Rhea Tourn

So...I forgot that I've linked my blog on my Twitter page (@michaelmpeters, if you care to know) which I apparently haven't touched in over two years. So...I'll quickly just plug that I've got a gig with Mr. Mike Przygoda at The Paper Machete this Saturday, August 21st. It's at Ricochet's in Lincoln Square, and you should come especially if you like Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, or two guys named Mike. We are, in fact, The Mike Ps.

You can see us with our full big band, The Cool Breeze (Yes, we're The Mike Ps and The Cool Breeze, if you're keeping score), performing the seminal Sinatra record "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" in its entirety at Strawdog's Hugen Hall on October 9th. More info on that closer to when that happens. Jazz!

Ace Habam, Producer and Master Electrician

It's plug time.

I'm doing this show down at EP Theatre on the southside.  It's called Resident Alien (no, I don't play the alien).  It's being produced by my friends at Shabam! Productions.  Check it out if you can.  Click the link, it will gloriously provide you with all the necessary information, also information about the other two shows (in rep?) that we're performing with.  

More tomorrow.  

J. Ignatius "Iggy" Ling

Boy acting's hard.

I just spent four hours at the local coffee shop memorizing lines...and I'm not done yet.  I guess memorizing is never actually done, but I've got at least another half act to memorize.  Play's only an hour or so but I still have a little less than half the lines in it.  Which, of course, is good for raising-of-profile purposes.  Bad for the actual memorizing of.  Good thing I'm a quick study...even though I've had the script for going on two weeks (Hey, I kinda got thrown into the process.  Give me a break). 

Though I can pat myself on the back for the work I've accomplished, I can punch myself in the face repeatedly for the things to do.  Laurel resting was never my forte (pronounced "fort," not "four-tay."  Then of course, I sound like the idiot when I say it right).  I've already done a "shit I gotta do list" this week, so I'll refrain from doing that again for fear of your "close-window" clicking potential.

But, I haven't done 'em.  I just...I get really tired. 

Okay, I'm not really paying attention to this post right now.  Gotta be honest.  I'm pretty scatterbrained at the moment...I think I should let the five of you reading this right now know that you're all essentially the guinea pigs of my world at the moment.  I started this blog because I am trying to write.  At least, to pretend I am anyway.  I'm trying to figure out how to power through my laziness level and put words to page, and consistently posting and updating a blog seems like the best way to do it.

I do have ideas, you know.  I have plays I want to write, novels to lay out.  I just...maybe undiagnosed ADD?  Sure.  I should be so lucky for an excuse.  

You know that 82% of Americans dream of writing a book one day?  82%.  I wonder if the same amount actually thinks they can put together two to three hundred pages of text about one subject, let alone a fiction piece, let alone that it would be coherent enough for anyone to actually read the damn thing, let alone that anyone would actually publish it...after all of that, I'd say less than 5% could actually do it.  And I'm including all book genres, fiction and non-fiction.  And I'm not necessarily including myself in that 5%, but I gotta be in the 80th percentile or better.  

Gar...I think that I'm having an identity crisis about just being an actor.  I've always felt slightly devalued in the artistic realm because what I do is so fleeting, so intangible.  Dancers might feel the same way, but they have their physical training to show their aptitude.  Writers have books; painters have paintings.  I'm trying to show you how I feel for a living.  And you're supposed to pay me.

I've definitely romanticized about being a writer of some kind most of all...

My Top 5 Romanticized Professions (That I don't necessarily have a desire to do):

1. Journalist

2. Fiction Author

3. University Department Chairman

4. Choreographer

5. Shop Owner

I think I fancy myself some kind of ambulance-driving, lion-hunting, Key West-dwelling, self-pointing shotgun-wielding neo-Hemingway or something.  It's quite easy to forget, however, that he was also pretty good at writing.  I always picture journalists and writers flying all over the world and...I don't now...doing stuff.  For...writing.  

The work I do is so private most of the time.  The hour or so of stage time I happen to get has about 10 hours of rehearsal and memorization behind it.  I won't lie...it's rewarding when I get the chuckle or the big laugh or the big gasp.  But the idea that it's just talent is pervasive and often belittling.  Just because you can't see my brushstrokes doesn't mean I haven't put them on the painting.  

What the hell am I getting at...I'm trying to write because I'm a creative soul and I want to create as much as I possibly can.  But...the respect end has to come too.  I can look over this entire post and pick at my grammatical and hyperbolic trends (too many parenthetical asides, ellipses, and a penchant for hyphenation not withstanding).  I can't just look at it as a blog.

The character in the play I'm working on seems preoccupied with the idea that "there has to be something else."  I empathize...he's a lot like me.  Probably why I was cast.  Anyway, I feel like this has to be something else, and so do I.  I said it already; I'm not a laurel-rester.  I work best with a full plate.  So I have to keep doing what I'm doing until I figure out why it's not working and fix it.  

And nobody can clean a full plate like this guy.  

Bucky Goldstein's Sweat House

Well my darlings, I feel like I've been out to pasture over the last week and I'm just returning from a cattle-drive.  Yee-haw!  I'm a fine arts cowboy, ridin' and ropin' abstract concepts so you can chow down on thick, juicy, socially critical tenderloins at your table tonight.

I think I'm going to let that grievously mixed metaphor go, for fear of eliciting any Brokeback responses.  

