The Swansong (...or Llamasong)

So I began this blog in August 2011 as a creative outlet so that I didn't lose my mind when I was working temp jobs in Portland, OR. Here's what has happened in the past year and a half since thesingingllama came to be:

- I prepared for grad school auditions and did a few staged readings

- My apartment flooded and I got into grad school (totally unrelated, but I didn't feel like adding another bullet point. damn I'm on a new line now.  STOP JUDGING ME)

- I stopped working office jobs, started working in sales for an awesome environmental company, and got signed to an agency for the first time

- I stopped working all of the jobs and snuck away to Monterey, CA for a month to study comedy and solo performance. bwahaha.

- I moved to Los Angeles and started work on my Master's at USC

You will notice that about halfway through that list, I stopped working in offices, and therefore, I stopped my writing in this blog and you haven't heard any llama-song since last June.  Alas!  I didn't know what to write about any more because I didn't have a cubicle from which I could kvetch about cubicles!  Ah, well.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to send out a huge THANK YOU to any and all people who took the time to read my little blog, and to explain why I stopped writing in it for so long.  So many, many thanks to those who cared to tune in to thesingingllama when they were messing around on their computers at work. :)

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!  If you still surf the blogger-net from time to time, and find yourself sighing with sadness for approximately five minutes due to the fact that you would like to read one more blog but you don't know which one to read, I HAVE A SOLUTION!!  Myself and my dear friend Britt Harris have cofounded a brand-spanking-new blog with the intent of charting our various blunders and successes as we stumble towards the goal of being full-time professional actors and decent, functional human beings.  We are in very different places career-wise, but we look and act very similar to each other, so we hope to give you two sides of the same coin, as they say. 

Since we are very twin-ish in appearance, and it would be impossible to say which one of us is the good twin and which one the evil, our blog is called Two Evil Actors, and you can find us at www.twoevilactors.com

Thanks again for all your support, and I hope to see you at my new blog location!!

Where did I go??

Whoa!  6 weeks ago I took a step back from Office-Monkeying around on a computer all day, and took a canvassing job getting people signed up for renewable electricity.  Hence, I disappeared from the blog-o-sphere for a while.  "What have I been up to?" You might ask.

Well here are 15 things that I have done over the past 6 weeks.

1.  Learned how to ride a real-live Portland road bike, hipster style.  Learning new things is great and it challenges you to grow.  It should also probably not be done while intoxicated and wearing high heels.  Although it seems like that's the most common way...

2.  Took up a whole afternoon having a complete meltdown/existential crisis/emotional outpouring over the hopelessness of the human condition and the pointless struggles of the masses after talking to people in Gresham about renewable energy.  And then I drank 60 ounces of beer and learned how to ride a road bike.  I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.  I think it's that beer is great.

3.  Worked in sales, and thought a lot about Billy Loman.

4.  Had a wonderful Food Revolution Picnic celebrating the bounty of real food that the Northwest has to offer. Feasted with 18 beautiful human beings.

5.  Got paid to act.  (Whhuuuhhhhh???)

6.  Hung out with two sixteen-year-old girls and realized the extent of my un-cool-ness.

7.  Took two mini-solo-roadtrips.

8.  Got paid to act AGAIN. (For serious?)

9.  Went on Portland's World Naked Bike Ride, WHICH WAS 0% AWKWARD, I promise.  I swear I don't care how old you are, no matter what your body looks like, it is the most awesome and liberating experience ever, and it has nothing to do with anything sexual.  Quit being so perv-y and weird about it, America.  Feel that wind beneath your...wings. 

10.  Got a surprise hang-out with one of my best friends who surprise-visited Portland from Texas.

11.  Put together an improv show to entertain a-dozen-and-a-half activists/hippies/mothers/anarchists/badasses at the Occupy Portland Food and Garden Team fundraiser.  Made topical jokes about corn and unicorns.  Watched Liz and Eleanor compete in X-TREME composting. 

