The secret of the non-existent secret lives of dorks who want secret lives.

I have been having this urge to dork-out and write a fan letter to the writing teams of Pushing Daisies and Chuck because, well, they make me smile on a regular basis and not a lot of things make me smile on a regular basis. This is not to say that I am not a happy guy, but I am certainly not a happy-go-lucky guy and hopefully the distinction is clear because I have no idea how I would explain the difference in less than 3000 words and 20 hours of research in the Newberry's collections on philosophy and etymology.

Pushing Daisies is easily the "better" of the two shows: beautiful, fun, witty...great. It has been flawless except one moment in the second or third episode that only someone who wore an eye-patch for a year and a half of his life would notice...I had a lazy eye...the school nurse caught it...I'm not blind in my left eye because of her...they called me pirate boy...

I cannot conceive how anyone could not be addicted to Pushing Daisies and so I don't really see a need to defend it. Check it out. It is its own defense. Because it is brilliant. It is brilliant. It makes me want to write for television.

If you are reading this writing team of Pushing Daisies, I want in...Please...please.
Chuck, on the other hand, probably could use some friends. The basic story of Chuck is ridiculous: a very-smart-but-basically-regular-Joe gets a whole system of government secrets downloaded into his brain through some shaky hypnosis thingy that is sent to him through his email by his ex-best-friend-turned-CIA agent. So he is now a walking computer that the NSA and CIA have to protect and use on missions, which are all conveniently local. Sounds pretty stupid right? But the characters are, again, brilliant and whoever cast the show should probably be given a medal. F-ing hilarious with just enough action to make it somewhat thrilling. And all the actors are really pretty. I mean REALLY pretty.


But more than the eye-candy and unapologetic-no holds barred-we-are-going-to-entertain-the- shit-out-of-you-attitude, Chuck is tapping into the secret dream of every single dork, pseudo-dork, and semi-dork: to have a secret power, or a secret life, or a secret. Do we all want to be spies? No. Because dork fantasies maintain a certain degree of logic and being a spy would be pretty lame. Chuck knows this. He's not thrilled about having a super-computer inside his head. Who would? I already get migraines.

But we do all want to be heroes. Superheroes wouldn't be bad either. Depending on the power of course: there is a lot of literature out there right now about how being a superhero would probably suck too. And, likewise, Chuck is tapping into an interesting angle of the escapism of the hero-fantasy: we can all become heroes overnight if we just receive the right email or we just get bitten by the radioactive spider or get doused in the right combination of crime-lab chemicals during an electrical storm.

But when that happens, we are not going to stop being dorks. We are just going to be dorks with super-powers.

I am searching for a day job, and finding a day job is kind of like searching for the right secret identity: you probably won't love it, but you should at least try to find one that doesn't make you miserable. And if you are really lucky, your day job will be helpful to your secret life. The Flash: Barry Allen, police detective; probably hated the paperwork, but he was always in the know. Spiderman, Superman: work for news organizations. Do they like taking photos and writing articles, maybe. But it's probably not as interesting as soaring through the air.

Batman runs with the social elite. Do you think the brooding obsessive Batman, enjoys brushing elbows with those boring suits? Of course not. He would rather be down in his cave eating the souls of all the weirdos running around Gotham as he feverishly pushes his super-computer to figure out who the hell killed his parents and psychologically scarred him for life, but instead he has to sip champaign and hear about how Eleanor's poodles just won nationals and about Simpson's dissatisfaction with his new caddy. No wonder he is so irritable.

Ideally we could all be like Mr. Fantastic or Aquaman: merge our two lives into one. Not have a need for a secret identity. But I don't think that is going to happen for me anytime soon. So I need to find a kick ass cover. Because I don't want to be irritable. And I get irritable...

Writing for Pushing Daisies would be nice. Please...please.

Regarding a fictional conversation with Will Shakespeare:

Sometimes dramaturgs need to save playwrights from pirates.

