1:02 am - FRI 4/19/02
A view into my head you probably didn't want
(Can't seem to get started. I'm writing and deleting, then writing some more and deleting some more. And I suspect that if I don't break the cycle here, I'm going to just KEEP doing that until I get too tired to write and give up.)

I haven't gone to bed yet, so it still feels like Thursday to me. Leaves me feeling awkward--Do I refer to the "Crossing the Line" final dress as "earlier this evening" or "last night"?

(Yeah, that's it Jim. Way to focus on the really IMPORTANT issue...)

Frustrating, unhappy experience for me. It was not DISASTEROUS--No one was injured or killed--but when that's all you feel like you can say for it, that's not good.

The show just SUCKS. There's no two ways about it. The script is piss-poor, I'm miscast, JR is a fucking CARTOON, and the show doesn't say anything that couldn't be said better on a fucking bumper sticker ("Retards are people too").

(Here's a semi-interesting Hoffmaster Fun Fact; When I was a child, they thought I was retarded for awhile. I spent the first part of my educational experience in a "special school", and then Head Start. I started first grade a year behind other kids my age.)

Do I sound MAD?

I want this script to be better. But since that can't happen, I'd settle for the OTHER show not being fucking GOOD (It's got an actual SCRIPT, an actual SET, actual COSTUMES, and actual PERFORMANCES by people who DON'T seem to be wildly MISCAST or playing a caricature of something they should just be able to BE).

And I was TERRIBLE tonite. And I've never felt so lonely, because there was no one there I trusted to tell me the truth, no one there who was going to HELP me, no one there to talk to.

And when I got home, there was no one to cry to. No one to hug me, kiss me, maybe jolly me out of my bad mood. No one to tell me, "It's just one show, Jim. Something better will come along."

Did I mention the other show was really GOOD?

I want the things I do to be really good, and I want to be at least one of the best PARTS of that really good thing. But our show SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS!!!! And I thought I had a HANDLE on my OWN part there for awhile, but I've lost it. I felt so FAKE out there tonite I couldn't stand myself. I wanted to QUIT, and that was BEFORE I stayed around to watch the other show.

I'm so ASHAMED. THEIR show is a bonafide, honest-to-God entertaining piece of theater. Meanwhile, I'm trapped in this lame-ass, piece-of-shit beginning acting class EMBARRASSMENT.

And people are coming to SEE this...

When I can't produce the way I want to produce under adverse conditions, I feel angry and afraid. I'm mad at myself for getting INTO this position, mad at myself for not rising ABOVE it better once I accepted it, and afraid that if I can't excel under adverse conditions, I'm never going to get the CHANCE to work under better conditions.

And it makes me wonder just how good of an actor I actually AM. This part is not HARD. This isn't fucking HAMLET; It's pretty simple, and simple-MINDED, shit. I should be able to play this in my sleep, even if I'm NOT a sixty year old black man.

But I'm stuck. I'm stuck and I'm SCREWED. Nothing to do now but just do what I can do, grin and bear it, and try to exit the scene with pride that I at least gave it my best effort.

"THIS is your best effort? What a fucking JOKE, you motherfucking LOSER! Yeah, you ugly piece of shit, you're so fucking GIFTED you forgot to work your ASS off to make this work, huh? And now the show's going up, and it's your fucking ASS out there, and you're going to look like a major fucking talentless IDIOT. Congratulations, Mr Big Time Fucking ACTOR..."

(You see, if I LET myself, I can tend to take things a little too much to HEART...)

I'm so MAD at myself. And a lot of it is pretty irrational--I didn't write the script, create a two-day-a-week rehearsal schedule, doublecast the show, miscast ME, or any of that--but that doesn't mean I don't FEEL it.

It's just a SHOW. A stupid little one-act piece of nothing that will be over practically before it's begun.

And I've got to somehow shake this THING I have, where everything I do, or TRY to do, connects to some major "issue" from my childhood or wherever.

This is just one thing. One stupid thing. And I have been in a lot of really GOOD things. And I have been the best PART of a lot of really good things.

It's just not going to be the case THIS time.

It's gotten really late. I should try to sleep, though we know how well THAT works for me...

Tempted to delete this. But this is the guy I hide. This is the guy I struggle with. The guy that has a stranglehold on me. I gloss over a lot with "funny". I even gloss over a lot with "depressed".

How can I do ANYTHING if I can never stand to FAIL? If a little one-act that isn't what I want it to be makes me want to KILL myself, how am I going to get from here to there?

"Boo-hoo. Cry me a river, you fucking LOSER..."

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