Diary of a Future Superstar

example

2011-11-15T13:43:00.000-05:00

In Defense of Rap-Rock, article critique

2011-09-19T14:08:00.002-04:00

I am applying for a job as an editorial assistant for Slate magazine and for the application I was asked to critique one of their culturebox articles. The result is below, and the article is linked right before this sentence, please let me know what you think.

“In Defense of Rap Rock” has a confusing opening that equates the term “the dream of the 90’s” with “nostalgia” and then later a “celebration of cultural touchstones”. It would have been more straightforward and simpler to mention that the 90’s brought a wealth of terrific pop culture, but as a whole rap rock was one element that we would all like to forget.

The author quickly redeems himself by bringing us up to date on the current state of rap-rock fusion with his more than considerable knowledge of the scene lifting up the Wugazi mixtapes as a shining example of the good that can come from blending these two distinct sounds.

Run DMC and Aerosmith’s hugely popular collaborative effort “Walk this Way” spawned a whole suite of imitators eager to cash in, and the author makes the case that corporate greed destroyed rap rock when they created the soundtrack album for the movie “Judgement Night” which the website allmusic.com describes as every track being “a hard rock act combined with a rap act”.

I disagree, as soundtrack albums from the 90’s seldom if ever even approached the popularity of the movie, (Romeo and Juliet being one of the few examples) and “Judgement Night” an Emilio Estevez vehicle, made little noise in the movie or music business and came several years before the onslaught of terrible rap that is the focus of this article.

The article claims that the merger of grunge and later nu-rock with rap led to the toxic sludge like Limp Bizkit that is best consigned to the trash bin of history. While ultimately true, the article seems to have almost criminally left out the only actual redeeming artifact of 90’s rap rock of any real worth, and that is the blistering sounds of Rage Against the Machine, the efforts of which were never equaled before or since.

The author name checks many more current musicians that I am unfamiliar with, explaining that by reimagining 80’s hip hop and rock combos and skipping the 90’s versions entirely, new rap rock has proven that grunge simply didn’t work well with rap music.

Blaming everything on Limp Bizkit and their ilk doesn’t prove anything at all, besides the fact that those bands made terrible music.

Eric Watches Movies: Cowboys and Aliens

2011-08-15T12:39:00.002-04:00

Its been a pretty wild month for me. I've been back and forth from New York now 4 times for work and auditions and I finally struck gold. Starting August 22nd I'll be managing a street marketing campaign for Fiat for their first entrance into the American market since 1983. Basically I'll be driving the car around to various locations everyday and supervising a street team who will be promoting it.

This is amazing news financially since obviously I haven't made a lot of money this year in my recovery from 2 stomach surgeries.

All of my overnights have been spent at my former 65 year old roommate Eric Sigward's apartment on his floor.

As many of you reading this may recall back when I was living with him i shot a series of terrific videos which capture all the eccentric personalities of my dear friend

On my last visit just a few short days ago I decided to revisit these monologue style videos and encouraged him to talk about a recent movie he had just watched "Cowboys and Aliens" below are the results. I hope you enjoy it.

- Josh

Summer Reading Series #3 - I'm Sorry I Can't Remember your Name

2011-07-10T17:25:00.003-04:00

I hope your tastebuds were whetted appropriately by my last summer reading series way back like 2 weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. I'm a lot beardier and I just had my first audition in Hampton Roads in 6 years.

It was a little different from auditions in New York where I would go into the audition room with like 8 other dudes. In the waiting room in Hampton, VA everyone for all the roles waited. It was a bunch of little girls and their moms, some 20 something brunettes, and me, the only person auditioning for the role of this crazy cult leader who kidnaps girls and young women.

I'm not sure what kind of a lead in that is for my summer reading series, but hey this is a blog and I should write something besides how hungry I am since I am on day #3 of the Makers Diet to cure my digestive tract which has been a wreck for many many years because of Chrohns disease. I think specifically my digestion has been putrid since "overcooked hot dog Sunday" At Elim Bible Institute in 1995

I don't know how much longer I can go on.

Okay I do, a long time, but I"m going to hate it and I doubt I can stick this thing out and be true to it.

so to really lead in to this story I wanted to talk about small talk in New York. It is terrific, and is the result of getting tepid or overly cautious people together in a room with me. The conversation is usually really short, they ask me like one question and then go back to the buffet table or something like that.

Anway this is.

I hope you like it, because I do. I like it a lot

Summer Reading Series #2 - Do You Think When You're Out You Could Get Me Some More Hot Dogs?

2011-06-25T13:01:00.003-04:00

I'm proud to announce the second in my summer reading series of short stories. This one is called "Do You think when you're out you could get me some more hot dogs?" It is written in the style of a McSweeney's story and is about a particularly large and non-moving roommate I had in my first apartment in Brooklyn. It is also hilarious. I invite all questions and comments. Seriously bring your questions and comments please.

Also if you are interested in publishing this awesome and previously unpublished story, please don't hesitate to contact me at my email address listed at the top of the page. It is also joshuadudley@gmail.com but the blogspot platform is super old and i can't figure out how to link an email address

Summer Reading Series #1 - Why Have You Kidnapped My Children?

2011-06-24T17:52:00.003-04:00

My stomach isn't quite up to full functionality yet, so lately I have been thinking more and more about my writing as a creative outlet, but I am not quite to the point where I feel like I can sit down and write a great short story, even ones I have already started on.

However, I used to go to a writing group in New York City, and everyone always loved my writing.

The following video is the first of my summer reading series. The first time I read this in New York, no one in the group "got" the story. There were no questions.

"Really?" I said no questions?

Okay thats great whatever guys, that story is published already.

And then everyone was like "oh im so sorry i didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or not"

So I hope you enjoy a story with humor so dry and sophisticated that a New York Audience could't figure it out.

Enjoy

Why You Need the Cloud Right Now

2011-06-12T18:12:00.006-04:00

I have a friend who introduced me to the gospel of Apple many years ago. This was in the early days of mp3's and to save money on music storage devices, I had bought some chunky, horrible 1 gig mp3 player (the big selling point for me was 1 gig of storage) with some poor forgotten name like the VD8300c music player or something else equally forgettable, and my friend was just laughing at my problems with trying to get my music onto this piece of junk. At that time he gave me some sage advice which has stayed with me all these years.

"Dude get an Ipod" he said.

I followed his advice and I really couldn't have been any happier. I was sort of proud to lug around two 15 pack cd cases for my 10 disk cd changer to show off my awesome taste in music. I really did have quite a lot of music with me, but the ability to carry "a thousand songs in my pocket" was such a revolutionary change that it was breathtaking.

Which brings us to the cloud....

Last night I was visiting this same friend again and not having seen him in a while tried to casually engage him in conversation.

"So um are you super excited about the cloud?" I asked my friend of many years who I have since watched more than one hour long Steve Jobs pronouncement with.

"What's so great about it" he remarked quite pointedly.

"I'm serious" he said.

"Wireless syncing" I responded tentatively, a bit confused by his lack of enthusiasm.

"I can already do that with Mobile Me" he said. "If my Iphone is anywhere near my laptop it syncs all my information" (Mobile Me costs $99 a year)

"Itunes Match" I countered. "Icloud scans your hard drive for all of your music then it automatically auto updates it to a higher bit rate. It doesn't actually send your actual files to the cloud like the competing Google and Amazon services do, instead it just reads the track listing and gives you a perfect version of that song regardless of whether or not you bought it on Itunes or where you got it from period." (Itunes Match currently charges $25 a year for non Itunes music, but there's reason to believe that won't be a permanent charge)

He laughed.

"The music industry is really gonna love that" he said. "Apple's awesome."

With ICloud they've really done it again; they're introducing a service that you didn't realize you needed but once you have it you'll wonder how you lived without it.

In addition to storing your music online (up to 5 gigs of non Itunes purchased stuff) you'll be able to wirelessly sync your contacts, calenders, mail, and photos like you could with Mobile Me but also your documents, ibooks and a complete list of every app you've ever purchased is stored in the cloud as well for easy retrieval.

And it's free, and it syncs to all your ios devices and computers, and did I mention it's free?

It's going to be revolutionary, and I just can't wait

How Do you Date Anyone?

2011-04-09T17:24:00.008-04:00

Seriously, how do you date anyone? I know, it seems like a ridiculous question, and I suppose it would be for almost anyone else but the mysterious process whereby you go from asking a girl to dinner or a movie to dating her on a regular basis and having her introduce you as her boyfriend is completely foreign to me.

The movies always make it look so easy, like guy meets girl, they kiss, they're in bed, and all of sudden being chased for their life by the Terminator or someone else and by the end of the movie an hour later they are in love and it is clear they are going to be married or do by the films closing credits.

I think the main problem for me is there is no clear highlighted roadmap on how to get from point a to point b. I usually end up turning left and falling off the cliff next to the Coyote from Warner Bros. cartoons.

Up till the point when I was in my early 20's I was either doing something entirely different or girls at that age just recognize when a guy asks you to dinner its not because he thinks you would make really great friends.

My main problem is a complete inability to go for the goodnight kiss at the end of the night which proves to the girl that its a date and puts you at least on good footing to a successful relationship versus the wierd quasi nova world that I live in when I take girls out.

I remember there was this one Seinfeld episode where this "friend" discussion took place and they were grilling George on the verbage he used to ask out the girl, "Did you say go out, or hang out?" As if this small slip of the phrase would plant the seed in the girls mind about what kind of night it was intended to be.

Obviously I was convinced that it was because ever since I have tried to avoid like the plague the phrase hang out when I am clearly interested in them.

My second problem after the lack of a kiss is a faded memory is getting it together and explaining to this girl that I actually like her. Once you do this, you are telling her in no uncertain terms that at some point in the future you would like to have sex with her on a regular basis.

You can see why this is especially scary for both parties.

Clearly the real decision making part needs to be happening on the girl's end to prevent this kind of flailing in the wind and again in movies often does with charismatic leads like Zooey Deschanel who often flirts onscreen with no uncertain intentions like in the recent movie Hot Tub Time Machine where she tells John Cusack "Hey you could do something awesome like talk to this girl you just met"

Those are just some of the regular difficulties that I used to experience in a pre emergency room world, now I also have to do deal with a stomach wound and a constantly leaking bag full of shit and a completely uncertain future.

Frankly, I can't imagine when a good time to mention any of those things are to a girl.

Probably, right after the introduction wouldn't be a good idea.

Hi, I'm Joshua and I'm recovering from emergency stomach surgery.

Oh you poor thing. Do you feel bad?

Only all the time.

Yeah. That's how I should do it.

And there's another secret I'm going to let you guys in on. I'm currently having these troubles with a girl right now that I've been out in public places with a few times and its obvious that I should apologize for the complete lack of kissing or saying how much I like her.

Texting it to her seems like a poor solution.

Explaining it to her over a cup of coffee seems better.

Getting her to read this article seems like the best thing possible because there is absolutely no way I could explain all that without fumbling vocally and looking like I swallowed a biscuit.

Also there is no way I'm naming names. I'll probably get her brother to read it.

Historically I'm at my best with women in the writing process, and since the internet has made letter writing seem quaint to the point of being ridiculous and snobbish this is probably it.

Also.

The final episode of Trailor Park Life is right above us! Unfortunately, my normal mechanism of writing out the panels wont work as well today because each panel has 2 sets of dialogue because there is a television playing in the background so I will write "tv" before the tv dialogue so as to be less confusing.

But I will try!

Panel 1: (tv)On tonights episode of Unsolved Mysteries (blah..blah) What happened?

Panel 2: (tv)Missing people....blah. You know what? I can really relate to that show

Panel 3: I mean like what happened to all of my beer? (tv)...still missing

Panel 4: Honey you remember that party last night? (tv) the search continues

Panel 5: ...Oh yeah. (tv)coming up next

Panel 6: (tv) Another mystery solved by our faithful viewers.

Figuring it Out

2011-04-04T12:44:00.014-04:00

I have to admit that I felt a little lost recently. My general health seems to be mostly restored to the point where I took 2 different jobs last week.

My first job was to setup a laptop in Richmond to webcast a bar where people were watching the University of Richmond play Kansas in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. The bar was packed with drunken revelers who by all admissions were there to watch Shaka Smart and VCU shock the world again

I was trapped in the corner with the laptop and aware that I was enjoying the game like a thousand times less then everyone else there because I was paying attention to the safety of the laptop and sending out corporate tweets about the game as part of work.

My next job was background work on set of the film "J Edgar" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Clint Eastwood. I did background work a thousand times in New York so the actual thing to me wasn't a big deal. However, it was pretty cool watching Clint Eastwood work. I was in a small shed with 4 other extras, Clint Eastwood, DiCaprio and 3 other actors for a pivotal scene in the movie.

3 hours of fiddling with knobs and walking back and forth wore me out and when dinner was announced I was done. I used to work 12 hours doing extra work and not blink, but I think if they threw me out there again I would have just about collapsed. No, I don't have my strength back yet although I did get my weight up to 125 that day and have gained a couple more pounds since then.

Fortunately, I was "wrapped" (set dismissal) right after dinner and slept 2 hours in my car at the nearest gas station parking lot.

I've been doing a few things for my dad here and there during the week, but it isn't enough to keep me occupied and doesn't get my blood racing like living in New York.

I miss waking up and doing Kung Fu in Chinatown on off days with my friend Kap Mandu.

I have my next doctors appointment April 11th and hopefully he will tell me that my wound is healed up enough to get my colon reconnected. This ostomy bag saved my life but it is a messy, smelly reminder of how close I came to death and I won't miss it a bit.

I have this idea in mind that I can do promotions and acting all up and down the east coast without living in New York and I'd like to see if I could make that work, but obviously I'm not quite able to be back in business yet.

It seems that writing is the only activity I can do full time that doesn't exhaust me.

So, I thought I would write a book. I have several unfinished books in my backlog and on my old website joshdudley.tripod.com. I used to write thousands of words and run out of steam. My ideas weren't getting shared with people and I felt like I was writing in a vacuum and I just get anxious and depressed when I spend too much time by myself.

I've absorbed a lot of zombie pop culture over the years and thought that "A Complete Idiots Guide to Zombies" would be a pretty great book but it is already written, so it's back to square one.

What snarky thing should I write about?

I think I would like to re-work one of my old unfinished books. I'm going to throw out the first chapter of "The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots" to you guys and see what you think.

Oh and also we have the long awaited return of Trailor Park Life.

The captions are as follows

panel 1: Gab, Gab, Gab

panel 2: Yak, Yak, Yak

panel 3: What are you kids doing inside?

panel 4: Sorry dad

panel 5: Go outside and play in the street like you're supposed to

And now...

The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots

Warning: If you are reading this, it does not necessarily mean that you are not an idiot.

Of course it does not altogether disqualify you from being one either. Of most native readers of the English language, the ability to read and understand complete sentences like this one is actually attained at quite a young age and it can actually be said with some certainty that this ability does not make one any more or any less of an idiot. There are still many idiots with us after the completion of elementary school. Strangely enough, there are far more idiots in the world after receiving a high school diploma than there were before. Stranger still, there exist quite a good many idiots out there in the world with a college degree. Shockingly, even the possession of a masters or doctorate does not exclude one from this very real and grave possibility.

The sad truth is that no amount of education in the world can stifle or prevent idiot tendencies completely. This is because idiot tendencies by their very nature are inborn, making them utterly and horribly inescapable. From the time of conception on up till when death locks us in its icy jaws we are all imprinted with the genetic material to say or do things of incredible stupidity. This is called “higher intelligence”.

Animals do not have higher intelligence, so clearly they must have “lower intelligence”. They also have very few things in their life to juggle, mainly just eating and sleeping and looking out for anyone bigger than them who might want to eat them. Additionally their comprehension skills are severely limited, so not only do they not know what they are looking at most of the time, it never crosses their mind to wonder what it might be anyway.

These are just some of the reasons why animals are seldom seen engaging in random acts of idiocy. Squirrels falling out of trees, and birds running into windowpanes would be among the few examples. Animals have such a limited scope of things to do that they very seldom screw up in an obvious way that makes them look ridiculous to onlookers. People on the other hand with their “higher intelligence” have such a broad scope of tasks to perform in life because of what they should know, and because of the capacity they have for performing tasks, that the chances of them doing something ridiculous at any given moment are incredibly high.

This is basically what defines an idiot; it is someone who screws up in either small or monumentally large ways. Normally there have to be other people around to notice it and think to themselves, “God what an idiot.”

It kind of reminds me of the old adage if an accountant screws up in a small office by himself and no one sees it, is he an idiot?

Can you be an idiot with no one watching?

How much of an idiot can you be with other people watching you?

This is what this book is about. It’s about people doing dumb, ridiculous things when they should know how to do those things.

A lot of you reading this right now might say that this book can’t possibly be about you. After all, you have a good job with a steady source of income, providing you with enough free time to read a book as ridiculous as this one. Also, you are very smart and always know what you’re doing at all times, and you always fill out the right forms, and dot all your t’s and cross all your I’s.

If this is indeed the case, then I might hazard a guess that this book may be very helpful to you indeed, because after all, if you’re reading this, then you just may be an idiot.

In the Middle of the Night

2011-03-20T01:03:00.004-04:00

I go blogging in my sleep.

That was a joke that approximately 12 percent of the audience will get as it was a reference to a top ten single from Billy Joel from the mid 90's called "River of Dreams"

I wish I had written more this week except that I didn't have anything I was incredibly interested in to blog about and I wasn't feeling that great.

Between life anxiety and medical anxiety, I was just full of anxiety this week.

And anxiety never makes for a good blog and I've already decided to leave out the gory details of how my "stuff" (stuff is how i will refer to the apparatus's that are around my stomach region) is doing until I write my best selling book called "What to do when Stomach Surgery threatens your whole way of Life" or I could call it "Don't Panic but your stomach looks like a Meat Locker and the Doctor is coming over with a worried look on his Face"

I bet that would sell.

Probably the highlight of the week was this morning when I took my rat and my niece to the back porch to commune with nature. After about 10 minutes of communing I was getting hungry and asked my mom to watch them for me. Next thing I know, mayonnaise is about to be mixed with my tuna fish when I look over and see my mom on her hands and knees and my niece jumping up and down.

I ran outside and. Oh wait I can't run right now.

I briskly race walked to the back porch and found that ****** (name deleted for privacy concerns) had scared my poor rat Buckley under the stairs where he could not be easily grabbed and he thought we were just playing a game of hide and seek.

Like a fool I tried to lure him out with a piece of roast beef, and he ducked his head out and grabbed it out of my hand.

With frustration mounting I motioned my blood relations inside the house while I maintained the vigil over the stairs where I would be ready to grab him and love on him should he ever appear.

I was not losing this rat.

I lost track of time over how long i was there before I caught him. An hour?

It doesn't matter because it's Saturday and I never have anything to do right?

Wrong!

I was planning on going out but being on my hands and knees and looking under stairs in pre-stoma disaster mode quickly tired me out and i fell asleep for nearly 2 hours while watching a King of the Hill episode on Netflix instant streaming on my Dynex 32 inch LCD TV screen that I use for a monitor that I got from Best Buy 2 years ago for 400 dollars because the TV that Super Christian owned had a giant portion of the screen that was all green shaded and I couldn't stand it.

Now it has significant scratch marks all over the bottom of the screen and some discoloration appears at parts of the top depending on what is on the screen at the moment.

I really like my monitor.

Oh yeah, something potentially big did happen this week. I got the opportunity to do what appears to be SAG background work in DC the next 2 weekends. This is significant because in 5 years in NY I only got to do SAG background work once and you need to do it 3 times to join SAG which is pretty much out of the question at the moment because it costs like 3 grand.

And then I had an evening out at a musical planned and that fell through. It was not as easy as it sounds to find a play around here on a random Friday evening.

So what I did before that was go to my friend's house with the purpose of watching Duke play Hampton in the NCAA 64's! or whatever you call the tournament as I know that March Madness is not it's official name and I hope they don't sue me for using it without permission in this blog post.

Unfortunately my friend's parents in law were over and he did not tell me that. So, while I was trying to watch young athletes dunk all over some hapless flunkies I was being grilled on my health and what Chrohns disease was and how I planned to treat it and why I don't just eat cheeseburgers all the time if I'm trying to gain weight.

Then the conversation moved to the topic of my various unfinished books and they pretty much thought all of my book titles were either stupid or too negative and probably not sale-able. I had to explain to them about how there was a big market out there for dumb comedy books right now like "How to Beat Up Anybody" or the various zombie classic literature mashups out there.

Anyway Duke won in a snoozefest of a layup drill and I'm definitely going to find out wherever I go if old people are going to be sprung on me out of nowhere.

When you Wish upon a Star

2011-03-16T23:28:00.003-04:00

No, wishing won't just create a new blog, only writing a new one will.

And I hate to report it but im feeling awful again today. I had a rash of days in a row where I felt on top of the world and just thought "well this is it." but today im back to feeling a little miserable.

And guys this has to be said

I'm getting tired of feeling this way. I just want these bandages to fall off and my wound to be healed and for my ostomy bag to go away and get me back to normal where I will have no idea what I'm doing.

That's right If I don't go back to New York which doesn't seem to be in the immediate cards then I really don't know quite what I'm doing.

Fortunately I still have a while to figure that out.

I know, I know. I should have written a real blog on tuesday or monday when i was feeling great.

Just not feeling it sorry.

If i had more feedback maybe I would write more.

Oh thats terrible why would i say that?

Well, time to get back to eating ice cream and watching King of the Hill on Netflix instant streaming.

I'm trying to watch every episode in a row and the show lasted like 14 years and im on season 3.

So I have a lot of tv to catch up on.

Apple Bashing

2011-03-13T20:49:00.008-04:00

As an avid follower of technology and news, and a proud Verizon Iphone owner with way too much time on his hands, I have read a great number of stories about recent tech products since my near demise.

Many of them fall under the same basic premise, to wit: you do or don't need said product, and you should or shouldn't wait until the next iteration of said product.

Usually its an apple product being bandied about; the verizon iphone, ipad 2, and Iphone 5 (universal gsm?) have been making the rounds in these discussions.

But, and this really should be said more often in articles, if you need or really want a piece of technology and it won't destroy your finances to get it, why shouldn't you get it? For the love of God, I thought that was the American way.

Tonight I just read, probably without exaggeration, the 30th piece of this type in the last 2 months and I just got all kinds of fed up. Here is a link to the article should you wish to waste your time on this drivel, and below is the email that I sent off to the writer in question, Jonathan Blum, about his tremendous article entitled "You Don't Need the Ipad 2"

I'm pretty sure he won't respond, but if he does, I will definitely let you know

My Letter:

I don't need the Ipad 2? There is an increasing number of anti-apple stories run, which this story falls under, which seem to be lazy attempts to fill space. Why would you bother running a commentary like that?

Did you also write an article advising people to wait for the Iphone 5?

And not for nothing, but isn't it good for Apple, an American company, to make money hand over fist?

Also your vampire and garlic analogy seemed frighteningly out of place.

Guess what? There's very little technology that you actually "need" on a basic level, but if it increasingly makes life easy for us, then whats the problem with that?

Also, thanks for telling me that there are other tablet devices out there. If not for the Ipad, these devices would not exist at all.

Does the Street pay for articles like this? I would be interested in being a total hack writer for profit

The Adventures of Super Christian #1

2011-03-10T08:43:00.004-05:00

I keep having these 2 nagging dreams. In one of them, I've lost the keys to my dad's car, and in the other one my old roommate Super Christian has turned into some sort of zombie like creature.

This was the beginning to the blog yesterday when I tried to write it and was interrupted by what could have been 10 thousand different things but I'm pretty sure it was my dad who wanted to yell at me a few times in the car so we could go to the grocery store.

So, I definitely can't do that opener anymore. I can't remember that nagging dream, and I'm pretty sure I made up that dream about Super Christian even though he basically was a zombie for the Lord.

I used to be on the couch with chunks missing out of it in Astoria trying to sit down to enjoy a game of Super Mario Galaxy and he would walk past me with that same look of resignment on his face wearing slippers on his feet and rubber gloves on his hands which he put out in front of him when he walked kind of like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. Then he would prepare the exact same meal every day just like he did as far as I could tell for about 12 years in the same apartment before I got there.

He made an omelette for dinner every day out of an omelette maker which he left on the counter overnight and every night filled with water in the belief that this would ward off cockroaches. When the omelette was ready on the pan he would slide it onto the plate in literally the exact same way every day. It was eery. Actor on the couch used to claim that he was a lizard creature in disguise which I honestly had a hard time disputing.

Then he would pour enough hotsauce on the omelette to make my eyes water and sting from 10 feet away. I used to ask him why he put so much hotsauce on his eggs and he said, "Because I really like hotsauce."

Well said my friend. Well said.

Of course he also gave the exact same line of reasoning for why he poured hotsauce on all variety of foods like pizza and rice. He used to stress, "I like my food very hot." And then he would eat it very very slowly and if the tv was on he would stare intently at it like it contained the mysteries of the universe.

Actor on the couch used to try to break him out of his revelry and ask him questions while he was eating and watching tv. This was always a bad idea because Super Christian could not eat his omelette, watch tv, and then listen to you or your question if the world depended on it. Then they would argue for at least 15 or 20 minutes and I would go in my room and quietly try to pretend that none of this was happening and remind myself that this was what I moved to New York for.

Then for the rest of the night Super Christian would play worship music in his room very loudly until he would stop to work on his screenplay which he would only consider submitting to Steven Spielburg.

And now dinner is calling or rather my dad is calling me to dinner. I hope I enjoy it as much as you enjoy Trailor Park Life #3!

oh wait I almost forgot this part

Panel #1: Woof

Panel #2: I love my new dog

Panel #3: ...Who just peed on the floor

Panel #4: Hm.....

Panel #5 Looks like its time to move the couch

Comedy Gold!

Buried Treasure 2: More Treasure

2011-03-09T18:12:00.003-05:00

Today is what I in the Ostomy care/ Wound Sufferers community like to call "not one of my better days".

I would describe why but I have a feeling the specifics of anything about my daily life problems are a turn off to my readership.

Perhaps I should link you to pen and ink drawings offsite?

I think I'll elucidate a little bit and say that things have really been flowing today.

Too Vague?

Should I have said that I'm really in the stream of things?

No?

I also want to stress that I'm sure this is in no way related to the extremely authentic Mexican restaurant me and my Dad went to for lunch today because of their advertised 3.99 lunch special which included an out of service toilet, Telemundo and a poor Hispanic family with 3 kids and an overweight mother.

PS. I'm now the mayor of this place on Foursquare.

Well regardless Ive been in mild pain and discomfort for most of the day and it has also made me a bit tired, so tired in fact that I haven't even been able to work up any enthusiasm for todays blog post which mainly consists of me ranting vaguely and is a thinly veiled excuse to put up Trailor Park Life #2

So without any further ado I'd like to present Trailor Park Life #2

....

Oh Wait.

It's right at the top of the blog isn't it?

Ok I didn't really forget, I was just short on jokes today.

I can't even read this cartoon while I'm writing it so I'm sure you wont be able to without this handy guide

Panel #1 - This Place is kind of dull

Panel #2 - I think I'll redecorate

Panel #3 - arrows pointing to bottom of trailor indicating that cement blocks have been replaced with wheels

Panel #4 - Sigh (to indicate boredom)

Panel #5 - What time does Matlock come on?

Whooo greatest cartoon ever.

See you tomorrow!

Finding Buried Treasure.

2011-03-08T11:20:00.003-05:00

Ever since my accident (and yes it was an accident, it wasn't a happening, or an instance, or a happenstance, or an unfortunate circumstance, or even a series of unfortunate events) people are always asking me

"So Like How are you Doing?"

And I try not to be glib and say something like "Well you know pretty good, I'm standing here and talking to you right, how bad could I be?

No one would know how to handle it if I was glib or semi-serious about dealing with my near death circumstances even though that's how I usually am about everything. In other words, if I seem to be joking or only half serious to you, then I am probably doing fine.

It reminds me of an old Seinfeld routine where he was explaining how men think to women, he was like "Go Ahead. Guess what I'm thinking about right now."

"Nothing"

To wit, what am I worried about right now? Nothing

I do kinda feel like I'm in purgatory right now though.

At this moment, I really couldn't tell you what day it is, although I'm convinced it's either Tuesday or Wednesday but I am not sure which. I'm leaning towards Wednesday.

But If you really wanna know what I am doing before I started writing this blog, then I'll tell you. I'm cleaning the thrown together mess called my room wherein all my stuff from New York was stacked and piled everywhere.

In doing so, I found some old comic strips I used to make. It's called Trailor Park Life. Yes, there are 5 episodes and yes I will be posting them on my blog, and yes they will go up on facebook the day after my blog is updated.

If you're having trouble reading it I'm providing a translation:

First Panel: Hey, the Pizza Came in.

Second Panel: Oops it fell on the floor.

Third Panel: Is that a cockroach?

Fourth Panel: C-R-U-N-C-H-

Fifth Panel - Yum!

