This Can't Be Broccoli

As anybody can tell you who has seen me do any sort of physical activity-- Skinny don't mean healthy. I can dry heave after going for a brisk jog...to my kitchen for some ice cream. So I decided it was time to get in shape, preferably before I turn thirty and my metabolism turns off thereby fulfilling the curse that a witch put on me at my baptism. You'll be able to eat pizza everyday for thirty years and then you'll gain eight hundred pounds and they'll have to get a crane to lift you out of your house. The problem is, I hate the idea of going to the gym.  Now, I've never actually been to a gym before, but just the thought of going makes me want to hide under a table and kick at anybody who tries to make me come out. I figured I could avoid the gym by using technology to help me get in shape.  After all, it's the age of "There's an app" for that, right?  So shouldn't I just be able to use one of the hundreds of fitness app...

I'm going to talk about something that I probably shouldn't talk about. Then again, none of this is really a secret, it's just that, when playing a game with people, it's usually not a good idea to let them know what tricks you have up your sleeve. I should let you know right now that I'm talking about theater, the arts, etc. Now, I don't think theater is purely a game.  I also think it can be a collaborative community of souls and a soul-sucking career--and probably a little of all three. The title of this post is "Title Envy" and I'm going to talk about titles, because there's a trend--actually, a routine--in regional theater these days, and it goes like this: You find out what's hot in New York. You start with Broadway, and then after you move onto off-Broadway. You pick and attain the rights for as many Broadway hits as you can. You don't get the rights for Broadway flops, but if a show got mixed reviews, it's still...

I always had this very specific idea of what would happen if I became famous. I believed--truly believed--that if I ever became famous, everybody who dislikes me or didn't believe in me or even all-out hated me would--wait for it-- Change Their Mind No, seriously, this is what I believed. In the core of my soul. This only made me want to be famous even more than I already did want to be famous, which was a lot--a whooooooole heck of a lot. Because how awesome would that be?  To suddenly have--I don't even know what you'd call it?--a clean slate? To have everybody who has a problem with you suddenly have to say-- "Nope, I was wrong about him.  Kevin's awesome.  Otherwise he wouldn't be famous.  Wow, I feel like a jerk for not realizing it before he was a star." Then someone I knew got famous--well, sort of famous. And so I watched his life--via Facebook, you know, the way we all do--and I really expected to see all his former frenemies...

Someone sent me a link to a status somebody they knew had put out about how being gay was wrong, because they wanted me to comment on it.  To, essentially, get into an argument about it. Stuff like this happens to me from time-to-time.  It probably happens to other people more. People ask me my "opinion" about gay-related things.  Sometimes they just ask me my opinion about being gay, the way you would ask someone their opinion about being tall or being Italian. And, for some really odd reason--I don't know, maybe in the hopes of expanding consciousness--I would engage in all this.  I'd respond, discuss, talk, listen, create a dialogue--and feel really good--if not exhausted--about it. Well, no more. I no longer have an interest in talking about being gay. I refuse, actually, I refuse to talk about it. Emma Thompson said this year that she was sick of having conversations about roles for women in film--rehashing all the tired old rhetoric, and I totally...

At the beginning last Fall, when the award-worthy movies start being unveiled, it looked like it was going to be a monumental year for African-American actors. The Butler was a huge hit, 12 Years a Slave  was going to be a shoo-in for Best Picture, Lead Actor, and Supporting Actress, and more amazing performances were coming from Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan.  At one point, it looked like there might actually be four African-American actors in the Best Actor race--something that had never happened in Oscar history. So what happened? Well, if you base your analysis on the Golden Globes, you could either assume that most of those performances didn't live up to the hype, or you could assume that the Hollywood Foreign Press is a little bit...white-washed. After all, Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Michael B. Jordan, and Octavia Spencer were all passed over for nominations.   12 Years a Slave  took the award for Best Drama, but none of its actors were awarded ...