Nantes (from the Flying Club Cup) - BEIRUT

Hermit

There is a man
On the coast of Antarctica
At Dumont d'Urville
Living in constant fear
That the French will show
And ask for a passport
he does not have.

Dramaturgy in motion

I am at a table with very smart people. Smart in that way that I have never been smart -- heads full of random facts and semi-important names; remembering everything they ever heard, saw, read -- but also smart in that other way. The director has found the only extant biography of the Canadian playwright that American production teams can get their greedy hands on without ordering from Amazon.com, and has copies of T.S. Eliot poems that he believes are subtly alluded to in the script. Gold. The sound designer suggests the nostalgic music of Beirut -- "Think Amelie" he helpfully offers to those of us who look lost (but only half of us are, because these people are smart in that way I have never been smart) -- would help us as we are finding an appropriate soundscape. Gold. The Artistic Director explains how the play fits into the larger goals of the company and why it specifically was picked for this season: Gold. I have to be reminded that I have two photographs -- results of a Google search of the word verdigris -- that might provide some insight. I sheepishly share.

I ask questions. I play devil's advocate. I remind people of what they said the other day. I try to keep up. We are in the back of a restaurant in a section that is outside when weather permits and under a tent when it doesn't. There is a space heater frying my ass. Literally. Jess moves my coat because she thinks it might be burning. I am hot, but I am having fun. I love conversations like this. It is Autumn 2003 and I'm in the back of someone's car driving back to Advanced Playwriting from a preview of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia. And we are talking about it, and I am deciding I cannot stop talking about it and all I want to do is talk about it.

Autumn 2007 is quickly feeling like winter in the back of this tented pub with good cheap dark beers, and questions of "do these smart people need me" quickly evolve into "how do I step up my game so that these smart people need me." Maybe this is dramaturgy: smart people helping smart people be smart...

It took me four years to learn how to ride a bike and that was only after I rode smack into a huge blue wall in the middle of a completely empty space

Late Night Break Up

I love you.

No you don't.

How do you know?

Because I don't love you.

Oh.

I'm not sorry either.

Oh.

I love your father.

What?

You're dad.

He's, like, 70.

He's a real man.

He's 70.

Don't tell him.

Why would I tell him.

Why wouldn't you.

He's married. To my mom. For like 50 years.

She's old though.

So is he.

And men cheat.

I think you should leave.

Loads of men want to cheat with me. I've had offers. I, like, remind them of something.

I need for you to leave now.

Is your dad home?

Where's your coat?

He's probably asleep. Is he a light sleeper? Lighter than your mom?

Here.

I wonder if I just lightly knocked on the door...

I want you to leave right now.

Or if I just slipped in next to him...

I'll call the cops.

She laughs.

Oh come on.

I will.

I'm not serious. (Beat) You think I want to do your dad. You're mom's like the sweetest person on the planet.

Ok.

I mean, your dad's fine and all.

Yeah.

But he's, like, 70.

He is.

Probably couldn't even perform if I did jump him.

73 actually.

I mean, it would be a thrill for him no doubt.

Sure. Sure.

I mean when you're 70.

73.

I bet you'll want your son's friend...

Girlfriend.

to make a pass at you.

I don't think so.

Oh come on you'll take your jimmys were you can get them.

I don't think so. And it's jollys I think.

I'd probably give him his first hard-on in years. Maybe decades.

I think I still want for you to go.

It was only a gag.

No. It's fine. But I think I still...

I mean except for the part about old men wanting me. That's true. I don't know why. Maybe they want all the girls. Oh god here I was thinking I was special but what if they make passes at everything walks by them. Jesus that's embarrassing.

It's getting late and I have to get up in the morning.

Would you want me if you were 70?

Not if I was married.

No, no but say you weren't married would you want me?

When you're 70?

No like I am now.

But I'm 70?

Right.

Probably.

Really?

