Electric Feels and Fireflies....

It's the end of the year and I'm overwhelmed again.

Only 3 shows left this season!

THE RICH AND THE RECKLESS, a fully improvised 80's soap opera, continues every Saturday Night at 7:30pm in Los Feliz at the Skylight Theater.   Don't miss out, get your tickets now!  The show is on fire this season!

You can check out our listing now at LA's BITTER-LEMONS as well...

To Yoko Tomita with love...

Dear Yoko Tomita,

Its been nearly five years since I met you halfway across the world, and though I am sure I will never see you again, I hope you someday Google yourself and find this.

You didn't know you were saving my life when you met me, but I did.  I was lost and miserable, full of disapointment and doubt.  I traveled thousands of miles to see someone, only to be betrayed the moment I stepped through their door.  I wandered off.  I wandered Peru like a ghost.

The first time I saw you I thought to myself: "Who is this girl? Is she going to be alright on her own?  Does she need me?"

You didn't speak Spanish, barely seemed to speak English, and you were a young woman traveling all alone in South America.  My head was so pumped with paranoia I felt strangely protective.

Then you stepped out of the airport shuttle van and I realized I'd probably never see you again.
The second time I saw you I was on a train, 4 days into my Cusco adventure, and starting to feel the ache of loneliness.

When I saw you an aisle away from me, my heart nearly lept out of my chest.  Just to recognize someone. Just to be recognized.

From that moment on, I started believing in the universe again. Maybe it had plans beyond my humiliation and existential defeat after all.

Your English was great, in fact, and whatever trouble you had translating your thoughts only made me fall in love with you.  You were spirited, open, intelligent, funny and kind.  You helped me laugh at my terrible vacation, at myself, at my own stupid romantic heart that got me there in the first place.
And the reason I laughed, the reason all of that was okay, was because I knew instantly that you loved me too.We never left each other's side
You saved me twice; on the ground and in the sky.  First you rescued me from loneliness on that train, and then you saved me again when I followed you halfway up a mountain and caught vertigo.

I swear to God I thought I would die on Wayna Picchu.  I never would have even attempted to climb it if not for you, and I never would have reached the top if you hadn't kept the gravity at bay.  It felt like something was going to pull me right off the edge.

But whatever it was, you stopped it.  You helped me  get on my feet and climb without dying.  I did something I didn't know I was capable of that day.  I spent thirty minutes in the clouds with you.  I transformed.

Before Peru, I was a miserable 25 year old struggling not to hate myself. I felt powerless and defeated. 
I am not the same man today.  I was reborn on that mountain.  You changed my life.  That mountain gave me my power back, and I've used it to reshape my world, my happiness, my whole identity.   And you were witnesss.

I know we lost touch.  I hope you are happy in Japan.  I hope you are an.amazing chemist.  I want you to know that I never forgot about you.  I wrote down your words and when I read them again for the first time in 5 years I burst into tears.  You have no idea how special you are.

I wish I would have kissed your lips before we parted ways, but I chose not to send you back to your boyfriend feeling guilty.  Still.  The me of today would have had no reservations.  I wish he could travel back in time and switch places... because he'll probably never find you again.

Some people float into our lives for a few moments and save us.  Moments later, they are gone.  Disappeared.  They are Good Samaritans.  Guardian Angels.  They live between the tics of a second and vanish when time catches up.

I was fortunate to find you during such a difficult time -- between two tics of a second.  Wherever you are, I'm sure you are still brave, emotional, and full of so much precious light.  And whoever gets to see that everyday is luckier than they could ever realize.

Thank you, Yoko.

Love,
Drew

The Rich and The Reckless: New Character Promos!

Alex Hamilton.  Fox Darling.  Austin Rex... it's about to get Oedipal.

Emily McKallister.  Natalie McKallister.  Jack Panama.  One man, two sisters...

I have to admit, Jack Panama is still finding himself on stage... I've only had 3 performance so far but god bless the cast, they carry me like champs.

