JOHN

I reckon the few people who read my bloggy thing have given up on it. Rightly so. But I'm in another play and the character is really friggin' difficult. Writing about it helped last time. Let's give it another go.

What I need to accomplish:

1. Age. He's in his 40's.
2. Make him likeable. He's on the stage too damn long for the audience to hate his guts.

I think the main thing I'm missing in my characterization is the playfulness. Which is ironic since that's one of the few traits me and this character share. If I can just pull this off I think most everything else will fall into place. The problem I'm having in sprinkling the character with some playfulness is that the man has issues. He's self-aware of these issues and they are displayed on the stage almost as often as he is, which is practically the whole damn play. So it's quite difficult to keep from turning him into a brooding, bitter, pained wreck. His flaws and problems are not pitiable enough for us to put up with that shit. I think there's room for sadness, and anger, and bitterness, but those things cannot dominate the character. The author has given us clues as to his playfulness. He's pretty sarcastic. He's characterized by his family as someone who likes to tease. But once again, it is very easy to take these same traits and turn him into an asshole. Plus he's obviously active in the NYC theatre community. This isn't his 1st play to be produced. He knows and is acquainted with theatrical people. He knows Swoozie Kurtz, even. It's a pretty safe bet that he'd be quite theatrical as well.

Another mistake I'm making has to do with the age factor. I make the mistake of thinking that the older someone gets the more serious they get. Which is true...if they let themselves get old. So. Physically I must age, but mentally I must not. Maybe not. 40's isn't necessarily that much older than myself. I just think it is because my parents were never in good shape and thought that their pains and problems were normal for someone of that age. Okay. Age-Schmage. As long as I don't turn John into Peter Pan, I'm cool.

How to make John likeable:

1. Smile more. Especially when describing my own problems. Be self-deprecating about it.
2. The sarcasm must not be at other's expense. It should be for their amusement as much as mine.
3. Don't be so quick with the shouty-anger. It's like engaging death blossom. Weapon of last resort. And even then I should regret going using it.
4. Chin up, buddy. Straighten that spine.
5. When Pop gives his disapproval for putting on the play, be disappointed but respectful of his decision. After all, I gave him the decision to make.

There's so much more. It's such a delicate balance, this character. Too much weight on any one aspect can topple my attempts.

Anyway. I've lost enough sleep over this fucker for one night.

Beware the Ides of...Oh Crap, I'm too late

Dammit! On March 15th I was going to post “Beware the ides of March” here on my bloggy page. I totally forgot!

I’m getting a little bored with blogging, actually. Hmmm.

Banned Books

Just passing this along to everybody. Bold= ones you've read. Italics= ones you've read a little. Underline= ones you haven't read but are interested in reading. I think this marks the first post I've actually been not too lazy to use html tags.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer In Olde English
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward
Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

rabbit.

Series 63

Series 63

Monday I took my Series 63 exam. It’s the exam that work made me take to be able to legally sell securities. I passed that sumbitch. Just barely. I didn’t do it violently up the anus like I did my Series 6 exam. Passing is a 70%. I got 71%. There were only 60 questions. That means that if I had gotten just one more wrong answer, I would have failed. But I would have gotten 69. He he.

Then when my supervisor asked me my score I could have said, “Dude, those two guys are totally sucking each other dicks!” For an explanation of that inside joke please visit Our Poker Blog.

Know what’s cool about passing my Series 63 exam? A $3000 raise, dammit. That’s like an hourly increase of 2.08 or something. Cool? You betchyoazz! That’s $3000 more that I could spend on blow! But I won’t.

Things Danny Hates. The short list.

Splintery chop sticks
Splintery toilet paper
Sleeping bag zippers
Bank statements
Ingrown toe nails
Crystalized boogers
People who think being a good American means never questioning what our leaders say.
Expensive cars
Neck ties
Pornographic films that loop the sex scenes.
Poop
Toby Keith
This asshole customer guy I spoke to today
The asshole customers I speak to every single other day.
Dave Matthews Band
Me forgetting to take out the garbage
When my dog whines
Pop star siblings of pop stars
Nails that don’t go in straight
Hammers that don’t hammer straight
Fire
Cole Slaw
Pens with yellow ink
Today’s country music
Drew Barrymore
Those fuzzy scarves I see a lot of women wearing these days. There’s no substitute for a feather boa.
Straws
Peas

Butt Buddies

Has the term “butt buddy” experienced a change in meaning since I was a kid?

Back in the day when some dick said to you, “You guys must be butt buddies,” it was basically his clever way of calling you a faggot.

But yesterday a co-worker used it as a term of endearment. “Me and Dan are butt buddies.” Me and the people around me were a bit taken a back. Not that it bothers me to be called gay. But “butt buddies” does carry a negative connotation and I’m certain I’ve never experienced anal penetration with this man in my entire life.

The co-worker noticed our discomfort with his declaration and questioned it. We explained what exactly it was he just said.

Apparently he heard the term from his teenage daughter. Apparently now it’s okay to refer to your regular circle of friends as your “butt buddies.” Is anybody else aware that this transition in meaning occurred?

Because it’s weird.

Poop