I mean, I want you now; I don't think taste in women changes. But maybe it does. I guess it does. It must, right? Or else old people would be chasing around young people all day. So I don't know. Maybe I'd want you.

Maybe.

Or maybe I'd want you only I'd want you-at-70.

You want me to be 70.

Well not now, no, I...

There's a word for that. For the opposite of pedophile. But I don't know it because nobody talks about it because it disgusts people. Not that it disgusts me. But I'm a girl. And girls find older men, maturity, sexy. But it disgusts men because Mrs. Robinson and Maud aren't real. Men want firmness more than they want maturity. And I'm firm.

Yes.

And you like that I'm firm.

...yes...

But I won't always be firm.

...no?

I think we should break-up.

Okay.

Because I don't love you and you love me and I think that's going to make things awkward because there is all this expectation, all this pressure for me to fall in love with you now and I don't think I will because I really don't do well under pressure. I resist it. I run away from it. Kind of like I think I am going to run-away right now. Maybe that is why I find older men attractive. They're going to die soon. I tell you I love you and, wham bam!, we're married and then we're 70 and we have spent 40+ years together wanting to screw other people but remaining faithful out of politeness even though we want to be chasing around all the firm 20somethings; but if you're 70 then the pressure is off because even if we do end up married, it won't be for the rest of my life. The rest of your life, sure, but I will have a life after marriage. A safety net.

I think we should break-up.

Oh. You're sweet.

Okay.

You don't have to.

I know. But I think I do. Think that.

Oh.

You're freaking me out.

And so you're breaking up with me.

I'm agreeing with you.

That we should break up.

Right.

Because I'm freaking you out.

Yes. No...Yes.

You're so immature.
She opens door.
And you wonder why I'm sleeping with your dad.
She leaves.

no fate but what we make

I clean my desk and I clean the dishes in the sink because I think it is a way to clear my mind of the clutter that prevents it from writing. But I prevent myself from writing even when the silverware shines and the paperwork is neatly filed away. It is easier to sit on the couch and watch Terminator 3 (a damn fine movie no doubt) and ponder what it says about me as a person that the commercial advertising the success of a penis-enlargement pill (though they never use the word penis: that would be too vulgar) comes on every other break. It is Saturday night. And I am home alone with two cats watching Arnold before he became governor. What demographic am I filling? What statistic? There is a cast party up on the Brown Line; I think I'd have fun but it is just a little too far and just a little too cold. But it hasn't started yet, so I tell myself there is still hope.

Some advertising clerk decided that the 7 to 9:30 Saturday night slot on AMC attracts an audience of men who needed some enhancement...what if they are right?

Spent the afternoon in the Newberry Library: a public library that manages to feel like an exclusive country club...but for dorks. There are lockers on the main floor in which you have to stow your bag and coat before you can enter, which you can then only do when you explain what specifically you have come to the Newberry to find and then you sign in and then they give you some paperwork to fill out once you have reached the 3rd floor before you go down to the 2nd floor where you hand the clerks the information for the three (3) books you would like them to fetch for you; no civilian is allowed in the stacks. They give you a desk number and point you towards your chair and a few minutes later the clerk has come with the books...Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction by Larry F. Norman (1999)...Moliere: His Life and Works by John Palmer (1930)...Moliere, a playwright and his audience by W. D. Howarth (1982)...and before he arrives you run quickly to the john and check to make sure your pen is functional because once he arrives you need to read, your hand feverishly keeping up, because you cannot check books out of the Newberry and photocopies are $.40 a page at the Newberry and the Newberry closes at 5pm on Saturday and aren't open at all on Sunday...

A dramaturg's utopic dream.

And it is quiet like no library is quiet because the rigmarole to get in is so thorough that once you are in you are there to work. You are there to get done what you needed to get done. You have a mission and you have gone through marine boot camp and survived the hazing and by-golly you are going infiltrate the Communist Military Base and deactivate the launch sequence because that is what you were trained to do...only the Military Base looks a lot like Paris in 1622 and deactivating the launch sequence involves discovering that Jean Poquelin IV is a lot like Horton Foote in that they were both actors well before they were writers...but Horton Foote is still alive. And Moliere's, well, not.

