Hello Dolly-ing.

Two Manhattans at dinner last night and I had to come home and take a bubble bath. The hot water helped clear my head and the bubbles made me feel pretty. I hung out with Cole and our friend David, we had a delicious dinner at Brooklyn Diner, where I'd never been before. I had Pot Roast and Kugal (is that the word?) which tasted like fancier macaroni and cheese with raisins (a perfect combination that I think I might try for Thanksgiving). It was a nice evening.

I walked home in the rain but had a hard time falling asleep. When at 1AM I still couldn't sleep, I decided to go up to my roof and look at the sky for a little while. It was perfect out. A little rainy, a little cold but not too cold, foggy up in the sky and around the giant pointy tips of the Manhattan buildings, my Manhattan buzz still going strong, and it all made me happy to live in Manhattan.

Sometimes when I'm on the roof of my building (which is the exact same view from the roof of my old building pretty much) I look across 46th street to the Paramount Hotel. It's an older place, really pretty and groovy inside.... not too fancy or anything but a neat old New York hotel that they made all hip and trendy in what I presume was the late eighties, maybe early nineties. It's where we stayed the first time we ever visited New York. I point it out to people every time they're on my roof. I wish I could remember what floor we were on (it felt like the 1,000th as I'd never been up higher than three stories before) but our windows looked down onto 46th street and the sea of yellow cabs passing by.

My parents brought my sister and I two weeks before Christmas as a joint family gift.

"Now you know this means you're not going to get as many gifts this year"

My parents warned but they warned that every year,
"This Christmas isn't going to be as extravagant as last Christmas"

Which was always a bold faced lie they told themselves and their credit card companies.

My parents were New York pros, having visited countless times over the years for my father's business trips and to buy products for my mother's clothing store. They had the places they loved to go eat, sit, walk, watch, etc. Over the years I've heard about and gotten insanely jealous of all the exciting theater they saw in these visits..... the first thing they saw on Broadway right out of the gate was the original "La Cage Aux Folles".... my mom was pregnant with me at the time, I'm just saying......

For our trip they booked tickets to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular which was AMAZING and "Beauty and the Beast" which was really early on in it's run, the enter original cast was in it. It was remarkable and enthralling. Our seats were in the front row of the balcony at the Palace which hung over at such an extreme angle that I remember legitimately fearing for my life every time I gave Tom Bosley entrance applause.

My sister and I complained most of the trip, we weren't used to walking so much especially in the winter cold. Any time we wanted a meal, we declined all ideas of exciting New York City fair and forced our parents to take us to McDonalds. We frequented the one on the corner of 51st and Broadway. I still feel an overwhelming sense of shame every time I walk by there.

We were there for a long weekend. On the last day, a Sunday, we were to fly back at 7PM or something like that. My father had the idea that maybe we ought to try for tickets to a matinee at the TKTS booth before we headed to the airport. So he went and stood in line as we sat in the diner across the way watching him wait. He knew what I wanted to see.... they all knew what I wanted to see..... it was the show I'd been talking about all week.... from the minute I saw the ads on the bus, outside the theater, in Times Square.... it was the 1995 Revival of "Hello, Dolly!" with Carol Channing. It was playing at the Lunt-Fontaine, right down the street from our hotel.... and even though I had no idea who she was, what the show was, who Jerry Herman was I had some weird tribal cosmic urge that told me

"LISTEN UP NINE YEAR OLD JEFFERY SELF. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT, NO VITAL, INSANELY VITAL THAT YOU SEE THIS WOMAN RIGHT HERE.... RIGHT NOW..... IN THIS SHOW!"

I didn't have to say anything when my father went to the TKTS booth, he could see it in my eyes what I wanted. I pressed my face against the diner window and watched, watched as the long line snaked around the booth in Duffy Square. My mother and sister talked and ordered more orange juice.... but I didn't say a word. I was transfixed, willing... secreting.... forcing the universe to make this happen.

Eventually he got to the window, was there for a while, then came back.

He had them, right?

In his pocket.... or his wallet.... he always put the tickets in his wallet. YES!

His wallet! Four tickets to Hello fucking Dolly.

He came back into the diner and sat down defeated and said,

"Hello, Dolly is too long."

Wise words from a man who knew not his wisdom.

"The show won't be out in time for us to get to the airport and to our gate. I guess we can just walk around Central Park or something."

