This is how I spend my Friday nights:

Interwebz Identity, or, How the Hell did my Prom Date Find Me Again?

In the past two months, I have probably matched the combined time I have spent learning about and updating my "web presence" with the amount I have spent on theatre-related activities. It is a bizarrely exciting aspect of networking these days that we needs must have virtual selves as well as actual. In some ways, it's always been this way. Headshots. Business cards. Advertising. It's just that now there's this whole alternate universe, the interwebz, that we ignore at our own risk.

It's the risk that broke me down, made me submit to said interwebz at last. Because frankly, I am not excited by the custom websites, and can't help but be aware that the interwebz market is even more flooded than the acting profession, so the chances of reaching a broad audience are slim-to-none. Ah, but suppose someone wants to find you...and can't? Great, say I. I already have a cell phone surgically grafted to my hand and an email account that gets a hundred offers daily for erection-enhancing lubricants. Let them not find me! I'll be over here behind this tree whistling Django Reinhardt tunes.

Then I remind myself that I'm an actor.

Balls.

So, here's my progress on the whole webby-ness front:

• ma' website.
• ma' 'blog.
• ma' MySpace space.
• ma' Friendster locale.
• ma' Onion classifieds account.
• various theatres deigning to mention my involvement (No, Google, I did not mean "'Jeff Mills' theatre". You bastards.)
  

So I would say I'm doing okay on that front. Certainly I've improved it greatly in the past couple of months...with a little help from my friends. Okay: a lot of help. Okay: they did it all, practically. So good. We're good. On the webinetz. Grood.

Non, monsieur. Excusez-moi, mais vous avez tort.

Look, I don't know who this "Jeff Wills" guy is, but he's really pissing me off. Go ride a bike, Jeff Wills! And you, YOU! Whatsyername? Jeff Wills, is it? That's just irresponsible, what you're doing. Besides, don't you have some table to bus, bitch! Your kung fu is no match for mine. Oh! Oh, excuse me, I didn't see you th . . . what are you doing to my leg? My alignment is NOT "all messed up!" Get away from me, Jeff Wills!

Actually, my point is defeated (once again!) by my own link-searching, which revealed that I have rocketed to the #5 slot on Google when you enter "Jeff Wills". I have no idea how that happened, but gift horses, etc. For years now I have struggled to find myself (pun intended) on these widewebberneties search engines, only to have to scroll through pages and pages of other JeffWillseses, the "VARNA cyclist" being the real popular fellow. (He's been working on his presence since 1995.) Somewhere around page 5 or 6, I would find actual mention of me, usually as the director of my friend Jade's second run of ICONS, Part I. Which is great, and all, if you're looking to hire a director with one professional credit to his name.

I shall apply defribulation to my point, however (CLEAR!), and see if it can't go on to lead a relatively healthy, normal life. In the struggle to be known, to have the opportunities come to me more than I have to go after them, there's a lot of one's soul to be lost if one is not careful. I see myself through the filters of these sites, and there's very little recognition there for me. Perhaps that's as it should be. They are, to me, mostly marketing tools. The website is pretty (Yes you are, you're pretty!) but essentially a best-face-forward kind of tool; a first impression of a careerist. The Onion ad was a lark, and represents me as I am when I'm sort of most casual about things. Friendster I signed up for so long ago (like, whole year or so) I'm not sure who that is at this point. The theatres and their websites are bare mentions of me as someone who acts and travels a bit. And MySpace...well. I can't STAND MySpace. MySpace is my generation gap from the youths--right there. When I finally got that page semi-glossed, friend Nat wrote to me to say (albeit in jest), "You are real!" MySpace makes me feel--on a visceral level--like an octogenarian in a discotech.

But this 'blog, at least, is fairly unfiltered and substantial. At times, it's frightening to think that I'm putting myself out to public access daily. (All three of you readers, this is a bond of trust.) One of the most anxious thoughts I have has to do with someone I knew years ago, anyone I've lost touch with, reminding me of who I used to be. Why should that be so terrible? I don't know. Maybe I've invested too much into this career that seems to require a polished veneer. Maybe I'm still not successful enough to be satisfied. Or maybe I really am, when it all comes down to it, an introvert.

Hey: It's what the MySpace personality profile tells me.

Pretty

I like this painting. It's by a fellow(?) named Jamie Wyeth.

Sticking Up

A little something from my passive-resistance, anti'blogger friend (see 1/7/07 for said friend's impressive dramaturgy), who met a young actor at an educational gig:

"C____ was actually a really interesting guy, who had only been acting for about four months, and had already had a speaking part in the upcoming Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe movie--Russell Crowe pulls a gun on him. So awesome! But he used to be a stick-up kid. He talked really honestly about it later when S___ and I were walking back to the subway with him. He also said that he felt the need to pursue acting because of what had fallen in his lap--that from talking to other people on set he had begun to realize and appreciate how hard it is to do that, how hard the life is, and how hard it is to work to perfect the craft. He felt that to honor it--the opportunities that have been flung on him, and the lifestyle that usually accompanies it--he had to see it through to wherever this took him. So there's something for your blog (make no mistake--I do not condone that sort of thing): choosing this life because in part it chose you. And honoring what you have intrinsically. That there's some idea of a blessing involved, and that giving back, utilizing these tools is part of the respect you pay to the work. I think it's rather beautiful."

