Dear NBC
Dear NBC,
Really?
You won’t hire me because I am a Canadian? In this day and age? With how far we have come we really still have that much further to go? You will program to us, use our fine canadian lumber to print scripts and schedules and take our precious canadian ad dollars but you will not let me work on 30 Rock? Do you know how long it takes to get to a place where you are realistically in the last handful of people up for a great part on a great show? It’s not just talent, NBC. It’s about confidence and calmness. Its about focus. Determination. Weekly therapy. Thinking long and hard about diet as it pertains to health and levels of energy and efficiency throughout what actors refer to as “our instrument”. It takes some of us years to work up to that point where we are told that “Tina would like to see you” and when that time comes you are ready or you aren’t. And I feel ready, NBC. I would have flown back to New York on my own dime to show you how serious I was about booking this job. Hell, had you pressed hard enough I would have paid whatever absurd fee might be associated with employing someone with an 01 visa in this country. NBC, a job like this could a mean a lot. And it will for some other fortunate actor now and I wish whoever he is well. He deserves only good things. But can you really afford to be so bigoted? So patriotic that you would so quickly keep me from coming on to team peacock? ABC, CBS, Lifetime, FX, FOX – they had no problem with me? But you think you’re better because you’re pickier? Or that the fact that you have the coolest posters or Peter Berg’s new cool looking show about gorgeous paramedics makes you better than me? Maybe it does. But I’m still a person. I’m just an actor trying to make my way in this world. And today was a tough one. Because Tina wants to see me and and I want to see Tina and you are keeping us apart. I love you NBC. But I hate you NBC.
I should go. This is getting too hard. Don’t call . . . I’m not ready.
Sincerely,
Patrick
Phish
So truth be told I only ever went to one Phish show with my friend Jay Shuster many moons ago in Rochester New York. Jay had been to about 1000 shows at that point and had every one of them on cds, catalogued, and ready to be relived at a moments notice . . . which I did with him almost every weekend. So i felt like I knew them well. And then Bush, and wars, and things happened and Phish sort of split and I checked back in every once and awhile.
So I don’t know what fans think of the new album, Joy, and it may be a big let down for them. I haven’t checked up on Pitchfork or any other number of online music publications in awhile. But I did listen to the album and it took me right back to the beautiful Rochester night where I danced my face off for about four hours while sharing any number of beverages and substances and dank stadium air with thousands of other loyal fans. I think this is my favorite track. Today I wear my flip flops and don’t shower and dance once more.
Full Fledged Grown Up Adult
I have pretty much listened to this song once a week since I moved to Los Angeles but on the day of my 28th birthday I feel like I’m right there where Loudon was when he wrote this.
20 years ago I would stay awake all night in anticipation of birthdays. I would lay there and premptively tear open gifts in the dark of my room. I would entertain all of my fantasies of having a day that belonged to me and whisper the words “It’s my day” . . my birthday . . I would lord it over the world as though no other human being was born on August 27th. Then the years tick by and I find myself sleeping very soundly until my eyes open up to the beginning of a 29th year. Shower, coffee, cereal, HBO catchup . . . a quiet but confident beginning.
I will let my dads words do the work here. He sent an email this morning:
“After a lifetime of saying happy birthday to children, friends, and strangers, the words take on a different tone. What they really mean, at least where our loved ones are concerned, is “I am so happy that you are on this earth” and in the case of children, there is that loving added subtext of “And I am so delighted that I had something to do with that fact.” And so what we are celebrating over and over again is august 27, 1981, a very very good and propitious day because it was a convergence of a great number of things that produced the possibility and the actuality of you. . . . Birthdays should NOT be a day when we ponder the relentless and unstoppable tick-tick-tocking of time; what they should be is a celebration of the happy accident that is us.”
Thank you dad and thank you world for putting up with me thus far. I look forward to all the other trouble we can get ourselves in together.
