Well here's me at my best

And on the 8th day, God said "let there be the Stone Brewery" and there was. And men and women throughout the land felt warmth and happiness within their bosoms. And it was very good.

We just had a truly intense rehearsal one night before the opening of our third run of ELEVATOR, here in the whimsical city of Los Angeles, California. The air outside my bedroom smells like unkempt roses, dirt and must with a touch of ocean breeze- I can hear an almost imaginary howl of faroff cars .. every once and again the kitchen down the hallway clinks with the sounds of Jason rummaging. My hair's afro. My mind's a sloppy smorgasbord of pleasure and passion and traveling dreams and impossible loves .. all I want to do is to explore - see new things. Too much order and demand makes me a dull and relatively restless soul. I look forward to opening our play this weekend (particularly tomorrow) and exploring the newness of that - but beyond my heart aches for some kind of oceanic scenic fear, that lofty frightened angst of pouring black waves, steaming with a thick billowing foam.. fog hanging around my ears. the night silent, just roiling pouring waves. it eats at me. it sickens me. and sick is pleasure for the deeper concern.
We can never have the girls, the items, the places, the parts we really want - then when our patience runs thin instead we puncture through the layers of taut, between future and past; running this river is like a blind dog crossing a highway at rush hour - but I won't waste a step. I'm not a stupid canine. I'm a sharp wolfe building an empire, and we're still digging for supports. It's a huge project. The pyramids took between 25-50 years to build. So this is nothin.
Goodnight you sexy world of minds.

some kind of warmth

and I can't quite put my finger on what it is, or why it feels so good lately.

But as I was hitting the outskirts of Los Angeles today on my way back from northern Santa Cruz, I recognized a change in the air or something. Something good has happened, and I think I'm responding to it.

The truth is, I just partook in a weekend of love and gymnastics familiarity, got paid and hung out with old friends in that fascinating little coastal haven. it's only natural that I would exit the weekend with a very warm heart. I mean, going to Crow's Nest two nights in a row now feels like a dream come true.. Funny how only a year ago that could have been more than a regular occurrence.. what happened? What's different?

I don't know how to describe the warmth. It's like a hot shower after weeks of being chilled to the bone. Or the first hot touch of sun on your arm after a long winter. Best described as amazing.

Maybe it's more katharsis; all the work and struggle are finally paying themselves off and I'm beginning to feel it. Maybe it's a warmth of some kind of earned security that took a lot of hard work to finally step into place.
Maybe it's that I fall in love with old crushes, marvel over road trips, joke around with 9 year olds, worship a trustworthy vehicle, love being in a play, feel settled in making some money and don't know what lies ahead that makes my heart feel so grand.
Or that it's going to be fall, and then winter. There's snowboarding to be had, more friendships to rekindle and crushes to pursue, jobs to search for and futures to get excited about.
it's all right there, at the edge of our fingertips, like the steam off a cup of coffee on an early november morning in a cafe by the beach, or on your drive to work.
it's such a crazy adventure.

what a nice night

Love you all

Migs

Unfinished

As I lay here contemplating life, drinking a Hop Stoopid on Alanna's bed in Santa Cruz beneath the La Pasta sign with the occasional gravely footsteps scraping by below while bad Rhianna songs echo from a local bar down the street, all I can think about is how good it feels to be alive again.
What, was i dead? Nah. Just dreaming. Lots of it. But earlier tonight i was standing at the edge of the roiling waves drinking my IPA, feeling the difference between dreams and awakeness.

... This could go anywhere (depending on which vocabulary my iPhone autocorrect sees fit) Why can't we lump our lives together, huh? Why must we choose for keeps just one or the other? Society does not suggest happy-mediums. All I want is to have both lives, all lives, but our ridiculous world refuses to allow the two or three to coexist. "choose your destiny." So that today I feel compelled as usual to choose between ultimatems, between outcomes pressed on us by no one in particular. Of course we have a responsibility to stick to our guns, our manufactured best interest - But what to do in delightful moments of solitude like tonight

Timberwolf!

Well for those of you whom I don't communicate with regularly, aka for the ether of internet crowds whom might unabashedly stumble upon this hoard of unstrung thoughts, I'm back in LA.

What that means is that I left LA, for about a week and a half.

What THAT means is that I finally had my summer elsewhere, something I'd been anticipating or the past three months.

What THAT means is I had an opportunity to develop perspective and grounding in order to return to Los Angeles with a fresh (almost too-fresh) new vantage point from which to work.

What does that mean?