The stories are really on fire this season.  If you've not yet been to THE RICH AND THE RECKLESS, then hurry up and GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!

Creating Jack Panama

When I finally got the chance to join the cast of THE RICH AND THE RECKLESS, my favorite live show in Los Angeles, I had the daunting task of creating my own soap opera character -- JACK PANAMA.

The process began with a name.  And a voice.  And once you have those, you've earned the right to go wig shopping...

After I had attained the correct Euro-trash ponytail wig, I knew the next step would be a Miami Vice-style suit...

But you have to rock the manliest t-shirt you can when you're going all Don Johnson like this.  And only one color says 80's macho attitude...

Hot.  Pink.

 Once you've got the clothes and the hair... you've pretty much made the man.  I give you, Jack Panama.

I'm the rookie in the group.  I've only performed 3 shows with the cast and so far I'm not too terrible amongst the professionals.   We run Saturday Nights at 7:30pm at the Skylight Theater in Los Feliz, thru November 10th, 2012, so GET YOUR TICKETS  and come check us out!

Home Movies

My friends' kids told me a story they had that should be a movie.  I quickly snapped up the rights and we lensed in July.  We might get 3D distribution next summer...

THE LITTLE BOY WHO TURNED INTO 

A DINOSAUR

I kid, I kid.  But seriously though, aren't they amazing?

Bailando

Speakeasies and Salsa and Fire-Eating Burlesque Dancers. 
Oh. 
My.
#IloveLA

Rockport

Summer In The Cape

Greetings from Cape Cod

You'll Never Belong Here

New York.

It's a beautiful city.  Full of beautiful people, buildings, streets and museums.  So many dazzling lights and smells and voices...

But you'll never live there.

In Los Angeles nobody really walks anywhere.  Those that do might look at one another, offer a glance or a smile...

Not in New York.  Everybody walks and nobody cares.  Everyone has somewhere to be, something more important going on, some reason not to stop and look.  Only visitors are interested in people-watching in a city swarming with so many faces... how can so many faces become faceless?

You will hear things.  Languages.  Music.   Accents so thick they spit in your ear.  You will see things.  Culture.  Fashion.  Women so unique they seem to walk around the corner and disappear into magazines.

They can't see you.  They've got somewhere to be.  If you wait 5 seconds, someone else will come around that corner -- again and again, endless repeat.  There is no short supply of interesting people to cast your eyes upon.

You will be a ghost in New York.  Invisible, you are free to roam anywhere at anytime with a golden ticket that can take you to any borough, any island, any other world you'd like to try.  Parks and pubs and clubs you've never seen before.

But you don't really belong in them.  You're passing through even when you're standing still.  No one can see you in New York unless you're a crazy person... and they've learned how to disappear the crazy people, too.

It's an invisible city built on vapor desperation.  Desperation.  You can't see it but it's everywhere.  Everyday is life or death or something like it.  That would probably explain why the parties are so good... so I'm told.

You will visit old friends.  You'll ask how they're doing and how they're enjoying the city.  You will be proud of them and tell them how incredible it is that they're doing it, making it, living it out here.

But you will look at your calendar and wish you could be on the next flight home.   Home.  You didn't know you had one until you came here.  But you do and you miss it like hell.  Because back home you still have a reflection waiting.  You have mirrors with great laughs that make you feel like a million dollars... while New York somehow makes you feel a million dollars in debt.

It's a beautiful city, but you'll never belong here.  Because somewhere in your lifespan, against your own intentions and plans, you decided you like the sun, you despise humidity, and you like your ponds a little smaller.

Happy Adventures to you.  Now go home and kiss your front door.

God vs The Universe

This is what God looks like in my head.

This might explain why I don't believe in the idea of a creator.  I believe in a spiritual force that provides a challenging path that we alone have the power to follow or ignore.

I call this force The Universe.  It doesn't have a face.  It doesn't have a sex.  It doesn't get angry or punitive or dictatorial.   This force at it's core is love.  And to reject love is to reject God.  Hell is the absence of all good things.  The absence of love.