I agree.

This is not a perspective I come to naturally, this idea that some people have gifts (or "talent") that others do not. I would even go so far as to say: Most people who say they believe this idea, when pressed or drawn into a need to defend their position, would discover they were operating from an assumption. There are these axioms we are all inclined to accept through the sheer pressure of public opinion. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my sister (who, being a fellow Unitarian Universalist, tends also to be a questioner--1/3/07) on different subjects, but with the same question applied to them: Why? Why is saving a life automatically the best choice in every situation? Why should there be someone out there for everyone? Why should it be that people have natural talents, rather than abilities that are either cultivated or not?

The Why Cycle is a vicious one, of course. Ever have that conversation with a beebler (read: fully verbal but very young child) that starts out with something simple, like, "Why do birds fly?", only to end up with a question equivalent to "Why are we here and how do we, in fact, know we are here at all?" Ah, the birth of abstract thought! Ah, the Medea-complex it can inspire! So let's not build an Escher staircase, please. But the question "why" was made to draw back the curtain, show us through the frame to a broader horizon of possibilities, so it's a good place to start.

C____ reminds me of my mother, midway through seminary. (Stick with me here.) (Come to think of it, he reminds me of myself, midway through college [see 1/29/07]. But my Mom has always been more inspiring, so:) A middle-aged Unitarian Universalist at Wesley Theological Seminary (an ecumenical Christian school) studying to become Reverend Wills. She came from teaching elementary school for years, and after volunteering for a year or two as Director of Religious Education (DRE) at our church--AUUC--began setting her sights on the ministry. That part of the story's unique enough, but the point (yes, I have one this time) is that about midway through her ten-year tenure as a student of ministry, her peers began to swap stories about their Calling. This is not calling, as in holla-back-shorty, but Calling, as in holla-back-Jesus. (Jesus: I ain't no holla-back prophet, but here's some blessing for the effort. And Haddock. H-A-D-D-O-C-K... [Just a little ecumenical humor, all in good fun...Sir...]) Of course all the acknowledged Christians had little difficulty with this in concept, regardless of how it might apply to them in practice.

My Mom, however, had to think about it for a bit. (It's what we do, UUs: think. Alla' time. It's irritating.) She also had to soul-search, pray, meditate and probably do some new age crap that I still respect but is awful, awful crap. Ahem. Sorry, New-Agers. And Wiccans. I do some of it myself. I'm just an upstart UU. WATCH OUT! Anyway--and this is funny--I can't remember what conclusion she came to. Which is the funny. I thought I had a point, and yet I have made a liar of myself. God did it, probably, for my non-UU-ness a few lines ago. Thanks, God. I needed that like I needed another crisis of faith. Anyway, my Mom is indeed Reverend Wills now (she even answers the phone that way; try it: 301-745-6576) so she and God must have gotten right about it somehow.

But how's this for a point: For whatever reason, my Mom is absolutely gifted at being a mother. It's what she was born to do, no doubt about it in my mind. Something silent in her reaches out to you in whatever need you're in and--whether it's by conduit to God or a powerful ability for empathy--gives you what you need. It's a fact of faith for me, and I don't have too many of those (mostly I have theories of faith, which is how we UUs generally like it).

My point, my friends, is that it doesn't matter how we do what we do. The source(s) of our power in the world, be it nature, nurture or divine providence, does not seek to answer the question of "why." What matters is that we do it. Perhaps we were meant to do what we're doing. Perhaps we've just spent a lot of time working really hard at it. I believe it's good to honor something other than yourself with what you do with your life. Any ambition means more, and will accomplish greater things, when it is serving a larger purpose. So honor thy mother and father, honor humanity, honor God, but honor something say I. Though not L. Ron Hubbard, please. That was based on a bet. I guarantee it.

There's a lot of banter between actors about the specific "right way" to get into character (it was a much-heated debate toward the beginning of the 20th century; now it's mostly just banter [like religion in the west, more and more people are beginning to see multiple perspectives with the same goal]), with camps that claim success is achieved when you become your character, transformed, and camps that insist success lies in the character becoming you, essential, real and true. A thousand grays lie between. I, and most peers with whom I've discussed it, see it as a meeting halfway. Halfway in this context meaning a point in time (rather than distance) when the two converge; sometimes the actor has to do more traveling, sometimes the character. I willfully apply this scenario to the question of our choice, or being chosen. And I think it is a constantly shifting ratio. Sometimes we just have to keep choosing and choosing and CHOOSING to do what we love. And sometimes, the love calls to us.

Holla-back, love. Holla-back.

Car! . . . Game on!