I guess we're just going to have to see. So let's make a list of conclusions:

Conclusion #1:

Dirt is good or you. Let it cover your skin and mat up your hair. You can bathe anytime - we live in a world of waterful luxury, so get dirty.

#2:

Watch what others are doing. People are pretty darn creative, and there's always a good reason to see what others are up to.

#3:

Writing blogs should be fun and exciting, not dark and depressing. So I'll do my best.

#4:

It's safe to explore your past-selves, those old versions of yourself that we've so neatly tucked away in the drawers of our subconscious.

#5:

You are always free. Even when trapped in the jail cell of society, you are still free. There is never a moment you aren't allowed to stand up, put your hands up and declare, "I'm out." Living in a city like Los Angeles should always be a choice. Humans don't need to congregate here, we want to.

#6:

Money is just money, and therefore meaningless.. Art doesn't need money to exist. People don't need money to survive. But money does need people and the artist in order to work. If you work, you are an artist doing money a favor.

#7:

Never spend a summer away from the river again.

#Photographs:

We created a little buzz of fame this day for these pictures. Satan's Cesspool. This one's pretty solid.


Little faux Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot with Joey, Emily and Heather in Apple Hill to top off the late summertime




Somewhere along the way I picked up this deep green angel of darkness. I have a new BFF. His name is Timberwolf after his father the Prince of Burning Man Nomads.


This happy request was posted directly on top of an artist's mural in the Liar's Bench in downtown Placerville.


I decided to take a few pictures of my origins, the city of the Gods, Placervillle, Caliornia. Check it out:












And look who came to visit.... :)


Finally it was time to pack up and head to Burning Man. Here's a very small taste of the incredulity that I had the privilege of experiencing:












And now I've returned home to my little temporary stay in Pasadena with a hoard of new love to feed me. It feels like a new year is starting, like the turning over of a new leaf. Having Timberwolf the car in LA has already proved the best improvement in a long time - now to moving!

Migs

Clearly this is happening for a reason

well maybe it isn't -
maybe it's all a random rolling thing
a coaster speeding up of feelings
sewn together but by chance
no serendipitous or make believe reality
exists because nothing is meant to be
and we are only left to scramble,
scattered all around still in our head,
we work and hope that we will
wake up knowing life's not nothing
more than finding nothing, knowing
we aren't but a stapled doll
draw to a cork board of banality
looking sideways

Today I have a car.
Yesterday I sat by the river at dusk.
Today I am in love.
Tomorrow is Burning Man.
Next week we'll be in rehearsals again
and everybody's happy when there's still room for growth.
Still is it all for hell?
Is it real or do we sell ourselves
to nothingness and ride this
passionate spiral of relationships,
realism, the adult plain staying away from play
when there is only no meaning
no reason for it at all to begin with?

Let's plot it from the present to reverse

It becomes a tree.

Moments now are like clean new twigs
sprouting from the stems of an earlier branch
This branch is glittering with memories
angled up and out from a thicker
and heartier arm split from three gnarled snakes,
all paths you tried to take
all rising up from one barky limb
heavy, curved, carved creating hymns of solitude
and sweetness, sing-song frivolous completeness
living in that freeful now, exploring love, failing, falling
picking up and packing on your layered bark
creating that totem of drying art
on your timeless trunk waiting for the kiln.
It is a tree we're growing
a life-giving tree
planted deep in old soil
a living thing
so fastly bound
no desert furies,
blizzards, rain
will shake these roots
from their earthen register

That's where the meaning lives
the meaning is now, and what's come before.
The past's alive, the future is what's dead
until we resurrect what once was in our head

see you after Burning Man kiddos :)
Mikie

grammer

things don't always need to be perfect - in fact, the little messedup things are sometimes more interesting than the big, Perfect things. You know?

When in doubt, change the punctuation to fit your interpretation. even the writer might find your new way more interesting than his old (perfect) way.
But not always. it's a fine practice, the art of learning when to change the marks. You have to feel it out.. kind of like everything in life. Feel it out, see what works. There's the times you buck the system, then the others when you follow to the T and step perfectly in line.

But what's best is if you can master the both ways. I think the truest art, the most interesting (and sellable) satisfying thing is a combination of the perfect and the personally askewed. You take something beautiful, shake it up then make it beautiful again.

Depends on what you're given, and how long you've been holding it; how long people trust it in your hands. Beauty can stagnate. But breaking something new never really works either. People understand, inherently, the balance in all of this. If we look while we write, we must look with focus then back up with peripherals, then center in and focus again. But allowing peripherals to laugh it off, and let another change work its way.
So that in the end you can stand 5 inches, 5 feet, fifty feet away and still feel the same thing about what you've just made. The laugh doesn't change, no matter your distance.
That's universal my friends. That's the stuff that lasts. That's what we're goin for here.. isn't it?