God is supposed to be love, is he/she not?  And love doesn't have a face.  Or a rulebook.  It's just a force that we are lucky enough to tap into during our brief blink of an existence.

It's a part of us.  We just have to let it in.

Trust.

Revolving

Vampire

"The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his."  
 - Tanner's monologue from George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman"

I'm only a third into this play and already Shaw has illustrated some slightly horrifying truths about the self-serving mindset of artists.  We tell ourselves that no matter what we endure or experience, somehow it will feed our imagination; coal for the creative furnace which will burn the past into something warmer, something brighter, in the future.

We are storytellers, and we are always hunting for a moment worth sharing.  Feeding on those around us.  Living to collect memories.

But sometimes you stop and wonder if your collection of moments is building toward a sum of its parts.  Maybe it's not.   Maybe memories just boil down to that thing that happened to you once.  Nothing more.

I say this because I used to be very concerned with my NUMBER.  As if the number of people you sleep with has some bearing on the depth of your human experience -- your expertise on the nature of love, sex and relationships.  I'm not advocating sexual addiction, just a healthy dose of romantic experience in the time you have to be selfish and free... your youth.

So why is it that lately... I can't remember the goddamn number in the first place?

If it's so important, why am I blanking on certain names or certain moments?  I used to think sex was so important.  I thought I was behind the national average and trying to catch up.  But I'm only 30 and already I feel like some of those moments have gotten blurry.

Strange.

Sometimes I think I'm just competing with my idea of what a normal man is supposed to be.  He's supposed to divide and conquer like Attila until he's tired and old and ready to be responsible.  It's that point in the future -- when man is fat and content, when the lover and the fighter is replaced by the husband and the father -- when he will look back on his collection of moments and feel sated.  Satisfied.  Finished.

How many moments until you're finished?  How many hearts get broken?

Now I've tried to be a good (vampire) person, even though the definition is vague and dangerously subjective.  But I have hoped that my experiences are going to add up to a full life, and the old man I turn into will  have broken his curse before devoting himself entirely to the happiness of others (namely a family).  That's the plan.  Feed for half of your adult life, then build for the rest of it.

Even I know this plan is hardly foolproof.

Someone recently accused me of being "a man of many interludes". If you've ever been accused of being an operator by the opposite sex, you might feel a disarming mix of flattery, denial and existential angst.  It's not a sin to breakup, but if you're always the one leaving, you start to question if you're never going to be happy. Perhaps you've simply been engineered to consume and destroy.  Cue the guilt.  You're a walking curse. A vampire..  The kind of person people warn their girlfriends about.  You claim your innocence, you claim good intentions, but deep down you know there's a trail of bodies in your wake.

Maybe that's some kind of badge of honor for some people, but  the game ends sooner or later.  The tools you wield to make people fall in love with you will fade:  Your looks.  Your wits.  Your youth and energy.  It's going to leave you.  And when it does, maybe nobody loves you unless you can compensate with status.  Money.  Power.  Respect... things romantics claim are irrelevant while biology insists otherwise.

And we're hoping we're married by then, aren't we?   We hope we slide under the door just in time because we only want to be alone by choice, not by the force of nature that makes us lepers in the eyes of the young.  

(I suppose we could dovetail into abandonment issues or whatever clinical term best reduces a person into a schematic of faulty wires and damaged psyches.  But let's not even bother.)

I don't want to be a vampire.  I want to be a person.  I want great moments in my life to inform my work, but I don't want the hunting to overshadow the living.  You can collect moments and memories, but you can't collect people.  When they're gone, you can keep the photographs, you can listen to the songs that remind you of them, but you don't get to keep the woman in a bottle.  She does not belong to you.  All you have is your perspective on who she was and what she mattered to you.

So you write a song, or a script, or paint a picture of the people you've known and the way they changed you, or failed to change you.   Because these moments get lost so easily unless they are immortalized.  Repurposed.  Shared.  And fed on by others to inform their own experiences.