Heartbroken. They paid the bill at the diner and we made our way to the park. We wandered around there for a while, every once in a while a cab would whiz by with an advertisement for "CAROL CHANNING IN HELLO DOLLY!" on top. Each time served as a grotesque reminder of my failure to fulfill what I still think was probably a great prophecy from beyond. We returned to Georgia that night and I never got to see "Hello, Dolly"

But I always think about that when I stand on the roof and look over at 46th street, like last night.... still there is the Paramount Hotel where I forced myself to sleep every night.... too excited to even close my eyes..... New York! New York!.... and just a few doors down is the Lunt-Fontaine Theater..... where it all happened.... my defeat with the "Hello, Dolly-ing". Stuff like that makes me feel like the universe IS doing something.... pushing and pushing forward or something like that. Either way I think thats pretty cool that I can see that from where I live.

I finally fell asleep last night.

Jeffery and Cole are coming to ATLANTA

I am very excited that in just a few weeks Cole and I are coming down to Atlanta.

For TWO PERFORMANCES ONLY, all you Southern folk can see

JEFFERY AND COLE MAKE IT BIGGER

At Actor's Express in Atlanta, Georgia

Friday, November 13th and Saturday, November 14th
at 10:30PM

This is from the Actor's Express website:
"Originally known for their viral webcam videos the VGL (Very Good Looking) Boys featured on YouTube, Jeffrey and Cole have now made it big with their own television show on the LGBT friendly Logo network. The series, like their webcam videos, features sketch comedy, improv, and general absurdity written, directed and produced by Jeffrey and Cole themselves. Catch it on the Logo network or at logoonline.com."

Go HERE for tickets and information!

Hope to see you there!

Home Improvement. Fan Fiction.

Wouldn't this be a weird scene on HOME IMPROVEMENT. Obviously Tim is Tim Allen and Jill is Patricia Richardson.

INT: The Taylor's Living Room. Midday.

TIM:
Don't forget to mail that today, Jill!

JILL:
Tim, I won't forget... if anyone is forgetful around here it's you.

TIM:
(Agging her on)
Oh and who forgot to pick up Brad from soccer practice?

JILL:
Tim, that was six years ago and it wasn't the most normal of circumstances.

TIM:
(Not paying attention, messing with some tools or something handy)
Oh.... really.... Jill.... where were you?

JILL:
That was the day you hung up the Christmas lights. So I was in the emergency room.... with you.

(Big laugh. Laugh dies. Tim takes a beat)

TIM:
Oh.... right.... speaking of which we've got to get a new Baby Jesus this year.

(Laugh. Jill drinks a swig of Diet Coke, smacks her lips with the soda taste and says)

JILL:
And a third wise man.

Every one continues laughing but no one is sure why, how, or what for. Tim steps forward and breaking the fourth wall, actually acknowledges the audience for the first time in the sitcom's entire history. It is a shocking and weird moment for everyone watching. It freaks people out big time, like if your reflection all the sudden winked at you. Some people are trying to get out of the studio, screaming and running, some are just frozen... terrified.... not sure..... scared to move. Tim doesn't say anything, he just grins....this scary Grinch like grin, then he slowly pulls down his pants, without stopping eye contact with the camera, and frat house style moons the audience. His testicles sort of hang out over his underwear around his thighs in a weird obscene way. Everyone stops leaving and they all begin laughing again, eventually it evolves into overwhelming sitcom cheering. There is applause.

Then....
Digitally, the butt opens up and begins to eat away the scene like Miss Pacman (the way the show always used to go to commercial or another scene with that kind of animation). Eventually the screen just says

HOME IMPROVEMENT WILL BE RIGHT BACK!

And we hear Tim make that weird sound he always made on the theme music.

COMMERCIAL.
and they go to commercial

pumpkin curry, Carrie Fisher, and being present

I just got home from a really nice evening. I am feeling buzzed and I haven't even had a drink yet.

Today I woke up and wrote for a while, made a delicious lunch, watched Shelley Long on "Modern Family" (I recommend it), then took a little stroll in the gorgeous sun to my favorite patch of green on 48th street (a community garden to which I have a key.... it makes me feel SO local) and read a book that a friend sent to me called "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You". A great title and one you'd find bizarrely amusing if you knew our relationship. I started reading it in the garden, on a bench, perfectly situated in that vitamin B friendly sun, I'd bundled up more than I needed to so that I could stay toasty and warm as long as I wanted. I sat there and started on page one of the book, I completely and utterly lost myself and before I knew it an hour had passed, Cole was calling from outside my apartment, AND I was a few chapters in. I love that. To completely turn off like that almost NEVER happens for me. I am in a constant pursuit of the next step.... whether its career wise, financial, how to get free shit for my apartment (I'm looking for a lamp and some shelves by the way), whatever. I am SO rarely here and almost always somewhere else. A terribly scary idea. Being present seems like the hardest challenge in the world. To me, the idea of being elected President of the United States AND starring in a multi-billion dollar remake of "An American in Paris" (all in the same year, naturally) seems more likely.

