A blast from the recent past

Probably not the best line with which to begin when you visit the Office of Disability Services to ask for a favor:

"So, I have a question but I don't have a physical disability. Unless you consider brain problems to be physical."

Louisville: It's not just for Sluggers anymore.

Yesterday, after several attempts, I got halfway through reading my play (the one I'm hoping to ready for my application to The Public Theater's inaugural Emerging Writer's Group).
It was awful. I was awful. How could I have thought this was ready? Despair came in without knocking, ordered a bunch of Chinese food, and didn't stop eating until it was all gone and I felt as bad physically as I did emotionally. I would have shaken my fist at Despair but I was inexplicably sluggish and too sweaty for that much exercise.

(You know where the story is going, don't you? You've known all along, yes? Is there no mystery left in the world?)

I called several people yesterday, trying to get them to tell me how good I am and why I shouldn't give up writing. Was not convinced.
Then I watched an episode of Life is Worth Living from 1953, discovering the fascinating Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
He was like the love child of Liberace and Red Skelton. The act worked. I laughed and thought about my eternal soul. (or was it the other way around?)
I watched the tube until I was too tired to hate my play, then I fell asleep.

Today I received a letter from Actor's Theatre of Louisville. It was the thickness of one sheet of paper. I continued to breathe while I prepared myself for the rejection.
it began:

Dear Mark,
Thanks for your patience while waiting to hear from us regarding your submission to the 2007 National 10-Minute Play Contest. ("You're welcome" I muttered) This year we received over 1,200 entries (Okay, here we go...the submissions were exciting but they're sorry mine was not selected as one of the finalists...)
and your play, A Morning After, has been selected as one of the finalists for the 2007 Heideman Award.

I screamed. I swear to you as God is my witness, I jumped up and down in that empty house and I screamed and laughed and said "OMYGOD!" so many times and so quickly that it sounded like I was speaking in tongues. Dizzy with joy, I tell ya.
It was a great moment.

Then I called almost everyone I know.
I will call more people tomorrow.
(Yes, I already posted about it on my Facebook. Was that tacky?)

I just want to savor this moment.
And when I forget, I want to read this and remember.
It's a stepping stone of encouragement in the river of doubt, despair and uncertainty.

Ah, yes. Life IS worth living.
Touche, Bishop Sheen, touche.

(takes a deep breath, visualizes more stepping stones, exhales.)

Cathy? Hi, it's Ben. Thanks for coming to the party. How are you feeling?

Just putting this here so I don't lose it. I think there's AT LEAST a 10-minute play in this story.

(from Ben Widdicombe's Gossip column in the Daily News, found from a link to a Liza item on talkinbroadway.com)

Don't shoot the messenger

Which network news executive had to confess to cheating on his partner after he caught hepatitis? Plus, he had to tell the 50 party guests whose food he prepared by hand the day before he was diagnosed.

Zis laptop...she is not healthy...

Apparently, up-to-date versions of Symantec anti-virus, Ad-Aware and Zone Alarm personal firewall aren't enough to protect your pc laptop from a virus that will destroy your hard drive.

Or, perhaps it's just me.
(Apple...why couldn't I have an Apple?)

So, for the last 30 hours or so (with 4 or 5 for sleep, nowhere near enough) I have been struggling to save my word documents, personal photos, digital music (and yes, porn, are you happy?) from the virus that was slowly murdering my 3 year old Dell Inspiron 1000. The virus won.

The bad news is everything is gone. The good news is I last backed the p.o.s. up about a month ago, so the loss isn't catastrophic. Thanks to the new web-based world, i still have my facebook stuff and my Myspace stuff and my webbased email and gmail and Blogger and Livejournal stuff and thanks to my incredibly generous host, i was able to pick up a wireless adapter for my Desktop from Sam's Club (Look! Multipacks!) at 8:45pm, and all is okay.
(Ah, yes...and the "service agreement" I got with the computer doesn't expire until the end of July, so back to Dell it goes! If I had known i was going to lose it to a virus, I would have gone hog-wild and seen how many of those suckers I could catch b4 the end. Maybe explore the wide world of bittorrents...)

