Poetry & Blindfolds

1. Kill Suspicious Clowns.  This is always one of my top 10 options for the year.  I enjoy the sketch comedy that I’ve written and helped bring to term over the last five years, but something inside me suggests that ten shows and five years is a good point to make a break.  For every wonderful show - like last year’s, when my dear friends Siranda, Cranky Ricky, Garibaldi and others came in to see us - there’s endless weeks of rehearsal and watching at least one relationship sour to the point of no return (the group term for this person is “problem child”, and not a show happens without one).  I have found that if I organize 99 percent of everything, things go smoothly.  But actors are such a bunch of shiftless, self-centered jerks, overall that it makes it increasingly difficult to give too much of a shit about making them look good.

2. Change Suspicious Clowns into a School.  Robert (the fellow in my main picture floating in the air) have talked about chucking the sketch comedy and actually teaching it, with the ‘graduation’ being a full run under our tutelage.  The downside would be that neither he nor I would be performing together; the upside is that we could charge punks money.

3. Finish my latest play.  I’ve got this absolutely horrifying piece that I’ve been working on, involving kidnapping, murder and family, which I think is quite good - but it is a painful thing to write.  The least painful bit was when I added in my character from my second play, “Remote”, into the equation - but then he doesn’t quite fit.  This one looks promising, as my friend Inga will be coming over from Norway in a couple of months doing a bit on theater, and I’d like to have a public readthrough of the thing when she’s here.

4. Market the shit out of my latest book.  I’ve finally finished a book of cartoons entitled “This Is My First Time So Please Be Brutal” and have been proofing same over the last week prior to publication.  While it will be on sale sooner or later, the main impetus behind writing it was to use it as a resume/CV and try and land an agent or other promoter. 

5. Open a bed-and-breakfast.  This won’t happen at all, but it’s a charming thought I keep with me.

6. Do an eleventh show with Suspicious Clowns.  This is always in my top 10 as well.  I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of the group being more than Vincent Truman, Robert Felker and Wings (e.g., constantly having to recruit new talent), because of the aforementioned traits of actors, but Robert and I have an almost symbiotic relationship and it would be a shame not to exploit it like Thai child labor.

7. Die.  Not big on my list, but a thought that surfaces when one is pretty sure one has passed the half way mark in life.

8. Write a book from the perspective of a woman.  A few friends know that I am on the virtual world/game called Second Life.  And, although I spend some time as my online doppelganger (V1ncent Tripsa, for anyone in-world), I am usually in the form of a very outspoken woman, who I will keep nameless.  My friend Lisa thinks a book of a man posing as a woman would be a very interesting read and potentially eye-opening for men (it certainly has been for me).  So that’s in there.

9. Direct an improv show.  Shoot me if I do this.  It just means I’m being lazy.

10. Collaborate.  There are many friends I have reconnected with after many years (Charles, Keith, Shawnn) with whom I’d like to create something.  No idea what it might be, but at least one would involve going to California and sharing one of these gentlemen’s bong.  I might even remember what I liked about pot.

11. Stop smoking.  Not likely, but still.

12. Finish my CD.  I’ve been working on a CD very spottily over the last year and it would nice to finish the damn thing.  I used to use recording music as a kind of diary - when listening to a song from 1990, I can remember everything so vividly - but that has been surplanted with work with the Clowns and my books.  One idea that The Girlfriend liked was to compile a CD based on one song per year, since I’ve been recording multitrack recordings since 1988.  That could happen, and I’m sure whoever bought a copy (ie, me) would enjoy the trip down Amnesia Lane.

13. Go into therapy.  I still have mixed feelings about this, and, having done it before, I know that mixed feelings in therapy lead to mixed results.  However, I do find upon occasion that I have an arsenal of deflective ticks that have the ability to leave the real me more or less on autopilot.  I think I’ve picked some good ticks along the way - I am certainly not harmfully antagonistic to anyone - but it might be good just to get a full inventory of them to see which ones are worth keeping and which are worth (twitch).

So that’s that.  If I come with a good ending for this blog, I’ll insert it.  Baby.  Hard.

 

 

 

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