I have not written about stopping smoking since May 2009 because I find writing about smoking tends, sooner or later, to make me want to have a cigarette to celebrate not smoking. 

Since May, I continued my use of Chantix, that wonder drug.    I gave up counting the hours between my last cigarette and “now”, whenever “now” was, after I reached 100 hours.   The desire went away, as did my desire for writing, working on music, etc., as I tended to associate being creative and having a cigarette smoldering in the background, like some nicotine muse.  Whenever friends or associates would ask me what play or song or sketch I was working on, I’d say, ‘nothing, I’m just being a normal person for a while.’  Although true, I realized that being a normal person was pretty boring.   The dance of wake/work/eat/sleep is just horrifying - and nearly as addictive as cigarettes.

I had surgery in the middle of May 2009 as part of my Vincent Truman Faces His Fears World Tour.  I was terrified of going to the doctor while I felt fine - doctors are, after all, paid to take care of problems, so they are highly motivated to find them.  My general physician found a couple of doozies: hernias and moles!   For the latter, some nice doctor cut one off and did a biopsy - all clear.  For the former, I was cut open and some other nice doctor rolled mesh along my insides so said insides wouldn’t come outside.

More details of my post-op experience can be found here:
http://www.vincenttruman.net/blog/2009/05/25/post-op-blues-and-purples/

Still, I continued to not smoke.

Somewhere in June, I got off Chantix and experienced horrific side effects - made horrific by the fact that I didn’t know they were side effects.  I felt out of sync with the world, and seemed to walk around in a semi-dream-like state.  I had a panic attack.  I had a few near panic attacks.  In fact, I was convinced I was on the precipice of going mad outright.  At work, the general incompetence of the staff had been amusing; due to my detoxing (unknown to me at the time, I should point out) I let a stray “I’m sick of this fucking department” escaping my lips.  Of course, I was trotted down to Human Resources so the Human Resources person could say “fucking” back to me.   It is an odd thing about my job that, on both occasions someone has reported me for saying “fucking”, the HR person seems compelled to say “fucking” back to me, as if the word would make me realize the error of my ways and go, “Oh my, did I really say that?  I’m so sorry.”  At least this time around, the HR person didn’t feel compelled to say “fucking” no less than 10 times, like the time before.

During my detox, I was also doing a bit of Vicodin (from the surgery), so I was quite a mess.  Even when I was involved in the 24 Hour Play thing (http://www.vincenttruman.net/blog/2009/07/06/the-24-hour-plays-blog/), I was still a little out of it.

In early July, I seemed to emerge back out of the glorious fog of prescription medications and back into the real world.  My desire to write and work with music came right back, as did - you guessed it - a lust for the nicotine muse to accompany me.  The only difference now is that I often forget about cigarettes and when I do think of them, I have a take-or-leave feeling unless they are right in front of me.  If someone is smoking in front of me, my eyes follow the Burning Cherry of Desire wherever it goes.   Despite the predominant absence of cigarettes in my life and lungs, though, all is not rosy:

**I have stolen a cigarette or two from my girlfriend’s bag.  

**I did buy a pack one day.  Had one.  Left the pack in some public area where hopefully some child will find it.

**The girlfriend smokes on the back deck of our apartment.  I do wander out there more often then usual and see if she’s left any butts large enough to smoke.

To counter this, I am talking a little bit more to people about not smoking.   I figure, if one person knew I wasn’t smoking, no one would care if I had a cigarette.  But if everyone knows, then it weighs on my mind more and I don’t smoke.  Such a petty, stupid game, yes, but I don’t want to smoke again.  Even if lung issues might show up in my later years now, the chances decrease if I don’t smoke and increase if I do.  I try and keep that in the forefront of my mind. 

Time to use some old fashioned transferance.  Who needs a cigarette?  I’m a-gonna have me a few bowls of cereal!

 

 

 

EPISODES 1-2  “PIT BULL”

Oh you betcha.

 

In the opening scene, our hero, Sarah Palin, gets a phone call from an old guy.  Cut to Palin thrust into the limelight as the candidate for Vice President of the United States.  She begins her attempt to make “thanks but no thanks” a catchphrase by saying it in her speech for the first of 1,000,000 times.

 

EPISODE 3 - “ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER”

 

The pro-abstinence Palins reveal one of their daughters is five months’ pregnant.  After the Republican National Convention, the Palins and an unwilling son-in-law-to-be, comically played by Levi Johnston, are whisked out of the limelight.

 

EPISODE 4-5 – “PROFILES IN COURIC”

 

Sarah, having gone through the extensive “presidential training”, emerges for a series of interviews with Katie Couric.  She shows off her comic chops by claiming to know about Russia because of its proximity to Alaska.  Another Couric interview reveals Sarah reading “most of them” when asked what magazines she has been reading.  A video is released showing Sarah having hands laid on her during a church service with a wacky pastor praying that she is saved from witchcraft. 

 

EPISODE 6 – “CAN I CALL YOU JOE?”

 

Sarah goes head-to-head with Joe Biden and, to the thrill of the country, doesn’t suck. 

 

EPISODE 7 – “PALLING AROUND WITH TERRORISTS”

 

Sensing that “thanks but no thanks” isn’t catching on, Sarah whips out “palling around with terrorists”, a phrase aimed at Presidential candidate Barack Obama.  The full impact of her message is blunted by another video of Sarah, this time addressing the Alaskan Independence Party, and a hilarious scheme called Troopergate.  Comic Betty White drops by to call Sarah a “crazy bitch.”