It's universally one of our greatest struggles and I envy my friends who can do it so easily, or at least pretend to do it so easily. So many of my unique experiences in life I've really not been there for, in retrospect I can't tell you what the theater I performed at Sodie Daisy, Tennessee smelt like when I performed in it on tour at fifteen (though my strongest guess is cafeteria macaroni and cheese), I have few intense memories of tech rehearsals for the Broadway show I worked as an assistant on when I was seventeen..... all because..... I was not present. Yet somehow this afternoon, for a mere hour.... okay maybe just forty five minutes..... I was. I could tell you everything about that book, that bench, the garden, the sun, the way my jacket felt, how I was beginning to sweat just a tiny bit underneath my three layers but how I didn't care because it was a good sweat, not a gross humid, smelly sweat. It felt awesome.

I told myself I wanted to have something fun to do tonight. I wasn't sure what but something fun. An event. A party. A show. Something. I put that out there this morning and assured myself that something would reveal itself. It's New York, after all. And sure enough..... Ashley, from yesterday's blog, of all people emailed me to ask if I'd be available to have dinner and see Carrie Fisher's one woman show "Wishful Drinking" on Broadway. Well. Duh. Of course she did.

I went and my day, like it was supposed to happen this way (and I guess it was), all made sense. Talking with Ashley was perfect. Enriching and happy. I talked about my struggle to be present lately, how guilty I feel for not working more actively, how I feel like its all output output output when I try to create, how I use ambition as an excuse to be jealous, an avid end gainer, and sometimes a shitty friend. And she pointed out, as my experience in the garden had tried to do..... it feels good to be present.

It seems all those struggles.... those "manifestations" I mention are truly stemming from one thing. EGO. Mister Ego. Old Man Ego. Lady Ego. Lord Ego. Ego Peabody, I am going to kiss Conrad Birdie and I won't hear another word about it!

Over our delicious curry dishes (mine had pumpkin curry in it, What? amazing!) Ashley said: "Ego doesn't exist in the present, and its the ego that's making you jump somewhere else.... but the present is all we've got."

And she's right.

Like any good dessert, Carrie Fisher brought the whole meal of my day together quite nicely. A gal who's been there and managed to be present to a number of wonderful circumstances. Some hilarious, some tragic, all unique. They are hers. Cause she was awake and she was there. In her brilliant delivery, her storyteller magic, her real experience... it inspires me: like Ashley did over our curry, like my forty five minutes of being with the book in the garden, like all good things..... to be present, cause it feels really good.

Hey, Universe.

Thanks for the nice messages yesterday, bloggers. Its nice to hear your experiences with similar ups and downs and I am flattered to have you open up to me. Yesterday was the beginning of my "new mood" (there's a "Twilight" joke in there somewhere for someone a little more on the pulse than I am.... or maybe a little less). After writing a little bit, I went on a little walk uptown to Central Park to enjoy the gorgeous New York fall weather. It was delightful. There's a perfect chill in the air and when the sun is out, making the leaves of Central Park (most of which aren't changed yet, by the way) glow, it's very spectacular. I sat on a rock for a little while and stared at the skyline, then listened to a jazz trio jam out some tunes near Bethesda Fountain. Nice NYC. I came home and Cole and I began work on a new little web series we're coming out with. Nothing fancy or nuthin'... just us playing around with a new script while we're not doing anything else. It got me excited and grooving (as I suspected it might).

Late last night, I came home and spent an hour or two watching Julia Roberts clips on YouTube. I just found out last night (in the midst of that) that she's starring in the "Eat, Pray, Love" movie! I couldn't be more excited. When I picture a movie star playing Elizabeth Gilbert I've usually imagined Meg Ryan (for pure physical reasons) but I think Julia is a perfect choice and my hope is it will be a wonderful new step in her career. Like a lot of Americans, I like my Julia Roberts dealing with love and self discovery, so this new movie couldn't be a more exciting fit. I loved the book and I suspect I will love the movie. I'm buying my ticket NOW. FYI: Crying along to Julia accepting her Oscar right before you go to bed is something I highly recommend.

