Month: January 2026

The water is wide and I can’t cross over, Neither have I wings that I could fly. Build me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row my love and I.

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I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake.
I pray the lord my soul to take.

This poem scared the fuck out of me as a child. Seriously.

I was convinced that the poem was for kids. And as a result, kids only died while they were asleep. I was sure that one night I was going to go to sleep and never wake up.

In fact, in 5th grade, I tried to measure my breathing to the point that I couldn’t catch my breath. I was hyperventilating and finally left my bed to tell my parents that I couldn’t breathe. My mom immediately called our doctor. I don’t know what they said to each other, but she told me to go back to bed. I did and fell asleep a little while later.

I’m less afraid of dying in 2026, than I was in 1975. I’m supposing that getting old does that to a person. The closer I get to that day, the less afraid I am. It’s a fact of life. Something that all of us have to go through. Whether we like it or not.

It doesn’t scare me either to think that I don’t believe in god. I’m not sure what happens after we die, but I’m convinced there aren’t angels on high singing, while I sit on a puffy white cloud.

Years ago, I came up with the idea that life as we know it is but a dream. A very vivid, realistic dream. And when we die, we awake in another reality. One were life is different yet the same.

I don’t know if I believe this now, but it’s easy to hold on to. I think now, we just pass into another plain. Wrapping my head around how complicated this existence is, makes it even harder to wrap my head around the next.

And I can’t believe in god. Not the almighty god that was preached to me in my youth and during my formative years. There is no way, an all caring loving god would let the shit that happens in our world happen. And I have no interest in a cruel god that created the trauma in the first place.

So, I live in my bubble. Try to do the right things. Try to love with all my heart. And hope for the best.

Meanwhile, if you are a parent, read your kids a story and for the love of all things do NOT teach them this prayer. It’s scary. And it’s not nice.

Amen.

Stuck all week on a lady’s lap, nothing to do but yawn and nap. Can you blame me if I yap?

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I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Family pets.  

We all have them.  Most of us grew up with them.  

A few people I know had sociopaths for parents and weren’t allowed to love an animal.  Not even a hamster. 

In my childhood, we had many pets.  Pedro is the first pet I can truly remember, although I know he was not the first.  He was a tiny, tiny chihuahua.   He loved my mother unconditionally.  And he would lose his mind when my Aunt Debbie, would tell my little brother to cry.  Something she enjoyed doing.  He would cry, and Pedro would get mad.  

As is with the case of a lot of chihuahuas, Pedro could also be mean.  If he didn’t like you, he had no use for you.  I don’t know that he ever bit anyone, but he certainly tried. 

The first real tragedy of my childhood, was sitting on the front steps of my house in Paynes Depot, Kentucky and watching a car squish our little 5-pound Pedro.  My Aunt pulled him from the road, and I stood next to her watching him die.  

Now you might ask, why was little Pedro in the road, well I wish I could tell you.  But I can’t.  I do know that I cried for several days.  

Cindy came next.  

I remember this perfectly well.  

I yelled at my mother that Pedro was fighting with the dog next door.  He belonged to my aunt and uncle.  What I didn’t realize till later was that they weren’t fighting.  My mom tossed water on them to “break” it up.  

We got puppies for Thanksgiving.   

We got Cindy.  My Aunt Doo got Toji, and I’m not sure what happened to the others.  

Cindy was special.  She loved us all, but once again, was attached to my mom.  She lived until she was 17 or so.  She was euthanized while I was at college, and my parents didn’t tell me until I came home for Christmas.  Of course, by that time, she was mostly blind, had no teeth, and had long stopped going outside for bathroom breaks.  

When I was in sixth grade we got Fiesty.  She was Cindy’s puppy and I have no idea who the father was.  She was the runt of the litter.  Hyper and funny.  And sweet as could be.  She also lived a nice long life.  

That was not true of all of our pets.  

When I was in first grade we had a white dog.  I don’t remember his name.  I’m not even sure he was a he.  I don’t remember a lot about him at all.  

