Why we can't have nice things.

Short version:  Assholes.

Long version:

Yesterday, somebody blew up a Buddhist shrine in a tourist spot in Thailand.  Twelve hours later, it looks like 18 dead, over a hundred more injured.  http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002363580

Nobody's saying, "It was me," yet.  There are a half-dozen religious, political, and religious/political groups considered potentially responsible, and the always-popular deranged individual theories.

So our range of motivations basically come down to these three:
1.  I think Buddhism is bad, and I want people to stop being Buddhist, so I will kill them to make them afraid and demonstrate that my religion will kill people who don't join us.
2.  I think the government is bad, and I want to deprive them of reputation and revenue, so I will kill tourists and make people afraid to come to my country because they'll think it's not safe.
3.  I think people in general need to be hurt or punished, because they deserve it and/or because it gives me pleasure or makes me feel better about my own life.

It's probably at least two, if not all three.
Now, the first two are, in the long run, self-defeating.  Though you might frighten people off from a religion for a bit, or destabilize a government, you sure as hell aren't going to attract anyone to your own religion, or inspire confidence in the government you're trying to put in place.
The third - what can possibly be more self-centered?  And is there really much doubt that it's at the heart of the political and religious folks who claim to be serving some higher ideal?

So that's my definition of an asshole - the person who says, "I deserve this, and you do not."  The person who says, "I deserve this at your expense."  The person who says, "If I can't be happy, then NOBODY can be happy."  The person who is so wrapped up in their own precious suffering and fragile sense of self-worth that anyone who infringes on - or fails to acknowledge - their superiority MUST be put in their place.

No group is free of assholes.  None.  No mission statement, no religious creed, no political platform, no club, no guild, no trade organization, no nation, no ethnicity, no team, no genre, no fandom, no online community.  There's no badge you can pin on that says, "This guarantees the wearer is not an asshole."

At the same time, no group is ALL assholes.  Even in the craziest nutjob extremist group that was founded based on hating some other subset of society, there are a few folks who are there because they're desperate to belong to something, because being on a team, not being alone, having someone say "You're a good guy," is a stunningly important part of human existence, and they haven't been able to find it from anyone else.  There are a few folks who legitimately think they're doing good work, not because they hate, but because they actually don't understand how their actions are affecting others.

So what do we do?

We don't make blanket statements.  We don't say, "If they were all dead, the problem would be solved."  We don't say, "You're __________, therefore you're __________."  We interact with each other as humans rather than as objects.
We deal with the assholes in our own groups.  We speak up and say, "The things you say and do are not acceptable."  We take the time to talk about the possible consequences of any course of action.  We don't snap back when someone offends us.
We apologize and try to understand better, and move forward together.

It's exhausting.  It's waaaaay easier to say, "These people are like me, those people are not like me."  It's how society has existed for millennia.  But we now live in a time when anyone - any one - out of the 7 billion people on the planet can go out and casually disrupt and destroy the lives of hundreds or thousands of people.

We can't afford to let the assholes win.  We can't afford to push each other away.

I love you.

The Final Countdown

Suddenly, I leave for Japan tomorrow.

For the last few months, it's been a thing (in my head) that happens "in a while."  Three months, a couple months, a few weeks - then, somehow, it jumped straight to "Wow, this is really happening SOON."

I'm mostly packed - I think/hope, and haven't forgotten anything critical.  Probably.  I'm trusting that my new employers have a good plan for getting us all settled in and trained, since they've been organized so far.  I keep telling myself to just be patient with all the nonsense at the airport - and then again at the airport on the other end.  I (mostly) know my lines.

Our apartment here feels like home.  We have routines, spots we prefer to sit on the couch, art on the walls.  It isn't quite done, but it's done enough.  It's the reference point from which I calculate distance and travel time now.

What will I miss most?

The weird balancing act of being a scrappy looking-for-work actor:  Scouring audition listings for worthwhile projects, the weird roller-coaster of hope and disappointment, the little frustrations and delights of every show or film that seem SO SIGNIFICANT, the times I run into an old friend at an audition or a rehearsal.

Our cats' weird personalities:  Savini, who just wants me to stay still so he can clamber into my lap, fall asleep, and drool all over my hands.  Isi, who will happily grumble and chirp her way through an entire conversation, and loves to burrow under the blankets at 6 AM.  Calamity, who's still kitten-fascinated by the world, and wants to climb everything and chase everything and run from everything, and so, so gentle.

Simple times with my wife:  slouching around in our bathrobes with coffee in the morning, separately checking our email and assorted websites before getting on with the day.  Scrounging Netflix for a hopefully-good movie, and knowing we'll have pretty much exactly the same reaction to whatever we find.  Walking to the park for some lazy reading in the sun.

