"The Foreigner" Pics

Larry Shue's "The Foreigner" is about Charlie Baker, an English science fiction magazine proofreader who finds himself on a forced holiday with his friend Froggy LeSeur in the backwater community of Tilman County, Georgia. In the show, I played Ellard Simms, Catherine's half-wit brother and heir to the Simms Prepared Meats fortune.
I don't claim to be much of an actor, but I never would have thought it would be so difficult to play less intelligent character. If I heard it from our director once, I heard it a hundred time, "You look too smart up there."

In regards to the picture, they say the camera adds 10-15 pounds. When you're my size, another 10-15 pounds doesn't make much difference, but the size 64-37 overalls we bought (because they were the closest we could find to my actual waist size) don't really do my girlish figure justice.

My Head's Screwed On Straight...My Knee's Another Story

As of last night, I've taken one more step down the Yellow Brick Road of knee repair. When my x-rays came up negative for anything related to a fracture, Dr. Johnson dumped me off on a Physical Therapist. Based on the motion tests Jeff did last night during our first visit, he's going on the assumption that I've somehow managed to tear my lateral meniscus in my right knee. This assumes that the part that was torn is somehow fouling up the motion of my knee, not allowing me to extend my leg and lock out the knee. For the anatomically-impaired (like me before I started to research this), here's a primer on knees - http://www.aclsolutions.com/anatomy.php.

Usually, when you think of an injured knee, you think of knee surgery, but Jeff explained to me that if we can get the swelling to go down and work on my mobility with structured exercises, we may be able to get the knee to go back to normal on its own. That would be a huge relief on my part and an incentive to do the grueling exercises he's going to throw at me over the next two weeks. So far I've got:

1. Leg bend with toe taps - Sitting flat on the floor with my legs extended, I'm supposed to plant my foot on the floor and bring it as far back towards me as I can, then tap my foot up and down 10 times.
   
2. Heel prop - Extending my leg as straight as possible and propping my right heel up on a roll or a towel, I'm supposed to sit there for 5 minutes, allowing gravity to work on my knee joint. Though I don't think it's bad enough to call it the "Hell Prop" as Jeff says one of his patients does, it takes a concentrated effort to bend my knee again after my 5 minutes are up.
   
3. Thigh tensors - For this one, I'm supposed to sit on the floor with my leg fully extended and contract my quadricep muscle while pressing my knee toward the floor. Jeff says that one of the body's responses to a knee injury is to shut down the muscles around the knee in order to protect the joint. This exercise is supposed to wake up the quad.

I'm supposed to go back 4 or 5 more times in the next two weeks, adding more exercises and hopefully gaining more mobility between each visit. If that works, then no surgery for me. If it doesn't, then it looks like I'll be experiencing arthroscopic surgery first-hand.

"Life Is Not About the Number of Breaths You Take; It's the Number of Moments That Take Your Breath Away"

I took my wife to see both Hitch and Guess Who in a bargain theater double feature last night. Besides a thoroughly entertaining Sunday evening, we were both surprised by the number of good quotes in Hitch like the one in my title. Like most folks, I love to get credit for good work, and in return I try to give credit where credit is due, so I was hoping to find out where my title quote came from. A Google search of the above quote got 622 hits, most of which belonged to other bloggers and personal ads. One page quoted the line as far back as the year 2000, but without a better source I'm going to have to give the credit to Kevin Bisch, the screenwriter for the movie.

Meanwhile, today seems like a good day to talk about television, movies, and happy marriages, and hopeless romanticism. Smarter people than me will tell you that our lives and our minds are shaped by our surroundings moreso than by our genetics. (Yes, their argument tends to ignore predestination, fate, or anything else related to spirituality, but as an agnostic with atheistic tendencies, that really doesn't bother me one bit.) That's why I think Hollywood should make more movies like Hitch - movies that show that even in a modern society where people are born cynics, that romance is NOT dead; movies like Guess Who that show the importance of families regardless of the race, sex, or orientation of its individual members. I was lucky enough to learn much of what I know from watching my happily married parents and spending time with family, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think some of my views have been shaped by old-fashioned ideas that I learned while watching old movies and TV show reruns. Maybe even those kids who aren't lucky enough to live in a close family environment could learn something about how it's supposed to be from the characters on the other side of the screen.

Sure, I watched a lot of The A-Team and Miami Vice, Indiana Jones, and the Die Hard trilogy and I still do, but we're taught from day one that these action adventure shows aren't real. Anyone with a little common sense knows that you can't jump over the side of a skyscraper using only a hand-tied water hose to arrest your fall. I doubt many of us expect to find Miami detectives in linen suits with a crocodile for a housepet. Nobody tells us that the Huxtables aren't a real family, though. Nobody can tell me that Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years wasn't based on real-life junior high school exploits because I think I lived through several of them. They don't tell you these TV and movie families aren't real because while every house may not be just like Happy Days, there are a lot of households that are.

