Aggressive Will Now Be Palatable

Class yesterday was partly infuriating and exactly what we need: an aggressive, crowded, higher-stakes version of what we've sort of been spoon-fed thus far.  While with more peers (12 students--too many for our time frame/template) there comes the occasional blowhard (he's with cacophonous bells on) but for the greater good--this format will work nicely.

My sketch went over well--and got zero laughs.  People were digging it, but going in I knew it wasn't a laugh-out-loud guffawing affair, so perhaps I benefitted more from the process and execution than the aftermath.  So as I was pissed off in the cold, in the wind riding home--this is exactly what I want, even if i didn't realize it for a dozen hours or so.

I spent the night at my girlfriends and found myself in strange, constipated limbo this morning.  Taking a few hour break to head home I popped into my friend's bar in Bucktown--where after gleefully consuming 2 beers and a complimentary shot of Basil Hayden, I, unbeknownst to me, see my checking is overdrafted, again. So it's funny, yes, I feel like sort of a scuzbag--suppose this is how Henry Miller felt the entire time he was in France, mooching off people, trying to find a "touch" as he called it.  All this does is ring the "sense of urgency" bell.  Acting in my insignificant show at Second City has marvelously fucked me in the pocket book.  Understand I only work part-time to begin with--which I have stasis with, but subtracting from such a precarious plan of action has had an insidious effect.  

And you also have to understand how much I LOATHE thinking so pragmatically--because all in all it's so fucking boring, and I frankly don't care.  Yeah.

The Drudge Report is claiming, front and center, that McCain volunteer was robbed and someone carved a "B" in her cheek.  Yet, she refused medical attention.  I saw a picture and it looks very fake.  Now if this guy {points to himself} was uh, mutilated, especially in the vicinity of my pretty face, you sure as fucking shit would bet I'd appreciate some medical attention, to the "Nth" degree.  Come the fuck on?!  When people at McCain/Palin rallies were inciting the crowd to yell "Kill Him" "Terrorist" etc., it was totally kosher.  I can't wait for this election to end.  All I'm feeling left with is a resounding sense of hope, and an exacting anger towards right-wingers who find this permissible.  Not to mention the intellectual divide in this country that begs a series of ugly questions to the relevance of a decent portion of the population here.

Ick.

I sleep now.

A Finite Jest?

I've yet to dress myself, in big boy clothes I mean, but I take a very specific solace in my domestic uniform.  Today it's long underwear with short-shorts over the top, and a button down henley thing where the buttons traverse close to my navel.

I have class tonight (writing @ Second City) and for once finished my assignment early: celebration!  It's polished to the point I don't need to hem and haw any more--it is just a first draft.  This week we had to take anything from any (assuming the primary) living room we grew up in.  Being an auspicious child of divorce (age 2) and a slew of moving around the post industrial wasteland of Racine, WI--this was overall refuted at first.  As sharp as my retention is there's whole worlds of my childhood I simply can't remember.  I settled on "The Bed in the Living Room."  This was a one-bedroom apartment after my mother left Tom something(can't remember the name), whom she was engaged too, for discovery of cocaine I believe.  Given how much of a square my Mother is she may have found a 20 bag and flipped her proverbial lid (a square lid of course).  But the bed, yes, so--as became a frugal habit--I took the bedroom and she slept in the living room.  

This particular incarnation we had a twin-sized bed in the space a couch would normally inhabit.  It was a hodgepodge, as was most everything then.  This is circa 1988-89-ish.  A year or so later I attended a reputable private school, on scholarship of course, and the purgatorial trainwreck of meshing with a group of rich kids provided the back end for the sketch.  Two boys playing Nintendo on a bed in a living room, and the guest, a rich kid, can't wrap his head around the decorative anomaly.

I've gotta hand it to Nancy(our instructor): I enjoyed the hell out of the assignment.  Crafting something personal and character driven without tapping into my eccentric-simpsonesque-surreality was def worthwhile, and there's a succinctness to it that may not be

laugh-out-loud funny, but whole emotional hook angle is a necessary angle in this medium (sketch comedy).

So I'm totally riding the high and self-lauding of being able to extrapolate something substantial from an assignment I scoffed at.  We'll see what the reaction is in a few hours.

Apartment Hunting has been dormant for week... as has been the case with Second City--but the gloves are off.  This HAS to be finished by December 1st...  

Meeting People Is Easy...

Hello.  My name is Michael Simon, and I'm pleased to meet your acquaintance.  I divide my time between acting and writing, ostensibly...

I'm 28 years old.

I'm going to record the process and everything surrounding my completion of a screenplay entitled: Apartment Hunting.  I believe I'm approaching my final year in Chicago.