Yesterday I reached out to a friend of mine, Ashley.... who was once my teacher when I was at North Carolina School of the Arts for those five seconds. She was one of my favorite teachers I had there and more than anyone else, what she had to say has really stuck with me. Her class was focused on text but more so on looking into ourselves before we did any of that. We did a lot of really cool writing, performance, presenation exercises that at the time really scared me. She scared me, the whole thing scared me.

Everyone else in my drama school class was excited and eager to go for it, whatever it was, whenever it was, just do it. I was less eager, for a many reasons I guess. For one, it was the first time I'd been in a classroom enviorment since eighth grade (having been home-schooled for my four years of high school) and second of all, I was attempting to pretend I had matured and figured my shit out more than anyone else in the class.... and for some reason.... people went along with it. I am still not sure if they believed me or just saw that they needed to pretend, for my sake. The way you would pretend your mom looks good in a halter top, if she's already got in on at the Florida resturant you're having dinner in.

So when we started doing exercises that forced me to question myself, my motives, my whatevers it really really freaked me out. At times I wrote off the class as weird and silly, at times I just zoned out, but in the end.... of all the things that stick with me from my short stay in drama school its the things I learned in her class. I only wish I'd been a tiny bit as grown up as I was pretending to be to enjoy it.

Since then, Ashley and I reconnected and have seen each other a couple times, email quite often, etc. She's just as inspiring as ever and I've come to realize, in the past six months or so.... how important it is to surround yourself with such positive people that do make you stop and listen and think. When I woke up yesterday and told myself that today was the day I HAD to be better, I HAD to get up, I HAD to get something.... anything.... done, and stop stewing in my negativity. So I did, and there in my email box was a message from Ashley, we were discussing some other things but in my message I'd briefly mentioned my recent downward mood.... feeling unmotivated.... uncreative.... etc.

This is what she said and I hope she won't mind that I'm sharing her wonderful wisdom here:

"Remember that life is about inhaling and exhaling.
Creating is part of the exhale. Receiving is about
the inhale. This may be a time in which you are
being given gifts, but you don't see them because
you are focused on "output".

Start your day by asking the universe: what do i need
to experience today"

I think that's pretty wonderful and powerful. I continued to think about that throughout the day. At first I tried to jump to an answer, just so I could have a goal to work towards by the end of the day.... which was obviously rushed and counter productive.... then I got frustrated cause I didn't know what I needed to experience and how could I know because its 10AM and I'm still in a rotten mood and my deodarant isn't working..... then I came to the conclusion that its about figuring it out as you go about your day. Experiencing. Not deciding what to experience.

I found myself having a good day yesterday, in moments I found myself frustrated again, jealous of my friends, angry, sad..... but only in moments.... and the other one's were good, but no matter what, I let myself experience it and thats all one can ask for.

So I think you too ought to ask yourself:
UNIVERSE, WHAT DO I NEED TO EXPERIENCE TODAY?

up and down

I haven't felt like writing a blog lately. For that matter, I haven't felt like writing anything. Scripts, stories, email replies, Facebook statuses, nuthin, nada. For whatever reason I've been in a really low "funk". I sometimes think the word "depression" can be misused so I'm sometimes afraid to use it.... but I guess, at the end of the day "funk" is something you hear in the score to "The Wiz" and depression is a disease.

The sucky thing about depression is very few people can wrap their minds around what that means exactly. There's a huge difference than being in a weird mood one day and feeling an emotional and physical pain in your body for days, weeks, sometimes months on end. Depression is a frustratingly mysterious problem because there really aren't any visible side effects. When Sally is depressed she doesn't limp, and she doesn't get an enormous cold soar on her lip..... but what she does get is much worse.

I first got diagnosed with depression when I was a senior in high school. The diagnosis came quick and easy like a doctor looking in your ear and saying... "Oh, you have an ear infection". At the time I was really relieved to know why I'd felt so shitty for so long but looking back I wish someone had said a little bit more, or looked a little further, or asked a couple more questions.... instead of SOLUTION: "Depression with bi-polar tendencies, and here's a prescription!"

