A Love Lesson from Gollum

The Hobbit Movie is coming out. 

Which made me reflect of the Lord of the Rings movies..then made me wonder:

What's all the fuss about the ring? 

(It’s been a long time since I’ve read the Hobbit, but Ill piece stuff together from my multiple viewings of LOTR movies and the internet)

So here goes:

Biblo is at Bag End doing his thing. By luck and happenstance, he gets involved with an adventure and finds himself with a match-made in Middle Earth, the perfect ring. Even though Bilbo and the  ring are pretty happy together. Gollum really wants that ring  back in his life.

Gollum doesn’t know how to live a single life. His named even changed because of the ring  remember? He used to be Smeagol and now he’s Gollum. The ring is Gollum’s life. Gollum would totally be into just hanging out forever in his dirty apartment sitting on top of pizza boxes rubbing the ring forever. But, are you? (Hey, Gollum! If you liked it you should have put a ring on it! Right? A ring on a ring? Right? Get it? No?....Yeah, you do.) It appears that his goal is to badger the ring into being his again, that and of course killing whoever gets in his way and eating them like a sandwich.

So that’s pretty much any ‘romantic comedy’ right? Or at least that’s want (some, you know who you are…) lady magazines tell ladies their lives should be. Go after the ring! Your life isn’t really happening until you have the ring! Sacrifice everything in your life for the ring! The ring is everything.

Later, Bilbo is over the ring. Till death do us part comes and goes. And the ring finds a new partner….Frodo, everyone’s favorite Elijah Wood. Boy, here’s comes Gollum again, just wanting that precious. But even then, Elijah has a hard time with the ring, getting his fingers cut off and all.

Have we learned anything from Gollum? That ring obsession will only lead to a horrible death in the fire magma of Mount Doom?

So the  lesson here is, be careful of rings. They might be wonderful  but get too crazy about them and you get your fingers cut off and you fall into Mt. Doom. 

Confession Time Part 2: Secret Fantasy

Oooh, it's Confession Time again!

And now is the time I tell you all my fantasies. I don't claim for it to be unique. In fact, I know a number of people who live this fantasy every day. And others who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this fantasy.

It all starts with pair of underwear. Mine. Maybe someone else's too, but most definitely mine. And these underwear are no longer on my body. But they have been, boy, have they been. These are dirty undies. Soiled panties if you will. And I take these undies and I toss them on to the pile of other unclean underthings, bras, swimsuit bottoms, maybe even a towel in there too.

Then in my bare feet, I step back and discover....that was my last stick of clean clothing in my home.

What ever will I do?

That's right. I will wash my clothes. I will do the laundry. Yeah, do it up right. I will throw all those stinky clothes right into a washing machine....my own washing machine....any time I want.

That's right, my fantasy is the fantasy of many. A fantasy where the amount of laundry I do is determined by my own procrastination rather than by how many quarters I have.

Poetry of the Sasquatch

This is how good a sasquatch would be at Photoshop.

Ah, poetry! The choreography of words!

I thought a very special treat for you today would be to delight your senses with poetry!

Ooooh! I can feel you collective gasp of anticipation. I hope I don't over excite you when I tell you that this is poetry of the sasquatch!

Oooooh! You all just clenched up your stomachs all at once! I can tell by the heightening of the universal tension in the world!

Wait, no more!

Here it is:     



Poetry of the Sasquatch
By Heather Meyer, who is not a sasquatch but wrote this poem as if she was one, but she is not a sasquatch,

I made a footprint in the snow
that showed all people which way I go.

Making my way to my home
dreaming of when I am not alone.

When the people come and knock my door
down, for tea and cookies and more.

I leave my feet marks over the ground
waiting, waiting for them to be found.  

Not often one sees my big foot marks.
Are they too light? Are they too dark?

Human dream of when we meet
Will I be scary? Will I bee neat?

They search and look but never do they find
The actual self, I call mine.

They find one footprint large and different.
And say "but why is there only one footprint?"

And I say, "Ah human, so much you wish you knew
that footprint if from when sasquatch carried you.

Don't know where this is going, but Andrew Zimmern was on the way

"leave"ing you with quesitons

What do my characters want? And other moments of trying to figure it out.

My MFA mentor gave me a lot of solid feedback on the 'shitty first draft' (copyright someone else) of the full length play that I am making exist.

Ultimately, I need to figure out what my characters want. And then be clear about it. I think I know what my characters want....at least to some extent. But obviously, if I just wrote 'I think I know" and "at least to some extent" that means I can be more clear and more specific.

Which makes me remember my freshman year acting class in college. It was all about what you wanted in a scene and then how was I going to get that goal.

THIS IS THE SAME THING!

This also reminds me of the first real improv class I ever took where it was about what was your character's deal and what did they want.

THIS IS THE SAME THING!

My whole artistic life is all the same thing. Which means, like anything important, I need to hear it many times from many places.

Then, this evening I went to HUGE Improv Theater to see Show X Featuring real life celerbrity Andrew Zimmern! Yes, that Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods! And if you know me or read this blog a bit you know that I have a thing for the weirdest thing on any menu. And life goals of eating both maggott cheese and fugu, both things totally pale in comparison to the things Andrew Zimmeren experiences.

Anywho, I am not sure yet how me talking about seeing Show X with Andrew Zimmern and my artistic learning paragraphs at the top match up yet, but they will. You will see.

At Show X a guest storyteller, in tonight's case Andrew Zimmern tells stories, which then improvisers use as fuel to create scenes, this scenes then inspire the storyteller into a new story, which inspires new scenes and so on and so forth.

Go it? It's an improv form called an Armando.