Thus concludes Trailor Park Life #1 I hope you have enjoyed it, because there are four more installments coming.

The Weekender

2011-03-06T17:38:00.003-05:00

Guys I just feel like its getting too heavy out there and I'm not just saying that because of that superhero behind me. It's the way Im feeling and I wanted to tell you guys that.

Ive been encouraged all day and all week and I wanted to express that adequately in my blog but all of a sudden my left arm is getting sore and my back is complaining to me and im growing tired and i need to change my bandages.

Ouch!

PS the picture above is me and a charismatic young man nicknamed "C-Lite"

Im telling you guys. I so want to rip into the truth right now and let it flow out of my fingers but I just cant do it yet.

I still can't focus like I want to and really get on it and write something to move people, to change them, to inspire them like I feel right now.

I feel like every day I'm alive is a gift and looking at life's little challenges as anything but compared to certain death creates quite the confusing sentence and illustrates the jumble that is my physical body.

Anyway guys, I'm still healing, my wound is still there, but eventually it'll heal up. I sure hope it's soon.

In the meantime I'm just enjoying fellowshipping with other people and trying to make the most of every moment.

It really helps to be with friends and to just get out of the house and to feel alive.

I honestly came home and wanted to write something great and to me this just isn't it.

I'm going to beat this thing guys and every day isn't great yet. I still have some bad days and I wake up several times a night to drink more water or empty my ostomy bag.

And its gonna be like 3 months probably before im as healed as im gonna be but I'm just not worried at all about what's to come.

There's bigger things than me to worry about. Look at Egypt, Libya, Yemen. People are crying out all over for freedom. And me? I just want to get my life back together.

Don't take things so hard people. Love one another is what I'm saying. It's just not worth it otherwise.

Wish I could do something great like this, but I'm a little constrained right now, so look out when I get it together again...literally.

Slow Train to Healing

2011-02-25T17:50:00.006-05:00

Warning: the following graphic image may be disturbing to almost anyone.

If there are any small children present or anyone that may be offended please ask them to leave the room immediately.

I'm not starting until everyone leaves.

Okay are they gone?

Great.

I didn't have time today before dinner to go on and on and on about how horrible the hospital was in fact, I've barely started on that topic, but I know a lot of you out there are probably getting tired of reading about it. You're thinking, "Wow, I wonder what Josh is going to write about today. I can't wait to check because I'm so excited to read the same old boring thing."

Whoo Wee who needs that kind of motivation? I certainly don't. Right now the hospital is just a fading dim memory of a time that seemed like it would last forever and now im in the time where my wound seems like its taking forever to heal and not really doing much of anything and if it never heals then i never get the ostomy reversal referred to as "the takedown" by everyone in the medical profession.

Also, I didn't want my account to get banned by showing my entire wound and ostomy bag so I thought I would just take a picture of a small portion of the bottom part of my wound, which also happens to show a lot of my underwear and part of the tape of the ostomy bag sticking to my skin.

Every every every every every single day the wound needs to be re-bandaged and every few days or sometimes less my ostomy bag needs to be changed completely.

Several doctors remarked that its going to be an awesome scar. However, some of those same doctors said that leaving my ostomy bag on forever would be a "cure" for Chrohns disease. Yes, its true that if you completely remove the colon then the Chrohs disease has nothing left to attack and will simply go home and irritate someone else, however thats like saying that a good cure for arm pain is to cut off your arm.

I have to empty this ridiculous bag like 12 times a day and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to stand it or do much of anything else if I had to wear it for the rest of my life.

Some friends and doctors have talked about support groups and given me videos about my illeostomy (the technical name for it) but I have not paid attention to any of it based on the hope and prayer that by mid april sometime this will all be a fading memory and all I'll be left with is a horrible scar, wierd arm pains, clothes that don't fit, and old medical receipts that have been paid for by the hospitals charity wing.

Also, most people that get the crippling level of chrohns that i have are generally much older.

I'm actually up at em most of the time right now and drive around all over the place, and get groceries for the family, and take pictures for my dad, and I've gained a little weight. I'm up to a gut busting 120 lbs.

Also don't forget that its never too late to donate money towards my recovery tax free to my paypal account at joshuadudley@gmail.com or follow my twitter account.

It was the best of times, It was the Blurst of times

2011-02-23T21:31:00.007-05:00

So much happened to me while I was in the hospital, that it makes me tired to think about. Since I get tired now from doing almost anything, I don't like to think about the hospital much anymore.

But the people demand the truth, and who am I to deny them.

The truth is, I think in my last blog I completely forgot to mention the fact that when I woke up in the hospital after about 3 days of being heavily sedated not only did I have a huge scar and a bag attached to my stomach, I had 3 separate drain tubes stuck onto me also.

If you are reading this, and know what a drain tube is, then you are clearly a nurse, or related to someone who has had drain tubes stuck to their body. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "hey wouldn't people related to nurses know what drain tubes are also?" the answer is: not really.

Nurses understand that people they are related to don't want to hear about the icky parts of their job and so don't generally share them with people unless it comes up naturally in conversation. Honestly, I can't really imagine what kind of conversation drain tubes would come up in, unless it was some sort of comparison to moves where drain tube like objects are used to suck up human parts from our bodies.

What is a drain tube? You might reasonably ask even though you have probably already hazarded a guess already from the name and from my description of alien probes. A drain tube is long tube stuck inside your body that in my case was draining infection into little plastic tubbie looking things.

So, I had 3 drain tubes arranged around my abdomen, an 8 inch long and 1 inch deep or so hole in my stomach, a stoma with a big plastic ostomy bag attached to that, as well as being hooked up to an iv and having both arms papered in bandages and cuts of all shapes and sizes.

Fortunately by this time, the penis tube and breathing tube up my nose were gone so I didn't completely look like a science experiment gone wrong.

A stoma is also another word that fits neatly into the same narrow category that a drain tube does in that the general public has never heard of it.

Basically after they went in and cut me open, my insides were so diseased that they were unable to close up my colon correctly, so they bypassed it, sealed it off and grabbed a portion of my guts and moved them to the outside of my body where they resemble nothing so much as the little red and pink head of some Dune like space worm coming out of my stomach which spits out internal waste constantly and has to be sealed over with a plastic baggie to prevent me soiling myself and consistently grossing out anyone in the immediate vicinity.

I was told however that this procedure was temporary and after I heal up, the process would be reversed and possibly a small portion of colon would have to be removed in order for this to happen. It's really sad when your wildest fantasies involve pooping normally.

So having heard that great news from a battery of multi-ethnic doctors and nurses, I was very relieved that I would probably not be a hideous freak the rest of my life.

This news, as truly terrific as it was, did nothing to shield me from the sheer torture of being in a bed for the next 5 days next to a guy with the most nasally monotone voice you can imagine, who seemed to be there because he hit his Chinese wife and then fled the scene and crashed his vehicle into a tree. At least that was what I could ascertain from his dozens of hushed phone calls where he would furiously deny to anyone who would listen that he didn't do anything wrong and he didn't know why he was there.

His phone calls would usually end with him saying "listen I'll have to call you back" because an authority figure had entered the room and he would repeatedly lie to them or change his story about what happened. To say it was excruciating to listen to would be an understatement.

At this point I should be wrapping up todays segment so I can go downstairs and make a yogurt fruit and protein smoothie to go to bed with, so I can wake up and take forever to eat breakfast and then think about all the things that I have to do, but not actually do any of them until 12 o'clock at which time I stand a great chance of being completely derailed by my Dad who will ask me to send an email, and then stand over my head while I type it for him.

Till we meet again, hopefully tomorrow.

Toodles,

Josh

Diary of a Future Superstar 12: Back in Action!

2011-02-15T17:44:00.006-05:00

Okay, so probably at least like 13 or so of you guys were getting really crazy amped up about my new adventures with chrohns disease and the ostomy bag that saved my life.

I should have been writing more. I apologize. I'm serious.

Also I have no idea what I am going to write and I hate that and I know that readership is going to drop dramatically which is pretty important to me in my ongoing life saga right now.

So, at this moment I am feeling a lot of physical discomfort which is making it hard for me to focus and put out superstar quality writing but I'll do my best.

This is for the Fans...

Hospital Stories

So, Id been at the hospital for several hours and my cousin who had just come up from Virginia to visit and take me out to a surprise dinner was now watching me anxiously as i was strapped to a bed and getting ready to be wheeled in. She works at a hospital and assumed that made her part of the brethren there at Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital and was poking around the doctors and nurses there to see what she could find out.

And thats like the last thing I can remember till Christmas morning 4 days later where my Christmas gift was to wake up to my parents who had been there for 3 days telling me they were going to leave to beat the coming snowstorm that was going to destroy America much like Obama's economic reform policy. That, an ostomy bag, an 8 inch incision that looked like a meat locker, and a cup of hospital orange juice were what Santa brought me this year.

I'm giving that guy coal next year.

Apparently while I was passed out and under the influence of various narcotics I sent several indecipherable text messages, made mumbling slurry phone calls, and posted garbled messages on facebook like "ggggeeeefffffff pens tub hrts". At that point all i had to do was make racial comments about Jews to be mistake for Mel Gibson.

Suffice it to say that I was in a wierd state which makes it kind of hard to do a chronological recap of my first few conscious days there. Maybe I should just do bullet points.

Being in the hospital was awful
My roomate for 5 days was on suicide watch
When you press the button on your bed to get service right away, you never get service right away
Some nurses are hot, and some are not
Hospital food is awful and is actually detrimental to your health. You'd think for the thousands and thousands of dollars they bill you for they could at least charge you like 100 bucks more for some better food.
I have scoliosis also which means that whenever the team of doctors came by to ask about pain I would always tell them that my back or arm hurt.
They would say "huh?" because obviously no one can have more than one thing wrong with him at a time; there's no way that God can be so cruel.
Morphine helps you sleep better until you wake up 4 hours later with blinding pain and its 3 in the morning and they wont give you more morphine and you just shift positions every 15 minutes trying to find one that doesnt make your arm feel like its falling off.
Whenever I would talk to family members on the phone they would remind me that it was one day closer till I came home
Coming home at that point was an issue of contention for the hospital who refused to allow me to leave until I had some sort of a plan put together to move back home to Virginia with my family and get hospital care there

And my mom is calling for dinner now and running around looking for my 3 year old niece who I'm not allowed to say anything bad about in front of her mom, my sister.

So I'm going to go.

From here on out expect regular posts that will mostly look like rough drafts or weird discarded ideas because I can put together a string of cohesive ideas while I'm in minor discomfort like I am now.

Till next time when I start hitting you guys up for money by asking you to contribute to my recovery fund through paypal by making your tax deductible donation to joshuadudley@gmail.com

Toodles

Hospital Stories...

2011-02-10T21:21:00.003-05:00

Are not going to be told today. I know I had promised my Aunt Louisa that it was happening but it appears in fact that it is not. My days just sort of seem to slip away from me and before I know it its dinnertime and then I go to bed and do it all over again. By 9oclock my back hurts and I just want to sit down and I just can't focus on writing right now at all.

I'll try to do it tomorrow, maybe earlier in the day.

We'll see.

I Hate NY #7: What the Heck Happened to me later?

2011-02-08T21:19:00.007-05:00

This is the second part in a multi part story. In case you haven't read the first part or are too lazy or uninterested to do so. I shall summarize the events thus far. But is that really fair to the readers that are eagerly awaiting this new chapter and don't have time or patience to muck around and find out that I had chrohns disease for 10 years and it caught up to me recently and my stomach exploded and I went to the hospital? Is it? After all, Peter Jackson didn't bother with any of that catching up crap with "The Two Towers" he just went right into it. You know that whole "Frodo can I look at the ring?" "No Pippen it's mine! My precious" that sort of thing.

Okay so I had just been dumped off by the emergency crew of CSI: New York at Roosevelt Hospital and after briefly seeing a doctor and signing my life away resolving them of any blame in case I died I was unceremoniously dumped onto a bed in a small waiting room with with 3 walls, a curtain, another bed, and a black man on top of it.

He was shaking his head all over the place and spitting into a bucket and occasionally throwing up, while I was merely sitting there spazzing and unable to breathe without pain.

The hours drifted by while I waited for the hospital to do its worst. The worst was definitely yet to come, although I didn't think so at the time when a cute nurse came by and forcibly jammed a breathing tube down my nose. Before doing this, she explained that it was really really going to hurt and that I might not think she was so nice after what she was about to do to me. She told me to concentrate on taking it in and breathing. I was only able to take it in and breathe for about 5 seconds before screaming in pain. It felt like a combination of being raped and assaulted at the same time "That's it just take it, hold it in. Just take it. Try to breathe. Take it." You get the picture.

**Note for those with weak stomachs, you may want to skip these next 4 sentences**

She took the tube out and it was covered in blood which dripped all over the cloth that she had placed on my lap. With a lot of pity in her voice she asked if we could try again. I reasoned that it couldn't possibly go any worse the second time, so why not, and this time it just sort of popped right in. I told her that the blood really helped it to slide down quicker.

**Okay you can come back now**

As I am writing this, I am overwhelmed with the desire to lay my head down on the keyboard and go to sleep. It is only 10 o clock, but this thing has just drained me of a lot of energy and I find myself getting tired as early as 6:30 pm. It doesn't help that I usually wake up like 2 or 3 times a night.

However, I don't want to disappoint everyone too badly so I'm going to skim quickly over the events that followed.

I was in the hospital for 2 miserable weeks. The days seemed to drag on forever and all I could think of was getting to the next day without feeling worse.

I was discharged January 6, and allowed to move back home with my parents provided I get hospital and doctor care in place before I got there.

It has been a long and painful struggle since then and I have experienced many ups and downs. My gigantic incision in my stomach is healing quickly and all the doctors are amazed by the progress which cannot come quickly enough for me.

My ostomy bag is a source of major annoyance and self consciousness as my mother and sister talk about the uncleanliness of it constantly around anyone who will listen, usually my dad.

My mom pours out health food to me after she finishes taking care of the needs of my sisters 3 year old niece.

Often I really feel like I am second or sometimes third in line.

My parents think I can do so much by myself and clearly I can or else I wouldnt be writing this, but I dont have a lot of energy and my back is very sore because additionally I have scoliosis and I probably didn't spell it right.

Sometimes at dinner my mom will point to broccoli or another vegetable and tell me to serve myself, so I'll take 3 pieces and then she'll say

"Don't you want more?"

to which I respond

"If I wanted more then I would certainly take more."

Or sometimes I'll give up and say

"However many you think I should have."

And then my dad will yell at me and say

"We're all very sorry you're suffering, but quit acting like a martyr"

All this in about 2 minutes at the dinner table.

And several times a day will my dad will talk to me or pray out loud about me entering into the family construction business. I used to tell him I don't know whats going to happen to me in the future and I'm just trying to focus on getting well right now but he persists in thinking of me as a way to assuage his guilt over his perceived failures as a parent.

In a way I would like to help him out and get a regular job and a regular life and get married and have 2.5 children and i want to fall in love and watching 500 Days of Summer today was just a soul crushing reminder of that, but every day just sort of drifts into the next and I can't do that things that I want to do and little things still hurt as my stomach pulls on me and I have to worry about changing things on my stomach and nurses coming over and it's all a little too much for me and I was almost about to cry at the dinner table.

I don't know what stopped me.

I Hate NY #6: What the Heck Happened to me?

2011-02-06T16:29:00.004-05:00

If you are reading this, then chances are you may have heard that something is wrong with me or that something happened or I was in the hospital, or I'm dead or I have syphilis or something. Fortunately all those things are true and I am writing this from beyond the grave with one amputated leg.

But really, what is wrong with me? I get asked this question with some frequency and I have to admit that despite my eagerness to talk about myself and have people listen to me, the frequency of this occurrence has dimmed my enthusiasm for the telling of the tell somewhat.

For a while when people would ask me what was wrong, I would refer them to my facebook profile and ask them go through the tedious process of reading everything that I or my friends and acquaintances wrote online, or they would press me and then I would give them a short answer.

So I decided that the time had come once and for all to tell the tale of woe and uncertainty that has befallen me.

In order to tell it properly I have decided to start from the relative beginning so to speak.

And hopefully when you arrive at the end you will decide for yourself whether or not it was a tale worth reading.

Having invested this much of your time reading between white spaces on a monitor shouldn't you go ahead and find out what happens?

Ahem.

12 years ago I was driving to church and eating some leftover chicken broth that my mother had given me when I suddenly and quite violently felt the immediate urge to pull over the car and projectile vomit. I barely got the door open before the spray began. Thinking nothing of it, I kept on my path feeling very queasy. I prided myself on the fact that once church began I only had to walk outside and throw up once.

At this point I was a little unnerved because usually when I threw up something I immediately felt better, instead I began to feel weaker and weaker. By the time I got home I was in bad shape, and I sat on the couch unable to sleep the entire night just shaking and shivering all over and going to the bathroom every hour or so and wondering what the heck was going on with me.

At this point some of you are probably wondering why it is that I didn't go see a doctor immediately, and the strange thing is that this thought had not occurred to me at all, nor was it voiced by any members of my immediate family. We just did not go to the hospital for anything. I had been raised by my mother to believe wholeheartedly in the healing power of prayer and God's word and that eating right and natural herbal remedies could take care of anything.

While I still believe strongly in those things, I also know that if you break your arm God doesn't want you to believe in faith that it is healed and then not go see a doctor.

I continued to not see the doctor for the next 10 years and once or twice a year I would have mild to severe stomach pains that seemed to be brought on by food.

I didn't have insurance or a lot of money and didn't want to burden my parents, so other than one exploratory visit to the doctor, I didn't seek any professional care for what was very clearly a nagging problem that I was in some stage of denial about.

Eventually after years of cajoling by my father and younger sisters, I took some dramatic steps which led to a colonoscopy that determined that I had chrohns disease. My doctor wanted to administer Remicade to me and told me that I would need to be on the drug for the rest of my life in order to put the disease into remission. Despite all that had happened for 10 years I was scared off by the possible cost and side effects which my mother repeatedly highlighted for me lest I forget.

Until finally on the night of December 19th 2010 I woke up at 11pm and my stomach felt like it was on fire and I had some difficulty breathing. Just like before I was unable to sleep all night, however this time it did not go away the next day. I still remained convinced that I would be fine and when a casting agent called that night to offer me the role of stand in the next day for Kiefer Sutherland I took it, hoping and praying that I would be okay the next morning.

I was not.

I stayed up on my lazy boy managing to sleep, or something akin to it for an hour or so at a time until 7 am when it was time to go to work. I struggled mightily getting dressed and was barely able to eat anything, for fear that I would throw it up immediately.

When I arrived on set I was asked if I was feeling okay. I told them that I wasn't, but as a stand in, my job mainly consisted of just sitting or standing all day which I assured I could still do just fine even in my weakened state.

She sent me home immediately and finally at this point I made a visit to see a doctor.

He took one look at me and my pulse rate and told me that I was a very brave man and he was going to give me 2 options. Did I want to take a cab to the hospital or did I want to have an ambulance take me there.

At that point I realized I was going down and opted for the ambulance ride just for the experience.

In the interest of time and of me getting to my Superbowl party on time I'm going to wrap this up.

Basically my stomach exploded and infection was leaking all over the place. The doctors were unable to operate beyond vacuuming up all the infection, sticking 3 drain tubes into me to remove more infection and bypassing my colon and giving me an ostomy bag to poop out of.

More story to come! Don't worry, I'm going to be okay I promise!

What I Hate Right Now #1

2010-10-23T00:49:00.003-04:00

As a person who mindlessly soaks up every bit of cultural minutia, I read a lot of articles. Specifically, I reed cnn.com every day and I just read probably the one millionth article written about the mobile phone wars. The bottom line of every article is always exactly the same - it sums up earnings for whichever companies it is talking about and then speculates about their future earnings.

Also, by the way, why are articles written every single week about what the top grossing movies are? Is it that obvious that the movie companies pay the newspapers to write about them?

How symbiotic is the relationship between writers and industries that make a ton of money like cell phone companies?

Also why is it so important that we (meaning me) who constantly keep up with whats going on are forced to be barraged with meaningless news and pointless rumors like this?

I can barely comprehend why news media outlets aren't running more coverage of the billions of dollars spent every day on the industrial war machine that is America.

Wow, and people are out of work and losing jobs and everyone is running around using the phrase "this economy" this and because of "this economy" that. Meanwhile the American public is so desperate for answers that they turn to these Tea Party Lunatics in a desperate bid for meaning out of this morass that they find themselves in.

Why they don't demand a dramatic decrease in military spending as a way to reduce the budget overrun that is pushing us farther and farther into debt and bringing the promise of a one world nation closer and closer all the time is beyond me.

I hate so many stupid articles that I read about idiots everywhere.

And I just watched a cnn video fawning over double amputee "victim" Aimee Mullins who is a top fashion model and a top athlete showing up for the shoot like she just came back from riding a horse with her tied back in a loose braid. She talks to Sanjay Gupta about how her whole life she was upset that people said she accomplished so much despite her disability and shes come to realize that she has accomplished so much because of her disability.

Also, just maybe part of the reason why she's such fodder for the media is because she's extremely hot and if she wasn't then she wouldn't be doing photo spreads and would be getting about as much attention as the worlds top wheelchair athletes.

Alright. I need to stop. I have to wake up to audition for the role of "Paul" in a Mormon movie about the New Testament.

I Hate NY#5 - I'm Not Coming to Your Event

2010-10-08T00:48:00.007-04:00

Everything in NY is based around events. People are always asking you to go to this event or that event. All the papers and magazines like TimeoutNY or AMNY or the Metro are advertising the latest cool thing that you should be going to tonight or tomorrow night because chances are you don't have a group of friends that just sits around and does random shit together like go to Starbucks or watch a movie.

Everyone here seems to think that's boring.

All you have to do is walk outside even and you'll see posters up advertising Mexican Wrestling and Tacos, or a HOT97 concert in the park, or a reading at Barnes and Noble by a popular author or comedian that you didn't even know was an author.

In fact, everyone you know in NY is dying to invite you to their latest event or thing that they are no doubt a part of.

If you don't know someone that doesn't want you to come to their comedy show of some sort, musical concert, poetry reading, kung fu class, or theater piece, then you are likely not even trying to meet anyone and are at home playing Left 4 Dead 2 multiplayer and trying to rack up achievements on your XBOX 360 leaderboard.

On any given Thursday night for instance, I have my pick of 3 different comedy shows that start at 9pm with or starring people i know in them.

For most of those people the routine of shitty job during the day practice practice practice perform perform perform at night is their entire life and the reason they have willingly put off any hopes of a family, steady income, and a yard.

I guess I have to applaud them and all their hard work and I hope that they one day get a regular part on a comedy central program or a gig on Broadway.

But I just hate going to events by myself.

Even at those shows where I know people, I'm just a willing audience member until about 1130 when its Miller time and I like to get up at 7 and do Kung Fu.

Events are how people connect here. (on the train) Hey do you know so and so? yeah she's in my improv class! Unless you agree to go said improv class or show it's see you later when its your stop.

Woman always shield themselves from strange men propositioning them, and here in NY, events are just one more layer of protection for them to hide their no doubt freeky side behind.

Woman in NY don't want to give a guy they just met randomly their number to meet them for coffee or drinks because there is a chance that it could go horribly wrong. The guy could be super boring, or not as attractive as was remembered, or keep pet fancy rats at home.

But meet a woman at an event where there are people that you may perhaps both know, and drinks will be involved, followed by cigarettes, then out to a diner with her "ingroup" for coffee, then followed maybe by her number, an invitation to add her on facebook, and an invite to their next event.

This is only the first step in the initiation, you should not possibly think that you have arrived at the circle of trust yet. Do not dare call this girl up during week and ask her to do something else because she has rehearsal that night and does not have time for you.

In fact you may have to go to several of these events whether you like it or not just to get an actual date or a night of drunken ramblings followed 5 hours later by "oh shit i have to go to work"

I recently sat next to a girl on the subway reading a Conan the Barbarian book by the original author Robert E Howard, and needless to say my nerd arousal button was peeked and a casual conversation was soon struck up about Conan which led to her working with Latex and the character Baroness from GIJOE and finally ...of course to the Star Trek improv group that she does lights for Start Trekkin.

Yes, I was asked if I was going to Comic Con this weekend and implicit in this question was the fact that her group was performing there. Sadly I have to go to a wedding this weekend or else I would be there taking pictures with Wookies no doubt.

It appears I have to wait till next Saturday August 16th to find out whether or not I have the chance to...go back to several more performances before I find out if I have a chance or not with the nerd girl of my dreams.

Clearly the second half of this column has been written from a man's perspective. If you are a woman reading this and trying to process how the so called comedy stylings depicted here represent you in any way, just try to ask yourself if you have ever invited me to any events.

Computer Virus

2010-09-28T18:54:00.003-04:00

As of this moment my computer is infected with a computer virus which I contracted last night in a rash of watching illegally streamed television shows like Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, The League, and Weeds. It was actually Weeds I was the most frustrated about, because there were only 8 links to the episode and they were all taken down which drove me to insane heights of looking for that episode and doing whatever it took to find out just what had happened to that crazy drug dealing family this week.

Fortunately there is an internet cafe/computer repair store on my block where i have been sitting patiently waiting since 4 o clock for my computer to be registered as clean of viruses.

In that time I've eaten 2 cup of noodles, paced around a lot, and made possible trades for my fantasy football team.

There is a girl sitting next to me that it is out of work and i cringed when i heard her begin a conversation this way "hi i used to work there"

Ive also discovered that i missed an email at 1 o clock which was a job offer for 4 people to give away gummi bears at Coney Island this Saturday.

That job is for sure taken. See what that episode of Weeds has cost me! Besides the 15 bucks and 2 hours of internet time and 2 cups of cup o noodle that is.

I can't say that I learned a lot from this experience. I probably won't be more careful because I haven't gotten a virus in many years and usually I take great pride in personally squelching them, but in this case this one got the better of me.

Perhaps after so many years on the pine my skills are beginning to atrophy.

Maybe I need to hand out more stupid postcards to tourists in Times Square. I'm sure that will make me feel better...

The American born Indian guy who works here supposedly 10 hours a day 7 days a week recommended I get Kaspersky anti-virus software.

I have never had an anti-virus program because I've never had a real problem I couldn't fix before, but then again most of the time I was at home where I had easy access to another computer which is greatly needed when trying to fix a broken computer.

Should I get the anti-virus software? Should I go home after my computer is fixed and watch that episode of Weeds anyway?

Stay tuned!

I Hate NY #4 Spicy Brown Mustard

2010-06-26T20:54:00.002-04:00

Today's topic may seem a little petty to a lot of you. Condiment choices may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people. Well it's not really a big deal until every time you want mustard you are handed that stupid bottle of Guldens Spicy Brown Mustard and all you want is regular ol yellow mustard.

Every time I bring this up to someone in New York they always say the same thing "What you don't like Spicy Brown Mustard?" I say "No. I like yellow mustard."

I just went to the Gulden's website and apparently it was invented at South Street Seaport, a notorious location for tourists, gawkers, and people with a lot of money and free time. It's no wonder that they like spicy brown mustard, they think its just what people use around here.

Ketchup and mustard are pretty much standard ingredients for pouring or slathering on a hot dog or a hamburger and you don't see New Yorkers using some special kind of Ketchup, NOOOO everyone here just uses plain old Hunt's and you don't see anyone complaining about that.

If you are reading this and you live in New York, ask yourself why it is that you use Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard, is it just because its what you've always reached for because it was your only choice?

New York City prides itself on its food and people continue to delude themselves by not thinking about their mustard options.

I would like to protest and bring packets of yellow mustard with me wherever I go and when I am offered a food item that requires mustard I could just reach for my packs and reject the Gulden's and say "no thank you I have my own mustard."

However, that would seem silly and reminds me too much of one of my half baked ideas of adulthood that involved taking condiment packets home and pouring them into my own condiment containers at home just to save money.

Later when I grew up I realized this was pointless and rejected the idea altogether.

I would like to call on all of my readers to not necessarily wholeheartedly reject Gulden's when it is offered, but instead to make a fuss to the establishment for not offering better choices in the mustard department.

Maybe one day I can live in a New York when yellow mustard is treated as the equal partner in the relationship with food that it deserves to be.

I Hate NY #3 - Mailboxes

2010-05-02T09:51:00.006-04:00

In other parts of the world there are things we take for granted, like running water, toilets, and mailboxes. In New York we take none of those things for granted, and just pray to God that the first 2 things work.

New York City does not have mailboxes. There are mail slots, mail chutes, male nurses, and drop boxes. We even get our mail underneath the door sometimes but no actual mailboxes.

In a real mailbox you are able to send and receive mail, including small packages. In New York, you cannot actually send out mail through your mail delivery system, whatever you have. Mail carriers will not pick up mail from your location. It's a fact. Why is this? Probably because New Yorkers steal anything that is not nailed down.