I grew up hearing that I watched too much TV, but I wonder if maybe we all should have watched more. The really good shows not only pick you up for the time it takes to make you watch them, but every time you stop to think of them, like the random times when my wife and I break into singing "The Elephant Love Medley" from Moulin Rouge while we're cleaning the house. Our friends look at us like we're weird, but I have to wonder if we're not a little happier, a little more carefree than some of our friends for realizing that life isn't so bad all the time.

You know what? I'm starting to ramble aimlessly, and that's a sign that I should have given up on this one a while ago. So in a nutshell, my point is this - Romance is not dead. Be good to your wife, your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. Give them those moments to take their breath away, and you might find the same thing happens to you. Surprise them once in a while with breakfast in bed, or flowers for no reason. Stay up late talking to them just for the sake of spending time with them. Tell them you love them without expecting a response. And if you run out of ideas, look to movies and television for a quick pick-me-up and some old-fashioned ideas that your partner may never have heard of...

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Another good line from Hitch was a toast I know I've heard, yet I quote again here more for my own memory than anyone else's enjoyment:

"May you never lie, steal, cheat, or drink...
But if you should lay, then lay in the arms of someone you love;
If you should steal, steal her away from bad company;
If you should cheat, cheat death;
And if you should drink, then drink in the experiences that make life memorable."

Stop the Insanity! On Second Thought, Don't...

This blog doesn't really have a theme other than the one that seems to drive most of the blogs that I've seen - the blogger. I'd be lying if I said I had any other underlying theme, particularly three days into my first blog. I'll say that I don't plan on being another one of those "Check This Out" blogs attempting to introduce my readers to really cool, funny, stupid or gross sites on the web. Let's face it, most surfers can find that stuff on their own if they want to, and most of them already know hundreds of other people with connections to all of the media they want.

So while I promise not to try to turn into a potpourri of useless links, the folks at Blogger just directed me to this site . At first I thought the guy was insane, or just downright attention-starved. Then I got to thinking. What's different about Daily Dancer's desire to post videos of himself dancing and my love of being on stage? In "The Foreigner", no matter how much fun I had or how good the review was, at most 1000-or-so people would have seen us because our crowd was limited by the capacity of the theater. Meanwhile, Daily Dancer could be getting that many hits in a day if enough people passed the word to their friends. After all, look what word of mouth did for Badger Badger Badger and the Hamster Dance . Would I be writing this right now if I didn't secretly hope that someone out there will find it halfway interesting and read it? Maybe so, but I'd probably be less diligent about it.

It goes back to my first post and being amazed at what some people will put in their blogs. This stuff is out there for millions of people to see. On one hand, that's pretty wild and oddly appealing to an extrovert like me. On the other hand, it's just a tiny bit scary, knowing what information experts can do, and knowing that there are people out there surfing the web in search of poachable identities. You can say what you want to about being able to carry on after having lost friends, family, and possessions, but should it ever get to the point where someone knows you well enough to take on your identity and it ever comes into question who the real Ted D. or Daily Dancer or Freshboy or Stella really is, what do you do? I'm not a doom-and-gloomer - I swear I'm not - but I can only hope that none of us ever has to find out the answer to that question.

On that note - have a great weekend! I have every intention of getting some pics from "The Foreigner" and Las Vegas up by Sunday afternoon.

If It's Not Scottish, It's Crap!

Well, the good news is that I'm actually walking on my leg today without the crutches. The range of motion, ability to bear weight, and walking speed are about 30% of normal, but compared to my wheelchair ride around Vegas last weekend, I'll take 30%. The bad news is that I still don't actually know what's wrong with it. The x-rays came back negative, which made my regular doctor decide he didn't know what it was and dump me off to a physical therapist. The physical therapist hasn't called me to set up an appointment, so I'm laying even odds right now that I'll be back to normal before I ever get to see the PT. Anyone else want to bet?

Meanwhile, I've always wondered who came up with the idea of daylight savings time and what prompted their decision to move us all an hour forward on the clock. After being home - and being stuck at home the last four nights - I'm beginning to think it was someone who'd had enough of the summer television schedule. Surely I can't be the only one not enamored with repeats of CSI and ER. Great shows though they may be, once I've seen an episode, I really don't feel the need to sit through it again until several seasons later when I break down and buy the DVD. With the good shows in reruns, that leaves us faithful TV viewers with crap like The Real Gilligan's Island and Hit Me Baby One More Time. Trapped in my living room, this week I had no choice but to stare longingly at the light outside at 9:30, and then turn to a good book while Gilligans Shawn and Zac fought to be the real Gilligan by trying to catch fish in a wading pool. Meanwhile, on not one but three episodes of Hit Me Baby, viewers were treated to such masterpieces as Haddaway's rendition of "Toxic", Tommy Tutone's "All the Small Things", Cameo's version of "1985", and Wang Chung's cover of "It's Getting Hot in Here"...and those were unfortunately the better performances of the three episodes. I should just turn the television off and turn some music on, but for some reason I always seem to want the TV on as background noise whether I'm paying attention to it or not. I'm not sure I would call the TV addictive, but it's funny how something becomes such a part of your life that you miss it when it's gone. It's also sad that I should find myself using words like that about an inanimate electronic device, but not being a Luddite, I'll leave that thought for someone else's blog.