The Cove
It’s a little late for this, but a couple of weeks ago I saw this movie and it really took my breath away. I really believe that documentary films have hit their Golden Age and this one is at the top of the list. It was timed to come out so that the annual dolphin slaughter in September might get some more global attention this year. I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s seen it that hasn’t felt two things 1. That human beings seem hopelessly bent on savagely destroying everything in the world for profit. and 2. that they must do something to get the word about this insane practice that the Japanese government and whaling commission are trying to keep silent. Please check it out and tell other people to check it out.
McDeath
If you ever needed any more reason to stay as far away as possible from your nearest McDonald’s, then this is that reason. A woman was crushed to death in a southern California food processing plant for the company. Click above for the link. Man, when you really start wondering where your food is coming from and start asking questions you come up with some really scary stories. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and human flesh on a sesame seed bun. No thanks.
random act of wander: big sur
Why is it so difficult to let yourself go? I spend almost every waking moment trying to get somewhere without going anywhere . . . and then one day you realize you actually can just leave. that it costs almost nothing. and you can get in a car and go somewhere you’ve never been. You can avoid traffic. You can take side highways. You can climb bluffs. Sleep in hidden cabins. Camp. You can literally go anywhere you want anytime you want to and in doing so will kick that little kid in you that is sound asleep in the back seat, wake him up, and have him take the wheel for a little while. If you just say yes a little more, if you just stop thinking so much, you can find yourself in places you can’t imagine with people you can’t imagine. Big Sur swallowed me whole this past week and I thank it whole heartedly for keeping me firmly separated from my brain for a week. The ocean is a place for people of the heart. I didn’t think I would fit in. I’m so glad that I did.
July 4th
A word of warning. When traveling to Hermosa Beach for July 4th spend a good amount of time before hand preparing yourself for the 3 mile long frat party that you always swore you would never go to. Once you are there, let all that go, make sure you have a camera and a water bottle full of homemade margarita and a good group of people by your side. And if that girl throwing up in the sand smiles your way just slowly tip tow down the beach and try to ignore that advertisements being pulled by planes every minute of this treacherous day. Yay! We are independent! And sunburned!
Sound!
After the wisdom of a man named Tyler and a little experimentation, this blog is officially audio friendly. It was important to me that I get this up and running as music is as important a thing to share as anything. The copyright authorities may disagree. And I respect that. But until they come knocking on my garage door I will be posting tracks every now and then and doing so in style with this cool little flash player you see above this. Just go ahead and click play.
Today in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson is being carried away in style and I thought I would play my favorite track that now sounds to me like an eerie, beyond the grave, demand to finally put an end to the 24 hour news cycle that has been our national mourning. Better that we all just listen to his music, talk about how we all tried to figure out the Thriller dance, and let the man and his monkey be at peace now. Leave him alone. He’s tired.
we are what we eat
Before I saw Food Inc. on a run of the mill Monday night this week, I was knee deep in Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, which was already making my daily eating habits a lot more difficult to stomach. Pun fully intended. The book and film take you on a tour of the industrialized food complex which is, and has been since the early 1980’s, responsible for creating a brand new culture of people who are overfed and under nourished. The Western world eats more food than anyone else and yet we are starving for nutrition and plagued with chronic metabolic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity. I have always dreamt of eating healthier and toyed with a lot of different ideas and diets but this wave on information that has opened itself up to me has me already making a ton of changes in my daily life.
1. I signed up for a local consumer supported agriculture (CSA) box which is a box full of locally grown, organic produce that gets delivered to me every week. The box comes with more than enough seasonal fruits and vegetables to tied me over for a week as well as a recipe for any items that I may not be used to cooking with. Not only that but if I collect my scraps throughout the week and leave them out then when I get my new box they will take the scraps and compost them for me! The service is run by the Eagle Rock based restaurant Auntie Em’s. (if you do try it out – drop my name please – i think you get a week for free or something.) These CSA boxes are everywhere though so ask about them locally.
2. Staying away from supermarkets. If I was a more educated person I would be able to walk the aisles and know what produce was in season and what products were alright to buy but I’m only at the beginning of this and so while I am learning I am only shopping at my local Nature Mart. It is more expensive, there is no denying that, but our culture spends a higher percentage of annual income on medical issues every year than we do on food. It wasn’t always that way and it doesn’t have to be. The rest of the world puts more of its money into what it eats than anything else. I can hardly think of a better investment.