To mail something you have to find a freestanding localized blue or green mailbox. It doesn't matter how inconvenient it is to find it on your daily commute to your subway stop, that's the only way to do it. If you are in a hurry in the morning and don't leave yourself enough time to get to your mailbox, you're stuck all day long with stamped mail - probably Netflix movies.

I'll admit, not being able to mail things is only a minor inconvenience, albeit one of a thousand, of living in New York. The big issue with not having mailboxes is receiving packages. Nearly anything you order from Amazon or Target or thousands of other places have to be signed for upon delivery. They can't just be left on your front porch or nearby because it can't be verified that you received it. If you are never home because you work a lot, or you're an intravenous drug user passed out on the couch, you won't hear the doorbell ring. You will be left with an annoying yellow sticker on your door advising you that UPS, USPS, or Fedex will be attempting to deliver your mail tomorrow. They do this 2 more times and then return the package to their local delivery station.

If it's the post office, then you have to take your yellow slip and wait in a 30 minute line behind immigrants who can't speak English haggling with the one person waiting behind the counter to help you. The one post office worker at his post may spend what seems like hours looking for boxes behind the counter, or weighing things while you look at your watch nervously hoping you didn't leave the oven running or your door wide open.

If you can't get to your post office during normal business hours, then you are in serious trouble and may never see your mail.

If you missed a delivery from Fed Ex or UPS then get ready to take a long trip to the middle of nowhere Brooklyn, or the Bronx and you better have 2 forms of id including a letter that verifies your address. Yes, those are the same things you need to get a drivers license from the DMV.

Also, you may have to wait for hours for the trucks to arrive back from delivering other people's packages.

But that's okay, you live in New York, it's not like you don't have a thousand other things to do than wait around all day for that very important package you need for work the next morning at 8 am.

I Hate NY #2 - Parking

2010-04-21T21:23:00.005-04:00

It is impossible to find parking in New York. In the time it takes you to read this sentence someone has already taken the first open parking spot you saw, and a guy in an acura has pulled up behind him to ask if he is leaving and how soon. The second open spot you saw has a fire hydrant in front of it that is obscured by giant bags of trash which are being picked through by a homeless man who is looking to add to the worlds largest collection of aluminum cans being carried around at any one time by one person.

But yet, some people persist in attempting to park their car in New York. Very often they will drive around for up to an hour in an 8 block radius from their destination thinking that eventually a spot will open up. Yes, eventually if you drive around in New York enough, a parking spot may open up. You may also be struck by lightning while fishing. The odds are about the same.

Parking signs in New York are not your friend. They are often mislabeled, confusing, or defaced so as to be illegible. It doesn't matter if you can't read them, or that they are written in Greek. You are still still responsible for whatever the sign says. Because of this, New Yorkers automatically mistrust all open parking spots and whenever they have to be somewhere for less than an hour they just double park.

New Yorkers are constantly surprised when they are ticketed.

"HOLY F-N S--T! I just went inside for 2 minutes to pay a phone bill and I come out and they're towing my car!" is a typical story told by countless put upon New Yorkers to anyone within earshot who will listen to them.

Non residents are not advised to attempt parking here for any reason unless you are prepared to willingly give up your sanity.

Parked cars are considered a danger to motorists on the road and so they often respond the only way they know how - by scraping or running into parked vehicles and then quickly driving off.

I recently witnessed a taxi pull up in front of another taxi to drop off a passenger. The passenger opened the door to get out and struck the other taxis tail light. The taxi driver who's cab was hit jumped out of the car and started screaming in Iranian or whatever his native language was about who's going to pay for this and give me your number and that sort of thing. The offending taxi driver (who hadn't even got out of the car) responded calmly by saying he was going to write his info down and give it to him, and then he pulled the passenger back inside and drove off into the night leaving the other guy to helplessly give chase and scream things at him.

In New York, signs are posted on every block about street sweeping rules which tell you (for instance) that you cannot park on this side of the street on Tuesday or Thursday between 10am and 12pm in order for giant disgusting street sweeping trucks come by to clean the streets. The people who live on these streets apparently never leave and so are able to move their cars when the street sweepers come and then move back at about 11:40am. Then they sit in their cars for about 10 minutes to see if any cops come by then go back inside to look out for any meddling kids who are trying to stop whatever it is that they were trying to get away with.

Unless you are prepared to do nothing but babysit your car all day on the street, the only real solution to parking is to pay hundreds of dollars to a parking garage every month, and then laugh at everyone because of your big bankroll.

I parked my car for a year in New York, before crashing it in New Jersey at 6 in the morning on the way to a music video shoot for Aerosmith, and I've been a lot happier ever since.

I Hate NY #1

2010-04-15T23:09:00.006-04:00

# 1 Everyone in New York is angry all the time

There are 10 million people living in New York City and thousands who visit every day from all parts of the world. The people who visit are happy and wander around aimlessly pointing up at the sky with their cameras dangling around their necks amazed at all the sights and wonders that await them around every corner. The people who live here just wish they and everyone else would get the hell out of the way so they can get to where they are going.

Living in New York makes people angry. It takes forever to get to anywhere, everyone is always in your way, homeless people are begging you for money, and everything costs too much.

Its hard to walk down a street in New York during the day and not see someone randomly curse someone out on the phone. It often goes something like this:

"Yo I told you to get me my f--n money. I'm f--n serious. Jesus I'm sick of this sh--. What do you mean you can't? You said it would be here today! F--k"

And that guy was probably just talking to his mom too who he still lives with.

I moved to New York almost five years ago, and one of my earliest memories is of crossing a street in Times Square and a car cut this guy off to my left. Right as we reached the other sidewalk he turned and said "Thanks a lot lady. You F--n B--ch!

I was at dinner tonight with some friends and a casual conversation was struck up about how everyone wished that people would just get the f--k out of their way sometimes. Naturally this seemed totally normal and this same conversation was probably had hundreds of times that night by other people all across the city. It's because we all have a mutual understanding and trust. We know that New York makes you hate everyone. This is a statement of fact. We poke fun of this in our daily conversations because its a way to relate to other people.

In New York we think everyone is out to get us, and its probably because they are. Stories cram up the local papers about slumlords who let apartment buildings crumble down on top of their tenants and never raise a finger to help unless the threat of a lawsuit is raised. It's almost impossible to rent an apartment in New York without paying a realtor an entire months rent up front and we think it's normal and it is, because this is New York.

Everything in New York that people are looking for, be it work in fashion or entertainment, housing or other jobs, are full of people that are waiting to fleece you or scam you, or otherwise prey upon you in some way to take your money. They do this because they know that in New York a sucker is not born every minute, he is born every second and just got off the bus at Port Authority.

If you're not angry right now, then you don't live here.

Back to Blogging?

2010-03-10T06:57:00.004-05:00

I'm blogging this morning because I have some time. I have some time because I slept probably about 14 hours out of the last 16 hours or so. I slept so many hours because I was super tired. I was super tired from working at 4:30 in the morning at JFK airport so frequently where i promote wi-fi in the sky!

Gogo Inflight internet is the name of the service. I've been working this promotion since September 2009. I could complain but seriously there's no point. It got me the new apartment that I'm sitting in right now which I'm extremely grateful for. The Lord has taught me that you need to be grateful for everything including the noise upstairs which seems to come from neighbors of Spanish speaking descent who like to watch tv when I am in bed at about 8 or 9 o clock.

I just remember back to the times a few years ago when I was totally broke (unlike now hahhahahahah) and walking around Manhattan for hours at a time looking for work and having nothing to show for it.

So here I am today living in a small 1 bedroom in Astoria, NY where I just spent all the money that I have saved up from the best job I've ever had for the past 6 months.

Yeah, it's going to make it hard to do something about those credit card bills. Well, not like that mountain is going to moved anytime soon. OKAY LORD! Sorry, it doesn't appear likely that that particular mountain is going to be moved anytime soon. But, I did just get a new great commercial agent and all it would take is 1 national tv commercial and I could wipe the slate clean.

Or a random phone call would do it, like the one I got last night where I was informed that they would like to pay me 400 dollars to dress up like a giant nose for a few hours for a publicity stunt.

Now if I just got a phone call like that a few dozen more times in the next few months I could really start to steamroll my mountain of credit card debt.

Not joking about that folks, current credit card debt is just a shade over 20 grand.

Did I rob a bank and I'm now paying for it? How did it get so high? The average reader unfamiliar with all my exploits might wonder. Well, the answer is simple - New York City robbed me of several years of my life and made me pay for it on my credit cards.

So now I'm making my own money and trying to figure out where to put everything in my new apartment. Will my landlord let me hang shelves on the wooden paneling that they call walls in my place?

Will anyone come over for the housewarming party that I'm having?

It's on Saturday the 20th of March and you can pretty much come over anytime you want. If you want to come over that day and hang out and wake me up at 6 in the morning. That's cool too. I haven't had anyone over yet except for past roommates who were checking the place out, and or helping me move.

I live at 2452 Crescent Street in Astoria, NY right off the N,W yellow train line about 25 minutes from Times Square.

I'm sure I've left something out in my first post back in a million years but now I can't think of a thing.

(oh wait I did just think of something) If you have excess money and you want to help me out. You can send a donation to my email address joshuadudley@gmail.com through paypal. I promise I will never shill like this again, at least not for a while. I promise your donation will be tax deductible.

And now of course I remembered something else. I'm in a video contest with Progressive Insurance where the winner gets to be in a commercial with their spokesperson Flo.

You can check it out here The first round of the contest ends March 21st and then after that I will be trying to get people to watch the video once per day assuming that I get to the second round which is starting to look likely.

Okay that's all for me. I'm going to start my day. Thanks for reading.

It feels pretty good to be back.

Is It Really Fair to Post Videos on my old blogs?

2010-02-03T05:43:00.004-05:00

http://www.helpflo.com/video_detail/?contentid=9223371833558028172

Seriously I just don't know if its fair posting videos on my old blog to get voted on for progressive insurance

The East Village Disaster Part 1

2009-10-05T02:28:00.000-04:00

By the time I met James, I had lived in Brooklyn for 6 months, and had recently discovered the joys of NYC couch surfing. This was because my roommate had apparently not paid the rent to the landlord during my entire stay, causing us both to be evicted with 3 days notice.

During this exciting time I was sleeping on various couches and trying to avoid leaving my toothbrush in someone else’s bathroom where it could be contaminated. I also experienced the joy of waking up one morning to discover that a concrete block had been thrown through my car window in the middle of the night because it was parked in Harlem and loaded down with all my worldly possessions.

For some reason, I had not realized just how bad an idea it really was to leave a car packed full to the windows, parked in a cramped urban area known throughout the world for crime. Who knew that cable boxes were such a hot commodity?

After paying to get my window replaced, I quickly found another place to hunker down and avoid temporary homelessness. Thank you Craig’s list. It was my intention while at this new location to either find some work or a stable place to live without a roommate who would scream at his mother on the phone at 6 in the morning about how she didn’t pick him up on time in second grade.

The next place was located in beautiful Carol Gardens (Brooklyn), in the sitting room of an old Jewish man who smoked Winston Salem cigarettes and had a bathroom loaded with travel size toiletries. I just can’t get enough of pocket sized mouthwash.

He was a helpful chap, quickly accepting my payment for what I could have sworn was 8 days in the ad, and then giving me 5. Also, he let me keep my mattress, which had been strapped to the top of my car just waiting for some homeless bum to sleep on it, in his basement, where it couldn’t be harmed except by dust that may have been there since the Civil War.

The only real problem with this arrangement, as I quickly discovered, was the lack of an internet connection for my computer which rendered me unable to use the location for my secondary purpose of finding a job and a more permanent place to sleep. Not to be deterred, I ventured out every day to the exciting world of my local public library where I was able to get 45 minutes of internet access a day for free. This turned out to be just enough time to not quite get anything done, and stress out about the person waiting to use the computer after me.

At the end of the five days I was taking all my things from the apartment out to my car at 7 in the morning with no one else in sight when I made the common NYC error of leaving something unprotected for longer than five seconds. I put a suitcase containing all my pants (fancy and otherwise) right next to my car on the sidewalk, and then went back inside to grab the last bag. This took me all of about 25 seconds, which was just long enough for a garbage truck to come by with men picking up the garbage who must have thrown my suitcase away. No duh, obviously a nice suitcase on a sidewalk is worthy of the trash heap. That’s just what I was thinking. When questioned about my missing suitcase, the trash men naturally had no recollection of it.

It was right around this time that James made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

Just before my eviction, I met James at a Christian-based artists’ group. We quickly became fast friends due in no small part to our shared love of using large words when small ones will do, as well as overreacting to minor inconveniences.

I started going to church services with him at a little place on Avenue A in the East Village. They specialized in reaching out to the urban community in the neighborhood, which can essentially be translated as “people who don’t work a lot”. The pastor had published a book about his experiences with the church, and the pictures on the inside as well as the back cover basically said, “I’m a white guy trying to be cool with the homies.”

After church we would often go out to eat at a local Greek Diner in the neighborhood that was usually full of older people. I’ve always been a fan of places where older people eat, based on the theory that they’ve been eating longer than we have and know what good food is. While we were there, we would have conversations over hamburgers and fries that at times was a little too stimulating for only having known the guy a short while. Questions posed to me during this time sometimes came out like this one, “So how is your relationship with your father?”

But I was grateful to have a friend at the time – okay any friend – and I wasn’t going to let the fact that he seemed a little weird stop me from clinging to any form of a social life.

I spent the day with him after one of those lunches and went to Queens to see his apartment. He shared it with a girl, whom he had confessed to me in one of those awkward conversations between bites of hamburger; that he was having feelings of lust over. Right after we got there, and I met the lust object in question, he wasted no time in bringing me into his shoe box size room, picking up his guitar and asking if he could play a song for me that he had just written. “I was trying to decide if my life was a tragedy or a comedy”, he said, “but I decided that thanks to Jesus, my life is a comedy!”

As I sat on his increasingly small seeming bed, I politely refused his offer of a serenade and wondered if my new friend was gay. I remembered a talk I had, before I moved to New York, with my southern born and bred father, where he expressed his fear of me falling into homosexuality. I told him that I hadn’t exactly fallen into heterosexuality yet either, but I don’t think he quite understood the joke, and it was never brought up again.

James was quite upset by my rejection of his singing in close quarters, and I gotta say that it darn near ruined his day. It didn’t do wonders for mine either since I had to hear about it over and over again, making me wonder if I could continue to be friends with a guy that I had to treat like a girl.

It wasn’t long after this that I was invited to a Bible study that he was hosting at his friend’s apartment in the East Village, located just a few blocks from the church and the restaurant. It was a very small one bedroom with just enough room in the den for 5 people to sit around and be comfortable as long as you didn’t move too much. There was also a small room to the side that was loaded down with Grateful Dead memorabilia and CDs of questionable taste. I never could trust people that really liked INXS.

These things would usually begin with James reading a passage of scripture and then the five or six of us that were there would talk about it as a group. The arrangement was going quite well until we were interrupted by Scott, the lease holder of the apartment, who would loudly announce his objection to Scripture because of some internal debate he was having over Old Testament commandments to the Jews, such as slavery or eating most meats. Then, he would go outside to smoke a cigarette then not come back up until we were done. By the time he poked his head back in the door, it was all over except for the prayin’.

It was near the end of my Carroll Gardens tenure that James approached me with the idea of moving in together.

“Josh” he told me. “You’ve been evicted, and I just got kicked out of my place too because I got involved with the girl (which is how he referred to his roommate at the time), and it didn’t go well and I don’t really wanna talk about it right now.”

“But” he continued, “Scott is moving back to Oklahoma. We’re going to take over the payments on his lease. He’s rented a moving van, and Jonathan and I are going to ride out there and see him home and help him get settled.”

Jonathan was another poor soul who had also been ensnared by James in this soon to be debacle. I never found out what his situation was but it must have been pretty bad to want to get in on this deal.

“It’s a great location” he said going in for the hard sell. “I know it will be a little crowded but I really think that we can make this work.”

At this point my quality control sensors for where would be a good place to settle were pretty low by having bunked down in 3 places in 2 weeks with everything I own parked in a car outside. This left me with the nagging feeling that I would wake up one morning and find that my car was simply not there. In other words I was desperate to find somewhere to park my stuff that wasn’t outside, naked to the world. But his offer seemed a little too good to be true. Why would someone willingly give up an apartment in the heart of Manhattan within walking distance of nearly everything you could want? As it turned out, one of the reasons that someone would willingly give it all up would be that he was a coke fiend and he had likely run out of money. I guess it is hard to hold down a job when you’re all stuffed up with nose candy.

The next day I came over to the apartment to help pack, and found the whole place nearly empty except for a huge amount of cardboard boxes which were being sealed up with masking tape. There was a bustle of activity as people were coming in and out of the door carrying things, and James was giving directions constantly: “Jonathan grab this”, or “Scott pick that up.” Apparently, everyone was eager to get started on this whole illegal lease jumping business.

In about an hour we had the rental truck full, and with the onset of evening, had a chance to sit down on the front steps outside and enjoy the area that we were soon going to be living in. All different types of people with colorful scarves, spiked collars, and band shirts going to and from clubs and bars and movies and poetry readings would walk right past us as we just sat there soaking it all in. It was pretty cool.

Everything seemed to be happening there at once. The East Village is a very eclectic artist’s hangout filled with hipsters with tattoos and overpriced sushi bars. It’s exactly the kind of place you’d want to live, if you enjoy art and the making of it and bad hangovers. Unfortunately the whole area has been priced out now and seems to be the near exclusive domain of trust fund babies going to film school.

And that was where I was going to be living, and it was just starting to sink in.
For the first time in a while, I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. It actually seemed like things were working out. Out on the steps, Me, James, and Jonathan ate sandwiches from Quiznos, and talked and laughed and shared our optimism for the future until it started to get dark. Then we realized that it was time for them to begin the really long drive to Oklahoma.

James handed me a set of keys and said I would have the apartment to myself for a couple of days till they got back. He also reminded me that our water wasn’t working so I would have to go to the empty apartment directly above ours to use the shower and sink facilities. It seemed like a strange setup, but after what I had been through it was so not inconvenient seeming at all. I mean what’s the big deal; you just go upstairs every time you want to wash the dishes, or take a shower, or brush your teeth. In other words, it was totally normal.

You Know What I don't think?

2008-05-07T23:37:00.001-04:00

I don't think this is all too much to ask for. A lot of other people have travelled this same road before with varying degrees of resistance. Maybe they were better looking or luckier or smarter than me or knew the right places to go.

But they did it. I'm sure it was hard for them. I know Harrison Ford spent 13 years as a carpenter before he got anywhere. I haven't even been here 2. Of course I did spend one summer as a carpenter. Man I was terrible at that.

So. I say my prayers. I take my vitamins. I eat my Wheaties. And every day I just duck my head under and plow straight on into the maoelstrem that is living in New York City on a wing and a prayer.

Cuz it's hard. It's damn hard. I need all the help and support and love I can get. Boy this thing sure isn't getting any easier. I feel like I'm pushing a boulder uphill.
But God told us to speak to that mountain and tell it to move out of the way. Maybe my voice is a little timid right now when talking to the boulder. I guess I've been a little polite to it. Perhaps I'm giving it more respect than it deserves.

You know when I look at those famous people on tv and the ones that aren't quite so famous, I come to realize that they're just people like you and me. People that got up and tried hard every day and didn't give up. They didn't give up.

They didn't give up.

I bet that mountain wasn't scared of them either.

God's got the whole world in his hands folks. We're all just a little piece of it in there. We've got to hold fast to what we believe in. What we hope for. What we dream.

We've got to believe in something. Belief in nothing is the quickest way to defeat to letting that boulder just roll over top of you and kill you deader than anything you can imagine.

But we're not the ones pushing it. God is. And he's got big hands.

So I'm asking everybody to pray for me. Not every day. I know that's too much to ask. I forget sometimes myself. But just you know, when you think about me.

I don't want to end up like this:

Rocket

hurtling….

soaring….

way off in space

leaving it all behind,

but just for a while,

emptiness abounds

leaving behind the human race

useless fragments of cargo entow

as it drops - released

to the earth far below

All normal thoughts and worries,

gone for a while.

A solitary passenger

A solitary smile.

DESTINATION - UNKNOWN

Then reality returns…

And all that remains,

is a burnt-out old man

in the blackened and charred husk

of a rocket that once was…

his dream.

Currently watching: The Astronaut Farmer

Is There Life on Mars?

2008-05-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

So I just finished watching the Life Aquatic tonight.

It's one of my favorite movies. It's about a tremendous failure who sets off on a mission of revenge to kill a jaguar shark who may or may not exist and to gain the love of Ned who may be his son. Also he's a bit of a pompous ass and he may have no idea what he's doing.

It's the kind of movie that makes me sit back and reflect on my time here in New York. You know like: what does it all mean? Does it mean anything? Does any of this matter? Was this all just a cosmic mistake? Did I get my wires crossed? I mean am I really getting anywhere around here? Sometimes I just don't know.

I just set off on one adventure after the other chasing down the impossible dream and trying to lasso it in and ride to the shore. Maybe bring along a girl with me, but I always scare them off. I tend to stare I think. Probably because I'm scared. Except in the movies whatever character does that finds some sort of soul mate that understands him.

I sort of get it when Bill Murray says, "I just want to be remembered" He's lost confused, he's off his bearings. He lost his son and his best friend. Is it all worth it?

But what have I lost? I don't know. Nothing much really. I never really had much of anything. Just my charm and impeccable sense of humor which usually tends to rub people the wrong way. I don't even want to tell you how I scared this girl in Starbucks today trying to make her laugh. It didn't go over well.

In the end I guess. I just want things to turn out all right like some kind of fairy tale or happy movie and have me driving off into the sunset laughing with some upbeat music like the Rolling Stones playing in the background.

Maybe that'll never happen. Maybe that doesn't happen for anybody.

Maybe we just get glimpses of it. Come to think of it I have ridden off into the sunset laughing a lot of times with Pearl Jam playing so maybe that counts for something. I hope I finish this book. I hope people get my humour. I know I think its the greatest. My old stuff still makes me laugh after all these years.

I had her once and I lost her. I was too young and stupid to realize what I had. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out. At least that's what everyone says to make me feel better. I know everyone hates this "feelings" dribble that I write about sometimes.

But hey.

This is an adventure.

What It's All About

2008-04-29T19:46:00.000-04:00

Continuing my long series of stories and essays that were formerly part of other works of mine that were unfinished, here is what used to be the first chapter of a book I was working on called "What It's All About". Hopefully you can see how this could easily be the intro to my new book.

What It's All About

This book is about words. Lots of them. There's no getting around it. There are quite simply a lot of words in a book. That is what separates a book from a pamphlet. Okay, a pamphlet usually has a coupon on the back to tell you how to join a fantastic mailing list for only five dollars a month, but you get the idea. Why did I write this book you ask? Well, if you looked closely at the title then you may have gathered that I am about to tell you what it's all about. Many people have made clever attempts at this over the years by telling you what they think it's all about or what it is or how to get there. But this book simply cuts to the chase by giving you the inside information that I have compiled over the years by simply observing people, writing what I see down, then losing the paper I wrote those things on, and hazily trying to remember them. By utilizing these techniques, you too can figure out what it's all about, but since you have already started to read this book, maybe you should just go ahead and finish it instead of trying to figure it all out for yourself. At least that's what I'd recommend.

In actual fact there really is no one unifying "it" that it's all about. For different people, and different animals it is about many different things. The popular theory is that it's all about happiness. This of course is a very vague theory and doesn't really mean much except to lump people into the same category as animals. Of course everyone wants to be happy but that's not what it's about. Here are a few examples to show you what I mean.

For a murderer to be happy he has to kill people. This makes him happy, well at least for a while until the whole "killing and wearing he skin of his victims as a mask" high has worn off. For an accountant to be happy, he simply has to finish out his horrible drudge of a day, type up a few more numbers and go home. Blockbuster Video advertises that if they have the movie that you want to rent on their shelves that you'll "go home happy". For a raccoon to be happy he's got to knock over your garbage can and start munching on a week old banana peel. You see how these things can't all work together at once? If the murderer kills the prospective video renter, then there would only be one person happy out of the two. If the accountant goes home from crunching numbers and finds his garbage can knocked over again that just might ruin the short amount of happiness he found in his five-minute drive home while blasting Kool and the Gang. Even people who revel in not being happy are, perversely enough, happy in not being happy. That's a pretty scary thought isn't it? It's almost as scary as the thought that Titanic 3 might be all checked out at Blockbuster Video.

- Author's note - The author has accounted for sequels and future humor long after the initial publication date with that last joke. hint - it was the one about Titanic.

If you haven't figured out exactly what it's all about yet, then keep reading, as the odds of more typed up words appearing on the lines after this one are incredibly good. But here it is, the defining statement of the opening monologue that you have no doubt been breathlessly waiting to read - what it's all about means many different things for many different people, so this book won't attempt to define one specific thing. Instead, the book will most likely be composed of many random thoughts and ideas, which in some bizarre fashion may account for what's all about at any given time. Did that make sense to you? It may not have. But, later you may find that it may in fact just be what it's all about.

Josh on Banking

2008-03-18T13:16:00.001-04:00

This is an old story that I'm putting in my new collection of stories for my new book called "Why I Hate you and Other Stories" yes that is mean to be taken with a wink and a nod. Anyway I love this essay and I hope you all do too.

I try to be honest with my readers, and usually I succeed. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I just said, and therefore, no easy way to string together a well thought out and funny sentence that would lead in easily from the first one. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about banking.

Most of you readers out there work and have a job, and that whole thing. So you’ve probably discovered that you tend to have more money than you can spend at one time, and the government doesn’t make it any easier by making it hard to get any bills over a twenty. So, unless you want to have your wallet stuffed with 20-dollar bills, or cram your mattress full of money and hope you never have a fire, you’ll have noticed that you need to put your money in a place where you can store it safely. Fortunately for you, such a place has already been invented and is waiting to store your money and charge you for it. It is called a bank.

For those of you who don’t know, let me explain the concept of banks – basically they take your money and pool it together with all the other people’s money that they have collected who’ve the same idea as you and then they lend it out to people who didn’t have the same idea as you when they were working. So basically these people are broke, and so instead of needing somewhere to put their money, they need somewhere to borrow money from, the idea being that theoretically sometime in the future they can invest this money that they are borrowing, and with a good rate of interest be able to pay off the acruity that they have earned through annual annuity interest payments to the bank at a rate of 17.234_ percent (thereabouts) and one day be able to pay slightly less money to the bank for actually holding money for them that they own. Oh yeah, and banks usually have lollipops for you suckers to eat. In addition banks often charge you money for holding your money through a process called “charging fees through the nose for every little tidbit and iota”. This is a highly technical term and I don’t recommend that you ask your local branch manager about it, especially about that nose part.

I know what you’re saying, “Josh you say, if the banks charge me money for holding my money then why don’t I just take my money out and put my money somewhere else that cares about my money, like a money station, or some sort of money depository?” Unfortunately I have to tell you gentle readers about a truth so deadly that I have to highlight it in all caps: WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T EVER LEAVE YOUR BANK EVER UPON PENALTY OF DEATH, OR HIGH INTEREST RATES WILL BEFALL YOU!

Honestly, if you notice that you are paying like 20 bucks a month at your bank for God knows what reason, and the bank next door offers you no fees and 50 dollars just for the privilege of holding onto your money for 3 months, what do you think you would do? Exactly, and so that’s what I tried to do, and unfortunately I calmly explained all this to my branch manager. This was my big mistake, and in fact I’ll quote the beginning of our conversation.

Me: I’m thinking about leaving your bank because of the fees you’ve been charging me, to go to the bank next door where they will charge me no fees and give me 50 dollars.

Branch Manager: I think you’re making a big mistake.

After that he tried to con me into staying at his bank for about fifteen minutes, all the while patiently explaining to me that the employees and the owners of the bank next door were all scum and would offer me poor service compared to his high quality bank, and how they would end up charging me before long. After that I politely pointed out that his bank was already charging me, and he explained to me that it was my fault for not getting it “straightened out” earlier. Then he told me that he was going to be “very flat footed with me” and went on to explain to me how even if he didn’t work at the bank that he was working at, there was no way that he would do his banking anywhere else except for (coincidentally) in the very bank that we were sitting in.

Later, I looked up the word flat-footed on dictionary.com and discovered that it meant

Of or afflicted with flatfoot.

Steady on the feet.
Informal. Without reservation; forthright: a flat-footed refusal.

Not knowing a great deal about this bank manager, I am unsure whether or not he has flatfeet (but he was definitely starting to feel like a heel), and not having challenged him to a leaning contest, I am unsure if he is steady on his feet or not, so I can only assume that he meant he was going to be informal with me. Honestly, I’m very glad he told me, because I don’t think I would have been prepared for it otherwise.

It was at this point that I began to feel like a very evil man. I told him this and he just laughed and said, “a lot of people feel that way, but don’t worry, I’ll check into getting rid of those fees for you.”