Five bucks to the first person who can name the movie quote.

I'm here today, folks, to talk about an addiction. My usual methods of coping with an addiction are two-fold:

1. Keep all resources and enablement as far away from me as possible; or
2. Indulge it.

The first is what I do with cookies and ice cream. Most of the time. The second is what I do with things like theatre, circus, etc., which, though legal, are often more difficult to attain than certain controlled substances. I practice "TYPE 1" coping with a number of things, not the least of which is television. I have no cable service, and a roommate who is okay with that. I've never attached an antenna to my TV. The only thing attached to it is my DVD player, and I'm seriously considering locking my DVDs in a time-sensitive safe that only opens on weekend evenings. This may seem excessive to you, but I assure you, it comes of self-awareness. And it always surprises me when I am praised for my discipline; for anything, really. Because it ain't discipline.

Nosce te ipsum. That's my only "discipline." If I am successful in working out regularly, it has more to do with circumstances that I can manipulate to make it easier for me than it does with any great, internal control. If I am at all impressive in my dedication to pursuing acting, it is as much because I have made my life so it's harder without the theatre, as it is because I feel theatre on a deeper level than some. It's choices, hopefully wise ones. I suppose maybe that's all discipline really is--a series of helpful choices.

My point? I have no point. (Haven't you been reading my 'blog long enough to know that?) But my purpose is to reveal that I have accidentally tripped over TYPE 1 into TYPE 2 on an old addiction. My circumstance became less helpful, I wasn't vigilant enough, and one thing led to another. Thus, I am indulging, once again, in that most insidious addiction:

Games.

More specifically:

Video games.

I know. I know. Therein does not lie the most productive use of my time! In point of fact, it is an astonishingly effective time-sucker. If you play, you know what I mean. You sit to play, maybe an hour, and when you look blearily up from your electronic pursuit, it's dawn. Someone is poking you in the head, making sure you aren't in a reflexive coma. Your survival instinct has been channeled into a screen for half a day, in which time your Mom has called saying she's fallen and she can't get up, and you didn't hear it because you thought it was the aliens firing plasma at your sidekick. The last time I was this plugged-in to the gaming world was when I was about 14, playing a D&D game in the basement (you flew dragons; it was really cool) while listening to Nirvana on my grandfather's single-speaker cassette player.

How did I come to this prepubescent nexus? A variety of factors are involved:

1. Friend D. Younce started emailing me about a year ago about game theory.
2. I gave unto myself a chemical epiditymitus (see 12/31/06), rendering me unable to exercise with purpose for months.
   
3. Friend Heather loaned me "Catch-22" to read.
   
4. Friend Adam got an XBox 360.
5. Friend Mark started playing "City of Heroes" again, and had my account reactivated so we could play together.
6. Friend D. Younce got his own "CoH" account and created a character to sidekick my own.

Perhaps you're wondering what Joseph Heller's immortal classic of war-time bureaucracy "Catch-22" has to do with my current plight. Well, I hate it. I am not enjoying it at all. This must be my problem, for it is widely acknowledged as hysterically funny. My feeling is that it excels with great vigor at telling the same joke ad nauseum. War doesn't make sense, and neither do people, and we'll never, ever, stop. I know: It doesn't even have a fart in it. Nevertheless, I am compelled to finish it. I only have 100 more pages to go. One hundred unrelenting pages, just sitting there, getting read four or five pages at a time. But oh, here's that GameBoy Advance dear Megan got me two years ago. So portable. So full of colored light patterns bent on my destruction...

So here I am, visiting Adam way up in Washington Heights to play "Gears of War," coming back home to sit at my laptop to play "City of Heroes," and during the subway ride I make Luke Skywalker my avatar for our journey through the only three Star Wars movies that matter. I am the addicted. I am the damned.

But it will pass (God, please make it pass). Because when all's said and done, I'd much rather be rehearsing a play or bettering my handstand, which is why the guilt. If I were "normal," and had a 9-5 job, and after I paid the bills could afford sections of time to save the virtual world, I doubt I would have this complex. But mine is not the "normal" life, and my "free" time is needed for a variety of pursuits, such as mailing resumes/headshots/cover letters, rehearsing audition pieces, networking and learning at long last how to do a kip-up. Hence: guilt.

But it's not rewardless. Sure, it's easy and artificial and time-consuming, but the game(s) has changed since I started wondering what it would be like to kiss a girl. Last night, for example, I signed on to "CoH" and discovered Youncey online. He lives in NoVa, and I see him maybe twice a year, if I'm lucky. And last night our heroic personae, Peppah (yours truly) and Salt Shakah (his, truly) got their asses whupped together for a couple of hours. Having a reason to see Adam more frequently than whenever the latest kung fu movie comes out is also great, and we end up talking about his stand-up comedy and my commedia dell'arte more than we might otherwise.

So all that remains (when my "discipline" kicks back in) is to sell my GameBoy on eBay. Maybe with the funds I can afford the Cliffs Notes on "Catch-22" . . .