12.  Applied for 10 zillion part-time jobs.

13.  Lost a dear friend and mentor to Lou Gherig's disease.  We will sing him to Heaven this weekend.  Love you, Doyle. 

14.  Rejoined the proud ranks of Portland Fitbody Boot Camp. Did some pushups.  Ate some chicken salad. Felt good about it. 

15.  Got paid to act, again. (This is not real life.  Or is it...)

Brain Soup

I just held my poor friend Britt captive as I went on a 15-minute rant about how a young adult Sci-Fi novel changed my entire perception of the universe.  Yes, I read it when I was age 11-14. Yes, “Ender’s Game” and the accompanying series is totally geared towards 12-year-old boys. Yes, it is to this day the coolest series I’ve ever read.  Those who know me well understand that, deep down, I am actually a twelve-year-old awkward nerdy white boy.  I only recently figured out how to dress like a girl, and that ability is definitely still shaky.  ((I am currently wearing a camo sports bra and an orange plaid flannel shirt, accessorized with a hideous lime green rubber watch from Walgreen’s.  The look is really pulled together by a total of about three square centimeters of chipped dinosaur-blue nail polish spread between a few of my fingernails.  HOT.))

Anyway.  In the course of this rant, I made a bunch of connections regarding how this intellectual obsession with this Sci-Fi series has morphed over the past 10 years or so.  It started with the concept which subtly powers the Ender series: Energy bridges are created between sentient beings in the universe, and what would happen if a self-aware being inexplicably manifested in the network of energy that connects all sentient things.  (WooWoo!!)  For a while this concept turned into a somewhat odd understanding of Catholicism in my Catholic-school-saturated high school brain, but then it morphed into a long obsession with the nature of human consciousness, which climaxed during college when I was simultaneously taking a reading course on Artificial Intelligence, an Intro to Psychology course, and the nursing course in Human Physiology.  At the time I even wrote an article for the school paper about a theory called Quantum Consciousness which sounded titillatingly close to explaining the science behind the Ender series.  At some point in this journey I also became obsessed with the idea of auras, particularly the way that Pamala Oslie, a California-based clairvoyant, perceives people’s auric energy.  Add into that mix “Womb Wisdom: Rediscovering the Ancient and Forgotten Powers of the Feminine,” my most recent fascination with astrological charts, my ongoing lifelong desire to attend every single religious service that exists, my fascination (and lack of any hard knowledge of) advanced physics, and a whole lot of Eastern philosophy, and you have what my Grandpa would call a Grade-A Hippie Nutjob.  

I guess it’s all just part of being in your 20’s and trying to figure out what you believe and how the world works, so it’s nothing particularly unique.  But honestly, I’m totally convinced that it is all connected somehow, and I sincerely hope that this discovery process never ends.  What if science, religion, and new age hippie-thoughts are all just three pathways leading to the same common revelation about existence?  How awesome would that be?  It just seems to make the most sense to me that the most elegant solution is something simple, like E=mc2, that would blow open a whole new world of thought possibilities by creating a common thread through which we can understand the universe.  At this point, all of these concepts (energy bridges, sci-fi worlds, quantum physics, human auras, astrology, Buddhism, Catholicism, Atheism, womb wisdom, neurology, the human brain) have amalgamated into a big, crazy, slushy soup in my brain, and they are almost indistinguishable.  It's a tasty-ass soup though, and I can’t get enough of it.  What crazy ideas are hopping around in your brain?  I am always totally game to discuss.  Let’s talk.

Home sweet hole-in-the-wall

Oh, apartment how I love thee, my loyal studio,
the window well above thee, the dive bar down below.
Your window well is covered, so cleverly stopping all light
from entering the windows with frames as black as night.

I love the boldly checkered floor
which signifies with ease
Five feet of kitchen by the door
with everything I need.

I love your brave little patch of carpet meant to signify
that this is the "bedroom" upon which the ikea pad should lie.
I love the camaraderie with which my clothes and heater share the closet,
and the covert way the hamper waits under the keyboard for a deposit. 