The conversation was obviously going nowhere at a particularly blinding rate of speed until he did something that bank managers just don’t like to do – he made an effort to help by looking up banking plans on the internet. For a minute he almost fooled me into thinking he could get me free checking with a student plan, but it turned out that I was too old to fit their corporate definition of a student. After a long moments pause, while giving me a sad face akin to a fat kid staring at an empty vending machine, he collected himself and said, “I’ll begin closing out your account for you.” Then he proceeded to do just what I had tried to avoid doing when I entered the bank - he told the bank tellers up front that I was leaving their wonderful bank and their free lollipops behind. Naturally they all turned and gave me a look like they just found out that I shot their daughter’s cat. Not having a bag to hide under, I twiddled my thumbs and looked at the bank manager’s desk to see if I could find out any secret bank secrets. Unfortunately I did not, but I made out with a really cool pencil.

Eventually the manager returned from his dreadful ordeal up front and returned with some forms for me to sign. As he told me where to sign, all color was lost from his voice – this man no longer acted like he wanted to be friends with me, or that he was remotely interested in anything else I had to say. He looked crushed. He looked like I had just personally ended the Jerry’s Kids foundation. He looked like I had told the March of Dimes to “cut out all that racket”, and take their marching somewhere else.

I was feeling very low indeed when he handed me a slip and told me to take it up front and get the money from my account. As I walked up to the front of the bank, I thought for a minute about how much I was going to miss seeing those bank tellers every week. No longer would they be able to ask me about how things were going. No longer would I be able to tell them that things were fine and that they should visit my website. No longer would they graciously accept my card and conveniently forget to visit my site. No, from now on it was strictly business; the thrill was truly gone.

Me: I’d like to get my money please

All Three Bank Tellers in Unison: I think you’re making a big mistake.

Bank Teller #1: Those people next door, they’re bad news.

Bank Teller #2: Why are you leaving us Josh?

Bank Teller #3: What did we ever do to you?

Bank Teller #1: Seriously I mean.

After signing for my money, I immediately looked around for the nearest paper bag to hide my head in shame in, and then in a blatant show of defiance I took one last lollipop from the jar.

Me: I think I’ll have the butterscotch today ladies.

Their icy cold stares could have melted butter.

Later that month, I had to drive there to drop off a car payment, and I wore sunglasses at the drive-in to disguise myself, but the checkout girl still said with a sigh, “Here’s your receipt JOSHUA.” It felt like that Seinfeld episode where Jerry leaves his old barber he’s been going to for twenty years, then comes back a few weeks later. “So you wanna get your hair cut now do ya?”

Dang, that feels like the ending of this episode and I hate to end on a quote from Seinfeld. So, in conclusion, now I do my banking through the ATM machine at my new bank, and I would kill for a lollipop right about now.

Why I Hate You and Other Stories or I May have a nearly finished book on my hands.

2008-03-05T00:56:00.001-05:00

I think I'm a lot closer to having a completed book than I thought.

I've been going back to a writers group lately, in some small part because of a girl there I have a crush on and am hoping to impress, and in doing so rediscovered how some of my earlier writing fits into the larger theme that i've been working on for years.

The new book that I've been slowly writing stories for I've intended to be titled "Why I Hate You and Other Stories" I had originally intended it all to be written in the style of a letter that described great annoyance to another person or thing but couldn't be expressed verbally.

I realize that this forced attempt at style was really just a copy of the popular literary zine McSweeneys. There are many writers on there that write stories in a similar fashion to that.

Okay. let me get to my point. I guess I got a little carried away.

So last week at my writers group I read one of my older pieces from my very old website joshdudley.tripod.com which houses all of my older works still in existence, circa 1997 or so till about 2003.

The piece was intended to be a travelogue about my trip to New Orleans but ended up being about how much I hate airports.

When I read this piece to the group, I had them on the edge of their seats. Literally nearly every person in the room laughed at almost every single paragraph. They were enthralled and I think just about everyone came up to me afterwards expressing admiration for it and the way I read it in my deadpan voice which some of you may be familiar with.

I was so delighted with the reaction to this older story that I realized that it actually did fit in stylistically with the new works I was writing, and that the overall theme of my modern writing since high school has been mostly about my deep and abysmall hatred and annoyance with nearly everything.

Basically since 1997 or so I have tried to write several different books, but stopped on each one after getting like 30 or so pages in because I lost the inspiration for it, ie didn't have a girl, or an audience to read it to.

Now that I do. I realized that a lot of my old writing is still fresh and really good. I went back and read some it tonight and found myself just enjoying it.

With the 3 uncompleted books I had previously attempted to write, plus material from my old website thats like almost 100 pages of material plus the stories for the book that I have already been working on.

A lot of it needs some editing due to my earlier fascination with long run-on sentences which forced the reader to adapt to my point of view (or so I thought at the time). But I really think I can make it all work and wow. if it does work that puts me up to like almost 150 pages of material.

Seriously is this going to work? I just think it might and after I dust some of them off, I will probably periodically be putting them on here as well.

I Just Wanna Be With You

2008-02-29T02:05:00.001-05:00

I just wrote this a little bit ago. It's sorta sad and sweet. It'd be a nice song if I had some accompaniment. Oh well. I hope you like it if you're reading it. whoever you are. It's kind of how I feel sometimes about looking for love and never really knowing where it is or how to find it. I guess I just feel lost a lot of the time.

I Just Wanna Be With You

Don't mind me ill just lay here on the ground

Don't mind me I just wanna be around

I wanna know what you're doing

And I wanna do it too

I kinda think I like you

And I hope you like me too

I'll pretend to be important

I'll imagine I'm so great

I'll wait for you forever

Even if I have to stay up late

I just wanna be with you

Maybe I'll hideaway in a great big bungalow

Maybe one day I'll find out what it is they do below

I'll be under the ocean

I'll be near the sea

I'll be someplace far away

Where they'll never think of me

But I just can't run hard enough

To get away from you

I just wanna be with you

I'll take a job at the candy store

Scooping ice cream pops

I'll make the greatest magic show

And I'll pull out all the stops

I'll be the hardest worker

I'll go until I drop

How can I ever forget about you

Because you never stop

I just wanna be with you

When you talk to me it tickles

Your smile ties me in knots

Even though you're not here right now

I miss you lots and lots

I'd buy lots of things for you

Everything you want

Just please don't run away

Don't go away from me

Everything I have and more

I offer you my heart

I just wanna be with you

Adam Sandler, Can I Please Be in Your Movie?

2008-02-19T00:51:00.001-05:00

just wrapped up the first night of my play "Saturday with the Georges" on Saturday night where I starred as George Bush. We brought the house down. We had a lot of laughs, and so many people told me afterwards how much they enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, none of those people were people that I know. So I ask you. What is wrong with you people?

It was part of a competition at the Strawberry Festival for one acts, and we got to the semi-finals which means we'll be doing it again on Tuesday and Wednesday.

therianttheatre.com 20 tickets 314 w 54th street manhattan. our first video can be viewed on their website (at least its supposed to be up now. it should be up tonight or tommorrow hopefully)

Also I had a meeting the other week with a real agent in New York who wants to use me because someone in her office saw my last play and she said I was good. Wow.

I have to get new headshots though. And I'm so broke that I'll be putting it on credit. ick. Oh well I'm thinking of it as an investment in my career which I hope isn't short lived. Thanks for all the prayers everyone.

Also I'm determined to write a new story every single week in order to finish a book. So here is my new story, it's called Can You Please Put Me in Your Movies?

Dear Adam Sandler:

I have just watched your film "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." It was awful. I have also seen "Click", "50 First Dates", "Big Daddy", "Little Nicky", "Happy Gilmore", "Mr. Deeds", "Billy Madison", "Happy Gilmore", and of course "The Waterboy".

They were of course also awful as well. However, each of these films are basically big dumb goofy fun with greatly varying amounts of dumbness, goofiness, or fun in each one, fart jokes notwithstanding.

In every single one you have a ridiculous plot device that you have to work through, like raising money to save your grandmother's house through winning golfing events, getting on the college football team that you are a water boy for, even you are severely mentally handicapped, making a woman with short term amnesia fall in love with you even though she can't remember you each day.

You have also managed to surround yourself with hot chicks and rocking 80's music in each one also, which is a testament to your prolonging your adolescence into your early 40's while making astronomical sums of money for movies which are so benign and repetitive that in an episode of South Park, Cartman disguises himself as a robot which on command spits out Adam Sandler plots which the movie executives declare will be huge successes.

I didn't initially feel the need to mention that in all of the aforementioned movies nearly all the characters are idiotic stereotypes that demean whatever people group they are intended to represent. But for your benefit, I thought I would point it out anyway in case you hadn't realized it as such.

Yes, I know you do a smattering of "serious" films and a few comedies which aren't entirely awful like "The Wedding Singer" and "Anger Management". In the first one you were saved by the presence of an actual script drove the story forward, and in the second by the enigmatic presence of Jack Nicholson himself. P.S. I do have "Reign over Me" in my Netflix queue.

But there is one thing more than anything that these films have in common – they all have the same "actors" in them. Every time I watch one of your movies and I see a character, I say to myself, "wasn't that the fat guy from Little Nicky?" or "I can't believe Adam Sandler has managed to keep Rob Schneider's career afloat all by himself."

In fact, sometimes it appears that the only reason that you do these movies other than to maintain enough of a public profile to do the next one is to hang out with your buddies all of whom don't seem to have any other acting jobs or careers other than to sit at home eating cheese doodles and waiting for the phone to ring to do your next picture.

I sort of picture them all as symbolized by Norm McDonald's character in Billy Madison where he just hung out by the pool, got drunk and high all day, and when you were at school trying to pass 1^st grade through 12^th grade he didn't even realize you were gone till he made a joke in your general direction and you didn't respond, causing him to turn around and utter the immortal words, "Hey where's Billy?"

I just want to state for the record that I have absolutely no problem with any of that. I would have no problem at all being just another nameless cadre in your pack of giggling buffoons who probably cannot maintain a straight face when you make another joke about queers or flatulence. It is one of my fondest wishes to be paid to goof off all day.

And I mean that. Real work is too much like work. Heck, even writing these coherent sentences is more of a chore than I would be doing if I was in your employ. Picking up the beer would probably be the most complicated task that would be required of me, and believe me; I have experience in that already so you're covered.

I would even let you beat me in poker. I mean why not – we'd be playing with your money away.

I would also order whoopee cushions on occasion and bandy about dumb remarks about any random person that I think might be entertaining.

Some people might complain that your films already have too many nameless buffoons taking up space in them, but I'm sure you have room for one more. So please Mr. Sandler, I beg of you.

Can you please put me in your movies? I'll bring the bag of flaming poop

I'm Often Wrong About Things

2008-02-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

Dear You,

Let me be the first to admit it.
I'm often wrong about things.

When we first met I guessed that your favorite ice cream flavor was chocolate.
It turned out to be moose tracks.

I figured you for the type that didn't like cooking.
So naturally you surprised me for my birthday with an incredible veal cutlet.

I told you that my family probably wouldn't like you.
Now they have you over for cards like once a week.

I was wrong last week when we went shopping for that dress you liked in that magazine, and I was sure they wouldn't have it in your size.
It turns out that they did.

Forgive me for suggesting that Canadian Geese would make great pets. I thought I had read it somewhere. I thought I would never get the yard clear of feathers and animal droppings. Thank God winter came early this year.

I was wrong last week when we were watching Jeopardy and on a Double Jeopardy question where the category was All Things Must Pass for $600 I guessed it was La Plaza. It turned out to be La Plaz. At least I was close.

I was really wrong when I told you that the generic version of your favorite cereal would taste almost exactly the same. As a matter of fact it was kind of lousy.

I was quite mistaken when after dropping our remote control, I told you that you wouldn't be able to put it back together again because it was so messed up.

Remember when I told you that Orange Jell-O was going to be a cinch to make from scrap? Well you can safely put that one in the pile of things that I've been wrong about.

Or how bout the time I picked up that homeless guy who wanted a ride and I suggested that it might be interesting and that we might learn something. The only thing we learned was how quickly we wanted him out of the car.

And just last week I suggested to you that because of your exotic taste that you would probably love Buttermilk. I'll give you a hint regarding who was wrong about that. It wasn't you.

In fact, before we met I had this mistaken belief that I was in fact quite right most of the time. This too has been proven false.

What I mean is
Oftentimes when I don't know something I just make a conjecture about it and no one else but you will notice how off it is.
Sometimes I talk too much or say the wrong thing and I'm glad that you cut me off to prevent my wrongheadedness from going any farther.
After meeting someone and saying what I have to say I frequently say a little too much and get myself in trouble.
You're right. Most of my opinions I should keep to myself.
I'm not really as clean as I thought. Shirts shouldn't be worn 3 days in a row without being washed for any reason.
A lot of my ideas could really use some spit and polishing that I frequently don't take the time as you do to add depth and character to them.
And you're right. I should eat more.
So.
What I'm trying to say is really
I'm often wrong about things.
But I'm so glad that I wasn't wrong about you.

I ain't Dead Yet

2008-01-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think my favorite part of writing something is in thinking of what to call it exactly, but of course I put the title at the beginning and then hope that the words some of which I've thought out in my head already will make sense to fit them. At least that's what I'm doing now.

I guess everyone was sort of alarmed by my last blog. Shame on me for putting something so stillborn into the world without explaining how that sort of thing has happened before and I'm used to it.

Those rages of my roomates really remind of the ones my father used to have, except without the hint of violence in his voice, of the feeling that he was being split apart at the inside.

So. Maybe its my fault for not writing more. Everyone always says what a great writer I am. I don't know. Maybe I would be if I wrote more. But there's the rub. Great writers write. Other people just doodle and dawdle.

There's actually been a lot of terrible things that have happened to me in the just over 2 years time since I moved to New York. I've had roommates steal thousands of dollars from me. I had my car broken into in Harlem. I had a skitzo roommate almost kill himself when I lived in the East Village for a month. 2 weeks later the cops dragged him away as he was singing loudly to the whole neighborhood. 2 days after that, the leaseholder, a crack addict, rented the apartment out from under us (there was another roommate as well who was caught in this crazy scheme) and gave control of it to a cross dresser who promptly came in with an equally discomforting "other" in black leather, sat on the couch and asked when we were leaving. In an hour the locks had been changed.

I fell madly in love with a girl from church for about a week in a mostly email relationship, culminating the next Sunday when I went to church with her, her sister and her roommate followed by an afternoon at the Moma where during lunch at the Moma cafe my Southern eating habits were dismissed with a remark about meat and potatoes. 2 days later she told me couldn't date artists anymore because she wanted someone who could pay her way in life and provide her with a child and a stable enough income to move somewhere with a nice view of Central Park.

I walked the streets of Manhattan for nearly 8 hours a day for most of my first 2 months looking for restaurant work, and when I found it. I was fired in 3 weeks. Not to mention the time I was fired before I was actually hired due to being late for the training which was a week after I was offered employment. And the third restaurant was Mediterranean and didn't have enough business to keep me on for more than a week before letting me go. I admit that pacing around in an empty restaurant for 6 hours a day is enough to drive anyone bonkers.

In the meantime my credit cards were being put through the wringer. I was too scared to make a balance sheet or look at how much I owed. All I kept thinking for months on end was how I needed to find stability.

I've just got to get a job I told myself. Then I can start auditioning and taking classes and meeting people and getting in the movies.

Then there was the time a whole suitcase of my pants was stolen right next to my car at 7 in the morning in Brooklyn.

The only friend I knew here, a hipster who used to live in Virginia, abandoned me after a week or so. I suspect because I didn't do any drugs with him, which I freely admit was because I was convinced I would have a job at any moment which might require a drug test, and I couldn't possibly sabotage my chances over something so trivial.

And I'm just not as good at making friends here. I mean real friends. I have a lot of friends that I've eaten chips with, that I've sang praise and worship songs, but not a lot of friends that I can just call up and hang out with. You know, nothing normal like "Hey Tom it's Josh. Do you wanna go out and get a sandwich or something?"

Maybe no one has time for that sort of thing here, although I suspect there is a secret underground cult which may engage in this bizarre type of behavior although I have yet to witness it personally.

And to think that my own father was worried that I would fall into homosexual behavior by moving here and hanging out with the theater crowd which he quite rightly as it turns out viewed as being full of men that like men. When he said this to me, I made a joke to him which either he didn't fully appreciate or it caught him off guard. "Dad" I told him. "I haven't really engaged in any heterosexual activity"

Wow were my parents scared. They still are. They would call every day if I let them. Now it's only five times a week. Everyone prays for me back home. I'm glad. I probably couldn't sustain myself without it. Jesus loves me. I heart him back.

And now I'm living with a crazy delusional, paranoid, preachy, depressed, loudmouth old man of a roommate who won't ever shut up for anyone. I have to address him whenever he comes in and even get up from the computer lest he get into some twitter about something I didn't do like the dishes or how there's a faint odor in the house which couldn't possibly come from his ornery cat that drags its cat litter everywhere including the bathroom which still has pieces of glass in it somehow when I scrub the floors.

I still call my old roommate Mario sometimes and remind him that he owes me 1300 dollars. I'm sure I'll never see that money but it sure would be nice if I did. Mario never answers the phone or calls back in the last ohhhh year or so, but just the fact that his answering machine still has his voice on it gives me comfort that he might turn his life around get an actual job being that he's 44 years old, not an artist and must at one point have had some job training or some skill which would enable him to do something more besides cry about his life and yell at his mother on the telephone about how she was never there for him because she used to not pick him up from school on time.

I could go on and on and on. Maybe I'll start to write more about the mundane existence of every day life here and how you have to grab the bull by the horns or get run over by it. That's a euphamism for life by the way.

I'm livin it. And for under 600 a month to live in the city that never sleeps fifteen minutes from Times Square as opposed to 45 minutes or so I can put up with a lot. I hope this impresses all the Josh fans out there because it sure impressed the heck out of me. Maybe I'll finally put some action behind my words.

God I hope so.

Look for me as George Bush next month in a play.

Eric's plea to Amy Winehouse

2008-01-09T12:56:00.000-05:00

My 61 year old roommate really loves Amy Winehouse and is saddened to see her life torn apart by her wickedness. This is his plea for her to turn her life around and start living right for Jesus.

This is the fourth video in the video series about my roommate, Eric Sigward. I live with him on Central Park West because it is rent controlled (cheap), central to everything, and I'm an actor trying to make it in NYC.

Eric at the Movies! A Review of Q: The Winged Serpent

2008-01-04T09:25:00.000-05:00

Here is the second video of my 61 year old narcissistic roommate Eric Sigward. He told me after watching this video that he likes it so much he wants to shoot one ever night.

I'm not saying this is going to make me famous, but I hope it will. Cross your fingers, write about it, talk about it. Here we go!

Another Sad Christmas

2007-12-22T12:02:00.000-05:00

Folks I'm not kidding. This You Tube video is great. It features my 61 year old roommate talking about Christmas. It is sad and depressing and hilarious!

My Picture

2007-08-02T10:54:00.000-04:00

This Post is so only so I could post my headshot and have it on the web to link to it.

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long

2007-06-24T15:58:00.000-04:00

Like I mentioned before. I've been writing on myspace because I get a more immediate reaction from the audience and more people read it.

Anyway. Here's my blog about yesterday...

I really hate doing these big general sort of update things since I feel that the people who are really interested in what is going with me would write me an email and ask "Joshua, what is going on with you?"

however there also lies the problem that while I like everyone on my friends list, I may not be willing to regurgitate the large variety of activities that I am currently engaged in during my tenure here in New York City.

Thus the need for a large blog type thing summarizing what it is that I have been doing, which on days like today really doesn't feel like much.

I've felt the need to put some type of blog up for the longest time about some topic or the other like when the Sopranos recently ended. I was pretty emotionally invested in that show and was rocked like a drum when Johnny Sack died 2 months ago. And then when Tony killed Christopher Moltisanti, I was rivetted to my chair and visibily exhaled for a moment or 2 and had to hit pause on the television (DVR) to gasp at what I had just watched. I would leave the after chuch coffee hour early to catch the beginning of it. I just couldn't wait.

Now that its all over I feel a twinge of sadness at the end of what I think is the finest drama ever seen on television. I keep replaying the ending over and over again in my mind. When the screen went blank I did freek out like the rest of America and panicked and then realized it was all over. I cried a little bit inside.

For the next 2 weeks I kept reading all the articles about the end and got all emotional about it all over again. Even the Hillary Clinton campaign video satirizing it had me thinking. Well, here's to Tony and the rest of the crew. I miss you guys. Remember the good times.

_________________________________________________

anyway this next part is about work and life and things.

I've been doing promotions work full time for the last few months. I've been fortunate enough to land an alcohol promotion for Beefeater Royal London Gin 3 nights a week at 25 an hour, 3 nights a week for the whole summer. It keeps me peaceful, knowing that no matter what happens, I have work for the week, and its at night so I can audition or meet people or get other promotions work during the mornings or days when Im doing that.

For those who don't know, promotions mostly involved giving things, like flyers for Nokia, or product samples, like chocolate, or in the case of my alcohol promotion, giving away drink tokens for a free drink.

I get to meet new people constantly in this line of work and most of them are actors of some description, although I feel that Im the only one out there doing this work that is as devote to acting as I am.

I also started taking 2 acting classes a week from respected Hollywood Acting Coach, Bob McAndrew - a technique class, and a scene study class. The classes are really pushing me and furthering my boundaries and stretching my horizons to places further than I have known. I feel extremely grateful to be able to take these classes and meet all sorts of great people, and I've already made 2 great friends in the class, including one (married) girl that I've been working on this scene from the movie Magnolia that has a kissing scene in it.

Okay, I love that. It brings some of the romance back into my life which has sorely been lacking all these years since the one girlfriend I've ever had in my life many years ago.

I should be meeting with an acting manager sometime soon this month or next I hope who if all goes well will guide my career to the next level which I have to take if I am to continue my gradual ascent around here.

I'm going to be a working actor and I want to be in film. It's my utmost passion and desire and produces a stirring in my soul.

I woke up this morning without any work for the first saturday in many saturdays now, which is nice because everyone needs a break sometime and Im not worried about getting more work in the following weeks because of all the promotional contacts Ive made this last year in the business.

I need to be in a great frame of mind and physical health in order to produce my short pieces which I put all my heart and soul into. I just have to know that people like them. I put so much effort and love into them.

I think I really can do this book "Why I Hate You". Ive never finished a book. Ive started many over the years but have left them unfinished because i lacked the enthusiasm, or really it could be because i didn't get enough encouragement by people reading them. sometimes i need that. okay i need that a lot. Im sorta fragile sometimes.

I was just down today. I relaxed all day, thinking that would let me write another piece for everyone to enjoy, but it just didn't happen. Sometimes you can will these things, and sometimes you can't. I feel like I have to be fed and happy. I was fed today but I wasn't happy.

I was waiting on a phone call from a girl who didn't call. I sort of expected to have something to do today. There was also a call from a friend about a party this week that he somehow forgot to call me for. So i just sort of relaxed all day and caught up on phone calls with family and friends.

then i asked a girl out for ice cream through myspace. i hope she says "yes"

I caught the inspiration i needed a little late in the day from watching the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" I cried a half hour into it when Anthony Hopkins told a young boy "If you don't follow your dreams you might as well be a vegetable." and the boy replied "What kind of vegetable?"

then I started to write but didn't get very far before tiredness overtook me.

Fortunately, i dont need writers inspiration to do this sort of thing. which is why I felt the need to share, because I couldn't do anything else and sort of wanted this day to count for something despite the fact that I didn't leave the house.

so everyone overall im doing wonderful and I feel like I am living my dreams although at points i feel drained and tired and wonder what the hell i am doing. Im making it. every day the Lord gives me the strength that I need to continue

I'm Sorry I Can't Remember your Name

2007-04-16T10:59:00.000-04:00

Dear Friend,

I address you as friend because I felt that "dear entity" would be too cold and impersonal even though it makes for a better description of how I currently view you which is essentially as a generic person that I have no intimate knowlege of one way or the other.

I am very sorry that I don't remember your name, and I can see that it is greatly distressing you to the point of causing inner turmoil, great pain, and boils on your face and hands.

Our last encounter when I said "hello" to you as we passed in the bathroom was particularly unmemorable and I am sure I would have put it out of my head entirely if you had not brought it up again when you recently addressed me by name, and I apologized and confessed that I had forgotten your name, apparently for the fourth time.

I did so enjoy our first conversation where you asked me my name, how long I've lived around here, and what my occupation is right before you were distracted by a much better friend who you had to chat with immediately.

I felt then as though we made a spiritual connection, one that will be sung of in the heavens, and that we formed a bond that will last into the afterlife, where we will walk the streets paved with gold, and call each other by name; well that is if I can remember it.

I do so fondly and dearly want to recall another classic dialogue we had on what "I was up too lately", because it reminds me of another conversation that I've been meaning to have with you about what I've been doing the whole rest of my life up till now.

Because clearly since meeting you, my life has changed dramatically. My cancer is gone as is my passive wish to kill myself. Yes, you have quite literally saved my life. No more will I gorge myself on junk foods waiting for the end to come while wishing I had written the great american novel and feeling guilty over forgetting your name.

In fact, I reccomend that a crime of this nature that causes such serious mental distress be listed as a felony so that it may be recognized with all the gravitas it deserves.

It is my fondest wish that all the scumbags that ask for people's names more than twice be treated swiftly and with the utmost justice that the law will allow for people who can't remember any details at all about a person that they otherwise might not even speak to.

Well anyway friend. You have my thoughts on the subject and I do just have one more question for you if you don't mind.

What was your name again?

Why I Can't Tell You I Have a Boyfriend

2007-03-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

*Note the following is a form of humorous fiction and is intended to be regarded as such. Any resemblance to real people alive or dead is purely unintentional and the author apologizes in advance for any such similarities made in this regard.*

Dear John:

I know you've been casually flirting with me lately and even mentioning that we should "get together" sometime or "hang out" in the future or meet for "drinks" and I'd love to, I really would except that our cat and mouse game has descended to tedium from overuse. I can only laugh or smile or move out of hearing range quickly when you invite me over for coffee just so many times and I am growing tired of it.

My laugh is meant as a response to your question to say this, "I am obviously flattered by your request and although I don't find you personally attractive, I'm sure someone else will find you so and take pity on your bereaved form. Also I have a boyfriend and I can't tell you, so please don't ask me again."

My smile is meant to carefully inform you that I am trying desparately to be polite and maintain a girlish image of one who is aloof and careful about who she is seen with and does not wish to sully herself with more than casual conversation with men who find her interesting, or "perky". Also, I think you should know that I have a boyfriend, and I obviously can't tell you, so please go away, but feel free to mention on occasion your flattering thoughts on my new outfit or hairstyle.

Whenever you drop the dreaded sentence mentioning lunch sometime I inwardly cringe and my stomach feels like paste and I am forced to excuse myself from your presence with the impression of mirth and a quick joke perhaps and some spot on genius reason for having to hastily exit your immediate vicinity. I think it should be obvious to you by now that I have a boyfriend that I cannot tell you about, and it is starting to sicken me about how dumb you are in not realizing this.

I can't imagine to what lengths I shall have to go to in the near future to avoid mentioning to you that I have a boyfriend should I ever chance you upon again in a room crowded with people or in some freak happenstance outside near a hot dog stand.

I suppose I shall have to have a friend with me at all times to swoop in and remind me about that appointment that I forgot about in order to more efficiently rendezvous from the area that you are standing in.

You probably have this idea stuck in your head that I am an ogre or a tease for leading you on by just not saying "no" to your queries, replys and pleadings but in fact John you would be completely wrong.

Despite my general repugnance and lack of feeling for you; by not telling you I have a boyfriend, I am actually trying to protect you. I don't want you to go away feeling discouraged that you have struck out with yet another woman and that there is absolutely no hope for you in the future of finding a person with mammary glands to exhibit any sort of interest in being around you for longer than 30 seconds at a time.

I just want you to go away with exactly the same outlook on life that you had before our brief encounter and talk to some other woman that you may perhaps have more luck with than myself. My fondest wish is, that to you, I simply stop existing, because you are clearly not in my solar system and I feel that you would be a lot better of if I was the same in yours.

Sigh. I suppose it would be a lot easier if I just told that you I simply cannot be seen with you because I already have a boyfriend, but I can't take something like that on my conscience. I already feel guilty enough from eating that pint of Haagen Daz last night during Grey's Anatomy.

So, anyway John as you can see there's absolutely nothing personal at all in my absolute rejection of you. It's not you; it's me. And that is precisely the reason why I can't tell you that I have a boyfriend.

yours sincerely,

someone I hope that you will quickly forget

ps. toodles!

Frustrated Incorporated

2007-03-11T00:48:00.000-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen. I come to you this morning very tired and in need of sleep, but I have awoken this morning before 8 am in the morning on Sunday which is extremely unhealthy, just to call a black friend of mine and ask him when his church meets, hoping it was at 9 or 10 in the morning, so I could visit it.