At one point, Andrew told tale of being presented with a bowl of donkey skin cut into donkey skin noodles. As expected, the crowd gave a collective 'gross' sound to which Andrew replied (not an exact quote) "Don't have contempt for something you have not tried, stretch yourself into something new, like I did by coming up on stage here tonight." (again, not an exact quote, but the feeling was there.) Well, that turned the collective gross out groan turned into applause.

At this point in this blog post I wish I had a clear way to tie in the first half of this blog post with the second Show X half. Usually, by now I would have some sort of clever metaphor I could throw it to look like I planned this all along.

You know what. This blog post is an improv set. I started with one thing: characters who didn't know what they wanted and now that has morphed and flowed into a post about not knowing where I am going.

Why?

Because this blog post did not know what it wanted! There's totally fun and interesting stuff in here, but very little story. Because the character (Me) doesn't have a clear want. Or maybe I do but I did not execute it clearly.

IS THIS TYING THIS UP?

I don't know but this is what I got for today.

Andrew Zimmern!

Minneapolis Superhero Sighting

Dear Helpful Strangers of Dec 2012 and what I expect to be early 2013,

Thank you for helping push out my car. I didn't expect you to show up out of nowhere. But then, I saw you walk over, away from your cute girlfriend holding a Pizza Luce box to help me. That is how I knew you were a superhero. No mere mortal has the willpower to resist an adorable one holding a pizza. You are powerful indeed. I could tell by your willingness to assist me, a stranger, free her car from the show, that you are a member of the most secret and exclusive superhero alliance in all of human history: The Alliance of Snow Strangers. Your kind comes in many forms; women, men, children, bundled up unidentifiable creatures on two legs, dudes in boots, ladies in flats, people without mittens, parents with kids in tow, dog-walkers.

You always arrive right when you are needed, as if all cars are equipped with a bat signal that turns on when the wheels start spinning in the snow drift. You give it a push with no judgement. You know that snow is beyond our control and blaming someone for getting stuck does nothing to get them unstuck. Thank you for jumping in with clear directions, a willingness to wield a shovel and only needing a sincere thank you before you return to your alter ego as regular guy going to eat pizza with your girlfriend (Sir, I am sure she was super turned on by your willingness to help a stranger.)

With a city less enthused about the appearance of snow, the sightings of your kind warms the winter air. You give us hope that our city will one day be free from the shackles of dense winter snow. One day, we hope to no longer be terrorized by streets frozen by the evil sub-zero temperatures. But until that day comes, we have you, Alliance of Snow Strangers, to help us fight back.

Thank you Alliance of Snow Strangers for protecting our fair city.

Much gratitude,

Car driving Minneapolis Citizens

A Little Holiday Thanksgiving.

In January of 2005, I went to the 10pm closing night holiday show at the Brave New Workshop. The show: "A Very IKEA Christmas or Some Assembly Required."

That show was outstanding, the laughing was so deep, so hearty....so magnificent. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I could blog about it by the foot on this blog, but nobody wants to read a foot long blog.

(I also wonder if this show was the reason I started working at IKEA the fall of 2005 and was there for five years. Well, this show and Brooke.)

But what I am here to say is that seeing that show was one of those magical moments where I knew my life had changed.  I wanted to be a part of this, this special crazy holiday comedy magic.

Last night, I opened Holiday Mixtape 2012 on that very stage. In addition to other classic sketches I had seen in other holiday BNW shows, I got to sing the epic and legendary Brave New Workshop's 12 Days of Christmas: Shrieking Mother's Chorus.

Originally, this was going to be a long sappy post about life and the roads we take and quoting Wicked.

But the simple matter is: life is amazing. And I am thankful everyday for it.

100 Short Story Contest

Check out my new Photoshop skills!

The Loft Literary Center is having 100 word short story contest.

As someone who likes contests and has a short attention span (Ask me about my 90 minute theatre rule) this is perfect for me.

(Yes, the contest is for Minnesota writers only, but if you aren’t from MN don’t fret it looks like http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/ has a weekly 100 word story challenge. So you there you go!)

But back to the Loft Literary Center Contest!

Entries are due January 4^th. That means you have 28 days to put together 100 words. Let’s math that out. That’s 3.5 words a day! Thousands of people do NaNoWriMo every November and they write 50,000 words in 30 days. Even the people who don’t complete it can usually bang out 1000 words for so. That means you (and I) can string together 100 in 28 days.

Now, I bet you are saying this, “I can’t do that. I am not a writer. I am not good at those things.” Or a million other excuses. Guess what? Those excuses could be your 100 word story! It’s only 100 words, that’s like four tweets. Or two Facebook status updates.  You can do it.

Here, this is what 100 words looks like:

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five. Forty-six. Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-three. Sixty-four. Sixty-five. Sixty-six. Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight. Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight. Sixty-nine. Seventy. Seventy-one. Seventy-two. Seventy-three. Seventy-four. Seventy-five. Seventy-six. Seventy-seven. Seventy-eight. Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one. Eighty-two. Eighty-three. Eighty-four. Eighty-five. Eighty-six. Eighty-seven. Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety. Ninety-one. Ninety-two. Ninety-three. Ninety-four. Ninety-five. Ninety-six. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.

Not scary at all!

Wait? What did you just say? Oh, the old “But I am not going to win,” excuse. Does that really matter? It’s not about winning. It’s about doing! Have you seen the name of my blog? It’s The Culture of Doing Things! It’s not called The Culture of Winning Things (if it was called that there would only be a blog post about the time my business card won free Jimmy John’s for my workplace.)

So let’s write some words. But only 100 of them! 

For your reference, this blog post is 404 words.