In some measure of seriousness, however, I feel exceptionally disconnected from the world around me over the last week.  It's probably because I haven't had as much time to diddle with my atrocious Fantasy Baseball team (is it sad that I took a break just then to diddle with said team?), peruse the latest offbeat news articles on Fark.com, or to keep up on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.  

Could it be that...(gasp) I'm BUSY?

Boy, it has been a WEEK, dearies. Auditions and auditions and working and eating sometimes and apartment hunting and rehearsing and scheduling more auditions and rehearsing and attending impromptu social events and moving people and apartment hunting and rehearsing and nibbling on olives.

I usually don't have a hard time keeping up on these things; it's only in times of reflection that I notice really how much I've done.  And suddenly it's early August.  Jesus, I'll be wearing fashionable sport jackets and hoodies in a month-and-a-half.  I'll have another show under my belt, and hopefully will have another to do.  Maybe a vacation.  

But that is SO FAR AWAY now.  My itinerary for just TODAY includes:

*Finalizing an apartment application and laying down a security deposit for said apartment

*Critical laundry-doing

*Assisting friend in preparing for theater/re benefit

*Submitting headshots to reputable small theater/re companies

*Don smart-looking suit and masculine-smelling hair grease

*Meeting lady-friend in Lakeview, then proceeding to said theater/re benefit

*Alcohol-induced blindness

Is it disconnection I'm experiencing or possibly...hyperconnection?  I'm so goddamned plugged-in that I've overloaded my dutifully multitasking internal circuit-breaker, leading to a system-wide power failure.  The answer to that supposition would then clearly be...sleep.  Which begs the question: why am I here, awake at 5:30 in the morning, writing this?  

I'm out of my freakin' mind.  

It's time to get one of those bulleted items taken care of, my children.  

Oh, and finally I would like to ask all of you for your prayers.  My future roommate and I discovered the most wonderful apartment I've ever seen in my four years in Chicago yesterday.  I won't say much about it for fear of jinxing, but I'll say this: it has a sauna.  You will all be invited over for schvitzing and cocktails if we get it.  Wish me luck.

Laverneus Itallone

Ah, a day with nothing and everything to do.  Once again.

The nature of this "business" is strange.  I use "business" loosely at this point, seeing how I'm rarely paid and frequently passed over in my young career.  It's something I have to keep telling myself: it is, indeed, young.  I've really only been at it a year or so, and I'm already a Clio award-winning actor and have been well-paid in a few productions.  But...yeah.  Call it the human propensity toward wanting more, but I do.  

Yet, I keep working.  I seriously cannot complain because I am busy.  And I'm meeting people, right?  That's the way it's supposed to be.  I'm supposed to be destitute and ill-fed.  I'll tell you what:  I'd much rather be a well-fed artist.  I keep hoping that my persistence will pay off.  That when I'm still doing this at thirty, as Louie Anderson says in Coming To America, "That's when the big bucks start rolling in!"

More later.  Now to tidy up my room and get ready to rock some serious one-act play festivaling.  AGAIN!

"Whittlin'" Willie Simpkins, Master of Ceremonies and Retired Cartographer

Sometimes I just enjoy creating nicknames for nonexistent people.  Really makes you wish there was such a person, eh?  

I'm supposed to be memorizing lines right now, per the n.u.f.a.n. ensemble 7 plays in 7 days festival this monday that I was randomly roped into.  But I'm much more amused by my new, quasi-newsprint-but-not-html-savvy-enough-to-make-it-look-like-newsprint blog.  Ta-dah.

Because I must temper my newfound enthusiasm for browser-embedded text-editing with the knowledge of awake-ness in the short term, I will make this inaugural posting brief, yet dutifully poignant.

I cannot be the only sports news savvy web trawler to be fascinated by the overwhelming news of ethics these days in sports.  The ongoing persona-non-grata Barry Bonds, the boorish Michael Vick, Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson (both nicknames strangely reminiscent of Atari 2600), 'Roids in Golf, and the breaking NBA referee betting scandal are all wonderful news to the avid sports fan.  My question is: Has it always been like this?  I don't think that in the sixties Arnold Palmer was juicing to drive five-hundred yards whilst tutoring a litter of pit bulls and stockpiling assault rifles.  Or maybe he was.  Maybe the news media was giving him the ol' Roosevelt treatment because of his status as reigning golf demigod.  Granted my choice of athlete is a bit silly, but even his contemporaries' issues (Wilt Chamberlain, Dick Butkus) never ranged beyond the basic verbal gaffe or sexual indiscretion.  It makes me wonder what we'd be able to know if our current Internet media capabilities were applied to that time, or previous eras.  God help me if I knew more about Babe Ruth or Johnny Weissmuller.

Whatever the hypotheticals, I need to focus on what makes sports, well, sports.  I'm watching these men (or ladies...I find women's basketball mildly entertaining) not as a moral Miss America, but because I want to be entertained by the game.  I must admit, to this point (sans Barry) I find a lot of the ethical stuff just as entertaining.  It's only when the "good" guys screw up, the Rafael Palmieros whom you'd think would never sully the sport, that the fleeting gossip fun ends.  It's fun to give a Nelson "Ha Ha!" to the guys you already hate, but it breaks your heart to see how deep the ethics issue in sports truly runs.