Unfortunately, my friend explained the the church he preaches at only has worship meetings one Sunday morning every other month. Apparently he is trying to phase a church into regular every week meetings. Since I am very tired I could be getting the dates wrong and maybe they meet more than once every month, but that was the gist of it. He is hopelessly charismatic and incorporates the mannerisms and ideals into his everyday life where I have never really seen him without a suit and top hat or being at anything but a super enthusiastic level of excitement about virtually everything. He probably feels that the Lord would never have him express a negative emotion.

I felt I had to call him in order to get a monkey off my back because I just met him for lunch the previous Friday, after he had been pestering me for weeks to meet without saying what he wanted to meet for, and we don't have enough of a relationship that I can assume we're just meeting to be friends and hang out or "catch up".

I had gone to a Tex-Mex restaurant with him for lunch with him after some persuasion (he just wanted to meet at a coffee place it sounded like) and I made him laugh for most of our time there. Eventually he busted out the big guns like he knew he would and asked me for volunteer help at his church. I had been trying to avoid him for some weeks because I knew that the reason he was asking me to meet was that he wanted help in some fashion with his church and I didn't like the way that he was making a pretense of wanting to be friends only for the purpose of church business.

That kind of business model always leaves an icky taste in my mouth but church planter seemed so enthusiastic, and sincere that I didn't want to hurt his feelings so it was tricky. He would call repeatedly on one days notice to meet at the Empire State building and fortunately for me work or an engagement with a much better friend would come up and I would have to cancel or not return a call and I would get repeated messages on my phone from him about this about how I had forgotten to return his call and I might be avoided in the future but that I was forgiven.

I was bewildered that this guy didn't realize that we didn't have the relationship necessary to talk like that to each other. It was highly inappropriate but I'm not the best person at explaining that to other people since I am usually the inappropriate one.

After our lunch meeting he called repeatedly and left several messages on my phone the next morning. When I finally returned his call he said he had forgotten to mention something at our meeting and wondered if we could meet again to talk about it. I was exasperated, thinking I had gotten my lunch engagement out of the way with this guy and was now free of him again for a little while so I told him that we just met and anything he had to talk about he could break over the phone.

So with a heavy heart he explained that he wanted me to sign for the opening of a new bank account for his church, and that this was a position of trust and responsibility. I was blown out of orbit by this request and didn't know how to respond to it over the phone and I may have to meet him in person to explain how inappropriate it is and how I can't possibly be tied up with any financial or otherwise responsibility to a church that I have never attended based on the description of it by someone that I have not known for that long.

So tomorrow we're meeting at the Empire State building where he always wants to meet for some reason. I suspect its because he doesn't get out much and doesn't know too many places in the city. Then he suggested we could walk to Starbucks at 1:00. I explained to him that man cannot live on coffee alone and he just laughed.

So we shall see how reacts when I break the sad news to him that I am just not on board with his crazy scheme.

It's a Record

2007-03-06T11:28:00.000-05:00

I was just on set of Law and Order: SVU doing background work for television which usually shows up as a blob on television and I met 2 different girls on set and they both had boyfriends. I think that has to be a record. Usually I only meet one girl on set that I'm interested in that has a boyfriend, so this was completely unexpected and an awesome to cap off my day.

I just realized that I am too tired to complete this post which would consist of describing this girls well, if I type long enough without thinking about it, I am sure that I can come up with something.

The first one had hair in her face and was untraditionally beautiful and had just written a screenplay and had a kid I enjoyed talking to her all day and discovered she had a boyfriend when I told her that I've been accused of living my life like I'm in a movie and my life quote for that would be, "I think life is one big inside joke and I'm looking for someone to share it with." She said it was sweet and my pseudo gay friend Scott that I see at least once a week on set (he's actually not gay, I just tease him about it for fun) said, "You could be that person." I guess he was trying to help but she said she was going steady.

It didn't dampen my mood at all because I enjoyed talking to her still and because Scott makes me laugh.

Later we were doing a courtroom scene and I ran into a production assistant eating beef jerky which I noted as unusual and she said everyone on the SVU set always eats beef jerky. That's really all i can remember about her other than the fact that I thought she was cute and you'd think that wouldn't be much of a reason to ask someone out but you misunderestimate how much I like beef jerky. I wrote a column about it on my old Joshua Dudley website at joshdudley.tripod.com.

I mentioned this to some of the other PA's that I was friends with and they told me she had a boyfriend on site. So I went around explaining this to everyone else that I saw later about how ridiculous it was.

So overall it was a fun day because of the screenwriter with a kid and a boyfriend and my friend Scott. I got to talk to them all day and work 15 hours in the cold cold weather. What could be better than that?

Extra Work

2007-02-28T11:08:00.000-05:00

Since July of 2006 I've been doing extra work on tv shows and movies an average of 2 or 3 days a week and it always amuses me every time I'm on set. This is a job where you get paid a low wage to sit around all day waiting for the producers to call the herd onto set where they place them into what they seem to think is the most "natural" way that they would look, except it never looks natural. It always looks pretty much stiff and forced.

Needless to say I have a lot of fun on these sets joking around with people and I only need an audience of 1 for endless amusement. Yesterday it was my good friend Scott Thomas.

I kept telling people he was gay and whenever he would talk I would tell people, "It's okay. He's gay." Because being gay excuses everything.

It was so much fun yesterday, so much so that I went across the street and had a general Tso's special lunch at the Golden Harvest restaurant rather than eat the cafeteria style food that they pour out in portions designed to be eaten by starving people in Africa. I didn't come back for almost an hour, and secretly I was hoping that they would go to set without me and I would finish eating my food at the restaurant and watch more episodes of "Arrested Development" on my Ipod. My roomate Blake Wilson just gave me the entire second and third season's in Ipod format the other day which was pretty nice of him.

I sometimes stare at people on sets just to gauge their reaction. Okay. I sometimes stare at everyone just to gauge their reaction. It's because reactions are funny.

I particularly like staring at old people because you know their reactions might be off the charts, they might not get the joke at all, or they might get it and start comparing it to something funny they watched on television in good ol' 1957.

I also met this great girl who's name I can't disclose yet for no other reason than I just met her and if it turns out sour then. oh forget it. There really is no point in not disclosing it at this point because my readership is very small, having alienated all 7 of my regular readers by never posting anymore and going to myspace. Which is great because now I can write whatever I want here without any pressure whatsoever to be funny which I am anyway.

So anyway this girl Anna Hanson liked every single thing I liked and when she said she was just watching the muppets, I had to stop her and say are you sure you havent been spying on me or this isn't a scene from Groundhog Day where you know everything I like and are just trying to get in good with me? It turned out she wasn't.

I didn't really get her to laugh or break character that much though. Perhaps she was playing it straight like I was. I told her I don't laugh that much either and when I'm in the the front row of a comedy show comedians hate me because I don't laugh and they pick on me thinking I'm ruining their act.

So I don't know anything about this girl except that she's an actress, and more importantly likes the tv show "Extras" (on BBC HBO), the band "The Arcade Fire" and the Muppets.

Well, that's more than enough to go on for me and I hope I get to see her again.

Signing off folks.

Calm Down Everybody!

2007-01-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

The sky isn't falling. I know that the five of you out there who occasionally read this blog are wondering where your superstar has gone to? How could he be so great if he stays away from his beckoning public? Well fans, I've just discovered what the rest of the world has, namely that whatever I write on myspace will get like 10 times as many views as anything i write here so....

Yeah thats right I just write on myspace now and this page is sort of like my bastard cousin who I sometimes take out for ice cream.

That really wasn't a very good metaphor was it?

But I wanted to let everyone know that my Christmas and Thanksgiving breaks were so wonderful beyond belief and I wanted to personally thank all my friends and family who made it so, and for my mom who always lets me use the car.

Anyway fans, I am excited and ready to rip 2007 a new one. This is the year that I will get an agent, will get into SAG, and will get a small part in a movie.

Mark it down. It will happen. Either that, or I'll finally have to get a real job.

For the last 6 months I've lived on freelance jobs, consisting of promotions jobs, extra work on films and tv shows, catering, and temp office work. My debt load is piling up with no end in sight and I keep transferring balances and paying high interest rates eventually.

It looks like the end except I have God on my side, so I win.

Sorry bout that devil.

I also want to thank my friends at Impossible Casting who have really been there for me when i needed them, and in February are hosting more showcases to allow me to meet even more agents than I did last year. Matt and Craig, you guys are the best.

Also Scott Powers Studios took my money for a class and didn't deliver what they talked about, and then informed me that the sheet of paper that I signed to take the class had a line on it about how I couldn't tell my credit card company I wanted my money back.

What a rip. I can't believe my credit card company is honoring this ridiculous line.

So here's what happened.

I met this wheeler dealer kind of agent named Mike Amato who told me I needed new pictures and told me to talk to Scott Powers where he "sends all his kids too."

I go down to Scott Powers Studios and Scott is busy so I just meet his office boy who tells me that the print modeling class is perfect for every actor at every level of work, so I willingly plunked down my 600 dollars on my credit card and signed the form without meeting Scott Powers, who was only in the other room.

I get to class and i am immediately horrified. Scott Powers looks at me when I walk in and says, "This is the part of the class where we welcome people, so welcome!"

Wow. What a freak. This guy is sewn tighter than a 3 dollar bill. If he's not gay then I'll bite an apple.

Oh yeah, did I mention that he had little kids in the class? Like a lot of them?

Does this sound like something that should be appropriate for what has obviously been sold to me as an adult class?

Um. no.

And as I sat there listening to him tell awful stories for the next 4 hours and give out every once in while really basic information that you could pick up from a casual conversation with a photographer about the business for like 5 minutes I wanted to throw up.

So I called back the next week and told Scott Powers that I wanted my money back (in a very nice way) and he in a very nice way explained that they don't give refunds.

THEY DON'T GIVE REFUNDS.

And my credit card company agreed even though Scott Powers is a rip-off artist who only wants to take your money.

I don't know how I got off on that, but the whole thing left a stink on my tongue. Blah

Stay away from Scott Powers Studios at all costs.

Where's My O.J. Prize?

2006-11-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

The new O.J. Simpson book, "If I Did It", chronicling the exploits of the football star and mass murderer and suspected coke dealer was canceled today over a furor of uproar about letting an unconvicted killer speak.

There was also a 2 part television special on Fox planned to promote the event and this two has been canceled.

This reminds me of how the Dixie Chicks were boycotted when they spoke out against the president. They were banned on several country radio stations, fans threw their cd's away, and ticket sales generally bombed until they figured out how to re-package themselves for a pop audience and make money off what they and others called a "clear Free Speech Violation"

This despite the fact that Free Speech as mentioned in the Constitution has to do with Congress making a law....

There will be no similar free speech uproar today because O.J. Simpson has an unpopular position - one of being a suspected murderer, therefore no one will defend or speak out against him if they have anything at all to lose.

Free Speech and public policy in America is shaped by the popular opinion of the masses.

Why I'm an Actor

2006-10-14T23:35:00.000-04:00

I just finished watching Akeelah and the Bee.

Akeelah is an 11 year old girl with a talent for spelling and she gets encouragement and support along the way to reach her goal. It made me think of my own childhood and how my parents were there for me financially and spiritually but were unable to reach beyond that and give me any practical help about "what I wanted to be when I grew up."

My dad always tried to pressure me to do something without trying to find out what that was. He always talked about "passion" but didnt know how to instill it in me. He made these vibrant speeches about why you had to have it and he was deadly serious. I was scared of him.

Growing up, I was always trying to entertain people. I put on magic shows and entered talent competitions for stand up comedy. But that was it. They never asked me about why I did those things or made any attempt to lead me in a direction. My dad just wanted me to have some direction. I remember one time he put so much pressure on me to come up with something that I blurted out I wanted to be an air traffic controller just so he would be quiet about it. I didn't really. Probably I had seen air traffic controllers save people in movies and so that's what I thought of. I just wanted him to be proud of me since he was out there pushing himself his whole life so his children would have the opportunity for learning he didn't have.

He struggled as a child and his father was frequently violent, telling him he was good for nothing, and he would never make it. He fought against that and worked hard as a young man just to prove his father wrong.I never had to do that. My grades were always good enough in school even without studying. I never had to get even with anyone. I just had to stay out of his way.I wish they had been there to help me with my homework or to stop to find out what I wanted.A lot of things that other people take for granted I was never taught. I just sort of muddled my way through life in probably a continued effort to stay out of his way.

The one thing that began to be a constant for me was movies. I felt things when a movie told a good story - pain, anguish, love, hate. I understood how the characters could feel that way. My mother gave me a soft heart and I was deeply affected by the things I saw. Just after college I made a halfhearted attempt to move to New York and be an actor with a friend of mine. He passed up the chance, saying sales made him more money than acting could. So I let the dream fade away. I didn't really tell my parents about, it didn't really fall into the few amount of things we talked about. They just wanted to make sure that I was happy, and I so hated to dissapoint them that I couldn't tell them that I wasn't.I ended up working for my dad and helping to run a custom building company. He loved having me there with him every day. Sometimes we would take off work and go to the movies or eat breakfast at our favorite restaurant.His speeches had softened over the years.

By now, he realized how much pain he had caused his children and began to regret things. We started to open up more and he always wanted to make sure that I was in the right place.Then one morning in our daily meetings he told me that he was thinking about me, and wanting to move to New York and he said that he wanted to make sure that fear didn't stop me from following my dreams.

I was sobered by that message and immediately took heart and announced that I was moving to New York to be an actor, which is where I am now 2 years since that pronouncement (I've been here nearly a year). Sometimes I get down because I don't get enough encouragement. I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing but it seems so mind boggling sometimes. Where do you turn to? What do you do? Well, apparently you keep plugging away and you never never give up. I falter sometimes and lose sight of that vision and get caught up in my own despair of the situation and sometimes the ship gets righted.

I spent the whole day playing video games and eating and other mind numbing stuff. I felt the weight of the world. My parents couldn't be there for me, I couldn't feel God there for me when I read the Bible a bit, but when i was watching that movie, I felt so happy to be alive.Akeelah and the Bee was such a sweet story about wanting something so badly and never losing focus on that vision. It took her 11 months of studying. I've been here that long and I just don't know when it will get any easier, but when Akeelah won that spelling bee competition I cried, because I had done it with her. I was there with her when her mother said she couldn't go to the competition and when she told her later it was because she didn't want to see her be a loser.

Before I came here, my parents expressed their own fears about the terrible things that might happen to me when I came here and some of them have probably come true.

But I'm still here, I'm still standing.I'm an actor because that's what's in me. I feel it stronger than anything else. I'm writing my own story now, one that will continue and will flourish and will get better. People ask me how New York is treating me, and I tell them it gives you what you put into it.

I want to put in my all. My parents wouldn't expect any less.

What Am I Doing?

2006-10-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

Some people have commented on the strangeness of my last post. Some people haven't commented at all. While some others have not read it. I feel bad for those people, because they'll never know what it's like.

Now there is a good reason why I was so off last week. I've been working like a maniac all summer. No hold up. Let me tell the story first for those who came in late.

Life in New York City has been really hard. I lived in Brooklyn with a sumo wrestler who subsisted on hot dogs and corn flakes and my other roomate smoked 5 cigars in the apartment a day and yelled at his mother weekly on the telephone...at 3 in the morning and 6 in the morning...Then he produced an eviction notice showing that I had to get out in 7 days.

This was fun, because I had been there for about 5 months then and so I was really getting some semblance of stability. I loaded all my stuff into my car and then paid an old man to sleep on his couch for 5 days. He kicked me out 2 days earlier than I thought he was going to, so I was back in my car again. I stayed in Harlem for 7 days with superficial friend while trying to stay away from black guys and crackheads at 3 in the morning.

I forgot to mention that at the first couch location I had a suitcase of pants thrown away by the garbagemen because I left it on the sidewalk in front of my car...And at Harlem I had a rock thrown threw my window and my cablebox stolen.

Additionally I lost 3 different restaurant jobs during this time and was not working for weeks at a time more than once. God was really grounding reality into my head, I think to prepare me.

All this time meanwhile I had been going to a Christian artist group called the Haven and meeting with extremely limited success with making friends or girlfriends, which was my only reason for going there and pretty much remains so to this day. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the worship and the small group discussion, but I go to church or the Haven every week hoping to make friends and meet girls. I hope I'm not in the minority in that opinion.

So I made a really good friend at the Haven in a short amount of time which is never a good sign. Like 2 weeks after I met him, parallel reality was getting really clingy and whiny about how I wasn't a good enough friend to him. Yeah, exactly like having a girlfriend except without all the touching and making out, etc.

Parallel friend got evicted at the same time I did for messing around with his roomate, and he managed to convince me and Too Lazy to Shave to be roomates with him in the East Village where we would be taking over essentially what was designed as a 1 bedroom apartment recently vacated by Crack Addict who Parallel friend was best buds with and where we previously were having Bible studies.

So I spent a month there (not working), mostly with Too Lazy to Shave because Parallel Friend was often either in the mental hospital relaxing between "episodes" or having sex with his new girlfriend that he was introducing Christianity to.

Crack Addict dropped a bomb on us by informing us on a Tuesday that a transvestite was moving into the place on Thursday and did I have somewhere else to go.

So, broker than I had ever been, I moved onto another couch on the Upper West Side with the Calvinist who had never been married and was extremely eccentric. We got along very well and I listened as he instructed me on the Westminister Confessional, sometimes twice daily.

I still was not working, yet again. I was going to job interviews and looking for apartments constantly. It drained all my mental and financial resources further. It was a harrowing experience and I am grateful for the constant Biblical instruction without which I might not have made it.

To be continued: only because this got really long and i sorta have other stuff to do.

Seriously Folks

2006-09-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

Seriously. I just got asked why I don't blog anymore. It's not true. I did blog. No one responded. I've got far too much going in my life to blog for a dead audience. Okay that's not technically true. If my audience was dead they wouldn't have access to the internet and they wouldn't be able to enjoy the mirth merriment and crazy antics that are happening here like non-stop. I mean its like a party in my mouth like 24/7 and for real its like crazy.

So you know like I've got this blog and its where I write like my innermost thoughts and whatnot and my deepest secrets like uh...nah i can't write that. seriously. don't make me. you wouldn't like me when I go crazy.

I went crazy one time and I didn't like it, so I don't see any reason why you, the nonexistant audience would like it much either.

So a lot of people are probably wondering, is Josh still in New York? How can he go on? Well let me say that I lie to my credit card companies, which I understand is a federal offense, but how else could I get zero percent rates?

Its the only way.

It's the American Way.

And I trust America.

I guess maybe I should complain about George Bush or somebody or something in politics, but I just don't care because I need to make a difference in my own life before I worry about the Saudi's. Duh. I can't help myself before I help myself or something like that.

A wise man once asked why I was going to St. Ives and I told him it was because I had 7 wives and kats and kits and I was going Damn it and that's all there was too it. And you better not try to stop me or I'll call the authorities and shut you down right now.

Wait! Hold on. Am I still blogging? This is really silly.

Is it possible for me to find a girl? I mean really? I'm dead serious. I'm just not sure. I don't do small talk, and I have a terrible time pretending to be interested in really boring stuff which is almost everything. sigh. Well, I'm an actor. So maybe I should like I'm happy and having fun.

It's a good idea.

Say have you seen Closer? It's really good. Although best friend said she wouldn't watch it because it had too much vulgarity in it and if by vulgarity you mean the word **** then yes, it's vulgar. Or maybe you mean the word ********** well yeah I guess that does make it pretty raunchy.

Man I sure hope I get married sometime, this not having sex thing just really isn't working out for me so good. I guess God has a plan and all and it's gonna be great in his time. It just seems like his plan is taking a little longer than his plans for all the normals. I guess that means its a top secret plan. Top Secret is a pretty funny movie by the way.

You should watch it. If you like funny movies. If you don't then why are you reading this blog? You should be reading Jane Eyre by yourself somewhere.

It's Called A BLOG!

2006-09-10T01:09:00.000-04:00

ALright everyone. I know you all are kind of dissapointed that I haven't blogged at somewhere instead of the nowhere that I have been blogging at, but I wanted to wait till I had my room setup because when I first moved to Washington Heights (a dominican neighborhood in uptown manhattan) I was sleeping on the floor without an air conditioning while my roomate was having 7 different girls over every week and each one of them thought they were his "girlfriend". He watches tv with them every single freeking night of the week till like 4 ..5? in the morning.

Yesterday I woke up at 4:30 in the morning at Dukes of Hazzard was on. I wasn't in the mood for Boss Hog then (no duh i was really tired) so i turned it off. 10 minutes later, my roomate laying on his bed with a girl remote in hand, turned it back on.

AAAAHHHHH sometimes I can't stand it. But that's only when I'm tired, which is a lot because I don't have any blinds in my room.

When I went to Ikea to get my room setup I wanted to get venetian blinds. How hard could that be I thought. Well it's pretty hard at Ikea unless you know exactly what you want and how to get it, because believe me, no one at Ikea is going to help you out because no one is there. It's like people dont work there except at the checkout aisles.

So anyway. my room is all setup now with a cheap twin bed, with a bed roll, a cheap bookshelf, a cheap computer desk and ta dahh!!! books. So i think everything is going according to plan and then my computer decides to work terribly. I mean really bad. Look I know about computers and how to fix them and such, but I was just lost for 2 weeks and too stubborn to pay someone 30 dollars to look at it again, and say, "why don't you just do this?"

So i finally broke down 2 days ago and ordered a new computer. I'm going to try to put it together in the morning. It's only the components of a computer. I am going to completely put it together from scratch. Wish me luck.

I'm writing from my roomates computer and I never wanted to do this, and I hate it right now because the tv is on and there's 2 girls in his room. I don't know why they like to hang out here so much, can't they go to their own freeking houses?

Seriously.

Well I'm obviously tired.

I hope everyone's appetite for me is sated for the moment because I will try my utmost to write more again very soon. And I mean soon.

Until then I will have to put up with dumb girls with no taste and constant television.

This is what I get for being close to Times Square (20 minutes from my front door by train).

TAA TAA!

It's Coming!

2006-08-22T12:08:00.000-04:00

But what is coming you say? What could it possible be? It's driving me crazy, please tell me. Well friends, neighbors, haters, random strangers, and stragglers my blog is returning.

Why is this? Well....

I'M FINALLY ABLE TO PAY THE RENT IN NEW YORK CITY!!!

this is actually an incredible event and I am excited about the future and can pursue acting now with unbelievable glee knowing that the future holds no bounds

also i am waiting for my new hard drive to setup.

it will take all day so i am writing this on my roomate's terrible computer. i fixed it and its still sorta subpar.

anyway.

im also setting up my new room. i bought a bed, a computer desk, and a bookcase. they are all completed thanks to the nightmare that is IKEA.

after the completion of the computer i will move everything in and it will be beautiful.

thank you one and all.

I LOVE YOU!!!!

Josh goes to the movies!

2006-05-28T13:09:00.000-04:00

Actually, I haven't been to many movies since moving to New York City, but I can still give you a great idea of whatever it is you're going to see this week when you go TO THE MOVIES!!!!

Over the Hedge: Dreamworks can do no wrong, and talking animals in CGI are red hot right now for some reason. Madagascar sucked but over the Hedge is clearly a fun movie. This is a date movie for guys who have girls who enjoy being a kid at heart. There's probably a fierce battle with the next door neighbor with the hedge clippers and the animals probably stage some desparate rescue of some trapped animal and make wisecracks along the way and chances are one of the animals is scared but one is a hero and convinces the others to come along with. Look, this is a funny movie if you can handle cartoon movies. If you can't, then you didn't need me to tell you to stay away.

The DaVinci Code: DID YOU CRACK THE CODE YET!!!! Movies that feature religious themes and deep dark hidden secrets are usually great movie fodder, and they always feature helpless Catholic priests fighting against evil, always played by other Catholic priests who try to keep their secret hidden, or they exorcising demons or something like that. Tom Hanks is the man of course, and he will bring a world weariness to this role and a very bad haircut. Audrey Tatou is hot as anyone who has seen Amelie already knows. Ian Mckellen is a great villain. Duh. Have you seen him in X-Men or Gods and Monsters? This man knows how to bring the pain.
Bottom Line: A fun movie that will bring people swarming into church to ask their pastor questions about their faith. Churchgoers everywhere are shaking their heads, unless they are Democrats and then they are talking equality of beliefs. So, go see the movie anyway.

See No Evil: This movie stars the wrestler named Kane of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) unfortunately he does not bodyslam or chokeslam anyone. What he does, and I can say this confidently from watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is chase down helpless Teenagers or College Age Kids who wandered who got lost in a small town while on their way to Florida to party it up and have sex. None of that will be happening for them, as Kane will viciously slaughter them with an assortment of farm equipment. Do you like blood and bad plots and worse one liners, and good looking young stars who scream and wonder what's going on a lot? If so, then you will like this movie. Everyone else will laugh at it and rent Spongebob Squarepants the movie instead.

X-Men 3: The original director of this movie bailed on the project to take on something he liked more for obviously less money, because believe me, this thing is going to make a killing. Of course, the special effects cost a lot so it needs to. Who will watch this movie? Almost everyone it has great actors (Ian Mckellen, Captain Picard, and Wolverine), great fight scenes, and dramatic importance and sweeping grandeur and lots of things blowing up and being hurled everywhere. I didn't realize that every X-Men story had to involve the government, but who cares, go this stupid movie and enjoy yourself.

Akeelah and the Bee: Laurence Fishburn does his Matrix-like mentor thing helping a young girl from the inner city overcome the struggles of being black and wanting to win a spelling bee. This is an actual good drama with themes of overcoming your circumstances and being all you can be. There will be tears and hugs and eventually a winner of a spelling bee. If you like a good cry, and a good story then Akeelah and the Bee is for you.

An American Haunting: Who doesn't love a good ghost story, especially one that has Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spasek acting scared out of their wits and trying to pull it together. I love the fact that it's a period piece too, because it adds more scares when there aren't a lot of neighbors nearby for support and of course no electricity. Scary. Scary movie. Special effects, probably not much gore, and chances are there's a catholic priest and some crosses thrown in also. I would watch this movie but its not for everyone, because it's clearly just not that great, or else I would have heard more about it.

Just My Luck: I'm embarassed how far Lindsay Lohan's boobs have taken her young career. Sadly, they won't take her too much further before she descends into doing bad television (see the Ghost Whisperer) where boobs and no acting ability have a much longer shelf life. I don't want to explain the plot of this one, except to say that it doesn't make sense and has disgusting sight gags. Lindsay Lohan is in nearly every scene which is enough to make frat boys who have had posters of her for many years (she's how old now...) go watch it anyway. Also her young fans who are quickly dissapearing and growing up will watch it also. The end is near for Lindsay Lohan. She needs a famous boyfriend and fast.

Mission Impossible 3: See my X-Men review minus the superpowers. Pretty much the same thing. Lots of spills, chills, sweat, excitement (the pulse gripping kind) and popcorn. Tom Cruise is now seen as a freak show but as he long as he turns out crap this he will stay on the top of the heap. Watch it.

Poseidon: A disaster movie that is truly a disaster. Kurt Russell plays the captain of the sinking ship in what I would have to call a "workmanlike" performance. People scream, some of them are rescued, and there's lots of water being thrown around in what will otherwise be a completely forgettable movie that will be shown on local television on Saturday afternoons 3 years from now all the time. This could have been filmed in the 70's and released now and no one would know the difference.

Scary Movie 4: Over the top sight gags, Leslie Nielson is really old but still funny, and they make fun of every scary movie of the last 2 years. The jokes are all retreads and very dumb, but you will laugh anyway. Only see it if you are prepared to completely humiliate yourself.

the end of the marathon running story

2006-05-20T16:31:00.000-04:00

I didn't really meet this guy, but I wish I did.

Welcome back true believers. This morning I wrote a blog story on myspace about how I was woken up by a mouse and I already got 14 people to view it and it got me thinking about the future of this blog. Clearly I'm at a crossroads because of the lack of readership, and of course some of my readers are not on myspace to bear witness to my clever way with words.

What to do? What to do? I've been kicking around the idea of turning this blog into sort of a commentary on pop culture blog which if you've ever talked to me is really my speciality and moving my great stories to myspace.

I need all my fans out there to leave a comment about what they think about that in the next week, seriously. I mean that.

Also, I'd toyed with the idea of not actually finishing the epic tale of my first large non union production because I didn't find it terribly interesting and now of course that I'm about to finish it, it will probably seem anticlimatic, but let's face it - it's hard to deal with the marketing power of lazy people to click on blogs that come into their myspace blog list or to click on their friend's face. I get 3 times as many myspace emails now as regular emails. Admit it, you do too don't you.

It's pretty clear to me that myspace and other social networking sites are clearly the future of communication and will only grow more popular as more and more people join while fewer and fewer people actually leave. About a year ago there was a stigma about being in your 30's and being on myspace. That stigma no longer exists, and people are growing more comfortable with their age and having people on their friend's list that aren't neccessarily in their traditional age category. It seems that sharing common interests in books, movies, and music and being able to share blogs about what you can't stand is more important in relationship buiilding than being born within a few years of someone.

