IT’S SHOWTIME!

Performance Eve After many weeks of rehearsing for the show “LLEGAMOS LIVE” I’m proud to say….we are ready? Tomorrow night is our opening night and I’m a little bit nervous. I always get nervous before shows though, it’s a natural nervousness. Sure I wrote and directed this one and sure it’s being sponsored by Coors Light, a great tasting beer, and sure all the actors were constantly late to rehearsal and barely know their lines not to mention their blocking, let alone the fact that we haven’t gotten all the costumes in yet but hey…..I’m used to it. I can’t think of any show after my college career that I didn’t do in utter and complete chaos. In fact if this show were running too smoothly I’d be even more of a nervous wreck. If I’m not thrust into a show by the seat of my pants barely recognizing up from down in a wonderland like spiral of uncertainty, then something is wrong.

To the actors credit though, they got a lot of heart, they are extremely talented people and I know we are going to kill.

Smoker Spasms

So I’ve decided to try and give up smoking….again. I’m sure you’ve heard of the recent trend to ban smoking in every conceivable place including outdoors. If that’s not enough now they want to pass laws restricting you from lighting up in your own car. Ah, I remember a time way back when, a time when my step-father would take us to the movies and light up right their in his seat. I would be distracted by the silhouette of his after smoke rising high toward the projector choking the elderly on the balcony. A time when he would fire up in an airplane on the way to sunny California and his smoke would immediately silence small babies insistently crying in an aisle near by, a simpler time. Like the time he used his cigarette as a weapon against the homeless guy trying to clean his windshield in New York City, ah what a magical time.

What is happening to our society? Is individual health overshadowing the freedom to kill ourselves and the people in our direct vicinity? What’s next? Smokers will be hunted down, put in train cars, and whisked away to concentration camps. Smokers Camps! The government will stamp every smoker with his or her brand of cigarette. Camels, Parliament, and New Port Lights displayed prominently on your arm for everyone to see. People with the slightest cough will be hauled away never to be heard form again! Wow…I need a cigarette. So I’m trying to quit not for my own health but to become an under cover non-smoker.

At the Movies

This weekend I got around to seeing Jarhead at the AMC theatre in Times Square. First off, this movie theatre is ridiculously huge. After purchasing our tickets from a machine we had to go up five flights of stairs, hike up a path way, take a canoe by candelabra, and meet an aboriginal man who cut through a jungle with a machete after which we had to solve a Da Vinci code to find our theatre. Somewhere in between this dense maze I managed to stop at a concession stand where I purchased a small popcorn and bottle of water for only ten dollars and my first born child. We got there just in time…to see about a thousand movie previews. One movie preview after another, by the time the movie started it had come out on DVD. I could have made my own film in the time it took for this freakin movie to begin. I must admit, the chairs were comfy.

So the movie starts and to my dismay it wasn’t about a circus freak. It was about life as a marine in our modern military. I really hope the government doesn’t use this film to try and recruit people. It basically illustrated how utterly uncomfortable and pointless fighting a war would be. There were a few short sex scenes which enriched the movie somewhat. Not to many combat scenes, barely any blood, no unnecessary strings of violence all of which was disappointing but over all I did enjoy watching this movie because I thought to myself, “I’m glad I’m watching this movie and not living it.” So if you want to see a good war movie, rent Full Metal Jacket.