backup

It's probably not the best time for me to sit down and write, but when is that time. Is there ever a best time? When life is good and the flowers in full bloom, the clouds scattered white on purple hues and the sun high, warm with your skin kissed by cool water splashing spits in your face like a lapping dolphin's tail dancing against the curling waves?

Or when your tooth aches and your eyes droop like wrinkled plums, your heart a lump of lead for emptiness and the sticky afternoon sinking your uncertainty into a helpless mid-summer soup of murk leaving you flat-tiredly bound?

Well I'm both right now so maybe I'll write something.
I'm just tired, and there's a couple aspects of my life that cropped up suddenly, that I don't know what to do about.

My dad has this mantra for me: "oh Mikie, you'll figure it out." Great.
And is he right? Yep. Just like when I was 15 and he's like "yeah, if you want to drive you need to get a job. so go figure it out." And I did. And so has followed everything since, a constant "its a dirty job but someone's got to do it" mentality. No complaints though! because I love working and putting things together, trial and error, the whole shebang.

But wouldn't it be nice for once to have someone there as backup every once in a while, to back you up and take the reins in that small, one-case scenario when you don't actually want to figure it out? I can see why people get married. If you're married, you've got automatic backup. And you can rest assured that I am currently living vicariously through your advantageously automatic backup. It's like About a Boy. Not so much like Party Down. Although I rode my bike through Old Town Pasadena again today in hopes of seeing Adam Scott. And didn't. As usual. So I got froyo instead.

I'm just sick of getting hung up on little things while trying to make my way into doing not-so-little things. Like, having a bunk tooth or a poorly-functioning automobile shouldn't hault the rotation of my planet. Here's where backup would be handy (take note, married ones). Sheesh.

On a different subject, my show opened Thursday.
Now, this show is the reason I'm not rafting so I know what you're thinking: "well this better be damn f*cking good." The news? Well.. even if our personal critiques of the opening may have been self-depreciating, the reviews that came in about it were quite the opposite. In brief, our opening (with new script, a full set and all-new technicalities) was hailed as a "theatrical gem!" with "characters and dialog that belong on a Broadway stage" (Performing Arts LIVE). Not a bad first review. Now we have four more weekends of never being satisfied. Sounds about right.
here's a picture:


and that's about it. Totally pointless blog. Now go listen to Beck and be happy its summertime.

Mikie

I'm sitting in a big grey Chevy Tahoe driving across the brown and spotted-green plains of lower Nevada. There's some black mountains to my left, two sleeping girls in the passenger seats and Matt driving us towards the horizon. It's about 7:30 in the morning, so the world has a welcoming eastfacing glow. We're leaving Las Vegas driving back towards Los Angeles.

The feeling of awe after going somewhere with no real idea for what to expect, living out a couple days of brand new experiences and then returning to 'normal' just never gets old. And its right now, when the car is packed and our minds at ease and focused on the road ahead that I recognize the significance.

So it goes after visiting Las Vegas for the first real time - the past two days were like a flash flood of manmade experience, packed with visual stimulation, pyrotechnics, carefully developed marketing, repetitive surprises and (most importantly) people looking to vent and express freely without worry - hundreds of thousands of people traveling to a manmade adult playground in the desert so they can finally let it all go and play. With no holds barred, no inhibiting society to tell them otherwise.

You know what I think the most interesting part of Vegas was? The service workers. Sure, water shows are gorgeous and phenomenal - but I'm just as fascinated by the Mexican woman mopping the spa floor at 3am, or the thick-spoken taxi driver, or the overly boisterous server or revealingly busty bartender.. or even the $1 water vendors. Or Mabel, the charming white-haired dealer who just glances sideways at you and laughs because she's seen you and people like you a thousand times. Who cleans this place up at 6am? What girl is manning the hotel gift shop on the overnight shift?