I don't take medicine anymore but my depression or whatever it might be..... is as prevalent as ever. Little things send me spinning downward toward the abyss that I've been living in for nearly a week now. Guilt, jealousy, frustration, anger. The biggest anchor dragging me down lately is frustration, I'm waiting on some "things" to happen that are so close I can almost touch them, but the waiting is killing me.... and distracting me from getting anything else done in the interim. It's left me feeling pretty aimless and purposeless.

As my mom pointed out to me on the phone yesterday whilst in my pit of despair, "You've never dealt well with not having anything to do." And she's right. At nine years old, during a two month gap between summer theater camp and play practice for "Babes in Toyland" to start I distinctly remember a similar pit of despair, lashing out and letting myself seep down down down in sadness. The moment play practice DID finally begin I was back as if the past two months never happened, in my element, flying high, 100% swell, smiling, jumping, awake, ready.... the distinct memory of waking up and knowing, at nine years old, that I had play practice that evening at 6PM still manages to fill me with the same sort of excitement and happiness.

This weekend was a long one. Difficult and down I found it difficult to do much, and found immense guilt in the not doing much. When you're there in that space its ugly and you really cannot possibly see the light at the end of the tunnel. I sit on my sofa and stew in my frustrations and think it'll never ever end. But today, in an act of an obvious universal metaphor.... the sun is out.... play practice isn't starting at 6PM but I think I can feel the depression, the funk, or whatever its been passing and I've decided to get off my sofa.

Perfect Harmony

I read this the other night at HIJINX. Thought I'd share here.....

PERFECT HARMONY
In 1991, an enormous movie crew arrived in Rome, Georgia to film a made for TV Disney movie called "Perfect Harmony". It was a US Civil Rights era film about two southern boys, one white and one black. While set at an all boys private school in South Carolina.... the film used Rome, Georgia's beautiful Berry College campus for the backdrop of the movie.

For the poor black kid's house the film crew picked an old disheveled two bedroom shack across the street from my grandparents. The place was picturesque for the movie's needs. Beat up trash cans, broken old cars in the front yard, a front porch on the verge of collapse. They even borrowed my Grandfather's old lawn mower to sit rusting in the establishing front yard shot.

Movie mania was abuzz up and down the streets of Rome in a way that can only happen in a small town. The Rome News-Tribune printed daily stories about the progress of the movie, locals were cast as extras, Peter Scallari was spotted in the local bookstore buying a Tigerbeat. Hollywood had come to town!

On the big day of the shoot across the street from my grandparents, we lined up folding chairs in their driveway and our entire family plopped down and watched it happen. The enormous cameras the size of horses, the lights, the cranes, the craft service table full of colorful food, the trailers lined up down West 10th Street..... we sat and watched the shooting, for hours upon hours.... taking breaks to drink Tabs and eat popsicles.... all afternoon. It was like nothing any one of us had ever seen. I was transfixed with the stars of Hollywood in my eyes.

The local film shoot lasted for three or four weeks, by the end of it all, a good portion of local Romans had gotten a chance to stand in the background at many a racially charged scene. I was far too young to be an extra but a lot of the teenagers in town got to play students at the all boys school. Teenagers I knew from school, church, and community theater were getting to experience the film first hand, right there on set. I was terribly jealous.

Even nowadays, I consistently ask myself.... had "Perfect Harmony" been filmed four years later.... would my life have been drastically different?

Surely I would've been cast as at least an extra at the school. With my blond bowl cut and round glasses, I'd have been a shoe in for a Lower Classmen student.

I'd simply sit in the classroom scene but midway into our first day of filming, the director would have given me a child bigot line.

"Problem with South Carolina is all them colored folks my Daddy says."

I would have poisonly delivered from my old fashioned school desk. The wolf in lamb's clothing. Everyone would be impressed, most of all the Walt Disney company and it is there that I would have been snatched up right off the set. Thrown into a private jet and taken to Hollywood.

"Shouldn't I call my parents first?" I'd innocently ask Carl, the producer and my new savior taking me far far away to fame and fortune..... he'd hand me his car phone, one of those twenty pound bag phones rich people had in the early nineties that connected to your cigarette lighter. "This is what its like to be rich." I'd think as I punched the green buttons on the enormous phone and watched my hometown fade away on the road behind me.

I'd arrive in Hollywood and immediately be cast as a bratty showtune singing kid in "Life with Mikey" starring Michael J. Fox as a children's agent. While a small part, I'm consistently noticed and everyone is calling Carl.... he's started working as my manager now too.