3. I’m eating less. The most moving part of Pollan’s book are the parts where he talks about out relationship to food. And when he say eat less he cites the diets and ceremony surrounding food all over the world. One of the defining characteristics of a healthy relationship with food is to savor it more and eat less of it. Just within the last week I have been preparing much better meals and finding that I need much less to feel satisfied. And this helps the wallet as well.
4. Found a ranch. I am having a lot of grass fed beef sent to me from a ranch in Idaho called the Alderspring Ranch. In time I’m going to try and find something more local but I just flatly refuse to eat beef that I can’t track back to its source anymore. All it takes is the visual of meat filler moving through the irradiation and ammonia processes to know that you might want to stop putting that stuff in your body right away.
This is all brand new to me so I will write more as I go but I am feeling good about this stuff so far. Please check out the movie and read the books and, most importantly, just start asking detailed question about where the food you are eating is coming from. You may not like some of the answers you find.
retoxifying
There comes a time in every fledgeling blog where a man must step away for awhile and take a respite from the face paced life of digital journaling. This time came for me. And I have to say I was pretty sure that no one would notice I was gone. I thought this little stage of mine was playing to a relatively empty audience (other than you mum). But I was surprised to get some comments from people wondering where I had gone. So thanks for checking in and I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I’m sure you were scared. But I am alive and ready to web log another day.
I spent 7 glorious days on the Queen Charlotte Islands, known to the Haida tribe as Haida Gwaii. Words are pathetic little infant toys in the task of trying to describe this place so I will try and let me photography do some of the work. I will be posting new pictures on the site in the days to come but you can always go to the Haida Gwaii section of the Places page on my photo site as well.
A funny thing happens when you spend 7 days without running water, very little electricity, sand everywhere, the ocean at your doorstep, the whole time pooping in a hole. You feel peaceful. I forget what thats really like. To take in a breath and let it out, the whole time not worrying about how you are breathing and why you breath that way and what made you the way you are and why can’t you breath better and be better and look better and act better. This neverending self effacing monologue that rides shotgun with us while we all trample over oursleves to “succeed”. In our quest to hold the mighty American (and Canadian) dream aloft and accomplish great things, we all just become a quivering mass of neuroses that can’t even take a breath without tearing our hair out about it. And out there, in my happy place, with my sister and her boy Fisher, and her estranged lover Colin I find myself connecting with a community of people and world where that isn’t entirely necessary. It’s still there. Neuroses abound. But it’s not helpful in day to day life and people can work, live, love and eat without it. I think its because the closer we are to nature the more humble we become as people. In cities we are kings, each of us. We lord over our little kingdoms and each of us is hot on the pursuit of a life that we all read about in magazine growing up. The world around us is just an amalgamation of shops to outfit us, eateries to fuel us and museums, theaters, and galleries to educate us. But nature is nowhere. Especially in Los Angeles. There are no seasons. When it drizzles the city shuts down. Animals are dogs on leashes and a few birds, a skunk smell in the middle of the night and a coyote sighting if you are lucky. The day before I left Haida Gwaii I sat next to a rotting beached whale that was playing the part of food to bald eagles and bears. Talk about humbling.
So I get back to LA and I find myself in line at IKEA trying to buy myself a shelf. Thinking the whole time that in my Haida life I would walk down to the beach and find a cool piece of drift wood, and mill it, and put it on a wall and have myself a shelf delivered to me by the ocean. In front of me is a woman buying a bag of stones, little colored rocks, for four dollars. We are all so separate from the very thing we rely solely on, our little hunk of water and dirt flinging itself through space, that if we need some rocks we would sooner buy them in a little bag than go pick them up ourselves for free. It gives me shivers.
But it has also renewed in my the belief that life in a city doesn’t need to be this way. And while I must retoxify to a certain extent just to maintain my insanity . . . I can also take some small steps towards acknowledging our little space rock a little more. There is more to come . . .