The familiar, I suppose.  Super secret about me which will surprise nobody:  I don't like new things.

This year will either get me over that forever, or drive me so crazy that I'll spend the rest of my life at home, only eating frozen pizza and tortilla chips, watching old Star Trek on Netflix.  We'll see.

California Dreaming

This past Wednesday evening, we turned south at Barstow, and before too long, we hit the long downhill stretch of freeway - seemed like ten or fifteen miles of downhill.  The sun was just starting to set, and our introduction to our new home city came with a magenta sky and lights beginning to come on in the valley below us.

We'd been driving for three days, staying in cheapo motels, gradually wearing down our humanity in the way that only long travel seems to do.  The cats had become resigned to their new itinerant life, and mainly slumped around in the backseat, stress-numb and travel sick.  Our car had served amazingly well on this trip - no hint of any issues (I suspect it was as glad as we were to be leaving Chicago winter).

And then we were here.

Everything here looks to me like those scrabbly little vacation towns along the gulf coast of Florida. 
Franchise businesses are scattered among local independents, and everything's sun-bleached, dusty, and a little home-made looking.  It all feels so, so spread out - there's really not much within walking distance of our apartment, whereas in Chicago, it was only the last couple years that I even felt it necessary to have a car.

So it's different.

We've been errand-running like crazy, trying to fill in all the gaps, trying to remember what exactly is still on the way (95% of our stuff will be arriving next week), trying not to exhaust ourselves.  It's a strange in-between time, when we don't really live here yet, but don't live anywhere else.  Neither Kitten nor I has a real job at the moment - I have prep work and lines to learn, and she's submitting for auditions, but nothing regular to act as a foundation, a ground wire, as ballast to keep us steady in the midst of all this.

Tonight we get to go out and see people other than each other for a bit.  It'll be good.  It'll be tiring.  Neither of us is fantastic at small talk, and we're going to be around a couple (one?) people we've worked with but don't really know, and an unknown number of strangers.  We'll see.

This weekend we can catch our breath a bit and get to know our new city a little.  I hope it likes us.

The In-Between Time

Lately, there's been a lot of treading water.

Let's expand that metaphor, and make it even more convoluted and complex:

A bunch of shipwreck survivors are scraping out a living on an island.  They all know that once in a while, a boat passes by, but it can't be seen from the island, and there's no good way to predict when it'll arrive.  Sometimes the people on the boat are nice, and they'll rescue anyone they find in the ocean.  Sometimes they won't.  Or sometimes they'll let you on board for a bit and then throw you back in the ocean.
So you prepare - you build a raft, practice swimming along shore, stock up on coconuts and parrot meat.  Many of those around you have decided to make the best of things on the island, and their life looks pretty good in comparison to your scrabbling.  You have a few friends who have caught a boat - messages in bottles occasionally wash up, and you have other friends who are also preparing to try.
A few times a week you swim out to sea and back, never really expecting a boat, but also too stubborn to give up.  Then one day, there it is.  Big-ass boat, out on the horizon.  And there's a person on the deck waving a flag and yelling to you.
You shout back to your spouse on the beach, who loads all your stuff on the raft and kicks it out to meet you.  Together you kick further out into the ocean, to the point where it'd be really tough to make it back.  That person out on the boat is lowering a ladder and a rowboat, but it's going to be a while - and you still don't know exactly what kind of boat it's going to turn out to be.

Still with me?

A couple weeks ago (seriously?  it's only been two and a half weeks?) I accepted a job offer from Universal Studios Japan, and Kitten & I started uprooting our lives to make it happen.  We're fitting in a move to Los Angeles before my contract starts, which entails all kind of stress and complexity.  The whole thing is occurring on this weird, drawn-out timeline where we know there are lots of things that NEED to be done, but there's not much we CAN do yet.

Kitten's heading to LA to look for apartments at the end of the month, but we can't really prep yet - nothing for an end-of-February move is being listed yet.  We're semi-started packing and clearing out things that aren't worth moving, but there's still 2 months of living here to do.  We can't really look for acting work in a serious way, beyond the occasional 1-2 day short term, last minute stuff that comes up.

So, we're out on the raft, treading water for now.  We're hoping this boat means great things.  It's going to be a tough trip, either way.

In the meantime, we're swinging back and forth between desperately wanting to hang out with all our favorite people, and just wanting to curl up and watch Farscape on Netflix (if you want to watch Farscape with us, it's win-win).  Please put up with us if we're weirder than usual for a while.