This should have been obvious to people so I'm surprised it's taken this long to catch on to this level.

Anyway, now it feels like that was a little preview of what I possibly had planned for this blog so now I'll finish the "running" story and people can say which part they liked better.

Let's see...

Where was I?>.....

Oh yeah.

It was very cold that morning and I wasn't sure how I felt wearing a yellow tank top and red shorts that I bought from K-Mart. Fortunately, walking and running everywhere in New York has kept me fit so I wasn't worried that my arms would look too puny to any prospective ladies that might want to chat me up due to my cute face and easygoing straightforward manner.

Fortunately the pick of the litter of the women out that fine morning seemed to be a little rough. There was the 85 pound toothpick of a black woman with nappy hair, and blues brother's sunglasses who kept talking to people and making them uncomfortable, looked as if she would die if someone ran into her, and was clearly there for the free meals and the crack money.

There was also some california beach babes that would be not complete if they didn't have large breasts, styled hair, gucci bags, rock star boyfriends traveling with them, and that little dog that does Taco Bell ads and really likes gorditas. If they were talking loudly about something other than Nick Lachay and sex jokes and drinking all day then maybe I would have cared more.

On a side note, I finally got to hear Nick Lachay sing last night and it turns that he's really an average singer with really banal uninteresting lyrics and probably most of his popularity came from his chiseled jaw and granite like abs and his uncanny ability to shake his bon-bon.

So we spread out in the middle of a blocked off section of road at 7 in the morning, and ran between 23rd street and 24th street several times in the relative cold air while people complained about the weather.

I had by now split up with my sports trivia loving black friend who was lazy and preferred to play a spectator all day. I naturally preferred to run myself ragged with no water all day for the exact same pay while my feet hurt. Guess who made the right choice?

Through complaining to other people about our rough treatment at the hands of our captors and grumbling about the lack of water and clear direction I was able to make "friends" throughout the day who I could acknowledge with a knowing nod every time I would hear them grunt or groan or wipe sweat off their headband.

I didn't really talk to the crack addicts, the porn stars, or any of the people who didn't get the memo that this was a commercial set and actually showed up looking like a ripped to shreds marathon runner on steroids. I don't know if I would actually want legs like tree trunks, but this guy sure did.

I thought it was funny when the real runner type guys kept flexing and stretching before each run like we were doing some real long distance endurance type stuff that would actually require some real preparation. I bet they were giving out GNC tips on set that day in between not breaking a sweat at all.

The only other two events to break up the monotony of being cold, and then hot and having differing directions shouted at me by at least 5 different people all day were 2 key events that really stood out in my mind as being emblematic of that day somehow.

1) At one point the running had moved onto the sidewalk, right in front of this souvenir stand run by this big time Trannsylvanian looking guy with giant mutton chops and one eyebrow. While we were running up and down the sidewalk for an hour straight, he would just stand out there, seemingly oblivious to the fact that farely soon there would be approximately 60 people dashing past him for an unknown goal. He had his arms folded and wore a scowl and looked like he hoped we would leave since he must have thought we were stealing his business, since about 100 tour buses with cameras flashing passed us that day, I guess his argument must have some merit.

The sidewalk running was going on without incident (minus the grumbling) until this really hairy bohemian looking guy who appeared as if he was straight out of a movie about gangs in new jersey in the 70's ran right into the store owner and almost started a fight with him. The cops separated them later without incident. They must have been used to dealing with shoving matches resulting from spectators getting hit by large crowds of people running on the sidewalk before and displayed their strong leadership skills in letting him go.

2) At about 3:30, the heat was starting to get to everyone and considering the fact that we had been there since 4 in the morning, that plus fatigue was starting to be an issue, so it should have come as no surprise to anyone when one of the marathon runners dropped like a rock and had to helped up. Water and soft drinks were quickly brought out. I guess they just forgot that the body goes through liquids in 90 degree weather fairly quickly. It was an honest mistake so I guess I can forgive them.

After lasting from 4 in the morning till 6:30 at night, one of my new friends summed the day up with this catchy phrase "Never again in life." I think that about sums it up. I'm looking every day for my hundred and fifty dollars in the mail.

My Day as a Marathon Runner part 1.

2006-05-08T01:20:00.000-04:00

This is me now. I've been working out.
and i joined the military on weekends
without telling anyone. and i decided
to get a nasty tattoo.

Saturday was my first day ever as an extra in a commercial with 500 other people. I got the notice from an email casting service that sends me scads of emails every day. Normally they're for specific categories like

African-American Female 20-25 needed for one day model shoot. Horseriding skills preferred. Also must speak spanish.

My acting chops are pretty good, but I don't know if I could pass for that. I mean, I'm no Felicity Huffman but I am pretty hot.

So this notice came in for something that I thought I could do -

Americans between 25 and 60 needed for Bacardi commercial. Must be in reasonably good shape and own a tank top and shorts.

This sounded plausible, of course I did have to buy a tank top, but K-mart was nearby, and they do have everything an actor needs there, like low priced shoes and ho-ho's at the checkout aisle.

So there I was lined up with 300 other people at 4 in the morning in front of an old cathedral which seemed strangely out of place for the drunken surroundings.

I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 2:45 to get there at that time. I was thinking that it was pretty early for a Saturday morning and then as soon as I got outside I remembered "Oh yeah, I'm in the East Village and everyone is still up and running around drunk and hailing cabs"

The email I got said the first 100 people get in and it looked like there was more than that already so I figured I might have been out of luck. Why for the love of God couldn't I have got up at 2:35?

But then I got to the front of the line and my name was on the list so everything was okay and soon I was eating tons of cheap breakfest food like eggo waffles, pastry strudels, and dozens of McDonalds like generic fried eggs that were all uniform somehow.

The waiting area looked like a segment from Oz as hundreds of "urban" types were all decked out in their Hilfigers, hairbands, and Ho girlfriends with the requisite boob jobs. So I decided to wait outside with this black guy I was talking to who apparently hadn't kept up with sports for years and asked me 20 questions about what Kevin Garnett was doing and what Derek Jeter's batting average was (and yes I knew the answers).

After sitting outside dispensing sports trivia for over an hour, I decided to go inside and see if anything was ever going to happen. The natives were growing restless and I had been busy doing nothing for over an hour. There were several people running around giving crowd shouting general directions like "remember you're all playing runners." So I figured they were in charge. At the time I had been holding trash from the breakfast that they so graciously provided for me and the other crack whores that made it out and I was wondering how long should I go on holding to it so I asked one of the yelling people were the trash was. One of them pointed behind myself to the receptacle. Then I tried to ingratiate myself with an hysterical woman with a microphone.

You would have thought that I would have learned something from my wedding adventure, but alas I did not. Stupidity runs deep.

So here's me - while looking at my watch I noticed that it was 5:10. So I ask her, "Do you think we'll be shooting by 6?"

This threw off a red flag and I was instantly vaporized and sent off to another dimension of pain. Well it felt like that. What actually happened was that she looked at me and said, "Okay you're done asking questions for the day."

It was one of my favorite "I'm the big director and you're a peon that I could squash" moments like ever.

Sometime later, and I mean much later, we were lined up outside and several different people were shouting things at us like "Remember you're a runner" and "Like maybe you guys should be scattered because like it's supposed to be the middle of the race."

This story will be continued tommorrow or the next day. I'm too tired to work on it any more and it was getting all Homeric and stuff. In other words long, but I know everyone loves that.

And when I say everyone I specifically mean the people that read this thing, which can't be but like 7 different people I think.

Goodnight all.

Goodnight moon.

and......johnboy.

okay I said it.

now deal with it.

more on the story later.

for real!

Weddings Make Women Go Crazy

2006-04-16T00:35:00.000-04:00

There is no such thing as a sane woman. Period. End of story. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, or a woman, and since woman are predisposed towards lying as a natural condition, it's really all the same thing. Women cannot be caught by lie detector tests because such devices are designed to test whether or not the person believes what they are saying, and women internalize their lies and weave such elaborate fantasies around them that they are unable to read words coming out of their mouths as anything other than gospel.

Additionally, women, unless chastized otherwise, enjoy talking about whatever situation they're involved in, as long as they feel free to do so, which usually involves another woman being present, since they would likely be the only ones that another woman would trust her deep dark secrets to. Keep in mind, that to a woman, nearly all of her inner workings are private and deep dark secrets; this extends from how many Snickers bars she ate that day, to how she really feels about the new guy at the office. However, if you add a little pressure to the situation, their willingness to only extend the privilege of talking about their issues and problems becomes enlarged to include everyone that is around them and they will constantly remind anyone listening of exactly what is happening and then force them to do something. This brings us to....

The Wedding

My little sister got married a week ago, and since like most weddings it was essentially run by women it was an incredibly stressful affair and we are all very lucky that no one was killed or maimed. Now I'm not saying that some people didn't want to kill each other, I'm just saying that it didn't happen.

My part in the whole wedding began when I arrived home and since my experience with anything important in my family involves not being told about anything till the last minute and then getting directions shoved down my throat, and being forced to wear a tie, and finding out 30 minutes prior that I have to pick someone up from the airport I wasn't exactly looking forward to the whole process so I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible since it's very likely that I would be in the way and whatever it was that needed doing would probably be done better by the women involved anyway.

So I had just arrived home to have the "family dinner" which involves my parents and all 4 "children" sitting at the places that we sat at our whole lives around the family dinner table. My father tried to make an elaborate speech about how important it was to my time to have the whole family for dinner again but it was quickly interrupted by my brother complaining about something involving food or reminding everyone what someone else at the table used to do 10 years ago, followed by my other sister chiming in an laughing and my mom commenting about how they didn't have to eat their food in "such a vulgar fashion". Sometime during this chivalrous exchange my dad managed to slip away and go upstairs to read an action novel in his underwear with the fan on.

Meanwhile at dinner, a lot of squawking ensued, some food was eaten, and I was presented with the opportunity to be the mc for the wedding which should have been a warning sign to me head for the exits, but I'm a poor sap that can't say no because saying yes just feels so doggone good. Also whenever anyone in my family tries to say no they get made to feel like a schmuck, an argument starts, and then someone slams the door and leaves before fists fly.

I'd also been told about being the greeter some weeks before which I was fine with. I have excellent skills in saying "hello!", "Thanks for coming", and my favorite "try an hoedurve." So this, mixed with my new all important duties as M.C. meant I was going to be the relative face of this wedding for everyone who was coming, be they redneck, white trash, country bumpkin, or just plain ol' next door neighbor. M.C. however, is another story entirely, you have to get up in front of everyone with a microphone and talk, lesser man have had bowel problems and sleepless nights over a post like this, but I resolved to honor the position with honor and respect, because that's who I am, and that's who I care about - the people of this great city, and fine town, and I'm very glad to be here.

In the days before the wedding, there were a thousand little tasks that needed to be doing because they had not been hired out, instead my sister who was not getting married hired herself out as slave labor for the weekend, making hundreds of baked chocolate goodies to put in bags to give away as party favors and to sweat over. Despite my best efforts to remain unseen, I was recruited to put chocolate in bags, which I can safely say that I didn't do as much as I could have. I was just there to lend my moral support to anyone who needed it, and at a wedding, you can bet that there will always be a need for that.

Then there was some discussion that my aunt was trying to take control over her perceived (accurately of course) idea that the wedding was not going according to how it should be. She was correct, although it was going according to plan. Chaos is a plan after all, and so it ensued.

Then the day of the wedding rehearsal dawned and everyone looked respendlant in their tuxes and gowns while all of the grooms family took a well deserved smoke break, after all, they showed up on time, wasn't that work enough? During this time I was grabbed, pushed, pulled, and mauled by my sister, mom and 2 different aunts who all wanted my ear, or a piece of my time, or to adjust my collar, or get me to move a plant. If it hadn't been for them, none of those things would have happened, and then where would we be? Not married, that's where.

So then, the wedding itself went off without a hitch. This means that it was wierd just like all weddings which should be like a pressure valve letting off steam. When they say "I do", all the woman involved should finally be relaxed and they can have a good time and not obsess over the little details.

Obviously this was not the case, and during the reception I was pinched half a dozen times to get up and say something as the MC. It probably would have helped if I had known the names of half the people that the groom picked to be his "mighty men" as it was, I had to read their names off a card as they came in, and it's a good thing they came in the order listed, otherwse they would have been seriously embarassed, and then had a few drunken words with me after about 5 corona's which they would brag was only the beginning of how much alcohol they could hold, and how it didn't affect them at all.

So the kids got married, and I greeted people, who did their best to shove past me and sit down, while I calmly reminded them that they needed to sign the guest book, because otherwise they would be forgotten about 10 years from now when Anna and Shawn went to look at that guestbook and see who was there that fateful day. I kid, I kid, the guestbook is actually really unimportant and I don't know any married couple who ever looks at it again or even knows where it is. Perhaps there's a huge collection of them stored in that big warehouse right next to the ark of the covenant.

After the wedding I was off to my new duties as MC which meant essentially that I had a lot less time to eat than most people because I had to stand up and look stiff in front of everyone while people paid me no attention at all as I announced "Hi, you may remember me from earlier when you signed the guestbook. Guess not huh? Alright...moving on. Howz everybody doing tonight?....alright tough crowd tough crowd.

I did my best to allow for some patter but I saw no heads turned my way at all so I just stood there and waited for official type things to say like "Here they are now for the first time ever...the married couple that you came here to see for crying out loud!!!!!"

My favorite part of the night was when people came up to talk on the microphone and toast the new couple. Most of them who came up forgot to introduce themselves, so I had to do it for them while they were talking. I was put on a tight leash at this point and several key woman in the wedding came up to remind me that I'm doing great and that I better not screw this up. It was all going great, what with people talking and me handing the microphone to them, until some ugly rednecks came up with their little daughters and asked if they could toast the couple. I had already been ordered and pinched on the arm to let no one else speak after my grandfather "But I haven't spoken" I protested. I was accused of being stubborn. But I spoke anyway and I could hear some sighs coming from the ladies who were upset that I was taking too long with the talking.

Then the ugly rednecks got in my face and started threatening me right before I was supposed to announce the first dance. They were on their 8th corona and out of their mind that I wouldn't let their little daughters speak. They were just hovering over me in front of the dj table from which I was talking on a corded microphone with only an 8 foot cord, so I had nowhere to run. They wanted me to let their daughters talk and I said that I was ordered not to let anyone else talk and they informed that they were going to "get this straightened out". I had this vision of me being thrown over a table followed by a bench clearing brawl. It was really amazing. There was 2 huge dudes just standing in front of me and no one seemed to notice that anything was wrong and they were just wondering how come I wasn't doing any announcing.

Amazingly enough all the women were still nervous and the dancing part of the afterparty must have only lasted 20 minutes and there wasnt any of that cute "daughter dancing with her father or grandfather stuff" nope, no time for that, that's for sure. How could they possibly have time for that? There was a schedule to keep! The schedule was so important that the cutting of the cake and the boquet toss was sorta mashed together and I don't even think there was a garter toss. Sorry guys.

Before I knew it, I was handed bubbles and we were blowing them a stupid bubble filled goodbye. I think party streamers or confetti would be more fun. And it wouldn't it be cool if we used noise makers more in real life?

Norman Ferguson retires

2006-04-01T18:31:00.000-05:00

The 4 time champ

It had been a long time coming, but yet most of his friends and family didn't see the telltale signs of a man burnt out from the near daily stress of checking lineups and scorecards and trying to sweettalk his best friends into gift dropping him their best players. And at 12:31 this morning, it officially happened - Norman Ferguson retired from Fantasy Football.

In one last post to the league where Norman had spent the better part of the last 10 years of his life he cited mental fatigue and a desire to spend more time with his family as some of the major contributing factors. "Apparently I have a third son now and my daughter graduated college. When my wife gave me the dates of these events I tried to track down where I was at the time to figure out how I could have forgotten about such important events.

According to the timeline, I was likely reading my foxsports news update about Priest Holmes possibly missing a game during week 2 of the "Big Dawgs" epic playoff matchups. This just blew my mind. I mean for gosh sakes the man was a fantasy monster for years without skipping a beat and now his hamstring hurts when I have to play Damage Inc. in the second round? Thank god I was smart enough to hang a roster spot onto Larry Johnson or I would have been in serious trouble. I mean stud running backs are just impossible to come by.

And now it turns out that this was exactly the time that my precious baby Boy, Randy Moss Ferguson, was born. And then the year after that I was in the middle of trade talks to move Jimmy Smith and Michael Vick for Tom Brady but Born Winner wasn't having any of it. Smith is too old and Vick too unpredictable he told me, sure it's cool to see him run for 100 yards but running quarterbacks don't win championships. Heh, I sure put him in his place 8 weeks later when the Vick Experience threw and ran for a touchdown.

It sure would have been nice if I could remember Rachel's smile as she finished up her B.A. in whatever it was she majored in. Now I think I was there, but I really can't remember much during that time except how Jimmy Smith hung 200 yards and a score on those pathic Saints. Good thing I held onto him."

Sometime later in the very long and increasingly rant filled post Norman finally admitted that the thrill of competition just didn't stir him on anymore knowing that his family couldn't be there to cheer him on. "It just didn't seem real to me anymore", Norman admitted during a moment of quiet reflection. "I mean it was like I was living a double life and always coming out on the short end of the stick."

Shortly after becoming the manager of his second son's little league football team, The Bulls, Norman started to realize that he had some problems when he traded little Cody, a respectable second string receiver at the time, for defensive help and next year's fifth round draft choice from crosstown rivals, The Rabid Wolverines.

"That and the fact that my wife left me after that really opened up my eyes a little bit," Ferguson allowed. "When you have to make your own dinner every day and the dishes pile up and visitation rights for your kids are every other week, you start to realize there's more important things in life then staring at Stat Tracker and watching Terrell Owens eat up the yards every Sunday afternoon."

Mr. Ferguson will now be undergoing group therapy with his family on Friday afternoons and passing out Cambell's chunky soup to hungry fans on game day and he's feeling good about himself again.

I'm About to Pass out

2006-03-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

From over stimulation, too much cigar smoke in the apartment and 3 hours of sleep on sunday followed by 6 on monday and after a full 8 today i need to go to bed right now. ive been way tired for over an hour. but still i knew the people would be clamoring for me, and I cannot abandon them. It is against my honor!

Some notes of note

I was at a house party on Saturday, and the topic happened to come up about Moby and whether or not he was a christian and then it struck me that christians sort of have this minority view of themselves where they (we) cling desparately to people in popular media and pin our normal view of christianity on them. Oh so if Moby's a christian, then i guess it's okay! that kind of thing. and then someone brought up how some old school metal artist is a christian but he doesnt change his stage show to reflect that, believing that its only a show and he shouldnt change what made him successful in the first place while living his life with friends and family for God. interesting topic to be sure.

What do you guys think about that?

I'm Not Bloggging Till I get Another Comment

2006-03-24T06:56:00.000-05:00

You guys probably thought that I wouldn't notice that my last 2 lucid and bizzare posts met with no comment. Perchance it was because you had no idea what to say. I no no. I spelled the word "no" wrong. It should have been "know", as in Dr. Know the first James Bond movie (other than Casino Royale of course) based on the popular British spy character invented by Ian Fleming way back when. It was always great escapist fun watching James Bond because he always had some gadget which would allow him to do something so ridiculous that you would just laugh, shake your head and say, "That wacky ol James Bond has done it again!"

And speaking of ridiculous...

Which movie are you guys looking forward to more, Rocky 6 or Rambo 4?

I haven't watched a single new Stallone film since Copland in 1997, the rest have all been, as I understand it, turgid. You may not be familiar with that word as such, but you'll have to trust me when I say that it was used derogatorily.

Where was I on that Stallone thing? Oh yeah, now I remember. Which is more believable, a 60 year old boxer, or a 60 year old survival expert training an elite survival squad in Iraq to defeat terrorism. It's go America!!!! time. I remember vividly watching Rocky 4 with my dad and brother in the movie theater and the fans literally standing up and chanting Rocky! Rocky! Of course they could have also been chanting USA! USA! which they will be because of these 2 movies which makes me wonder if they weren't a mandate from the President in order to increase public support of the war on evil doers.

Well, thats my post. I have to go make eggs. My theory is that Rocky dies in Rocky 6, but Rambo kills a lot of people. Comment away!

Steal this Blog!

2006-03-21T20:29:00.000-05:00

I have no real reason for writing that, except that it's funny in an idiosyncratic sense and if nothing else that's at least good for something, although I must admit that at this time I am not exactly sure what that is or why it would be important but I feel I have certain obligations to my readership to include you in important goings ons such as this private joke that we are now sharing in honor of that beloved social revolutionary, Abby Hoffman. Abby loved his country so much that he named his only son after it, and thus America Hoffman was born, although I think it would have been more powerful if he had named him Johnny America who could have then become a comic book character and fought all sorts of wacky adventures against the red skull.

I'm so sorry but work on this blog is unbearable now that I have become afflicted with the dread disease that waits for all of us - sleep! Sleep is to be feared. It can strike at any time and without mercy. It holds no regards to the color of one's skin, or which moon you bow to. Sleep waits for you my friend, and when it catches you, it's lights out.

Yes, I did stay up far too late last night for undisclosed reasons and so I have to go to bed at 8:45 pm in the hopes that I wake up refreshed and able to continue on with my day of peril in which I attempt to figure out what my maniacal office manager wants me to do before she leaves to go on vacation. She will be and cry and plead with me to get everything right and ask me to ask questions if I don't know something , and then will promptly get all freaked out when I don't know it. It's too much for me. Which is why no matter how much sleep I get, I still feel the overwhelming urge to buy a Coke and drink it. I've heard it does a body good.

Additional news is that I had another phone conversation with Valley Girl in which she revealed her country of origin to be from California, in fact in, the Valley. I still have no idea where that is, and I'm convinced that a basic knowledge of geography is totally unimportant. She's spring breaking for a week back home and will get back to me later. So I'm feeling good at how slow I'm taking this time with the new girl. It feels great to not be worried about a girl for once after meeting her, unfortunately I've been worrying lately that I'm not worrying enough about it.

What else can I say before I collapse and yawn again? Nothing apparently, a yawn escaped my lips in mid-sentence and now I must retire.

The George Foreman Saga: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grilled Food

2006-03-17T21:01:00.000-05:00

Hoo boy! There sure is a lot of stuff going on in the world isn't there? I mean that's like a serious understatement if ever understatements have been made, and certainly they have otherwise there would be no need at all to have such a word which describes something which otherwise wouldn't ostensibly exist.

I heard that Dick Cheny, who is currently our vice president as of this writing, shot someone in the face. It's very likely that this won't happen ever again as I understand he is now going through a mandatory "face shooting sensitivity training course" which is designed to let the viewer understand how serious it is to shoot someone in the face. I have never seen it, since I have never shot anyone in the face, however there was this one time that me and my brother were playing with BB guns and my brother asked me to point the gun at him and pull the trigger, which looking back on it seems like a really bad idea given the fact that our dad had told us to never point a gun at someone's face which looking back on it is probably the best advice that he has ever given me. It turns out that the gun actually had a bb in it, and not knowing this I turned the face of the gun slightly to the left of my brothers face, and fired, hitting coincidentally a picture of my brother in the face.

It's this kind of bitter irony which sometimes forces us to pause and reflect on the indeterminate nature of our very lives while we curl up on the couch eating Doritos and watching the new season of the Sopranos which I understand has started and every New York newspaper around here has already reported that Tony Soprano has been shot. I do not know however if it was in the face. Could Dick Cheney be involved? Was he interviewed for the piece? I do not know. However, I know it is time for us as a nation to come together so the communication over face shooting can truly begin. Otherwise, the terrorists may already have won.

In other slightly unrelated news, I just returned home from a rough day at the hospital where I temp at and after filing folders all day and getting blisters underneath my fingernails, and having to walk through an endless mine field of elevators that seem to stretch on to the heavens I spent the last half hour of the day reading New York magazine which appropriately featured articles on the Soprano's and that one guy who was on the Soprano's who helped to shoot a cop in the face and was immediately labeled a "cop killer." I don't want to actually name this hospital, because I understand now that bloggers are getting in trouble for name dropping and getting fired for posting their opinions about commercial interests which are of a serious and private, yet universal interest. I do not think it is a conflict of interest for something to be universal and private at the same time, I just think that big companies only want the truth to be spoken about their product, which in this case is their carefully crafted corporate image which probably includes a slogan about how every day they are striving to be the best at whatever it is that they do and they want you to know it.

I'm finding it increasingly hard to find good fried chicken in New York City and I think this is a serious problem. I'm not going hungry or anything, what with McDonalds taking over the city alongside Starbucks but sometimes a man has a hunger that only a chicken breast that has been seasoned with the Colonel's original recipe can satisfy. A woman can never satisfy this craving, she can only feed it. I recommend the 10 piece "family bucket". Some of my favorite childhood memories involved the smells that would come out of that bucket which other families would bring to church lunch functions. My function at these events was to eat the chicken, and I must say that I was incredibly skilled at it.

And now I am a little bit hungrier than I was when I first started writing this piece so it is time for me to pay a little visit to a place in my apartment that I like to call "the kitchen" and fire up the George Foreman grill and put some chicken breast in it.

Good Night everyone and good luck with whatever you're doing. and don't forget to comment on how great you think this blog is and how you want to get me in contact with a book publisher who would love to jump on this crazy bandwagon that is rolling all over the freekin place!

News of the Day

2006-03-10T20:09:00.000-05:00

What with trying to be entertaining and having my living soul sucked out of me lately, I've noticed that I've been a little skimpy on any actual, you know news about me. Since probably nearly everyone that reads this thing actually knows me, that may not be such a bad idea. I mean I may have to sacrifice writing some ridiculous story about God knows what that 5 of you would enjoy for the greater good of mankind as we know it to be.

So, what has been happening with me lately? Not a lot if you judge by this thing, but experience has taught me that a man's blog may not always be the best representation of anything that is actually relevant to him, especially if you're dealing with an individual of such an unusal persuasion like myself. Did I happen to mention that I enjoy celery? Well maybe I should have. Information like that could be quite pertinent should you chance to encounter me at some wild and distant point in the future when those damn dirty apes have destroyed everything.

Well, as it turns out there is nearly always something happening to me in New York City, but I often feel too buggered to write about.

So here's a list. ahem.

1) Met great girl at church

2) Began exchanging long and exhilarating e-mails several times per day for an entire week.

3) Spent days on end contacting temp companies trying to drum up work.

4) Went to church and the Museum of Modern Art with her and her sister and her roomate. A lovely time was had by all. Seriously it was a fun time. It felt so natural like we could have that kind of time many times in the future.

5) 2 days later was informed that:

a) she dated a musician for 4 years and began to look down on him because of lack of funds.
b) went through years of therapy for this
c) therapy convinced her that she was co-dependant and shouldn't be in a relationship with other co-dependant people which since we seemed to be so much alike she was convinced that I was, but clearly this was just an excuse to cover up the deeper issue to be discussed in d as follows:
d) She could not date any more artists period. Since I'm an artist, that means I'm out.
e) Spent several fruitless hours writing to convince her of her folly including how I would work 2 jobs to support what would clearly be a very beautiful baby.
f) natch. At some point, despite the fact that she was more logic driven than any woman I've ever met, her red flags were flying and she refused to listen to any more of my supportive arguments fully convinced that there was nothing I could do to change her mind
g) deep depression. unable to write anything worthwhile.
h) yadda yadda yadda
i) briefly floated the idea of meeting with her to ask nagging questions. When she discovered that I would not give her the questions in advance the idea was shot to pieces with a buttering knife and eaten with a french croissant (She's very civilized)
j) discussed the girl situation with several close friends who all did their best to council while I forged ahead and did my best to completely ignore what they said and screw up on my own terms.

6) Prospective New York talent agent contacted me to setup possible (still) forthcoming meeting for the 16th of march.

7) met new best friend - another funny actor, writer, general enterainer also named Josh.

8) Josh floated the idea of getting an apartment together in Queens. I second the notion.

9) began a series of temp assignments.

10) first temp assignment was hair raisingly dull - a receptionist. my duties consisted of opening the door for people and sorting the mail. I mean really, how much of my time during an 8 hour working day do you think that took up?

11) in the middle of second temp assignment at hospital. More work means less sucky. Basically i do an enormous amount of filing and photocopying. I travel to 3 different offices daily in the world's largest hospital, Mt Sinai on Madison Avenue. I got lost half a dozen times in the first 3 days alone. But they're not so picky on time or anything so it's okay. In fact, it seems like a hospital is pretty ineficient in a way that reminds me of the government. Oh well. 12 dollars an hour is 12 dollars an hour no matter how you slice it.

12) unable to remember details about 12, moving on quickly to 13

13) Was reading a book called the life of Pi which reminded me that God has the whole world in his hands, so I felt better and quickly got over the "relationship" as much as you can given the fact that I'm still convinced it would work out if I had any money to speak of. I don't really think not dating an artist would have mattered if I had a recurring role on Guiding Light and was the star of the new IBM commercials.