On a Sunday morning in my little room I happily awaken
to take a refreshing shower above the wafting smell of bacon
...Which comes to me from the dive bar kitchen twenty feet below.
Oh little apartment with no ventilation, how I love you so. 

This poem would be incomplete without my gratitude
to the dive bar owners who let me steal their Wifi without attitude.
And also to my friendly neighbors who brighten up my days
with their witty banter and sarcastic humor as we go our hipster ways.

I'll always remember my time spent here
in one-hundred-and-fifty square feet.
My little oasis where my head is clear
and my heart in comfort beats.

Office monkey retaliation

I started this blog as a creative outlet to ease my mind while I was trapped behind a desk, which is not my natural habitat.  I owe many thanks to y'all for sticking with me throughout the tangents that I tend to wander down.  Today, I want to get back to my roots.

Back in February, I declared that my office monkey days were over.  ...I spoke too soon.  After 6 weeks of traveling and auditioning and whatnot, I landed back in my new baby-sized studio apartment and within a week was back to my old office monkey tricks to get rent money.  This time around the office madness set in with a vengeance almost immediately.

I work for a nonprofit.  I was initially very excited about that.  The NELA Center for Student Success runs a program that mentors underserved high school students through the college application process.  Here's the thing, though.  The center is a subsidiary of NELA, a nonprofit student loan guarantor, which is a subsidiary of USA Funds, which is a nonprofit with a generalized mission statement about helping people pay for college.  All of these things are "affiliates" of Sallie Mae.

What it boils down to is this:  The people at the NELA Center are working to get kids into college who are at a disadvantage.  But every single decision, action, or thought that these people have regarding the work they are doing with these kids has to make it all the way up this massive chain of corporate command and back down again before anything can actually be done.  And the further things go up the corporate chain, the less anyone knows about the actual work being done on the ground floor.  There are only two employees at the Center--One to run the Center, and one to run statistics and numbers on everything being done here to report back to Corporate that the Center is "efficient" in helping people.  The worst part is my sneaking suspicion that all of these nonprofits are actually only tax write-offs for some fat cat at Sallie Mae.  I'm just real tired of Corporate America, I'm bummed to realize how insidious it is even in the nonprofit world, and I'm frustrated to witness how corporate busy work is utterly crippling for actually getting anything done. 

Maybe it was this office madness that drove me to plug in to the Occupy movement this last weekend.  As some of you know, I've been intrigued by Occupy ever since it started, but somewhat cautious and skeptical.  So when I heard about the 99% "Spring Training" being held all across the country last week, I decided to go hear about Occupy from the horse's mouth, if you will. 

What I found out is that we are on the same page:  All the political and economic power in this country is concentrated in a tiny group of people that operates well above our heads.  Mega-corporations run our food system, our housing market, our financial system, the military-industrial complex, and global manufacturing, and they tend to pour enough money into our Legislature to shape government policy in a really gross way to their own advantage.  They have all the same rights as individual human beings but none of the sense of personal responsibility. 

My major qualm with Occupy was that it was a protest without a list of demands.  I was annoyed because I could tell they were pissed about something but they didn't seem to know what they actually wanted.  Now, I think the problem is so deeply engrained in the fabric of our society that it's too early in the movement to have a specific list of demands.  Could you even imagine an America without foreign oil and high fructose corn syrup?  Or massive personal debt?  Or looming environmental catastrophe?  Or invasive, poorly-justified wars in foreign countries? What would that even look like?  If you are protesting the construction of a dirty coal plant, and I am protesting government subsidies of Monsanto corn crops, and she is protesting cuts in public education, and he is protesting for labor rights, then we are all essentially protesting against the same system.  Occupy has pulled back, regrouped, and is training people to take effective non-violent direct action on grassroots issues that they care about.  Rosa Parks style.  It's a long-term, big-picture vision of how to take back this country bit by bit, and I think I'm ready to say that I am the 99%.