What's In a Blog?

I've always been pretty good at learning how to use new technology, but I'm usually the last to switch over. When my friends were switching from cassettes to CDs, I was still pulling out my parents' old vinyl record albums. When I finally got a CD player during my sophomore year in college (1995-ish), friends were using Napster to download all the music they wanted for free in MP3 format. I don't think I got my first DVD player until 2-3 years ago. So it comes as no surprise to me that I've finally decided to give blogging a shot when many of my friends have been doing it for years.

Here's what does surprise me...the sheer amount of personal information that can be found in a person's blog if only you know where to look and you're patient enough to read through the chaff. After returning from a disappointing trip to Las Vegas, I found an email from my friend Freshboy - yes, he insists people call him that even out in the real world - with a link to his blog (see the 'Bloggers I Know' section on my page if you're curious), where he had posted some pictures of his recent wedding in Scotland. In moments, not only had I seen his wedding pictures, but found links to the blogs of other mutual friends containing stories of broken relationships, graduations, and swimming in tampons, most of which I have no doubt are true.

You remember all of those complaints by factory workers that their jobs were being taken by robots and machines? Well, I'm starting to maybe agree with them. Bear with me, here, but I think you'll be able to see where I'm coming from. I always prided myself on being the "nice guy". Hell, I was too fat and unattractive to attract people on looks alone, and I had a pair of great parents who taught me how important it was to care for people, so why shouldn't I slide into the role of friend and confidant; the George to the world's Seinfelds. I'm a firm believer in honesty, love, caring, and most of all communication. Communication keeps you from harboring grudges against your friends, and it's what keeps your head from filling up with mindless crap then exploding like an over-stuffed garbage bag. Because of that, people tended to trust me and feel good around me. I had one friend in college - one I lusted after for several years before realizing just how neurotic she was (and no, I'm not talking about you, Kerry) - who spent many nights sleeping in my dorm room, talking about the latest jerk who'd dumped her or the new guy she was crazy for. I used to end up knowing a lot of people's secrets, dreams, and desires because they felt good when they got everything off their chests and they knew I wasn't going to do anything but listen. Now what do we have? Blogs! Who needs a "nice guy" when they can pour all of their thoughts into a little electronic box, never really certain that anyone's reading them, but yet not making their blogs private either, because that would be the same as having a diary and you just don't get the same catharsis by baring your soul to yourself.

I'm not really complaining. Despite the friends I've made all over the country through my fraternity, it's not as if I spend large amounts of time picking up the phone to find out how most of them are doing. Unfortunately, it seems like most of my catching up is either done through the occasional e-mail or the 5-10 uninterrupted minutes I may get with a friend at the most recent fraternity function. My own "little brother", Thomas, has been dating a girl halfway across the country for six months, and I only just recently found out about it when he flew to Minnesota to help her drive the moving van to Richmond, VA, and called me to see if they could stop in Lexington on the way. Thomas? In love? In love so much that she's moving from Minnesota to Virginia to be with him? How the heck did THAT happen? While I'm thinking about it, maybe I ought to go through some of these blogs to see what else I've missed in my friends' lives.

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Other musings not worth their own entry:

• I just finished playing Ellard Simms in a run of "The Foreigner" with the Studio Players (http://www.studioplayers.org). This was the first play I've done in five years and I had a blast. The whole cast was excellent, but I'm telling you now to look out for a guy named Shayne Brakefield in a couple of years. As Charlie Baker, he brought down the house and stood, jumped, danced on, or climbed over every piece of furniture on the set. Once I get a chance, I'll post some pictures.
• Having thoroughly caught the acting bug again, I tried out for two more shows before the end of the run of "The Foreigner". I turned down a slot in the chorus for "Beauty and the Beast" and didn't get cast in "The Wizard of Oz". In the long run, it's probably a good thing - I did something to my leg or knee during the "Oz" auditions. While I was in Vegas, I got into a cab, twisted my leg the wrong way, and suddenly couldn't put any weight on it when I tried to get out of the cab. The x-rays came back clean, so now the doctor's referring me to a Physical Therapist. I'd imagine I'm going to be stuck on crutches for another couple of weeks. I guess I'm going to be on a forced hiatus from the theater, at least until auditions for "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" in the fall.
• I'm going to continue to read "Super/System" and "Killer Poker" (on my reading list to the left), but I evidently haven't learned enough. After three hours at a table in the Golden Nugget, Carrie and I found ourselves down $200. I had budgeted the money to gamble with, but I had also hoped I'd have done better at the table. Looking back over my first experience outside of home games, I had several really good hands, three or four really bad hands, and a lot of hands that I played correctly. I can't chalk up all of the losses to my own play - Carrie continued to bet into at least two obvious flushes (four of one suit on the table) with two pair or trips - but I obviously didn't do well enough to keep myself even.