Before I begin this post, I want to impart the following information to anybody reading this: I am a Democrat.  I am as Democrat as they come.  I'm a tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-gay, bleeding heart liberal. And this is going to be about Chris Christie and the George Washington Bridge scandal. Now, I should probably tell you that I'm not going to rehash the details of the scandal.  For that, you can go to CNN or MSNBC or pretty much anywhere but Fox News where they're still talking about Obamacare and how it's going to make the Devil rise up out of Hell and make love to Janet Reno in front of the whole world--or something. I'm going to write as honestly about politics as I possibly can.  Now, these are just my opinions, but because they're mine, they're only somewhat based on facts and they're 100% right. This whole scandal is to make sure Chris Christie doesn't run for President. Now, do I think he's guilty of being involve with the s...

There's two kinds of humor, or rather--senses of humor. I learned this recently when I found an extremely inappropriate joke funny while it seemed to appall everyone else around me. Some people like regular humor, and I like theater humor. Theater humor being wildly offensive and grossly distasteful.  That's the stuff that's guaranteed to make me laugh.  The sort of thing the class clown yells at the teacher from the back of the class, or a joke told about somebody who's only been dead for five minutes, or pretty much any joke told at a roast. Virtually nothing makes me laugh out loud (despite what all of my Internet conversations say), but that kinda stuff does. For awhile, I didn't think of it as a separate kind of humor.  I would laugh at a joke, and if other people didn't, I would assume they didn't have a sense of humor at all.  Now I realize they probably did, and I'm just depraved and need mental help--or it's just that I do theater....

I do this every year. New Year's Day rolls around and I have a list of things I want to accomplish by the end of the year. This year, I've upped the ante even more because I'm turning thirty in July, and I want to make sure I'm a fully-formed human being by then who can compose symphonies and bake a perfect upside down cake. (How old was Mozart when he was universally declared a genius?  He was three-years-old, right?  No pressure though, no pressure.) So what did my list include this year? Here's a sample: 1.  Learn French 2.  Run a marathon 3.  Watch every episode of Wings (There are about eight hundred and they're all terrible, but Netflix makes everything look enticing.) 4.  Figure out what foods are killing you and stop eating them (So far everybody agrees that eating cheese for dinner every night is a bad idea, so fuck this resolution.  Fuck it to hell.) 5.  Convince someone to buy me a miniature pig. 6.  Watch The Retu...

This year I decided to try and keep all my negativity and angst off Facebook and put it somewhere more useful--like Twitter and blogs that nobody reads. But, like a sheriff who goes on vacation only to come back and find out his town has been taken over by gay whores, I now find that since I've chosen not to call anybody out on their bullshit, my Facebook has indeed been taken over by--you guessed it--gay whores. And in the true gay tradition of not communicating things face-to-face, I'm going to, instead, write this list of things the gays on Facebook need to stop doing, and then passive aggressively post it hoping the queens I'm talking about will give it a rest, but knowing full well they won't, and I'm probably not even going to unfriend or hide any of them because I need something to complain about or I won't live (I'm like a fish swimming in a bitter ocean.  If I don't suck in stupidity and breathe it out as anger, I die--or something.) So le...

When I thought about writing something about how producers and writers of various television shows plan poorly for success, I started writing down a list of shows with concepts that couldn't possibly extend past three hour-long episodes, let alone an entire season, and then I ran out of paper, ink, and sanity. Honestly, when you think about what it takes to get a television show on the air, it amazes me that some of these shows made it past a basic Q&A with network executives. Remember that Romeo and Juliet inspired show on Fox where Juliet's Dad ran an adult film company and Romeo's Dad was the police chief or some awful bullshit like that?  The show was cancelled after about half a season despite lots of advance buzz and pretty decent reviews, so nobody could figure out what didn't work. Here's what didn't work: Romeo and Juliet is a three-hour play and these bozos expected us to believe it could be stretched out over the course of years. YEARS...