But I'm heading back now, getting mildly carsick and you know my thoughts. Matthew Hunter, thanks for the amazing trip. Plenty of new. And some great comedy, drinks and food. Farewel Vegas. Back to our other desert playground - LA

sounding board thou art

I want to write about something interesting but my mind is aflood with only plans and pressures.
In fact I haven't really written anything in the past month, what is that? I need to get back on it. The horse is far away and still galloping apace.

It's funny though because I'm getting pretty sick of sprinting - maybe it's this job, it comes in waves. I have to have money, so I jump back on the schedule and work 4 days a week and suddenly life blends to a blur or greys and early mornings. Then I wake up today and have nothing to say and no channel to shove it through.

That's fine, you don't always have to have something to say.. I just enjoy the exercise of getting my thoughts moving - eeking them past the boulderstop that's walling up quick. I can push them over, like I'm doing now, and the blog is my outlet.

Wait, I did just have a thought. But for fear of sounding dark.
Here it is: we can be anywhere, do anything. A daily reminder I tend to get stuck not reminding myself of.. we can do anything. Pick it up and fly. The question is, would you have people in your life were you to do anything? we have options. We can either stay in one place and hang onto the people around us (because for some reason nobody else is a metronomad) or we can get fed up and fantasize (and even act upon) an escape route from this convoluted amalgam of social mash.

This of course is coming from the guy who's having trouble eeking those thoughts over the boulderstop, mind you. I get tired of running, of pushing, and nonstop struggle and just want to say "f**k it" and walk away from the whole scenario. Let someone else deal with all the trouble while I take my energies elsewhere and release them into the canyon wind.

A big part of the problem is that at this point nobody's counting on me anymore. Nobody has much in the way of expectations so really it's all just personal survival (or even better, finding something worthwhile to do) and so I've chosen a current highest form of imaginary survival. And I do mostly enjoy every second of it when things are good, but I'm destructively impatient and overly skeptical. Overly? well, overly because I sometimes think I'm the only one who sits back with furrowed brow and thinks, "wait a tick, let's see that again. really? that?"

So I had the desire to escape again today. But I won't do it because I don't need to. I would enjoy it, but walking out on a commitment, as banal and secularly cyclical as all this seems sometimes, is walking out on a commitment.

So I wont. I'll continue to toast my bread in a pan and commute to a bungling city between hills. I need to do a better job of creating my future - letting things come and go on the fly is too risky and I'm left unprepared for moments like today.

:)

Thanks for listening. Sounding Board thou art.

Mikie

dream

I saw Inception yesterday. How appropriate that I had this dream last night:

I was standing in front of my old house. Looking at the door. The windows were boarded up. nobody was home. no yellow glow was lighting up the windows. no christmas lights could be seen in the front room. the purple door with the funny little mark on the front was locked. the stairs beneath it were empty. there were no roses on the bush. bumbs the bee wasn't buzzing around them. the tomato plant was gone. the orchid was gone. the circuit breaker didn't need switching. the shower wasn't running. the curtains weren't open and nobody was talking inside. nobody was inside.

That's the whole dream.

makin memories

So maybe I won't remember the exact date of Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 like I so predicted (on my new Twitter account)

I will however remember shaking Shaun White's hand outside the W and feeling overwhelmed with the awesomeness that takes you when meeting the gold-medal-winning Best Snowboarder in the world.

I'll also remember that significant moment this afternoon driving beneath the mountains of Burbank blaring Alkaline Trio and having a realization about how great summertime can be in LA.

And I'll remember going to sleep with a huge smile on my face this past morning. :)

So that's all we really need, right? memories. not dates. memories to stick with us - we're literally creating nostalgia for our future selves to reminisce about. We're voluntarily manufacturing our own future emotional responses.

Like the moment tonight when us valets stood in a line, bored, watching execs and celebs get out of their limos, shooting the crap with each other and I'm standing next to Chrissy listening to her talk about her wild acting class where she did unspeakable things, and all I could think about was how it's just like Party Down. Because life is just like Party Down when it comes to valeting cars with Chrissy Randall.

wherever you're at, hope you're making some memories folks.

