WAMA: Looting

A few of my friends have invariably asked about the validity of looting, wondering why and wondering how it achieves anything. In any discussion where I bring up understanding, someone invarabaly confuses understanding and compassion with condoning and being okay with it. It is important to understand that these are not the same thing.

While it's frustrating to have to blacksplain everything over and over, I stumbled upon this way of describing it to a friend that seems to have worked the best:

"[The point about looting is] not invalid, [name], but it's also an extremely common and expected discussion that all-too-often derails discussion about the root problem. It does not help that that the rioting discussion invariably ends up being a discussion that is used to support the negative views. Try to think of it as the equivalent of "Well, look what she was wearing!" or "Look at how she was dancing!" to derail rape discussions. Except, you know — the destructive results from rioting are an actual valid consideration. It's another in the chain of "This is why you people can't have nice things!" and a lifetime of that crap breeds illogical reactions like rioting.

For me, it just breeds rage and writing a lot of words. Sometimes a lot of big words."

This is in no way meant to equate rape and looting, but rather using an imperfect example to illustrate how discussion is commonly, expectedly derailed from root problems. I've been struggling to find better examples than rape or abuse.

Confessions of a Klingon Curmudgeon: Middlin'

We are in the thick of it. I am in the thick of it.

During this process I have closed one show. Since my last post, I have rehearsed and performed in another show, conducted an apartment search, moved most of my stuff into said apartment, have been looking for work to apply for, applying for said work, auditioning, doing a one-day shoot, and working a couple of small, short-term jobs.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out if Life is getting in the way of my passion or if it's simply the struggle of the juggle. After all, I did just spend the last two years of my life living where I work, doing something I love doing with a person I enjoyed doing it with.

This process of reacclimating to so-called real life has been throwing me curves aplenty.

The lines started to freak me out a bit. One of the original creators of A Klingon Christmas Carol is still involved with its production in New York and he made the effort of sending out an APB to former and current SQuja's to form a support network. The most important piece of advice: "You will hit that point of saturation and panic." The second most important piece: "We'll give you support when you need it."

The first wall was being off-book for Act I. I was panicking and had no idea how it was going to happen. The load of nannying I have been doing for temporary work means that I have not been able to dedicate as many daytime hours to working lines. But it happened. I plowed to make it happen, things happened that gave us an extra day. And I passed!

But then this week we were supposed to be off-book for Act 2. Lots of lines. A lot more lines. I was not off book. Cue next wall, enter stage everywhere. [note: one week later, at the time of this editing and posting I am still not off-book, but I have one more scene to go. I'm not perfect on the other scenes yet, but I'm off book. That's something.]

I've been growing out a VanDyke for the show and I've made it through the first wall with that. It didn't start to look decent until after week four and I'm going on week six right now. I was worried that it wouldn't come in very well at all. Instead, I have learned that it's growing beautifully and evenly and I even have these cool individual grey hairs growing along the chin; the last time I grew out any part of my facial hair, I didn't have that. Going grey is an adventure to me.

It still looks a little funny. Not only because I usually shave, but because it's not as neatly sculpted on the sides. I wanted to make sure that I have enough to play with for Klingon Christmas Carol, but it also turned out that after years of applying and modifying clown makeup, I happened to subconsciously determine the borders of my face bush using principles of lines of facial movement.

Look for humor hard enough and you will find it.