonna do it," he said.

"No, I would imagine not," I said and scampered for the exit. As I passed the shouting man he began slamming his head against the wall and saying under his breath, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..."

It all reminded me of a story my former acting teacher, Michael Moriarty, once told me about working with Robert DeNiro. They were doing a film called 'Bang the Drum Slowly' and there is a scene in which the terminally ill character DeNiro was playing had to vomit in a bathroom stall. Michael was watching off-camera. Before every take, and there were 10 or 12, DeNiro would take an iced tea spoon, one of those inordinantly long ones, and jam it into the back of his throat thus causing his gag reflexes to activate. He was trying, obviously, to make it completely real. Michael told me that as he stood and watched he said to himself, "You know, I'm just not that serious about all this."

So I finally made good my getaway. I told Angie later, 'This was agent submission only. WHO REPRESENTS THOSE GUYS?!"

All in all, however, I really can't complain. This business is a numbers ggame; 100 people see you, 5 or 6 like you. Simple as that. Most of the time it has nothing to do with how 'good' you are. You're either what they want or not. And that's it. That's the long and short of it. No reason to get your panties in a bunch. It's not personal. You're just not the guy.

Once one learns that indifferent truth about auditions, it's all just another day at the ball field.

See you tomorrow.

Social Butterflies...

We could not have attended two more disparate Fourth of July gatherings yesterday, Angie and I. First we ventured over to Hollwood to our friends, Gary and Jorge. They have a delightful little bungalow just a block from Melrose with an entirely enclosed back and front yard. The whole Interlopers cast (the play Gary has written and I'm currently acting in at The Bootleg Theatre downtown) was there and of course, I adore this cast. A funny, smart, irreverent bunch. Gary and Jorge also had a number of other friends over for BBQ and frivolity. Everyone there was in some way or another connected with the LA film and theatre scene it seemed, consequently it was a witty and gregarious bunch. My kind of folk. We left just as they were starting up a spirited game of 'Celebrity,' one of my favorite party games. Unfortunately we had to take out before we could play because we'd made a committment elsewhere as well.

So we headed up into the Hollywood Hills for a gathering at our friends, Phillipe and Tara. Tara and I did my play, Praying Small, together just about exactly a year ago today (she was brilliant in it) and Phillipe and I are currently neck deep in a film project together. They've just moved into a new house in the hills and we were anxious to see it. Actually (this is true) it is the old Ronald Reagan house when he was married to Jane Wyman (before 'Just Say No' Nancy). I happen to be a huge Ronald Reagan fan even though I agreed with virtually nothing he ever said or stood for. I can't help myself, I just liked the man. That was his great political gift, I think.

Anyway, we braved the narrow, winding roads up into the hills to find the new place. And believe me, they are very narrow and very winding. And once we found the new house we were awe-struck. It's stunning. Absolutely beautiful. It is, I daresay, the perfect house. Inspiring, unobstructed views in all directions, a wonderful tear-drop pool and jacuzzi off to the side, a large and sprawling house (Phillipe and Tara have two toddlers) with spacious and eccentrically spaced rooms, a large 'play area' out front for the kids. It's just an incredible house.

Of course, being the parents of two small ones, they have a whole slew of friends with small ones, too. So Angie and I weaved our way into the party dodging kids left and right, none of which came above our knees. Phillipe is Dutch by birth, British by accent and German by career, so the place was full with jolly, European expatriots. We sat by the pool chatting with Phillipe and Tara and marveling in the surroundings. I simply cannot imagine a more perfect house for a new family. And of course Phillipe and Tara are the most gracious of hosts.

We ate heartily at both destinations and came home early in the evening stuffed to the gills, a very satisfying Fourth of July. Angie watched fireworks on TV (which always seemed a bit removed to me) and I lay down exhausted in the bedroom watching, what else, the History Channel, featuring Revolutionary War documentaries.

From hipster to young parents, from Hollywood grunge to wading pools, from young, idealistic intelligencia to wary, watchful, smiling moms and dads. I had to smile at the incongruity of it all. And, oddly, we felt equally at home with both, although we conceded chasing kids around is well into our past.

Los Angeles is a funny place. It is not as socially connected as, say, Chicago or New York. People scatter and scrape for their own well-deserved piece of life's pie, emmersed in their own worlds, taking time now and then to bring peope into their carefully contructed lives and careers. No one just 'pops in' in this city. Angie and I are the same. Homes and houses here are bases, places to rejuvinate and restore energies before venturing out again the next day for another round of wheeling and dealing in paradise. That's just the way it is.

