Episode I: A New Hope

One of my friends and now ex-co-workers suggested a start a blog here on good `ol MySpace to keep those of you who give a shyte in my loop whilst I am up here in Bristol, PA. Once the laughter died down and I realized she was serious, I actually gave it some thought. In the end, I figured, "Ah, what the hell." Thus, this blog was born.

(I began writing this entry the Sunday evening I arrived and only gained internet access to actually post the fucker the other night. Some of the opinions written here are, miraculously, slightly dated as of August 28^th. Still, I will finish this writing in the vein it twas begun and move on to my current thoughts soon enough.)

I have hopes that I'll be able to make this a weekly posting. I've been known to try these types of things before and fail dismally at keeping them current. Perhaps a fervent wish to keep my friends back in the DC area informed on my rather uneventful life will motivate me to keep up. Then again, mayhap I'll just finish that bottle of wine instead and spend the next three evenings telling them all over the phone about it instead. Only time will tell. I have long had a love/hate relationship with MySpace. I appreciate the ability to finally contact Robin and Mandy from high school but the seemingly unsquashable desire to continuously find appropriate music to accompany my growing assortment of inane photos of myself doing even more inane, stupid shyte weighs heavily upon me. I liken it to my love and hate or Starbucks. I love Starbucks coffee; with a passion only surpassed by my love of Star Wars (note the similarity in shared letters) and Romeo for Rosalind. At the same time, I feel I should dislike the Starbucks corporation. Mayhap it is the hippie in me that feels the need to hate any company who suddenly comes into any kind of power. Perhaps it is the continuous drain on my wallet that affects me so (I do still somehow hold to this baseless fantasy that someday soon the Starbucks coffee bean will become public domain and I can walk into any Joe Schmoe joe shop and get an extra venti double-shot RedEye for a buck and laugh all the way to the bank). Yet, I still happily buy and drink coffee from the Green Menace. Such is my hypocrisy. I have no excuse besides that I am weak.

Still, MySpace hasn't been all that bad. I can no more blame MySpace for its members' content than I can blame my country for allowing its morons to continuously populate it. Hmm, . . . Or can I?

Right, but I was talking about Bristol. More specifically my move to it. But first, some stream of consciousness on the current MySpace blog page layout:

Hmmm, interesting. I am, indeed, listening to music. How did you know? Is it merely the first option on a long list of activities Tom believes me to be capable of? Or is it something much more insidious? If you must know, Tom, I'm listening to the soundtrack from It's All Gone Pete Tong, a decent movie in-and-of itself but also a wonder in the mixings of trance by the likes of Pete Tong, the Shapeshifters, Orbital, Graham Massey and ye even the Beach Boys. Makes for excellent writing music, if you must know. But why must you know, Tom? Hmm? Answer me!

I am also curious as to the seemingly endless yet still somehow limited list of Current Moods. Whilst I am, apparently, able to list my mood as thirsty I am unable to tell those interested that I am feeling jaunty this particular evening. Now, I'm somewhat old-fashioned (some would simply call me "old" but we're not listening to them), but if I'm thirsty I can simply stand up, stretch my legs and fetch myself a beverage of choice. Am I not an adult? If I'm old and able enough to pick through webpage after webpage to set a Current Mood to thirsty, can I simply not attend to this need myself? Does the whole freaking world need know of it? Why I would waste the time to tell all of MySpace that I am thirsty (as if I expected someone upon the world-wide server of folk here to message me a drink?) when I would much rather shout from the ramparts that I am without doubt feeling somewhat saucy this even? And if I'm truly feeling apathetic, why would I take the time to let people know this? Wouldn't I just say, "Fuck it" and leave well enough alone? This should be addressed as soon as possible, I feel. Get on that, Tom.

And no, the addition of Other afterwards does not help your situation. I long to see what your animation techs would make of an emoticon dedicated to saucy and until I do, I will not allow weak substitutes to stand in for how I truly feel. So there.

Oh right. Bristol.

PS. Your blog categories are dumb. I'm sorry. But they are. Really? I can post a blog in the category of Blogging? Fascinating. . . .

Ahem. On August 20^th, I left my second hometown of Silver Spring, MD and moved up to Bristol, PA (a suburb's suburb of Philadelphia) to become Bristol Riverside Theatre's newest technical director. To say that this was a scary event in my life is akin to saying that the first moonwalk made for some interesting family scrap-booking. After I had moved to the DC area with my mom and my younger brother circa 1988, SS, MD became my second and real home. I finished grade school and the rest of public education there. College was attended a stone's throw away at U of MD in College Park. My career was (miraculously) maintained throughout in the area's theatre scenes as both actor and a scenic carpenter (I'll let you all guess as to which I did more often). Twenty odd years later I find myself thirty and single at a well-paying but trackless job right back at the University of Maryland in a state-run practically state-of-the-art performing arts center, living smack-dab in the middle of a bustling and gentrifying downtown Silver Spring with two of my oldest friends, and I couldn't feel more lost and confused and angry if I concentrated really hard whilst looking in the mirror.

I needed to get out. I didn't know this at the time, of course. Upon applying for and then negotiating my contract for BRT (as we're colloquially known) I was scared shyteless. =""> So much so that I wasn't sleeping and was constantly (for at least a week or so) feeling as though the previous meal would make a Great Escape-esque get away from the confines of my stomach. Luckily, I've some friends who look after me more than I deserve (or ask them to, frankly) and once they talked me down from the ledge, I realized that Maryland – much my home that it was – was not treating me as well as I would hope. Once I was content that my contract with BRT wasn't a sham (reads: "The Technical Director is not responsible for Facility Maintenance."), I took the job, said my goodbyes, packed my kitten in a box and drove up to bright Bristol, PA.

This town is boring as hell. More later.