That's as close as an artist gets to keeping what they've lost.    This is our religion, our sense of meaning.  Our belief system.   And when we cannot express these experiences, when we worry that they will all be lost... well, it's a terrifying thought.

And thus, we feed to live.

"LA Darkness"

My new glasses make me feel like a literary arts student discovering Allen Ginsberg for the first time.

On a completely unrelated note, I just discovered Allen Ginsberg's poetry for the first time.

I've been getting my first taste of "LA Darkness" (as it has been described to me) as have many of my friends.  It's that transitional time when the ladder just stops in the middle of the air...and that fear creeps in.  That lovely fear.  You can see other people climbing, but you're all out of rungs and you're not so sure you can get down without breaking your neck.

Its times like these when little gifts help to keep you from losing your mind up there.  Little gifts that put that light back into your heart.  Little gifts that  stave off the darkness.

Sometimes it's a beautiful girl. Sometimes it's finding a community.  Sometimes it's as simple as someone telling you "Hey, I like your blog."  Or your script.  Or your new glasses that you kind of regret buying.

You've got to cherish those little gifts. Especially amidst the darkness.  You might be convinced there's something you don't have that would make you happy... but even if you get it, the darkness follows.
Because the darkness gets around. 

So be thankful for the other stuff.  The unexpected stuff.  The safe places that shine a light on you, even if you only go there once a week.

We're all trying to get somewhere.  Be somebody.  Make something.  And we will...

In fact, maybe we already have and we're too stupid to appreciate it.

Hey, Michael Keaton...

I think I'm going to start a new "Why so serious?" series.
Then again, all I ever do is come up with idea for art series without actually completing them.
But this.  This I'm quite proud of.
#whysoserious?

Top 5 Incarnations of Batman

5. Adam West (1966)
4. Bruce Greenwood (2010)
3. Christian Bale (2005)
2. Michael Keaton (1989)
1. Kevin Conroy (1992)

Character Portraits

It's been a stormy period of frustration lately.  Whenever my writing or my writing career feel a little stagnate, I turn to artwork to expel those electrons.

It's nice to be able to finish something and share it instantly.

MY BROTHER COLLIN

Took this photo on the left of my brother Collin a couple months ago.  His birthday is April 30th, so I'll post it to Facebook then.  In the meantime DON'T TELL HIM I MADE THIS!
(Don't worry.  He doesn't read this blog anyways.)

Collin moved out here in October from North Carolina, so now all of my brothers and I are in the same city.  I was initially worried about how he'd fare in the city of angels, but he joined UCB Improv and is turning into a superstar.  I'm super proud of him.  And somewhat envious of the mega-talented little circle of peers he's adopted.

TIF

My friend Tif and I used to make music together about 10 years ago when I lived in Florida.  She was the musical talent, and I the witty lyricist.  We sang funny little songs together that amused us to no end -- recording them in her room on her computer.

Then one day I realized I could neither sing nor play guitar, and quickly turned my entire attention to Film School.  That was the day the music died.

Earlier this month, Tif came out to visit me in LA and stay on my couch.  We hadn't seen each other in nearly a decade.  Awkward.  But not really.  We still cray after all these years.

Sometimes Tif dresses up and models.  This photo showed off a whole new side of her and I knew I had to capture it.  (tracer)

THE BEAST

I was stuck and discouraged working on a short play in February that was taking too long and producing limited results.  After reading some Shakespeare, I decided on a lark to take on a story that had been stewing in my head as a collection of dark, gothic, fairy tale images.  I had no idea if I could write anything within the world I had visualized, but I sat down and started typing... experimenting...

What began to develop was a play so chock full of language, sex, poetry and darkness that I was almost embarrassed of its existence.  That's how I knew I might be writing something great.  A good old fashioned "Fuck You if you don't like it" piece that was breathing and kicking with wild, brazen life.

It's freaked some people out, for sure.  But The Beast above was a character worth realizing: a metaphor for all those abused children who grow up without the understanding of intimacy, love or trust.

There's hope for those beasts yet.