14) Shortly thereafter met another girl who agreed to be friends with me. Due to previous female encounter, am deathly afraid of what to do next. Do I call her to hang out? Do I try to go out with a group with her and other people since we're friends and not dating. How soon do I call her just to talk? oh the possibilities.

15) Discovered that Craigslist.org has listings for actors. Promptly stayed up way too late sending out digital headshots.

16) Have been waking up way too early lately for hospital temp job due to annoyance with the work. I think dread makes it hard to sleep, and I sure dread this place. However with the imminent collapse of winter, I don't think I'll be having to worry about work and money for a while.

17) I have 3 short film auditions this weekend. One of them may actually pay something!

18) Wrote new blog detailing myriad of experiences as of late.

19) Finished blog and thought about eating sandwich

20) Realized that we are all out of bread and don't feel like driving even though store is only 8 blocks away. This is because it's nearly impossible to get a good parking spot at night so assumedly when I returned from my shopping trip, I would have to park like 4 blocks away.

21) Wished everyone a merry christmas and to my sister who is getting married in just over a month! I'll be coming home then. Look for me to appear like Haley's Comet.

22) I'm so excited right now.

23) Worried that I shouldn't have left message on new girls phone explaining that I was calling to confirm that it was her number and since it was I would be hanging up.

24) Am overthinking my overanalyzing.

Women on the Subway

2006-03-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

For the benefit of everyone who doesn't live in New York City, which admittedly is most of the world, you may not be aware of some particularly strange new york behaviour that goes on in the subways. It is thus: when you are waiting to board a subway it is perfectly okay to engage a stranger in conversation, if interested the stranger will talk back and if you board the same train as them it is perfectly okay to continue the conversation until it ends and try to exchange phone numbers or just mumble something at them as they get off on their stop and have a happy life that doesn't include ever seeing you again neccessarily.

However, once you are actually on the train, 99.99% of strangers will not have a conversation with you for fear of their life. It's like the whole personification of the alpha male syndrome of pack animals. When you look at someone in the eyes too long they may growl at you or move to a different seat to avoid all the intimidation that you are directing their way with your unwanted "eye" presence. Any talk at all between strangers is usually just to alert someone else about something like about how they dropped their bag or that a fat woman is about to fall on them and they may want to move. After the event has passed, so has the conversation. Any questions that are asked after this point will likely be answered with one word and a turn of the head.

So it was with some bizzarre surprise when yesterday on the subway I made a casual remark to a girl and she actually said something. and then something else. and then I remarked to her how bizzarre it was that she was actually talking to me. and then we just talked. then i made her laugh. then as she was leaving i asked if I could give her my email address and she said that she already had a lot of boyfriends.

I can certainly imagine. I mean after all, a girl who would talk to a stranger on a subway must be popular. The kind of behaviour that she displayed is known as "subway slutting". It is practiced only by those familiar with the dark arts, and by that I do mean mud painting.

A funny thing happened on the way to the grocery store

2006-03-03T08:04:00.000-05:00

So I was in the elevator at the grocery store going down to the parking lot and I saw a sign that said "shoplifters will be prosecuted". I kind of find that hard to believe because of the logistics of catching every little kid that makes off with a snickers bar. On the other hand though, I think most lawyers are sneaky, so to make up for it, I think there should be another sign that reads "Prosecuters will be shoplifted." I kind of think that would bring balance to the world.

Life Affirming Moment

2006-03-02T11:58:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO on Demand and right when I turned it off, the Price is Right was on and I was reminded to keep my pets spayed and neutered. There's not many things that reach all the way back to your childhood, but Bob Barker takes me back and he's still fresh. By god, did you see the way he punched out Adam Sandler almost 10 years ago in Happy Gilmore? Man he was really old then, so imagine how old he is now!

Man versus Machine

2006-02-25T17:22:00.000-05:00

Today's blog is brought to you courtesy of the chair that I bought yesterday for 13 dollars that provides me enough back support to be able to write to you relatively free from pain. Let's give it up for the chair everybody!

And my flat panel monitor and speakers are now resting comfortably on a svelte but cheap looking computer desk that came in a 35 pound box that I had to lug 2 blocks from the store along with the chair and then collapse in a heap. The next day after becoming strong like bull I put myself to the test yet again and attempted to setup the computer desk despite the fact that the directions are written in 3 languages and clearly the interpreters at times forgot which one was which. Although this may not explain how part 5 was labelled part 1 but it is obvious to me that not a single woman works at the plant that this monstrosity was put together at, otherwise they would have made sure that all needed holes to gently send the screws home into were present and accounted for.

Probably only 2 of you know what a pilothole is, hence the reason that I didn't mention the word "pilothole" in that last paragraph. My roomate, the great Italian who mumbles a lot, was baffled when I said the pilotholes were missing from this piece of crap. I had to explain to thim that pilotholes are holes that are pre-drilled so screws can be inserted with a minimum amount of effort. This also helps to explain why the part of the computer desk that the keyboard normally rests on is still on the ground. It is because my brain and my back could not take any more drilling without drill bits and using flat edge screws. So I am typing away with my wireless keyboard right in front of the monitor as nature intended it.

Important Read this Line Carefully!

And yesterday one of the temp companies that I've been going to off and on for weeks finally came through and starting on Monday I will be the receptionist at the NYU real estate office.

Thank you Sweet Jesus. Amen.

You should note this line too

This concludes today's blog as my whole afternoon was spent in a race against time to put this thing together so I could write this and then go to my friends concert.

and we're done.

The Most Important Blog you will ever read!

2006-02-23T21:31:00.000-05:00

...whew! I was just reading tips on cover letter writing, and it said to grab the audience right away, so I figured that would be a pretty good way to do it. You know by overemphasizing how great this blog is. Don't get me wrong. I mean it is pretty great but it may not neccessarily be the most important blog you will ever read. I mean there's that one blog about that political guy that I heard is kind of neat, and there's like this one blog that teaches you how to knit sweaters at home. I guess that's pretty important right?

Alright before we breeze through today's topic I just wanted to tackle some issues real quick with my astounding depth and insight.

Immigrants: Get a job
Terrorists: Don't like em
Bad Weather: Stay indoors!
Smoking: Causes Cancer!
Inhaling: Disqualifies you from Presidential consideration
Ham Sandwiches: Delicious
Smelly armpits: Deodorant
Packing Tape: Better than masking tape
The VCR: oh the memories
Doughnuts: Krispy Kreme Original Glazed
Keyboards: Wireless Keyboards
Coffee Machines: Espresso Machines
Labor Problems: Take a hike
China: Quit buying our country commies!

And there you have it folks, late breaking commentary about issues important to you.

Oh wait there's one more

Olympic Winter Games: Couldn't care less.

The Great Job Search

2006-02-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

As of this writing, I am still without a job. I would not mention this under normal circumstances in this blog as I hate for the content to descend into begging and depressive states of behaviour. Plus experience has taught me that it makes for terrible entertainment, which if not the central focus, should at least be a consideration for any work of public consumption. Therefore, if focusing on personal content at all, it becomes neccessary for me to either lie, stretch the truth, not be totally honest, or just ruminate in a self depricating way about the strange and wonderful journey which so far doesn't seem to have produced much of anything.

And whalla! We have today's topic.

We're going to have a stroll down the good old memory lane where everything was a little bit rosier colored, the grass was greener, and I could still reach for a third funny cliche' to round out this sentence.

The time was early November of 2005. I had just moved into my brand new Brooklyn apartment of hardwood floors, and bad smells with the knowledge that this wouldn't be an easy jaunt. In fact, I kind of had this idea that things might not go so well at first, which is good because it helped me to deal with a seemingly unending string of days involving me getting on the subway to Manhattan, picking a starting location, and going to as many restaurants as it was possible to talk to that day about hiring.

I remember my first interview at Bubba Gump Shrimp clearly. I walked up the stairs of this chain restaurant that was all decked out in wood so polished that you could see your face in it, as well as numerous bright colors and sparkly objects from the sea to tease, and please the easily amused traveling consumer and his family.

I got an interview with the manager who asked me some stock questions about restaurants, most of which involved guest relations, and working with the other "team members". I in turn gave him stock answers, and tried to look as eager and friendly as possible about working in a place that clearly knew a thing or 2 about fried foods. He said they would probably give me a call, so I called the next day to see if they had a chance to review my resume, they said they were looking into all of them, and then I never heard from him again. This set the tone for that whole first month of wandering the streets, reading books on the subway, and going to the library to use the internet.

Anyway, I wasn't too happy, and so I could have been knocked over by a feather when a manager at Pizzeria UNOs told me that he wanted to offer me a job. Training didn't start till the next week though, so I went home and proudly told my friends of my great success and they crowded around the big New Yorker and began offering their accolades and wanted to add their own jokes to my comedy act. Yes, everything was looking up until I went back to go to training and I discovered that I had written the time down wrong and was 30 minutes late. So after a lot of begging, pleading, cajoling, and a one page letter, I was shown the door.

Despondancy was definitely starting to set in and soon thereafter I began scouring the classified ads looking for any job, not just restaurant work. I still can't believe that juice bar didn't hire me. What the heck kind of qualifications were they looking for anyway?

My favorite story of this nature deals with the time I applied at CVS pharmacy. Yes, you heard me right. I was so desparate that I applied to be a greeter at a backwards pharmacy, unfortunately I made the mistake of telling the lady over the phone that I was an actor and I was doing some comedy open mike nights. This surely whet her appetite for a vigorating discussion of the comedy arts and what people used to laugh at 40 years ago.

At the time of the interview I was ushered into the stock room and made to sit down at a cheap plastic table that employees probably used for eating granola bars on top of and forgetting about their problems while reading the ingredients of various cleaning supplies.

The 50 something shrewish woman kept asking me these insulting questions as to whether or not I could smile because it didn't look I was smiling. Why, surely I must have been thrilled at the prospect of a 6.50 an hour job of standing out in the cold and thanking people for shopping at CVS. She insisted that she wasn't sure that I could smile. I assured her that it was a skill that I had perfected and constantly worked on just in case an opportunity like this one presented itself. After a nauseating question and answer session she walked me to the bathroom and let me know that it would be my responsiblity to clean, and then she again wondered aloud if I could do it. I told her it would be fine and began looking at the large bathroom, thinking about all the poop stains which would no doubt be accumulating as we spoke, then she told me to quit looking so hard.

After we got back to the table she tried to ease the mood by saying, "Are you sure that this job won't interfere with your career. The hours are from 11 to 11 at night sometimes. This isn't Trollup you know." She was aghast that with my English degree I had never heard of or read Trollup. It was obviously very important in her life. Then she reminded me that we would be dealing with a very conservative client base and then asked if I could be conservative. I assured her that I was as clean cut and well mannered as the next fellow, so we proceeded on to the letter that I was to write out, explaining to the manager about what a great job I would do there and why I wanted to work at CVS. After this ordeal, she was still unconvinced, and handed me a mirror and asked me to look into it, smile big, and say I love CVS. I love my CVS customers. I almost cracked under the pressure of such an enormous undertaking but I managed it without too much effort.

Fortunately that same day I got a job at TGI Friday's and worked there proudly for 3 weeks and was promptly laid off on the morning of New Years Day when I called in to check my schedule.

Gathering courage, I began sending my resume to all the places mentioned in the classifieds and had to turn down some really skeezy and ghetto telemarketing jobs.

Things were looking up when I strolled into a Philly Cheese Steak shop and asked if I could apply and they promptly threw some plastic gloves on me and had me going through the motions for 2 hours. Then I worked a full day and found out that I wasn't actually hired yet. I was just in training and they would be calling me, and you know how much I hate that.

2 weeks after that I was hired at an Egyptian restaurant and promptly given 20 pages of material to learn the next day. I sweated and sweated over it and was thrown on the floor the very next day just to help out. After making too many mistakes that our gracious host had ran over for 3 hours in orientation the previous day, I was sent home and was sure that I was to be fired. It would have been a better scenario at that point because I was shipped to the Tapas Restaurant next door that had almost no customers and the same gruelling amount of training. During this time I turned down an office interview and a job offer much to my later chagrin as it would turn out.

So after enduring the trials of learning all their information for a whole week I was told that I had finished training and would be put on the schedule. Then fate intervened and the manager's dad died and he left the country for a week and his store was looked at by middle managers from the Egyptian restaurant who concluded that their wasn't enough business to hire me, so I was promptly shown the door again when the manager returned.

But the next week I realized that I had an advantage over most New Yorkers since I had a car and decided to go back to what I knew best - pizza delivery.

And thus concludes our thrilling story and brings us up to the present day. I hope everyone had as much fun reading this as I did writing it.

First Chapter and News

2006-02-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, your favorite Future Superstar is currently dealing with a severe emotional blow from a lady and so has been thrown at a loss for what to write today. However, I did want to let you know that I have been working steadily on The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots and I have decided to make the intro to the book available for your perusal.

We'll get to that in a second, but first some news

My First On-Air Commercial!

Okay, it's only a regional spot, but I can actually be seen for a good second onscreen in this commercial for Koons Toyota which is shown in the Maryland, and Washington D.C. area. Click here to view it in all its glorious color! I tried to get a screenshot but I fear that my nerd skills may have waned a bit since turning 30.

And now the moment that you've all been waiting for...

The intro chapter to The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots!

The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots

Warning: If you are reading this, it does not necessarily mean that you are not an idiot.

Of course it does not altogether disqualify you from being one either. Of most native readers of the English language, the ability to read and understand complete sentences like this one is actually attained at quite a young age and it can actually be said with some certainty that this ability does not make one any more or any less of an idiot. There are still many idiots with us after the completion of elementary school. Strangely enough, there are far more idiots in the world after receiving a high school diploma than there were before. Stranger still, there exist quite a good many idiots out there in the world with a college degree. Shockingly, even the possession of a masters or doctorate does not exclude one from this very real and grave possibility.

The sad truth is that no amount of education in the world can stifle or prevent idiot tendencies completely. This is because idiot tendencies by their very nature are inborn, making them utterly and horribly inescapable. From the time of conception on up till when death locks us in its icy jaws we are all imprinted with the genetic material to say or do things of incredible stupidity. This is called “higher intelligence”.

Animals do not have higher intelligence, so clearly they must have “lower intelligence”. They also have very few things in their life to juggle, mainly just eating and sleeping and looking out for anyone bigger than them who might want to eat them. Additionally their comprehension skills are severely limited, so not only do they not know what they are looking at most of the time, it never crosses their mind to wonder what it might be anyway.

These are just some of the reasons why animals are seldom seen engaging in random acts of idiocy. Squirrels falling out of trees, and birds running into windowpanes would be among the few examples. Animals have such a limited scope of things to do that they very seldom screw up in an obvious way that makes them look ridiculous to onlookers. People on the other hand with their “higher intelligence” have such a broad scope of tasks to perform in life because of what they should know, and because of the capacity they have for performing tasks, that the chances of them doing something ridiculous at any given moment are incredibly high.

This is basically what defines an idiot; it is someone who screws up in either small or monumentally large ways. Normally there have to be other people around to notice it and think to themselves, “God what an idiot.”

It kind of reminds me of the old adage if an accountant screws up in a small office by himself and no one sees it, is he an idiot?

Can you be an idiot with no one watching?

How much of an idiot can you be with other people watching you?

This is what this book is about. It’s about people doing dumb, ridiculous things when they should know how to do those things.

A lot of you reading this right now might say that this book can’t possibly be about you. After all, you have a good job with a steady source of income, providing you with enough free time to read a book as ridiculous as this one. Also, you are very smart and always know what you’re doing at all times, and you always fill out the right forms, and dot all your t’s and cross all your I’s.

If this is indeed the case, then I might hazard a guess that this book may be very helpful to you indeed, because after all, if you’re reading this, then you just may be an idiot.

Hawaii to spread joy by getting rid of Poverty!

2006-02-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

In a convoluted story just released yesterday by CNN.com, several things were revealed.

A) Hawaii has nearly reached maximum capacity of the amount of tourists that they would like to have.

B) Hawaii would like to keep the same amount of tourists that they have now.

C) However they would like the tourist base to have a lot more money.

D) "A rich person that throws their money away on expensive room service, oil rubdowns every night, and guided trips of volcanoes while hangliding or snorkeling" is now un P.C. according to Hawaii's tourist board and has been replaced with the phrase "activity seeking tourist."

E) If more people came to Hawaii, then everyone would not be able to appreciate the "Aloha Spirit" which is not translated in the article, but which I have bothered to look up for you. It refers to the New Agey kind of energy of good will where everyone puts all their thoughts and actions to good will and harmony results. These are the same kind of people that freek me out by always talking about karma, and energy, and balance. Also some of these people take a lot of mind altering substances. It's because the harmony of nature and you with it becomes more real that way. And that's the only reason. I know when I sit around with a rolled up fattie and all my friends that look like they're from a public awareness commercial that's the only reason I do it.
It's just to maintain the balance man. That's all I wanna do okay!

The article posits itself as a straight news piece, indeed it's from the Associated Press - your trusted news source for all things newsworthy since the news began. Without the Associated Press, it's safe to say that we wouldn't know anything about squat outside of our backwards little communities that we live in while carving bird feeders by hand out of melon ballers. It's not as easy as it looks either.

However the article takes on a surprisingly snarky (but subtle) tone when it says this, "Hawaii's target market is shifting towards "activity seeking travelers" -- rich people who golf, spend hours in a spa, island-hop and can afford the overpriced snacks inside the hotel's mini bar." I have a feeling that when Rex Johnson, President and Chief executive officer of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, sat down for the interview for this article, he wouldn't have consented if he'd known that his mini bar snacks were going to be called "overpriced." You didn't quote me on the mini bar! Rex would have screamed. Don't you know that those snacks are the highest quality refreshment for our very special guests, the activity seeking travelers, and I'm very upset right now. I can hardly breathe. Can someone please get me some guava juice and one of those squeeze balls that release tension?

Barry Wallace, executive vice president for hotel operator Outrigger Enterprises concurs when he says that, "Our initiative has been to focus on the very best guests - the ones who will take advantage of activities and other amenities that we have to offer. That's been the focus of our marketing for the last 2 years, and it certainly will be from this point forward."

I don't know about you, but I could almost feel Barry's saliva glands operating as he smelled all that money coming in. In fact I have this image in my head of him giving that interview while shining a tourist's shoe with a hundred dollar bill. Can you picture that? Go ahead. Do it right now. I'm serious.

All right. Now that we're all on the same page I would like to point out how Barry shot himself in the foot. That's a cliche' that means essentially that Barry possibly sabotaged what he was trying so hard to promote with that interview. This was because he described rich tourists as "the very best guests", this of course would imply that middle class tourists would be the worst guests and that he doesn't want them around. This is nearly on the same level as Ross Perot's classic gaffe where he addressed a gathering crowd as "you people" except that it's in a fluff piece on the marketing of Hawaii which I can't believe is on a national news page, and the writer of the article is probably embarassed by it and is fortunate that his name isn't attached to something so mundane.

The rest of the article is likely summarizing a long interview citing facts and figures about Hawaii's recent tourism industry. There's also a quote about the Aloha spirit which is sort of disjointed and I can't quite understand what is meant to have been said. Maybe one of my lucky readers can figure it out. Here's the quote from our pal Rex Johnson retyped verbatim, "if we lose this thing called "aloha", we're just like any sand-and-surf destination. I don't believe we can afford to go there." Rex is clearly a marketer at the top of his game and I salute him. To read more about corporate speak, and its fascinating uses, go here, it's an archived article from the old Joshua Dudley fan club.

Wrapping it Up

Chances are that some of you noticed the picture at top of the article. I congratulate your cognative skills. You may have wondered what the heck the picture was all about. Honestly, I just wanted to create the spirit of hawaii and I was having a hard time looking up pictures of Hawaii girls without getting porn So I settled on a classic picture of Elvis from his historic 1961 movie Blue Hawaii. Enjoy.

Striking Back for America

2006-02-08T00:17:00.000-05:00

Being the transparent persona non grata in many circles that I am, people often feel that I am being something less than transparent. In fact, many of those same people are downright nasty and probably yell at their mother's on the telephone about how they didn't have time for them when they were 8 years old, scaring their roomates half to death and forcing them to remain secluded in their room.

So needless to say I get a lot of gripes. I usually cope with these mindless tantrums and complaints the way the President does - by completely ignoring them, and forging ahead to a shiny destination in the future met by a thousand points of light. However, a recent anonymous commenter made a comment that I so completely disagreed with that I decided to forego my normal response to said cowardly anonymous commenter and point out kindly in the comments section how ridiculous and unthought out their commentary was and how they should take their dissenting opinion to a place where it will be met with much less virulent dissent and open honest and frank discussion - you know, someplace like Palestine.

So for the benefit of those readers who can't trouble themselves to go back one column and peruse leisurely the remarks that I refer to, I will quote the offending comment in its entirety.

"Dude what is the purpose of this blog? To be funny? To give us real insight into your daily life? Your recent entry does neither." by the reader who has named himself "Hey" posted at 3:07 pm

Since this comment refers specifically to my recent blog (the one right before this one) I will quote liberally from it to defend myself from these unwarranted attacks.

Hey begins with a legitimate question, and one that I find myself asking more and more these days, just what is the purpose of this blog? Well, I think the fact that I have called it "Diary of a Future Superstar" should give you a pretty good idea. It's a diary, so I'm free to write about pretty much whatever I want within legal, ethical, and personal moral standards. I enjoy movies and pop culture, so references to those often find themselves nestled within my fascinating words of wisdom to which I and others should aspire to.

I also happen to be very funny. This is backed up by literally hundreds of quotes from friends and associates who will attest to this great maxim that indeed "Josh is a funny dude." In fact, I have a new friend Long-Haired Tourist Guide who introduces me to all of his friends like this, "Josh is the worst comedian I've ever met, but he has the best timing, and timing is everything." So, since I am funny, a lot of my frank writing, which is basically all of my material, will often contain large chunks of humor which may be unnoticible to the common sense of humor, much like how only bats can hear certain high pitched noises.

To prove it, I will insert quote #1 from previous column, "So what does the future hold for future superstar, Mr. Joshua Dudley? Well, after this column is over I'm going to get up off of this futon and eat some cereal."

I would like to point out that this quote is from the beginning of the last column and that it sets the tone for the piece as a whole and is actually funny. I'll explain why. The question of what does the future hold is generally perceived to be referring to a time in the near future defined in generally mushy terms as being weeks, months or years away. Comedy is in a sense about re-direction, you get the audience thinking that you're taking them one way and boom you hit them up side of the head with your sense of how things are really going from a totally different direction than the the one that they were expecting. Instead of talking in vague terms about what I was going to be doing weeks or months from now I stated what I was going to be doing in the next few minutes. On what I think is a funny side note, after the column was finished I couldn't decide if I was still hungry or not, until upon re-reading my newly finished column I discovered that I needed to eat cereal, which I had clearly forgotten about, so the whole joke became a big "note to self."

The second big attack by Mr. Hey is his question about how this blog should provide insight into my daily life but it does not. Well Mr. Hey I think I have effectively slaughtered 2 birds with one stone with that last piece, since if you will note that it points out that I like to eat cereal.

Later on, I provide intelligent commentary into the whole Dave Chappelle morass which was recently broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Show to a national television audience of several million. This indicates that I am either concerned about Dave Chappelle as a person, that for my own personal gain I want to see his show continue, or that I am hip to what America is talking about and just want to share in the conversation. Whichever way you slice it, it is obviously an insight into my daily life, part of which consists of thinking about funny Dave Chappelle moments. Like right now, I am thinking about Dave Chappelle dressed as Rick James being kicked up into the air by Charlie Murphy, playing himself and hitting in slow motion a dresser drawer and breaking a mirror.

Later still in the post I talk about the purpose of the blog and explain that I just "have to be me" of which the entire previous post is representative of and if Mr. Hey cannot see that then it is really too bad for him and there is nothing that I can do to help except reccommend some expensive counseling sessions with Dr. Melfy

However, none of this making sense to Mr. Hey right now, who probably thinks that I am completely stonewalling the issue when he cannot see the plain truth right in front of his nose. This is who I am. This is what I write about. How much do you think a person can write without revealing something deeper about themselves? I would have to be a fantastic storyteller or an incredible narcissist to write all these columns since July without revealing in fact a great deal about who I am. The truth should be obvious, but some people have a lot of 'splainin to do.

Now I'm not gonna lie to you, I try to make this thing interesting and you sure can't please everybody, although to people like Mr. Hey it would seem like maybe I should.

In conclusion Mr. Hey, my recent post in fact does both show who I am while being funny at the same time. It also allows for some incredibly awkward endings.

What's next for the future?

2006-02-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

What does the future hold for Joshua Dudley, future superstar? Well, shortly after this blog is done, I'm going to get up off this futon and eat some cereal. I want to let all my fans know that I do try to eat healthy but there was only one egg left and I already scrambled that with cheddar cheese.

But I know, that everyone is talking, and the buzz is becoming almost too much. People are saying, "Hey man, you've got the internet now, you can email people again, you can waste a whole afternoon reading movie reviews and any new ipod news that may be linked to cnn.com and I'm like, "You're right. You're absolutely right! I can do that! I can do all that. And one day I will, but not today."

I really don't know why so much of that last paragraph was in quotes, since this whole thing is in first person anyway. I guess that's kind of wierd.

Alright, I lost where I was going with that. I was thinking about the Dave Chappelle on Oprah interview that I just finished watching. I guess a lot of people are talking about it. They're saying, "Wow Dave Chappelle really is crazy", and "That Dave Chappelle really was smokin something last night!" Although I may be misrepresenting that last guy by presenting his quote with an exclamation point.

But while we're on the topic, I watched the interview, and it was horrible. Dave was not only rambling, he was unspecific and I kept waiting for him to say something that I understood and then they would cut to a commercial break. He kept talking about all the pressure that was on him because of the 50 million dollar contract and all the people that wanted in his pockets and in his mind. Then he said he might come back if he could give his dvd money to "the people". And an entire episode of the one hour Oprah show was devoted to this story, which according to the interviewee wasn't much of a story. He needed a break from all the people hounding him, and he bounced.

So what I'm trying to say is, that maybe making my grand return to regular blogging with a special about my fat roomate wasn't in the best taste. Perhaps it won't gain me a larger audience. It seems possible that some people's tolerance for fat people is exceeded by their good taste. Maybe some people were offended by it. I get upset when people are offeded by me, and then in turn those people are offended that I am upset at them being offended at something I wrote for them. And then the whole thing just makes me sick.

But the truth is, I don't know where to go with the blog anymore. I can't make it too inclusive or I'll feel like I'm losing a small part of myself. What I'm saying is, I just have to be me. And until someone pays me to do otherwise, that's who I'm going to be.

Someone told me last night that, "They read my blog Mr. Dudley and they liked parts of it, but for a blog that was trying to be funny it didn't make me laugh as much as it could have."

So there you go. More laughs. That's what we need. Laughter. Happiness. Joy. Sentence Structure. Capitalization. Wow, I really should have ended with that thing about how I just gotta be me.

What's that I smell?

2006-02-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

It sure isn't clean air. My elephant sized roomate is still next door lending his particular masculine aroma to every part of the apartment and spreading good cheer with his buff shirtless, full haired body every day during his morning ritual of going out to the kitchen with his bunny slippers on to pour half a gallon of milk into an economy sized bowl of frosted flakes so he can return to his abode and continue his quest of watching more television per day on average than it was thought humanly possible. He also sets a personal goal to eat at least 5 hot dogs per day. And then he accomplishes that goal. Way to go Mr. Oversized roomate guy! Some people don't know how to stick to their guns and make a plan and go with it, but not my large roomate. He takes it as a personal matter of pride. He knows the nearest grocery store is only a block away, and since it's cold outside he won't work up a sweat by walking there 3 times a week and coming home with milk, Kellog's Frosted Flakes, a 12 pack of buns, and 2 packages of Armour Hot Dogs (The dogs kids love to eat!).

Editor's Note: I know many readers out there expected something spectacular from their favorite friend during his months of hiding out and accumulating parking tickets at an astounding rate. However, I find that updating the drudgery of my new job at Tapa's Lounge at 1st avenue and 59 street in Manhattan and how I have to study all the time makes for bad entertainment. Pointing out the idiosynracies of life equals good entertainment. And I still have to study wine for 2 hours before going into work, so the nearest thing I could come up with to write about, was literally the nearest thing that I could come up with.

P.S. This is not an actual picture of my roomate, it is a still life photo I took at an all you can eat restaurant. To get a good sense of today's topic start by looking at the picture of the man, and then imagine him if you will without a job and eating cheetos all day while watching M.A.S.H, the Jeffersons, and the news and sleeping 17 hours a day. Then you will get a pretty good idea.

....but in the meantime..... STAY TUNED!!!!!!!

Important Announcement

2006-01-30T14:55:00.000-05:00

This thursday, I am scheduled to have the internet hooked up at my apartment and therefore will have no further excuses in making this the greatest and funniest blog ever created by one person.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Kingdom of the Spiders

2006-01-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

Editors note: There has been a tremendous question lately of what has happened to my blog i wanted to assure everyone that it is still here by presenting this blog in progress. i thank you for your time.