 

EPISODE 8 – “PUCK THIS”

 

Sarah stops by a hockey game and gets booed.  Comic John Cleese stops by to talk about the McCain/Palin ticket: “You already wouldn’t find five percent [of the leaders in Europe] who think she’s good enough to run the United States, and here she is, running with a 72-year-old cancer survivor.  Monty Python could have written this.”

 

EPISODE 9 – “CLOTHES MINDED”

 

Just when things appear to have calmed down a little, the report on Sarah’s wardrobe comes out – some reports suggesting that $150,000 went into the making the maybe VP look presidential.  And just when that calms down, people start yelling the N-word at her rallies.  And just when that calms down, Sarah is pranked by Canadian disc jockeys.  And just when that calms down, mumblings from inside the McCain/Palin campaign suggest Sarah has “gone rogue” and is impossible to work with.

 

EPISODE 10 – “THANKS BUT NO THANKS”

 

McCain/Palin loses the election.

 

EPISODE 11-12 – “DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT…?”

 

It’s a new year and Sarah has a full plate in this special two-parter.  Her legislature in Alaska doesn’t seem to like her as much, as if she had burned a few bridges to nowhere during the autumn.  Her ex-son-in-law-to-be makes the rounds on talk shows about his child with Sarah’s child.  David Letterman makes a joke.  Margaret Cho makes a joke.  Wanda Sykes makes a joke.

 

EPISODE 13 – “BOOK DEAL”

 

In the barely emotional season closer, Sarah quits as governor of Alaska.  It is suggested by her followers and fans that she may be taking time to work on her book.  Sarah dashed those dreams not by failing to write, but writing plenty, on the governor’s website:

 

“Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources.  This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, AND oil and gas.  It’s energy!  God gave us energy.”

 

- Vincent Truman

 

 * * * *

 

In 2009, I’ve had only two dalliances with the theater, both as part of the “24 Hour Plays”, a show that is created and performed in roughly 24 (not consecutive) hours.  The schedule was: actors, writers and directors all came together on a Saturday, then the directors and actors left, leaving the writers to construct ten-minute shows based on their few seconds meeting the various actors (and reviewing the show-and-tell of props that were volunteered).  On Sunday, the directors arrived at 2pm, read all the plays (pre-cast) and picked their favorites.  At 3pm, the actors arrived and were herded by their directors into various obscure locations (parking lots, coffee houses, basements, etc.) to rehearse until 8pm, when everyone re-assembled for tech rehearsal.  The next night, Monday, saw the full show open and close. 

 

The show, originally a product of New Yorkers, was fronted by producer Brian Cohen, a guy I watched intently.  He ruled with an iron fist, but one with velvet lining.  Very firm, but very nice about it.  I learned a lot off him. 

 

For my first show with “24”, I was a director, which I freely admitted was a way to dip my toe in the water as it seemed the easiest of the jobs (the other two being writer and actor).  Of the five pieces written for that week’s performance, I picked the oddest: two demons fighting over a just-deceased soul while eventually being trumped by a seemingly well-intentioned Angel of God.  The actors were an interesting hodgepodge of talents and abilities, so I thought it best to encourage them all not to act at all while they were doing their lines.  That approach worked pretty well, as they all shone well as a result, especially an actor named Liz Chase, who was brilliantly comic – despite having no lines and spending the performance tied up and behind a hockey mask.   How did she do it?  I don’t know.   My only theory: she’s got a bit of the Gilda to her. Scriptwise, I don’t think we had the strongest, but we got the most honest laughs for the night’s performance.

 

For the second show, I was recruited by Brian to be an actor.  I wasn’t able to attend the Saturday “meet and greet” and offered to do a video that Brian could show to the writers, but he said it was fine, that he would describe me.  And he did a good job, as I found myself in a three-person scene, playing a grumpy, been-there-done-that 40something with a bad attitude.  I was directed by Erik Wagner.  It is difficult for me to describe having a real director (and indeed, it’s hard to describe being an actor in a show I had no hand in directing, writing or producing, as that’s all I’ve done in the last 15 years), but suffice to say, if I only worked with Erik as a director going forward, I would be dead pleased.  Whereas as a director, I tend to guide and push, Erik pulls and suggests.  Our biggest difference is that Erik showed compassion and encouragement for all three of us equally; I tend to give more to the actors who want more.  Erik pulled from me some really sorrowful and dire characteristics, which were, by coincidence, honest feelings.

 

And I was funny.

 

I don’t often claim I am funny, as I always feel a struggle onstage.  However, for “Training”, written by Hope Rehak, I was funny.  Erik and I hugged after the performance and he and I both met Hope, and hugged her as well.  This was gross animals apart from my experience in the prior week as a director, when the cast dispersed instantly and I neither did meet nor had inclination to meet the writer.  I don’t think either way is better or worse than the other, but if there is a defining difference to my directing style and Erik’s, hugs afterwards may be it.

 

I got involved with the “24 Hour Plays” because 2009 has been many things, but it has not been my most creative.  After “The Tearful Assassin”, I wrote three (or three and a half) plays back-to-back and, while all are good, none are brilliant.  “24” gave me a chance to see a small cross-section of what was out there.  I did walk away from the experience grateful and enlightened, but also a bit more charged up on the writing side.  On the acting side, I was charged up for a while, but I’m just not sure I have much of a range.  However, the experience did make me think about doing stand-up.

 

No idea how that came up.  I can equate the idea of stand-up with the idea of herpes; it’s not there for months, even years, at a time; and then, poof, I’m red and splotchy.

 

To be continued, as always.