Shortly after "Life with Mikey", I co-star as a kid brother in an unspecified Holiday Blockbuster featuring me and a talking Giraffe who's "just trying to get home for Christmas" The movie does gang busters at the box office. It's THE movie of the holiday season, and everyone is talking about one thing.... and it ain't the Giraffe. Variety calls me "The new Makulie Culkin". Immediately Carl hires a fancy fashion photographer to do a series of press shots of me doing the classic Machaly "Home Alone" face that are then run in Highlights Magazine and on a pull out page in that week's Entertainment Weekly.

On the tails of all my new publicity I land the one thing I've ever wanted: my own television series. I play a kid detective. "Detective Kid Champeroo". Very "Harriet, the Spy" meets "Murder She Wrote". Cybill Shepherd plays my mom and as much as we try, we really don't get along off set. Debbie Allen guest stars in one episode as our sassy next door neighbor.... she and I hit off right away and spend every day gossiping about how weird Cybill's trailer smells. "I'm not saying it smells like Chicken of the Sea in there.... I'm just saying.... it don't smell natural." Debbie would offer one day in the make-up room.

The show lasts a good seven seasons, the first five being critically lauded and never out of the top ten in ratings. The last two seasons devolve into cheap gimmicks and desperate attempts to stay afloat. For sweeps Cybill's character births a set of triplets but nobody can honestly believe Cybill Shepherd is young enough to have babies.... let alone three of them, so by the end of the year, the show is cancelled.

Unemployed for the first time since they'd plucked me out of Rome, Georgia, only sixteen years old... I turn to drugs, because.... well.... thats what my best friends Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are doing. The tabloids are after us at all the parties and clubs we're far too young to be in. We don't care. We're kids of the Hollywood machine! Fuck you America!

One paper will report a rumor that Ashley and I are a romantic item. We'd get a huge kick out of it. Seeing as Ashley was the first person I ever told I was gay.... to which she replied "No shit Sherlock. You have a trail of gizz that follows you like a tail."

Always the performers, we drunkenly make out in front of the paporrazi just to start shit. We laugh all the way back to Ashley's malibu place and ignore angry messages from our publicists and managers. We stay up the rest of the night snorting lines off a National Enquirer featuring us on the cover and prank call the straight laced "goodie two shoe" kids at "Boy Meets World".

"I sucked Ben Savage's dick at the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards last year and his cum tasted like bloody maynoese." Ashley shouts then pushes the button on the blender full of tequila and frozen margarita mix we'd just picked up at Raulph's on the way home.

God. Ashley GETS me.

We spend months partying hardcore and taking Ashley's private jet all over the place. Drugs, booze, men. We're having it all. After a combination of an overdose and crashing Ashley's Ferrari into a Coffee Bean on Hollywood and Le Brea.... I hit rock bottom. Fast. It wouldn't be the first time I'd crashed a car, and not even the first time I'd crashed a car into a Coffee Bean.

My parents would finally intervene and take me back to Georgia to a rehabilitation clinic. The Olsens would turn their backs on me to save their own asses in the press, especially Ashley, who apparently I never should have shared so many personal secrets with, let take those photographs of me and Javier; or even trusted in the first place. Cybil Shepherd releases a statement about her concern and well wishes for me "to get better Champeroo" but in her true character, never contacts me personally or even sends me flowers.

I go into rehab, and I put on a lot of weight. I get clean, well.... as clean as I can..... and I come out of rehab. I try to make a splashy comeback but the only people that are willing to hire me are producers of a new Off Broadway play. The role is a gay hustler; edgy, dirty shit. I say "fuck" fifty six times before intermission and I stimulate giving an old black guy a blow job in the middle of a church. The show gets terrible reviews and I begin another downward spiral. This one is super fast. I lose the weight but with it, more addictions and tabloid sensations. I'm living in New York so there are less cars to crash into Coffee Beans but I do manage to set a long standing Russian Bakery on fire.

The failure is killing me. Utterly killing me. No one will hire me, no one will talk to me, I couldn't get a job at a Rooms-To-Go in Illinois if I wanted to. I wake up every day and smoke a bowl, pop two Ativan, drink some gin, and pass out. My family disowns me, my friends stop calling, and I've started to wither away.