Isn't it.

Sitting on an airplane about to depart for the great unknown
for the next two and a half days.
I have a cup of coffee in my crotch and an egg mcmuffi stuffed away
the Lincoln ride was smooth as the silver dawn glinting off the cool buildings
and fall suddenly freshens up my nose with musty change
but shut up the poet with real bullshit. Air conditioning
is hissing hard cold fake air into my hair
i'm reminded of a perfect year ago sitting on a plane
in Missoula. Looking at the grey an blue and brown and greens
and loving the distance. The unknown. The new and the possible
i love it still. I'm killing the poet slowly so he can be reborn.

Adios amigos

Mikie

A highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I'm on the 180 bus again after plenty months of not riding.
I think maybe having no wheels to borrow is a freewheeling of it's own kind. There's some kind of release that comes with knowing youre no longer behind the steering column venting your frustrations towards the humanity of the streets and highways.
Sitting on this bus, I can smell driving into Arizona at midday with my mom and Joey, half-drunk mountain dews and candy wrappers strewn beside us the red sands and 110 degree heat just outside our bubble of the car, stretching in the sun long roads that never curve but touch a white house on the horizon. Then running at night towards the lights of Jack in the Box over sagebrush in t-shirts, my mind stuck with thoughts of girls who's names I barely knew...the precious innocence in mystery of foreign love. One girl back home, one up ahead, one to rule them all conquering my young heart. a warm afternoon rainstorm. Downpour of heavy hot drops. Wet jeans and wet hair, rain plants under a grey sky branching out in the daylight of a passing thunderstorm. This is freewheeling. Total obligationless freedom.

I haven't let go of myself in a while. Ive been very contained. and Happily. Elegantly ruffledly happy. it's funny - I wouldve died for freedom not a year ago, and now nothing feels better than to put your shoulder to the wheel and grind away with little thought for the ends.
Something about running to this bus just now at 215 made me let go for the first time in a while and feel free.. and it's a freedom that is rare, useless, frightful, invaluable to know. one I already know.

I've learned that freedom isn't always a good thing. Lately I've cherished having limits - the moment I chose to finish the second run of Elevator, I allowed there to be limits on my freedom; I built walls aroud myself. And you know what happened? In my new jailhouse I got more work done than I had in all my years since college.. I think because I didnt have the freedom to leave I turned inward like a creating rat caught in a cage just grinding away at what I put on my plate in front of me, of what i could get my trapped-up
hands on.

And now? Do I need a break? Maybe. Maybe a taste of freedom is necessary to get back to getting work done. My getting angry the other day is a sign that I do need mild escape. BUT a brief sweet one, so that immmediately after i can trap myself again and be even more productive under all-new pressures. Entrapment again, and again and again. Removing freedom is key. I've known freedom my whole life. I never thought not-being-free would be just as important, if not more.

Still, sitting on this bus I'm instantly free - and since I gave away Princess tonight (the Saturn I've been driving) I officially have no car again for a spell, and this bus ride is likely my first of may new jaunts.

Here's to a good end of the entrapment, a blessed freedom to follow, and even more terrifyingly productive entrapments beyond!

Peace

Mikie

ps- congrats to Joey and Emily. The best kind of entrapment :)

anger management

I got pretty angry for the first time in a long time last night. We had just finished a show and were having a little barbecue at Michael's housesitting house in Hollywood Hills when the conversation I was involved in escalated to an argument about some stupid things, and I got angry.

Honestly, I'm not sure why it's been so long since I've really been angry. Is it because nothing's made me mad in the past few months? Or is it because anger is that one emotion I don't show anyone unless I actually feel comfortable enough around them that I won't lose friends if I voice my opinion. I think that's what happened last night.

I mean, I've spent day in and day out with these people, rehearsing and running and performing the show to the points of exhaustion, and I think last night for me was a moment when I actually let go of my careful Los Angeles mentality and just went for it.

The problem with me getting angry is that it's an expression of love on my behalf. Most of my life has been in situations where you have to shout to be heard, and in my older years I've learned to just shut up and say nothing and let the other guy be right in situations where I'm new to the group or friendships. Then when I start to love the people, I let go of my filters when I have an opinion (don't we all) and just say what I'm thinking. This does actually work sometimes, arguing with people you love knowing that they're not going to judge you for saying what's on your mind and will listen to what you're saying..

