No Business Like Show Business

I found this picture while looking for things to post and I thought it appropriate since it's 20 degrees and there's snow on the ground. It's me and my girlfriend (she's hot, huh?) in St. Croix this past July. We were on an all-day boat trip to one of the little islands off St. Croix. We snorkeled and laid on the beach, then had a big picnic and got drunk on rum punch. It was a good time. Seems like it happened a million years ago.

Well, tonight is show night and I'm killing time in the office waiting for curtain call. We were on stage all day today for rehearsals and we had some laughs. There are some decent jokes in this episode and I even got a joke in. (It's the blow to a scene which in layman's terms means the last joke of a scene. I won't bore you with it -- it's only funny if I set up the first 20 pages of the script and I'm not going to do that here. The important part is I pitched it and it's in). One of the funniest moments occurred off-camera. We were rehearsing a scene where one of our actors has to belch. She's not a natural belcher so we had one of the writers do a stunt belch for her. During rehearsals, they dubbed in the stunt belch and it was funny, but then one of the executive producers concocted a scheme to substitute a fart noise for the belch during one of the takes in tonight's taping. I told the writer of this week's episode about it and he shook his head sadly -- "This is what it's come to at age 52. I had dreams once. I did." This cracked me up. I'm sure the fart joke will be funny, too, but the simple pathos of the writer's comment and the fear it induced in me was far more hilarious than anything else.

When do dreams die? And what hand do each of us have in their destruction? Is it dream murder to choose to make money rather than follow your heart? And what happens if your heart's confused because your body is so poor that any job seems like a good job? What happens when you get to the point of no return -- that point when you've committed so much time to doing something that you have no choice but to do it for the rest of your life EVEN though it's not at all what you really wanted to do? And what is it you want to do?

I love the old saw about "If you don't love it, don't do it" because it's such a pussy thing to say. It's the kind of thing an actor or an artist would say. It's not the kind of thing my dad would say. My dad doesn't love working shift work at a chemical plant. My dad loves hanging out with us, but you know what? That gig doesn't pay very well. So, he did what he had to do and sucked it up and he'll retire in a couple of years and then he'll be able to hang out all the time. I was a firm believer in the "don't love it, don't do it" thing for all of my 20s and part of my 30s. Now, I've decided that I what I really love is not being fucking broke. That's what I love. So, even if my heart isn't in it, I'll probably still do it if it means I'll make money at it. Hence, my spec script...

Soon.

Real soon.