In other news, in addition to these two massive writing projects in which I find myself barely keeping my chin above water, the auditions (as an actor) are gushing in at an alarming rate and my calendar is getting filled with ink-stained 'write ins.' Angie is acting as my organizer these days because god knows I can't. If it were up to me, I'd be hopelessly confused as to where I'm supposed to be and when. In fact I have two today, one in Pasadena and one in Culver City. I think. I'll have to ask her. Mostly I just get the information and get in the car and go where I'm told.

This is the kind of schedule and life I've wanted since I got here nearly two years ago. And now that I have it, I'm frequently overwhelmed. Be careful what you ask for...

Life is good.

See you tomorrow.

Fourth of July.

Another Fourth of July is upon us tomorrow. The tempuratures are expected, here in Los Angeles, anyway, to be around 100 degrees for the day. Angie and I are flitting around to several cook-outs, fireworks displays, etc. We're quite the social butterflies this holiday weekend.

When I was a kid we had a houseboat at the Lake of the Ozarks in Southern Missouri and that was where we spent our Fourth of July, usually. We docked the boat at a place called 'Yacht Club Marina' which was a high-falutin' name for a rather run-down, little joint that docked a bunch of barely floating boats at the end of a scraggly, winding cove in a deserted part of the lake. For the uninitiated, however, if you said you were spending the Fourth at 'Yacht Club Marina' it sounded rather impressive.

The fun part of all that, though, was the bottle rocket wars we had when the sun set on 'Yacht Club Marina.' To this day I'm surprised I have all my fingers intact after these impromptu battles. We would light a bottle rocket, wait till the fuse was centimeters from the rocket, then toss it into the air with sure-minded agility so that it twirled once and then took off at the exact moment it was pointed in the direction of the enemy. Unbelievably careless. And yet, I don't recall anyone ever getting hurt or burned or otherwise injured.

This was the game we youthful ne'er-do-wells played while our parents got blind drunk and passed out on the rusting houseboats listing in the muddy cove.

As a professional actor, most of my Fourth of July memories are of doing plays at some theatre somewhere. Holidays for actors usually means two shows that day.

But the one Fourth of July that stands out in my mind had nothing whatsoever to do with fireworks. A buddy of mine in Chicago, a fellow C.A.D.C. counselor, called me a week or so before the fourth, and asked me if I would consider cooking ribs and burgers and chicken all day if he gave me five hundred dollars to buy it all. Huh? Well, he said, there's this homeless shelter on the North Side of Chicago and he wanted to give them a good Fourth. So I said yes.

Over the next week or so I begged, borrowed and stole as many BBQ grills as I could get my hands on and then got an old pick up and went around the city the day before picking them up. Around four in the morning on the day of the Fourth, with the help of a couple of friends, we started firing up the grills and slow-cooking the ribs. Slowly, as the morning wore on, smelling the ribs and burgers, the inhabitants of the shelter started filtering out to see what was going on.

Actually, everyone got in the way of the cooking, surrounding us, pushing in to see the grills, excited and surprised at the prospect of a great meal, and finally I had to put some Frank Sinatra on the boom box to clear them out so we could work. I discovered that cranking up Sinatra during his Vegas period really loud has the effect of scattering inner-city youth.

In any event, the day went off without a hitch and long about noon we had ourselves a feast. After everyone finished eating and wrapping up everything they couldn't eat and cleaning up and taking all the grills back to their respective owners, it was well into the night and I was exhausted.

And that is the Fourth of July I remember most fondly.

The point being I always find it remarkable how satisfied I am when I 'get outside myself' and do stuff away from my 'comfort zone.' I am virtually guaranteed a good day when I do it. Even if it's a small thing, a phone call to offer encouragment, a kindness not necessary, a deed, however small, designed to make someone else happy. Yes, it's corny and yes, it's not a new concept. But it works for me. I spend so much time living in my own mind, I sometimes start to think the universe actually does depend on my existence in order to keep spinning. And once that happens it is almost a certainty that I'll shortly find myself disgruntled and ill at ease with everything around me.

It's a funny thing, this doing-stuff-for-other-people business. The idea itself, 'service work,' altruism, is not appealing to me. I'd far rather do something that makes ME happy. And yet, oddly, it always makes me much happier in the end to do exactly the opposite. Not sure why this is, it just is.

And, oddly, it has nothing to do with making myself feel more 'moral' than someone else or more 'noble.' No, it simply takes me out of my self-centered life and thinking for a few seconds, a few hours, a day, whatever.

I highly recommend it.

A heartfelt happy Fourth of July to everyone. Be safe.

See you tomorrow.