I sit around and think about the better times, the old days, the moments that were some of the best moments of my life. Somedays I try to write a book that will never be published, at least not in my lifetime, to tell the whole story.... the truth..... all of it. I think of the whole ride, bumps and all.... and I look backward in the limosene whisking me off the movie set, out of Rome, Georgia. Fame, fortune... soaring around in the head of that eight year old boy watching the movies get made in his grandparents' driveway.....
And on the last page I write four words: IT WAS WORTH IT.

Its not just a comedy, its her LIFE!

I finally got around to watching the first episode of "Sherri", the new Lifetime sitcom with Sherri Shepherd and y'all... its good. Really good. Here's the situation- I love, more than I love most things, a good three camera, studio audience, laugh track sitcom. I just adore it. To me, its a form that if done right can be just about perfect. (and it ain't easy is it, "Joey"?)

"Sherri", or the first episode at least, was just exactly what I wanted.... jokes every other line, physical comedy, easy storyline, compelling heroine, a wise father, a cute kid, wacky comedy ladies as co-workers, an uptight boss (that you KNOW is going to have some sort of epiphany down the line) . There's also something metaphysical about the show as it is based on Sherri's life (you've seen the subway ads: "Its not just a comedy. Its her LIFE!")

I've always rooted for Sherri Shepherd on The View, through the ups and downs and flat Earths, and with her sitcom I'm officially a total Sherri Shepherd fan. It's a mid nineties comedy, folks.... with a 2009 leading lady.

Who could ask
For
Anything
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!

I love this speech.

Perfectly said.

"Our right to marry is of paramount importance whether you as individual gay person listening to me right now want to get married now or ever. It is important because when a country has different laws for different categories of people it sends it's population a message: That the different group of people with different rights are somehow inferior and less deserving of respect and are in fact wholly human, and that message is heard loud and clear by the worst elements in our society, and it instructs them that if they are looking for someone to bully, or beat, or even kill... if they are looking for someone vulnerable to prey upon... gay people are a ready target."- Cynthia Nixon

The March!

Yesterday I marched.

In Washington, DC.

Past the White House, the Capitol, The Washington Monument, Cynthia Nixon.

It was so cool.

Around 5AM yesterday I got up, in a hazy fog from a couple hours of not great "oh crap I have to be up in a few hours" kind of sleep. It was pitch black outside. The streets were weirdly populated. Not crazy full but populated nonetheless. There were your usual drunks stumbling about, attempting to find their ways home to outer boroughs.... junkies, hookers, people with new puppies.... the hard edged New York that comes alive after dark.... but more than anything there were nicely showered, neatly dressed, back pack toting guys and girls with a huge glow of excitement on their faces. It was bizarre. Each block I passed I saw these people heading in the same direction clinging to giant coffees, to 50th Street. At 50th Street, there were a couple different buses lined up.... from East to West.... some on 8th, some on 11th, on 10th, scattering their ways across midtown. One by one all these early morning risers boarded these buses and before long this band of buses took off, out of New York City to do something we all believed in. It was THRILLING.

I was on a bus hosted by Ars Nova. As usual Ars Nova turned it out with awesome snacks, their wonderfully fun and positive staff members, and just that unique spirit that Ars Nova seems to have that makes one feel a part of a family. I love them so much.

The march was exciting. While I don't enjoy crowds, I don't really enjoy marching, and I don't really enjoy carrying signs, it wasn't hard to become intoxicated off the the energy of yesterday.... every where I looked I felt inspired, filled with hope, joy, and excitement. It wasn't just a bunch of LGBT people wandering around with witty signs.... it was friends, parents, grandparents, kids, colleagues, neighbors, bosses..... standing up and saying it is time for equality.

Wanna get married or not, this day was about SO MUCH more.

The entire day felt intensely surreal. I continued to think about how lucky I am that my life has brought me here to DC via New York, with these friends, to 2009, to witness this. Fifteen years ago, I don't think I ever would have imagined marching by the White House and seeing an enormous sea of rainbows in the crowd below, seeing the determination on every one's faces, hearing the cheers, feeling like a part of an important community, feeling this hopeful. Its not hard to consider what it must be like to be a twelve year old boy or girl in Rome, Georgia right now.... doubting who they are and feeling immense worry and fear for whats to come all because of who they were born to be.... then turning on the TV, or the computer, or Newspaper, or whatever.... and seeing that.... yesterday.... I hope, honestly I think, it will leave them thinking.... its going to be okay.

Thank you to every single person who organized yesterday. You all rock.

PS- I Twittered throughout the whole day yesterday with pictures and some videos.... check it out