I wonder how many other people left the Newberry at 5 -- having satisfied their need for research; we are all researching the exact same question, we're just going about it differently -- only to find themselves on their futon with a cat 3 hours later watching commercials on male-enhancement...

If I stare at the television hard enough maybe I will see them staring back at me.

exploding lightbulbs

Eventually you probably get over the hump and stop writing about thinking and stop writing about writing and just write. I'm troubled that the most appropriate lines that come to mind are from The Matrix when Morpheus instructs Neo how to fight -- Stop trying to hit me and hit me -- and Star Wars when Yoda instructs Luke -- Do or do not. There is no try -- but I guess movie references are the allusions of our generation and there is no need for embarrassment.

I had ideas today. I have been having ideas all week. Ideas are problematic. At least mine are because my ideas always seem fun and lovely and economically impractical. Not impractical. They don't cost much; they just don't make anything. I'm not bad with money; I'm just not good at making it.

Like on the bus downtown two days ago (was it?). I'm on the 134, that lovely (word of the hour) little express that skips over half the commute and transits along the lake. The lake is beautiful and I am looking right at it but I'm not: it's earlyish and my mind hasn't yet popped into second gear. I don't know what I am thinking about, but not about the lake. And I think about not thinking about the lake and think about how anybody looking at me would say I am looking at and thinking about the lake (these are how the conversations in my head usually unfold) and to these theoretical voyeurs I would cleverly reply: what you look at doesn't matter; but how you look at it...

or something like that. It felt like a deep philosophical thought at the time. I was proud of it. It gave me hope. But I didn't write it down, and minutes later when my mind had moved through about seventeen different topics I was saddened to learn I had forgotten that thought that had filled me with a certain amount of creative glee. The 134 was turning off of Lakeshore and onto Wacker and I tried to convince myself that it was enough that I had thought the thought at all: that simply thinking it was evidence that my mind still had "it" and that "it" would come again when I needed "it" to.

I don't remember when I remembered (if hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, what is the memory of remembering called?). It might have been the same day that I decided I wanted to open my own literary agency for midwestern playwrights (and dramaturgs; and directors). Another idea! That would have put it at about a week after the dramaturgy blog. Another idea! Oh, and I have plans for a new works program for New Leaf if I am asked to move into the position of literary manager...

The job hunt goes poorly because I am stubborn and full of ideas and the Medici are all dead and even when they weren't they lived in Italy...

I just laid on the couch for the last hour listening to This American Life. The one radio show that I don't mind when it plays a repeat. What a great idea...

Why Birthday money rocks!

What Dan bought with his Birthday money.

Postmodern Museum of Bastardization

Postulations about dramaturgy examined through metaphor.

Most people...well at least some people...well...at the very least I hope you have heard of the Sistine Chapel debate: to clean or not to clean...To clean and restore the work to its original splendor or to allow the soot and the dirt and the mold of time that has accumulated to remain, well, accumulated. Most would probably agree that it would be nice to actually be able to see God and Adam touching pointing at each other with recognition

ADAM: Hey, hey. I know you.

GOD: Yeah. Yeah. Weren't you that...guy...

ADAM: Hey, yeah. Didn't we meet like at

GOD: I think it was...

ADAM: Hey. Yeah! That's right. That's where it was! Yeah. Hey, man, you look great.

so few would argue that light maintenance is inappropriate. But once it is visible, what about reviving the colors? Revisiting the details. Do we deny history her due? Or do we deny the audience of today what the audience of yesteryear enjoyed? How does one maintain this allusive thing called authenticity when time does not give a shit.