It's just, I wish we all argued the same way. I want to fight with you so I can find a resolution and learn something new. That's how it's worked with the closest people in my life, since day one. A fight breaks out, but instead of people walking away from it we stick around and hash it out until a peaceful resolution is reached and the group has all-the-more bonded. I wish everybody wanted this.. because at this point in my life I usually just avoid most conflicts knowing that people won't stick around for the resolution.

Then there's moments like last night when we get too comfortable, and say "f**k it, I'm going to voice my opinion" and then all hell breaks loose, so to speak. Guess I jumped the gun.

I trust these people and am there for them. Now I just hope they feel the same. It's a funny thing being in LA and trying to be yourself in front of others. Sometimes people just aren't going to like you for it.

That said, the show went great this weekend. Most things are great. I'm gonna go help out on that movie now.

Lates foolios

Mikie

no more resenting representation

In case you didn't already know, Elevator's doing quite well. Check out these reviews:

LA Times
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/08/elevator-elevates-a-familiar-premise.html
LA Stage:
http://www.lastageblog.com/2010/08/02/michael-leoni’s-elevator-is-a-moving-experience/

Additionally, I'm working on a cool film right now (up till 7am last night shooting) and have some other small things in the works.

Plus I have my own show.
I think the best piece of advice I've heard in a long while was last night, and it was this:

"You have a show. It is silly that you don't have representation. Seriously." Thank you Kindall.
So come see Elevator, and let's go get ourselves some freaking representation for crying out loud.
Let's make those 70's ancestors proud.


Mikie

...and in the nick of time, our unsung hero dashes from his apartment complex front door and launches into the air from his right foot with arms shot forward in a hurling spear of society-fighting fury, piercing the parking officer like a bayonet and slicing that tow-truck-calling, misery-inducing, poor-career-choice-choosing menace-to-everyman's-society banal excuse for even a pathetic human being directly in two!!

As the pieces of parking officer fall opposite each other, Misty, the lovely magenta ranger with flat tire and dusty tail, lets out a sigh of sweet relief and blows a kiss to her loving master. The hero looks at her and pats her on the nose.

"We've saved the day again, my old friend"


...or at least that's how it should have gone.
Society won today.
farewell Misty, you did so well. I'll miss you.

curse you, society. Curse you.

:(

Mikie

the backup takeback

It was Matthew Hunter's (one of my most respected colleagues) birthday today, on this lovely Sunday the 1st o' August, 2010. In honor of the occasion we ventured to the glitzy land of Universal Citywalk for an amazing dinner at Panda Inn. Excellent times all around. Loaded up with leftovers, I hopped in the borrowed Saturn (Jasmine) for a little drive back home to Pasadena.

On my drive home, I could smell the wood smoke of mountain air and see the breeze blowing my stripey plaid shirtsleeves, the yellow bits of light hanging in the skies in the mountains over Glendale to Burbank, beyond downtown and back up again to the far eastern slopes of the San Bernandino mountain range, and behind that wheel in the warm cool summer evening all I could think about was how good I've got it.

So in reponse to everything I wrote about last night, the whining and wishing and pleading and beotching.. here's my update:

I have a bunk tooth - I also have 10+ incredible teeth that are healthy. I have a choppy job - and I also have an incredible job on a network television. My family's far away? - I also have a family that loves every stupid thing I say unconditionally and follows me like stalkers on internet websites. I'm in a home by myself right now - and I'm also living in a mahogany-floored apartment mansion with too much space, a lovely patio and a massive television at my fingertips. My car blows - but I'm also borrowing a beautiful car from a very generous friend. Occasionally lonely? - I'm also not alone for 98% of the day. I have so many amazing people in my life. For godssake, even Candice still talks to me!! And I'm tired - but I went to freakin Las Vegas and had the life-changing time of my life last weekend with amazing people!! So what if I'm not rafting. I'm in a fantastic play and going to New York in two weeks.

See what I mean?
The point is, I have so much more good in my life than the miniscule, pittlingly bad. I could write books and books of blogs about the good and fascinating things that happen to me every day. But do I? Nope. Instead I sit down and write complainey blogs about the few shitty things that happen instead. Lame.

So this is my take back and thank you blog.
I take back my complaining. Sorry for being an inappreciative a-hole.
And I'd like to thank everybody for making me happy.
Because I am. Happy August y'all. Life is pretty freakin amazing.

So now let's move beyond this an make life funny again. Deal? deal.

night

Mikie