I am, as you might imagine, a bit miffed, though.
I think i got the damn bug from a website, thisisby.us.com, an awful "writing site" (write for us! Get votes! earn $! You own your work!) that I found through (duh) Craigslist.
But, I'm afraid to go back and find out because my desktop doesn't have a service plan and if it dies, it gets buried.
Anybody else get infected by this site?
It happened when i was trying to delete my first post from the website. I clicked "delete" and my hard drive started making horrible scraping noises and it was all downhill from there.

I'm gonna look around in the net. see what i can find.
This post is boring and ill-thought out, but i just wanted to get it in b4 the day is all gone.

Happy July!

Two Guys Visit Yankee Stadium: A Tale of Loss and Friendship - New York Times

Two Guys Visit Yankee Stadium: A Tale of Loss and Friendship - New York Times

Sunday Morning (okay, afternoon...) tearjerker.
Maybe it's just good (manipulative) writing, (or maybe my body goes through a physical change on Sunday mornings that makes me sappier than usual) but this story about a guy who asked for and got a bunch of free stuff for his friend moved me.
I think it was this bit right here:

“We’re going to Yankee Stadium,” Mr. McGuire said on Wednesday. “Michael doesn’t know it yet, but he is going to meet his idol, Don Mattingly.”

For Mr. McGuire it will be an important outing at Yankee Stadium, but for his friend, it will be much more.

Mr. Sayre has congenital glaucoma, which has left him blind in his right eye and in danger of losing his eyesight altogether. Their road trip to the Bronx began in March with a letter that Mr. McGuire wrote to the Yankees.

“I’d like to tell you about my best friend, Michael Sayre,” the letter began. “Michael is a 25-year-old diehard Yankees fan. He was born with glaucoma. Recently, he lost all vision in his right eye. Right now he’s hanging on to what vision he has left in his left eye, and his doctors don’t know how long it will remain healthy.

“I knew I had to do something special for him. Something he’d never forget. I’d like to take him to a Yankee game and give him the chance to experience the game like never before — to walk on the field, sit in the dugout, hear the dirt crunch beneath his feet or have him meet his all-time Yankee favorite, Don Mattingly. Nothing would mean more to Michael than to get up close and personal with the team he is so passionate about.”

I know it's a kitschy, feel-good story, the kind that shamelessly panders to our emotions, and reinforces the lies that our system is fair, and good people are rewarded, and I know that this sweet event won't change the world, it probably won't even change a life (a bat with Don Mattingly's name on it isn't going to help Mr. Sayre find his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or help him feel useful in a world where our worth is determined by our jobs), but...

it moves me to see people caring for one another.
And, to be honest, next to images of dads hugging/accepting their sons (Billy Elliot, Field of Dreams, Tribute w/Jack Lemmon (rent it), etc...), nothing makes me emotional like people realizing their dreams.
It's not the dreams that get me, it's that people have them.
So many have no dreams at all.
I wonder if dreams are the USA's greatest natural resource.


There's a voice in my head that says "How dare you throw away those dreams. You know, there are children in Africa who don't have any dreams at all. (There are people who are dead, in prison, bedridden, hospitalized, mentally or physically crippled, etc...) They're dying to have dreams, and you're just throwing them away."
Here, too. Lots of people can't afford dreams here, either.
They're expensive as hell.
I think they might be the luxury we can't live without.

Thank God for TV.
It dreams for us.
Watching it feels like having dreams of my own, feels like going after them, feels like exercise.
As long as I never turn it off, I don't have to hear the nothing, see the empty space.

(I wanted to share this as a happy story, honest. I was trying to wrap the story in warmth, I didn't realize the blanket was wet until it was too late.)