My friend put to me an interesting question that is similar. Kind of. Well, it's an art question. Sort of: it was actually an art metaphor to talk about theatre. I am defining what I think the role of the dramaturg is, and I am lucky to have found a friend who disagrees with me at the very core. Disagrees with me in a way that fills the air between us with a violent electrical current.

The question: Would you allow a curator of a museum to hang Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night upside down?


I started to think how cool it would be to have an exhibition in which numerous masterpieces were flipped upsides. How we would see the pieces in a new way. We would see elements of the paintings we never saw before. This was not my friend's intention. I started to think of the marketing side of it too: purists would be enraged by the prospect of disrespecting the art while a small faction of revolutionary post-modernists would gleefully praise the reinterpretation. Fireworks! Arguments! Heated arguments that can only happen between people who believe they have found the meaning of life. One side has found meaning in an authentic beauty that reaches deep down into them and phenomenologically moves them; the other side has found meaning in the endless potential of interpretation and in the evolution of meaning itself.

The ticket sales would boom!

And people would go see the art again. And one intention we can safely assume about every artist -- possibly the only intention we can safely assume -- is that they wanted the work seen.

But would this audience see the art the way that the artist had intended? This was my friend's point. Are they seeing the art or are they seeing the interpretation of the art? I think this was her point. When we view The Starry Night upside down, are we seeing Van Gogh's painting or the curator's project?

I would go see it, and I think a lot of people would. And I would enjoy it (and I think a lot of people would). I also think that a lot of people would also view the painting how it was originally angled: I would wager that many patrons of the exhibit would crook their necks uncomfortably downways; I would hypothesize that many of them would peruse the merchandise in the giftshop on the way out to remind themselves (but do you think they hung the posters upsidedown when they got home?); and with whole museums our our fingertips, I would guess that many a Google search of The Starry Night would occur before, after, and during (iphones, you scare me).

But what if this was it? What if this was the moment that you would see The Starry Night for the first and last time? What if no one was around to tell you that it was upside down? That it "wasn't supposed to be viewed this way." What if there was no context?

These final extrapolations from the original question are what irk me the most. I don't know. A temporary exhibit viewed in the context of a world of easily accessible information is easily excused. A permanent entry in the museum of the mind is less so.

Maybe this is the compromise: there are works of art -- as there are works of theatre -- that have reached a level of contextualization. And this context protects the piece from any one exhibition -- or production -- defining it. I would argue that The Starry Night is protected. I would argue that Death of a Salesman is protected. And since they are protected, why not screw with a little bit...so as not to get bored with them?

Cornelia Parker's 2003 The Distance (a kiss with string attached) at the Tate Modern

Clearing the Throat

A really bad movie makes you realize how easy it is to allow your life to amount to absolutely nothing. I am talking a movie that has absolutely no redeeming value other than to distract you from your ordinary day. To distract you from the fact that your ordinary day is ordinary because in the time that you could take to make your life extraordinary, you happen to be watching this movie. This movie that is mind-numbing. This movie that is a sedative. This movie that is Lara Craft Tombraider Search for the the Somethingorotherwhogivesafuck.

And yet I cannot turn it off. It is on as I write this. Angelina Jolie just jumped off of somewhere and shot someone in the head without looking because she is just that good at shooting people in the head. And there's that guy who is in 300 but he is like 30 pounds smaller and 30 times less badass -- Spartans! Tonight you dine in Hell!. It is on because it is not only a distraction, it is also an ambassador. Not Lara Croft per se (although with Miss Angelina "UN" Jolie...), but the television. Alone in my apartment with two loving but sleeping cats, I can reach my hand through the television and hold yours, the other poor sap who has been sucked in to watching the Tomb Raider jump through break away glass as thousands of bullets whiz by her pretty head. Our silent lazy go-between. I am communicating with the other people watching AMC at 8:40 on a Friday night. I am saying the same thing they are saying: I had a busy week. I want to unwind with something mindless.

But I don't.

Time to turn the TV off...or at least pause it. Thank you TIVO.