I spent last night in terror watching the screen in agony wondering how it would all end; and it was presented magnificently in full color Shatner-vision. Yes friends, I watched the entire classic film from 1979, Kingdom of the Spiders. It stars our intrepid hero William "Tyberias" Shatner in a role that he was born to play, just like the *gods were born to eat grapes and bring torment upon us poor humans who deign to serve them.

* Reference to classic 1969 episode of Star Trek entitled "Who Mourns Adonis" where the Greek god Apollo captures the crew of the enterprise and forces them to serve him. The third season was low on budget and a bit silly. It also featured the infamous "Spock's Brain episode. I don't want to go into details on that one.

Shatner plays small town veterinarian "Rack" Hansen, a smooth-talking, small town doc ready to lay the charm on any beautiful out of town specialist female who might happen to come by to verify some blood samples that were taken from a recently deceased cow with cobwebs hanging from its mouth.

Synopsis with commentary is as follows:

I must begin by expressing my tremendous dissapointment that the spiders in question, who naturally ravage the town, are not giant spiders from space but a large scale invasion of tarantulas. Thus you can understand my confusion when in the opening scene we see a cow grazing on the field and then the screen pulls back to a wide shot and slowly approaches the cow with that sort of traditional horror device I can only refer to as the "monster camera". The monster camera lets the audience know that a monster is on the trail of some unsuspecting bystander and we'll see a shot of the bystanders doing something which requires them to basically just stand there, be it eating, cooking, playing, etc. If they ever happen to move slightly out of the way, then well, tragedy averted.

I was really hoping that it was like a small space spider of some sort that would grow bigger through eating flesh. Alas. Ayway bottom line: cow's dead. The black rancher couple notifies our small-town cowboy hat wearing doc who gets a blood sample from the poor animal after "doing all he can for him". This upsets Colby the rancher and he lets loose a stirring line of disappointment that seems lifted somehow from should have been at some time academy award nominated actor Louis Gosset Jr. for his stirring command performance in Iron Eagle III: Aces High. "A thousand dollars for that prize cow shot all to hell. He was going to win at the county fair this year."

The blood sample was sent for testing, and this prompts the arrival of the aforementioned out-of town specialist and damsel in distress to be, referred to in the movie only as "Miss Ashley". She wastes no time in sidestepping Rack's advances and requests for dinner and makes her way to a local bed and breakfast where she was promptly hit on by a really awkward married man (with his wife sitting at the table) who, after his wife finds that Ashley is into science thinks that she might be interested to know that her husband is into science too. he brags to her that his expensive mobile home parked outside was paid for by inventing a cleaning agent for portable toilets and then askes if he can buy her a drink. This is called "local color" I suppose.

But of course poor Miss Ashley stood no chance for the brute charm of Shatner, who after getting his second request refused runs her car off the road with his van, engages her in conversation, then jumps into her car and pulls her in, driving off to their dinner location, wherever that might be.

Around this time there's a fun bit of useless sideplot where Kirk reveals to Miss Ashley at dinner that his brother is dead and that he looks after his wife and daughter. There's a scene where his sister in law comments, "You take such good care of the cow that I thought you'd want some milk after all this time." "You watch out or I might milk that cow one of these days." She's got a huge crush on the captain which makes him look like a huge jerk when he brings Miss Ashley over to his sister in laws house to take her daughter out on a hiking trip.

...Later that Day

2006-01-06T19:09:00.000-05:00

11:20 head over to the library at 43 and 5th avenue to read the new Robert Redford article in Moving Pictures Quarterly.

11:23 Purchase a hot dog from a street vendor

11:25 Spill the relish on my brand new Armani's.

11:26 Freek out in the middle of Time's Square but no one is paying attention.

11:30 Arrive at library to find that magazine cover is ripped. Do not wish to patronize a library with undelicate customers.

11:37 Purchase Moving Pictures Quarterly and am disturbed to find a profile of Anne Heche. Feel that she has no talent and time with fellow lesbo (unmentionable) was too much time spent in media spotlight.

11:39 The next article on John Turturo brightens my mood considerably. His new French comedy where he plays a former lawyer who turns into the town drunk and wakes up on a priest's doorstep sets the scene for a heartwarming story of redemption. I smell a winner. Wake up and do your job Academy!

11:47 My agent calls and asks if I can audition for a guest spot on Day's of Our Lives tommorrow. I grudgingly agree knowing that it will make me late for my power lunch with Natalie Portman, and you know how I hate to keep her waiting.

11:58 The cold weather drives me inside H & M where I go shopping for the perfect sweater.

12:04 I'm captivated by the dark blue sweater with the swirly patterns.

12:13 My purchase has been wrapped lovingly in a bag and I depart.

12:29 Pop over to Central Park to work on the sequel to my bestselling first novel. I begin with the words, "Darling, you don't know what you're doing to me right now. Yes I do she says, as she delicately twists the knife into my spine. I want you to pick up the phone and tell the police that you're okay so we can get down to business."

12:47 Really this book is going to be a hit.

1:03 Run into Art Spiegelman in the Tea Room of the Waldorf Astoria. I listen to him prattle on about the cost of Kosher meats lately. I mention how much I adore Maus and suggest that he should do a sequel. He tells me that he did. I ask him if it's true then how come I haven't heard of it?

1:45 Head over to Suncoast to do an instore to promote White Men Can't Jump part 2. I note the lack of screaming fans with utter disdain. However I am impressed with their intelligent questions regarding my free throw shooting abilities as compared to the other white guys who auditioned for the role.

3:12 Head down to the gym to work on quads, thighs and glutes with my personal instructor Pierre. I have a mancrush on Pierre and I don't know if it's healthy.

4:10 Finish up my sets and pull on my ipod for the subway ride back to my upper west side apartment. I'm on chapter 3 of basic French linguistics on my audiobook. Pierre doesn't even act like he notices me leaving. I'm slightly offended.

4:37 Arrive home. kiss my girlfriend quickly because I'm afraid she's caught something. but the pasta she's making for tonight smells good. Enter bedroom. recline on the twin bed in the fetal position and make a mental note to practise yoga.

5:15 wake up and start watching Dr. Phil. That man is amazing!

6:00 Me and Catherine start eating. It's important to have dinner at exactly 6 o clock. I read that somewhere in Ladies Home Journal and I think it has some deep applications to life.

7:00 We finish dinner and I, as my custom, help her with the dishes. It's my little way of saying thank you.

7:15 We read over her Shakespeare lessons for that night. I discuss the meaning of Othello as relating to mankind's struggle with life and why it's important today.

8:21 The books are closed. She brings out the wine. A nice 1957 variety of Chardonnay. Those Californians really know what they're doing.

9:07 I'm a little bit sleepy. Catherine seduces me and we make sweet love till daybreak.

A Day in the Life

2006-01-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

There has no been no "typical" day for me in NYC so far. Every day has been a new exciting and often stinky adventure. So here is something of a travelogue of an imaginary 24 hour time period in the life.

2:30 a.m. arrive home. notice multiple dirty pots in sink. evidence of cooking by roomate. open the refrigerator. 12 ounce cans of Coke that were placed in the refrigerator earlier have dissapeared. correction. one of them is standing empty on the wooden table that is covered with a blue sheet in front of the couch that is covered with a blue sheet and cigar ash stains. An ash tray rests on the table, filled with remains of a night of cheering for the Giants while chomping away on a cigar. A stale smell permeates the air. i make a slight noise of disgust and tromp away to my room.

2:45 a.m. probably asleep

3:00 a.m. my cell phone rings. its a girl. she says she was only going to leave a message and wonders what I'm doing answering the phone at 3 in the morning. I tell her a story about how several years ago when me and my brother lived at home and had dial up internet connections, I would leave the internet on all night to download large files. that night my brother was involved in a drunken accident for which he shared probably very little of the fault but perchance the same level of drunkeness. He was unable to get through to the house on his cell phone because the signal was tied up with me trying to get part 1 of office space on to my computer. Ever since then I've always left my phone on for emergencies. The girl is a little taken aback by the story but I thank her for calling anyway, and she explains what she's been up to for about 30 seconds, which mostly involves catering and being tired. Then she hangs up. We both go to sleep.

3:50 a.m. I'm awakened to hear my Italian roomate cursing some inutterable words which rather disturb my slumber. The television sounds like it's on. Probably Perry Mason, Columbo or the Jeffersons. nothing else is on between 3 o clock and 4 in the morning on any tv programmers schedule. I try to sleep thinking that the noise will be kept to a reasonable level.

4:15 a.m. the "reasonable level" of noise has kept me up till this point. at the sound of gunfire and laughter from my roomate. I rouse myself enough to stand, open the door and ask for the noise to die down. My Italian roomate apologizes and the television volume is turned down by probably 2 levels.

4:25 a.m. the sounds of muffled screaming convince me to awake and again complain of the noise. An apology is again quickly offered in what seems like an instinct response more than actual attention to any offense or discomfort caused by watching television loudly in the middle of the night.

7:25 a.m. My italian roomate is now yelling into the telephone and complaining to someone. since he said "ma" i am forced to assume that he is talking to his mother. My much larger roomate of indiscriminate origin is wandering around and is pestering italian roomate about some domestic matter. I can't tell what. I just wish they weren't there.

9:30 a.m. I want to get up and eat breakfast and leave the apartment but i can still hear some faint roomate rumblings and I don't want to see either of them so I wait till all is silent. I lay my head back down on my boxspring futon and check the time on my cellphone. It's 9:30 in the morning. I think about writing more of my new book "The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots" but I can't get up any inspiration for it. I vow to write more on it later. Then I fall back to sleep.

9:50 a.m. The coast is all clear. I slip into some jeans that have been worn 20 times at least since coming to the city and put on some socks and shoes so my feet can escape the disgustingly dirty conditions of the kitchen floor that I'm about to tread on. As I walk around the corner I catch sight of my larger roomate of indiscriminate origin pouring a box of cereal into a very large bowl. This bowl is much larger than any that I would have ever thought would be used to put cereal into, except for industrial purposes. The nauseating smell that arises from the roomate as well as the sight of his flabs of skin hanging over his nearly equally unsightly backhair push me back into my room quickly. I grab a book and head for the private bathroom in my room which also affords me the only seat to read on in the apartment without a blue sheet covering it.

10:10 a.m. the coast is clear. this time for real. So i grab some bacon and 2 eggs from the refrigerator and fry bacon and eggs over the electric oven. I enjoy the way the flames come crackling out and cook things in like 2 minutes. It's like a 1960's version of the microwave. The whole place actually reminds me of the 1960's - all hardwood floors, dirty floor tiles in the kitchen and bathroom (not mine but the public one with the shower in it) an entire corner of the main room devoted to a table and smaller piles of what appear to be useless junk that hasn't been thrown out yet, and of course no decorations on the wall of any kind. Yup, just like the 1960's all right.

(to be continued tommorrow)

The weather is nice and I need a sandwich

2005-12-30T17:36:00.000-05:00

Fortunately I have recently completely filled out my latest subway card, which means that a free 6 inch subway sandwich is awaiting me a mere five blocks away after completion of this blog and subsequent departure from the library.

Whew. I can't wait for the holidays to be over and all the people who are crowding the subways with their Macy's bags to go home and leave me in peace so i won't have to fight past all these slow moving people when I'm trying to get to work in the afternoons. Geez, where did all these kids come from anyway.

I saw the best magician on the subway the other day, he was doing all these tricks with rings where he would tap them and they would go together and great card tricks like the kind that you see on television. He had that naturally spooky aura that David Blaine, proffessional street magician, has also. So I gave him a dollar. It was the first time I've given money away in New York, other than to the government for their ridiculous parking tickets.

There's no where to park around here and to make matters worse you have to move your car at least once a week because of street cleaning at which time I have to get up before 9 in the morning to go move my car and get back in bed because I just worked till midnight at TGI fridays last night.

And I bombed at the Bowery Poetry Club. I was the very last performer on at 2:30 in the morning on Monday night and my time was compressed down to 4 minutes and I guess I was trying to get as many jokes out as possible and so much of the audience was inebriated that I guess they weren't making the connections and I was moving pretty quickly so it didn't work out that well. That's what learning is about though - screwing up.

I've just finished reading a book called "THE NARNIAN" about C.S. Lewis. I friggin loved it. It made me cry more than once and gave me a much deeper and profound love and respect for the man. I reccomend that all who saw the movie and actually enjoy reading to give it a whirl.

I love all of you and I look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon. Your prayers and support keep me going through a difficult transitory period in my life.

God bless!

P.S. and happy new year!

new blog!!!

2005-12-29T15:56:00.000-05:00

....coming tommorrow. FOLKS WE"RE OUT OF TIME!!!!! AND MY CAPS LOCK BUTTON IS STUCK!!!!!

Happy Holidays and Tidings of Good Joy!

2005-12-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

woops! I meant Merry Christmas! Man I sure didn't want to say Happy Holidays and act like I was scared of Jews or Muslims or something. Cuz I'm not!

But I have figured out why Jews are so cheap, and it's because I live near a jewish grocery store. The reason why is because the local Rabbi has to personally bless all the food so kosher food products can average several times what comparable non-kosher items cost in the same store.

And I know a lot of you were wondering how the commercial went. Well it was essentially just a photo op for Koons Toyota located in Maryland and most of Northern Virginia. I put on a vest and smiled for at least 30 seconds on a podium along with several other vested actors and that was that. To get to that point though I had to wait for an hour in an entrance room with other actors and read old issues of Entertainment Weekly and gab about who everyone is with and where did they come from. You'll be able to see the commercial next month at koons.com

So I really enjoyed it and I look forward to other commercial opportunities with my D.C. agency as well as getting New York counterparts very soon, assuming that I can finally get the internet in my apartment this month. Sheesh!

Work on Thursday should be copius amounts of fun if the subway strike is still in effect, because thousands of tourists will be stranded in our fair city with nothing left to do but eat! And eat they shall, and I shall be there to serve them and scoop up the profits!

So Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

A Special Holiday Message

2005-12-21T11:33:00.001-05:00

At this time of year when so many of us are snug in our beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads, it's natural to want to give to those less fortunate than us. However, I want to urge you to make it as impersonal as possible. Organizations like the United Way need your support all year, and now is a fine time to think about donating money to them, or perhaps a tenderly used coat or wrapped gift for a little one.

But it's also possible at this time of year that you may know or come into contact with people who may need your help. I urge you to do your best to ignore these people. They should be going to their local churches for help, or contacting their nearest homeless shelter not pestering you personally and making you feel remorse. After all, that's not what this holiday season is about is it? No, it's about the giving, and the receiving, and the egg nog.

But try not to get in the face of people you don't want to give to personally, because it can only lead to depressing contact, awkward silence, or criticism and rebuke of the person's condition and Lord knows they get enough of that everyday that they certainly don't need it from you.

Now if you'll excuse me, you're in my way at the buffet line.

All the News that you REAlly wanted to Hear

2005-12-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a local Toyota commercial in D.C. on Tuesday. OH WHAT A FEELING!

Yeah most of you probably didn't know that last year I invested in 2 separate long driving trips to D.C. for the express purpose of gaining favor with agencies in D.C. and it looks as if it has finally paid off.

Speaking of paid off. I finished my first shift on the floor at work yesterday and despite mistakes and closing early and having my first table stiff and stiffing myself when I calculated the second tables check wrongly I still made 80 bucks. So I'm happy about that.

I'm about 6 blocks from work so uh. I gotta get some boots, because I hear that they're good for walking to work in. And that's just what I should do.

Side note to in bed by nine: I'd love to use the bootstraps that God gave me except the government took my boots and my laces from me.

Just another Blog Post

2005-12-13T17:34:00.000-05:00

Oh great you say. I can't wait to read another exciting and riveting post from Joshua Dudley about how it's cold in New York or that his roomates stink, or that he's tired of walking around looking for work or that he's begging for money. I also hear that due to his lack of internet access, he is forced to blog with increasingly diminished quality from libraries and churches.

Boo Hoo. I've got enough of my own problems without being reminded how tough someone else's choices in life are. I've got my own set of struggles that are totally different than that guy's, and plus I don't screw up every job opportunity I get, and I'm not paranoid about where my keys or my wallet is.

In fact, I've just gotten plain old tired of Joshua Dudley. Dude, it's time for you to sink or swim, and in case you hadn't forgotten man you're like 30 years old. Shouldn't you be out applying for Viagra somewhere?

Wake me up when you have something interesting to say because I can't stand any more pithy comments about stuff that no one cares about.

In fact, don't even talk to me about your blog ever again. My impression of blog's is now destroyed by how uninteresting a read yours is. I mean, shouldn't you be talking about movies, or your impressions of politics, or the subtle nuances of the subways, or all these parties I hear that you go to but don't blog about?

And talk about voyeristic, what a loser! I hear that you're going to some church in NYC just so because your favorite blog author listed on your links list goes there. Pathetic man. Sad and pathetic.

I'm just glad that you're not living with your parents anymore. Man I sure couldn't wait to read more of that stuff back a few months ago. Whew a classic literary masterpiece, that's what was.

P.S. Good luck man,

signed: your biggest fan

First day on the job!

2005-12-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

and i have 3 minutes to write this...okay.

I listened to an hispanic lady show me where stuff was in the kitchen and then prepped up salads and stuff and then had to run around delivering packages to other TGIF locations. i made a few wrong turns while running around my boss got worried and called me. then i made another wrong turn while running back.

i was just waiting for him to say "i just dont think its going to work out because you didnt cut it as an errand boy."

fortunately he didn't, and i spent the rest of the day as a busboy and order taker at minimum wage. it was the most fun ive ever had and my time is about to expire so goodbye all.

Good News Everyone!

2005-12-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

There's brighter times ahead. I'll have good things to report and you'll cry and tell your friends of my adventures and exploits. One day I'll be sitting by the fireplace with my grandchildren telling them the very same story that I'm telling you right now.

But until then I'll just have to live it.

So that's just what I'll do.

See you next time!

As long as next time means monday.

Well, that was easy

2005-12-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

I went through the security department of T.G.I. Friday's today and got my clearance. So tommorrow I call to get on the schedule and uh...start working???

crazy.

I got a library card to use in Manhattan, but not Brooklyn (where it is required for you to have a ny drivers license)

i probably could have written a longer blog here but i had to check my email.

this library is just around the corner from where I work, and my bank is on the same street too!

there is an actual good mouse here too. im loving it.

send money.

Alrighty Then

2005-12-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

I just got on the subway for almost an hour simply to post, check my email, dispute a traffic and return a belt that I could have returned anytime this month....

The second interview was really more of a "here's what we do at this fridays" kind of thing so now i have to go get fingerprinted and id'd tommorrow and call "nattie" on friday to get put on the schedule.

then...that should be it...i should be working in like 3 days???

maybe?

i still can't believe I'm in New York.

Remember in the spirit of the Holidays and in the spirit of charity as represented by our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, please remember to support my endeavours through the holidays. After that I should be okay for a while....

whew.

i can breathe easier now but I still racked up the credit bills the first month I was here and I need your support.

Paypal to: joshuadudley@yahoo.com

or send check or money order to

Joshua Dudley
1555 Dahill Road
brooklyn, Ny
11204

Redemption Song

2005-12-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

I was going to another job, when i saw a tgi fridays on my right. stopped in. said hello. and i applied basically. fortunately i could tell that the interviewer wasn't the most corporate character around which i have determined is the only kind of character that would give me a job.

i still have to go to a second interview tonight at 5 though but he said it was really more cursory anyway and that he would probably have me on the schedule to start training tonight.

id write more but i cant stand this keyboard. i love this church office, but i dont want to come back unless i have to .l..aaaaaaa

please lord give me the internet in my apartment so i can blog in my santa claus full body long johns with the butt flap in the back.

p.s. this doesnt mean by the way that you still shouldnt send me money because you still need to. seriously.

Happiness and Crushing Defeat

2005-12-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

Okay. So here I go. I don't know where to start since my head is still spinning, but I'll do the best I can. I went home for Thanksgiving this past week since I wasnt due to start training at Uno's till Tuesday. So I spent 5 days as the hero around town and all my friends who saw me were thrilled and very happy for me. I didn't get as many free food and drink items bought for me as I would have liked but still, it was a wonderful time.

Monday night I did open Mic night for the third night at the bowery poetry club. I was the very last person on at 2:20 in the morning, and I brought the house down.
(editor's note - this section of the blog was actually written last and feeling pressed for time and a little drained by the writing of the rest of it, any descriptions of this event will remain sparse until a future update, thank you)
They loved my opening joke - I realized when I got home the other day and looked around my apartment that I really needed a girlfriend, because after all, how else is my underwear going to washed? I followed that up with a gut shot to the stomach.

Q: How come you can't fire a white guy?
A: of course you can. I've been fired all the time. And it's usually for stuff that I didn't do anyway, like showing up, or working.

Anyway, it was great and I finally felt like a real comedian. It was incredible

Fast forward till Tuesday when I arrive at Uno's at 4:45 which was the time that I thought I was told over the phone, and it turns out that they have already started "Pizza School" which is their name for their once a week corporate training camp. They would not let me continue the class late so I had to go home and they told me that I would have to go back and take it next week. I felt awful and I had this deep crawling sensation in the pit of my stomach that something wasn't quite right. Unfortunately, Chad, the guy who hired me, wasn't there to pat me on the back and smooth things out with the trainer who greeted me that day with this little pithy comment, "So you're a little late huh?"

They told me to call Lori the schedule manager the next day. Following orders, I did just that, otherwise I would have shown up to see her. She told me she would have to talk with the trainer and get back to me. 2 hours later she said she talked to the trainer and they're booked for next week so she just didn't think it was going to work.

What was that? Did someone just drop a lead weight on my heart? Ouch. Did that really happen?

So I wrote a 2 page letter of apology addressed to Chad and the other manager's there and went to Uno's the next day. Chad was not there again, so I talked to Lori, and barely fighting back the tears I told her how important the job was to me and how committed I was, that the mistake I made in arriving at the wrong time wasn't reflective of my true character and that I would put it all behind me. She was moved a little bit, but not enough to change her mind, or perhaps she didn't have the authority to do anything then. I don't know. I gave her the letter addressed to Chad with instructions to give it to him, and left gasping for air.

The next day I talked to Chad and asked if he got my letter. He said he did not. I asked him if I could take Pizza School out of town, and he said he would talk to Pat about it. I don't know if I should call over there today or just show up, or should I bother about it today at all because it will look I'm desparate. But I am desparate, so maybe I should just show up.

I really have nothing more to report. There is still a glimmer of hope at Uno's, but just a speck. This lead balloon of darkness is rapidly filling up all my available space and it hurts to walk or ride the subway or breathe or think.

I'll take any job right now. I have just enough cash to pay the rent and my next credit card payment, but not the one after that. I'll have to get a cash advance from my credit card to cover it.

I'm going to an interview in a little bit, then I will just call all the retail shops to find work.

Tommorrow morning I will be calling all the Starbucks, and a lot of clothing and movie stores.

If I'm not hired by Wednesday somewhere I will be calling Fast Food places. I swear to God.

Oh yeah, and I tried to get a New York Driver's licence and I can't yet because I have to pay for an old ticket from 8 years ago in upstate New York and I don't know how much that is yet.

Otherwise, I would already be delivering pizza again.

I am currently accepting generous cash donations to help ward off the coming insanity and general gloominess.

at 1555 Dahill Road Brooklyn, New York 11204

or send a donation to my paypal account at joshdudley@yahoo.com

I've Got a Job

2005-11-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

You read the title right. I just got a job at Uno's Pizza, and yes I'll be a waiter. I'll also be waiting for your responses. Yes, that was a joke. Yes, it was an awful one, but things cost more in the city.

I had my notebook filled up with like 18 pages of leads and phone numbers and jobs to look for and amazingly enough, Uno's was actually looking for workers. I was incredulous.

I went in to the resteraunt and was greeted by a smiling manager with an earpiece named Chad who seemed like your typical cool dude recent college grad. And somehow he was the manager, maybe the fact that this location is across the street from New York University in the East Village (Manhattan) has something to do with this. I don't know. But right now I'm feeling overwhelmed with joy from finally getting a job, combined with the sudden drop of having one of my main goals knocked out of the way and I was so tired from that struggle that I feel the need to recharge my batteries till next week when I start (hopefully) tackling getting a manager and an agent and going on auditions and actually serving food to people again and getting paid for it.

Currently I'm using the computer in the hallway of the main office at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on Broadway and W 38. It's free. That's one of the benefits of going to church folks, besides the breakfast muffins served afterwards of course.

I've met a lot of people, and maybe this weekend I can finally start hanging out with them somewhere besides in the lobby of the Bowery Poetry Club which is an absolute hipster mecca, and for obvious reasons I feel right at home at.

That was the longest 2 weeks of my life by far when I was going door to door looking for work, and fortunately it was unseasonably warm the whole time. It just now got cold around here yesterday. It almost seems like New York was waiting for me to get started. It's still a cruel world, but it just seems a little friendlier now.

I feel way too off to amuse anyone with funny anecdotes right now so I apologize to all readers about the tone. I'm sure everything will settle in as soon as I get the internet in my room and can type in the comfort of my santa claus long johns.

Hopefully this internet thing happens soon, because before I moved in, I was told that the internet was part of the utilities that I was paying for, and now my roomate is trying to push me to get Verizon DSl because he's having a hard time paying the old cable bill, which is the reason for the hangup and the headache right now.

INCONVENIENCE BEGONE!

And that's the way I feel about it right about now.

This funk is so rubber.

Why I'm Embarrassed to be a Football Fan

2005-11-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

This is a piece that I wrote at Starbucks the other and it was performed at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan at approximately 2:12 am November 14th 2005. My apologies to whoever have already heard it, or who will hear it at the next open mike at this other place on Sunday.

Ahem

It all started the other day when I was watching the game and the announcers came on and said, "Welcome back fans, you're watching the first matchup in 56 years between left handed quarterbacks." I sat there for a minute with a puzzled look on my face as several large men with shoulder pads played a modified version of kill the man with the ball and I thought to myself, "Why would they say that?"

Because you know I can't really see how that helps anyone watching the game to understand it better, or figure out what they're looking at. It seems that this is about as relevant as saying that this is the first ever sold out game at Giants Stadium when in odd numbered years the temperature was exactly 49.3 degrees Fahrenheit at tipoff when hosting the Vikings.

But then it occured to me that maybe part of this was my problem in assuming that announcers are supposed to say relevant or important things to the fans at home watching the game on their 43" Sony Plasma Screen Television which can display NFL High Definition broadcasts in approximately a billion pixels per inch which enables the average viewer to see sweat droplets on the receivers face, and of course everyone understands how important that is to your viewing experience. It tells you that the receiver is working hard to get the ball. It's important for you to know this for your own personal well being so you aren't screaming things like "Come on, you're getting paid $555,000 per game and you can't even work up a sweat?"

After this you can relate to your buddy in detail about how in 1985 that you could run the 100 yard dash in 5.3 seconds flat, and that's a fact. Your buddy probably listening to you thought because he was completely absorbed in hearing the announcers explain what the quarterback is thinking after being sacked by a 350 pound lineman and he only has 43 seconds left in the half to move the ball 27 yards and score a touchdown.

I used to be impressed by football announcer's psychic ability to know exactly what all the players on the field, and coaches innermost thoughts were, until I realized that this is what separates them from announcers of other sports who merely give you play by play, and aren't privy to that kind of insider information. During a boxing match for instance, all you get to hear is someone droaning on about the number of hits that guy just took to the head and the subsequent body blow that puts him away. Now how interesting is that?

Football announcers are much different, it is their solemn and sworn duty to bring you up close and personal to the beauty and pageantry of a sport where dozens of similarly uniformed individuals are trying to kill each other for the entertainment purposes of millions of people.

I get on my knees every day and thank God for their wisdom and clairvoyant powers. Because I for instance would assume that a quarterback that just survived a vicious clothesline from what can only be described as a bloodthirsty assassin and seeing that he has precious little time left to move the ball would be first be muttering a serious of lewd expletives about the pain he is in, and then thinking, "I hope that sweaty receiver can catch the ball this time."

Fortunately for the world, the announcers see it differently from me and they know that the quarterback after hopping up from the near fatal injury is merely telling his teammates that he is okay and ready to go another 9 innings. The announcers also have to use the word football a lot when describing action like this. In this case, they would say, "That guy, now he's a football player," or after the game they will describe the coach as, "A real football coach. That guy, he knows how to coach football."

Clearly you or I would not have known that without them. We also wouldn't have known why it's called football when there was already a game played for hundreds of years under the exact same name. Maybe it would have been too complicated to call it the "throwing and catching and running with the large spheroid object league."

But, as Americans, we already stole this country for a handful of beads, so why should we go to the trouble of coming up with an original name for something that largely keeps our economy intact when there was already a perfectly good name to appropriate from the rest of the world.