I made a resolution this year to take more photos. And then I thought about it and realized nobody really gives a shit about my Instagram. I mean, it's nice that I can document parts of my life in order to appear interesting and busy all the time, but I guess if I'm being truthful, I seriously doubt anybody is checking my Instagram on an hour basis to see if I'm up to anything new--and by anything new, I mean, something that isn't just new but also photogenic. The plan was to take three photos a day.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find three things a day to take photos of?  I guess it's easy if you're Annie Liebovitz and Hillary Clinton is standing in front of you holding a baby from Australia and not wearing any pants, but I don't have shit like that happen to me in my everyday life, so instead I took a picture of snow on my car. Because--I don't know--I like snow? I deleted the photo from my phone as soon as I posted it, because I ju...

As someone who absorbs as much pop culture as humanly possible, I find myself occasionally force-feeding my brain stuff I don't actually like all that much. Sometimes I wonder if I'm justified in not liking it, or if I'm simply missing something about whatever it is that makes this thing so enjoyable. Most of the time, it has to do with television. I have a feeling that binge-watching is popular strictly because some television shows have to be viewed in blocks in order for you to find any enjoyment in them whatsoever. Homeland  on a week-to-week basis never keeps my attention, but I remember loving the first season.  Is that because I binge-watched it over the course of a snowed-in weekend?  I mean, any television show watched in one sitting would essentially be the most epic movie ever, right?  So of course we'd enjoy it more. Some shows seem to have a million seasons so that every time I thought about watching I would think--Never mind, I'm way too far ...

During the month of December, in an effort to be full of joy and light, I refrained from posting anything snarky on Facebook. As a result--and I don't want to be too melodramatic about this, but--I nearly exploded. The amount of nonsense and tomfoolery I wasn't able to respond to because I was trying to stay positive and only put out good vibes seemed to run rampant.  It was like every idiot in the world (and by "every idiot in the world" I mean people I've chosen to be friends with on Facebook) knew I was out of commission and decided to double down on their bullshit. That being said, I liked having my Facebook free of neverending threads where people would argue and accuse me of being devoid of humanity (simply because I hate Avatar ) or regretful posts that I put up before having my fourth coffee of the day.  Part of me wanted to keep the happy times in place. But where could I put all that built-up angst and fury so I wouldn't develop an ulcer? I...

Forewarning:  This isn't a Best Film or Best TV list. Instead, I just decided to single out the performances that I thought were the best.  To be honest, there weren't a lot of overall movies or television shows that I thought knocked it out of the park this year, but there was certainly a lot of great acting going on. Here's my list: Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black . Best performance in anything, ever, anywhere this year.  I boycotted the Emmy's when I found out she wasn't nominated...for like a day and then I watched them, because they're the Emmy's and I'm me.  But still--outrage.  She's incredible. Bonus:  She was really funny on Parks and Recreation , because she just had to prove she can do anything. Louis C.K. in American Hustle I have a rule:  If I'm making a "Best Of" list, then Louis C.K. has to be on it.  Although, if I'm nominating someone from American Hustle who ISN'T Jennifer Lawrence (clearly the ...

I have to say, I always fall for this-- Somebody posts a list of things that will, allegedly, improve my life. Now that it's a new year, people have ramped up posting this kind of stuff. "28 Things to Do Differently in 2014" "14 Things You Should Have Done in 2013" "800 Things to Do Before February If You Want to Have a Fulfilling Life" Can we please put a moratorium on these lists? Because, here's the thing: I always click on the link, thinking the list will give me clues to a secret treasure that's buried somewhere underneath the Lincoln Memorial, like that movie with Nicolas Cage that was really just The Da Vinci Code for people who didn't want to read the book or see the movie based on the book, or people who just really prefer to see all stories acted out by Nicolas Cage. Instead I get stuff like this-- "Be mindful." Kids, I'm going to admit something--I don't have a f#$king clue what "mindfu...