And it's officially 5:20am. Time to ride the midnight eye slide

Night, Mikie

Homage to the summer Beatty fam

I posted this blog on our family's website (http://thebeattyfamily.blogspot.com) in response to Adrienne's post about how Beattytopia is fading from existence. Well I thought since they're my photos and I like each and every moment from them I might as well include it on here. Enjoy, folksies
Migs

Dawn

Why does it get colder just before dawn?
That's one thing that doesn't change wherever you go in the world. It's a nice little reminder that nature still runs the show - like she's breathing a sigh of morning each day, her yawn to wake up the birds and wail on our skin with the chill and rose of sunrise. It's happened since the earth began it's rotation, she's breathed every day before the sun comes up for the last 5 billion years.
I'm usually asleep, as we all are.
Whether you're in the heart of a city, on top of a mountain, in the leaves by a river under the pouring rain or in the middle of the salty ocean it's always been the same. 100,000 years ago and tomorrow.
And just right now. Sweet morning, I welcome you. :)

Mikie

Routine

can't fool myself into thinking anything's normal. The random adventures are just weirdly in full swing, easy as it is to convince that I've fallen into any kind of normalcy.. Like Party Down. Life is just like Party Down. Particularly when you dream that Lizzy Caplan is valeting and crashes a Bentley into a Ferrari, is impaled by a tree branch and you rescue her in your arms and take her to the hospital. Lesson learned? I think I'm in love with Lizzy Caplan. Adios. :)

Mikie

Summer sojourns

48 hours ago I was curled up and truly worried about whether or not I was going to freeze to death.

Now I'm sitting shirtless on my bed, warm in the city, with the window open on a soft mattress.

36 hours ago I was running up the broken gravel streaming in shards from the top of a mountain peak enclosed for hundreds of miles by desolate, white-capped mountains and breathtaking fresh mountain lakes and air.

3 hours ago I was breathing smog and wet must, hefting my pack through the barred-up slums of dirty downtown Los Angeles.

72 hours ago I walked through Union Station looking at the grandeurous architecture.

2 hours ago I did the exact same thing.

It kind of blows my mind what becomes of us when we leave and then return. Little journeys every time. There's never a wasted trip, and every time I'm a little bit amazed..every time you leave your house, you look at the same things then BAM! you're smacked with new things you've never done before until you're walking back into your house and you see those first things again and it hits you "what just happened?" I remember being a kid and coming off-stage thinking, "what just happened?" after curtain call. I didn't realize that 18 years later I'd still be experiencing that same marvel with still little explanation.

Anyhoo, I'm back in Pasadena. Almost like I never left three days ago.
Summer sojourns, ending up coming round full-circled. I live for these things.

Really I just want to kiss and go to farmers markets.
Whatevs. Night

Mikie

summer anthems

Since summertime is inching past its early stages and getting closer to that delectably melty and sunburnt gooey center we all love to enjoy so thoroughly, I figure it's time for some good music.
So I'm on the lookout for new bands or an album (or two) that I haven't heard yet to sing along to as anthems during our hot and heavy summer of '010.

For example, I've just pulled up Alkaline Trio's most recent installment on my iTunes and purchased the first track "Calling All Skeletons" to see if I'm sold. Of course, with Alkaline Trio I am an easy sell, having been an avid listener since the late nineties when brother Matt introduced them to my eager, cauliflowered ears.

But beyond Alkaline Trio, I know there's some great music out there that people must be listening to. Iron and Wine or Eddie Vedder used to hold the top two slots on my go-to playlist. Lately it's been only Jack FM. ONLY. Sorry Jack, but I need new tunes to chant bellowing and shirtless from my magenta unmuffled hard-starting dirt machine! Something uplifting, something that will create nostalgia from this time for years to come, to help our minds finally move beyond the month-old echoes of "rah rah, oh ma-ma" or "sweeeeeeet dissspooositiiooon" or "ohhhhh oh the sex is on fire!" We need new summer anthems if we're gonna make these upcoming months of eternity stop time as usual..

In other words: please suggest me your favorite albums/songs/artists as of late. The time is now

Mikie