What I do remember, is that it was summer, and I was spending the day with my stepfather, on the horse farm he worked on.  

It was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining.  The sky was blue.  We took his blue VW Beetle up the hill to go to work.  When we left, the dog was running around in the field next to our trailer, tied to the fence.  

Fast forward about four hours.  We take the tractor and wagon, down the hill to the trailer we lived in.  

I saw it first.  The dog wasn’t running anymore.  He was hanging from the fence post.  He had jumped over the fence and when he did so, the chain caught on the fence.  He’d been strangled to death.  

My stepfather, never said a word.  We went into the house and had lunch.  And when we finished lunch, we went back to the tractor and wagon.  I sat there and watched has he unhooked the chain and then tossed the dog on the back of the wagon.  

Without speaking, we drove to the back of the 80-acre farm and he tossed the dog onto a rock wall.  It was unceremonious.  It was not spoken of.  He just tossed the dog on the wall and we drove away.  

I’ve thought about that day a lot over the years.  What I was supposed to to think?   Would I do the same thing as an adult.  

What I do know is the dog deserved better.  I deserved better.  

And that’s not even the worst of the pet stories.  

Fame, I’m gonna live for ever!

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I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Thirty years ago, I taught lighting D]design at the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts.  I started there in the fall of 1995 and left at the end of the 1998 school year.  

I learned more from my students and co-workers than I ever dreamed about teaching.  That being said, it was a great experience and I value the friendships of the people I met during that three-year period of my life. 

It was an interesting time to be there, as the school was going through a transition.  The founders of the school had just left, for an array of different reasons, and a new principal, artistic director and slew of teachers were being brought in.  

Myself, and the scenery design teacher both started at the same time.  We were tossed into the fire together, and both worked to make the program the best it could be.  He is still doing a great job there, by the way.  

I can’t speak to things now, but in 1995, I spent the morning teaching 7th and 8th graders intro to lighting.  And I spent the afternoon teaching 9th – 12th graders lighting design.  Everything from how to change a lamp in a lighting instrument and how to hang a light, then to how to create a design and implement it.  

As I said, we taught each other a lot.  

The thing I found most interesting was that while we were a performing arts high school, not everyone embraced this fact.  I remember going to the 12th grade English teacher to propose a combined unit on Macbeth, where we taught in tandem her focusing on the literary importance and me on the design components.  I was emphatically told no.  

Our principal at the time was also a piece of work.  I don’t remember the year, but myself and the scenery design teacher came to work one morning to find that the principal had ordered the custodians to empty the prop room.  To her it was a disorganized mess, and she felt it looked badly on her.  When we got there that morning all the props from storage were in the dumpster. 

I kid you not.  

With out asking we salvaged what we thought was important.

I discovered a set of mid-century dishes in the trash.  Franciscan Starburst Stoneware.  With the help of my students, we pulled it out of the trash and I took it home with me.  It was the start of a life time of collecting Franciscan stoneware.  

Fun fact about the Starburst pattern, 30 years later it would be worth hundreds of dollars.  It’s a serious collector’s item as we moved in the 21st century.  I still have those dishes, and have supplemented them when I have found them in various antique stores along the way.  

Adam and I use our Franciscan dishware all the time.  For all the major holidays.  Our cat’s food bowls are starburst and Ferndel dishes.  His mother gave us her wedding dishware which was the Desert Rose Franciscan pattern .  And we bought Indian Summer dishes 13 years ago.  

I have a friend whose mother gave him a complete 10 piece place setting array of Starburst dishware.  On eBay it would easily be worth several thousand dollars.  He jokes that it’s his retirement plan.  

For us, it’s our daily lives.  It goes in the dishwasher.  It’s durable.  And we love it.  

The best part of the principal cleaning out the prop room, was that I claimed it as my office for a year.  It had a loft and tons of book shelves.  For my students it was  a kind of  clubhouse for a year.  Complete with a sofa, a lava lamp that a student eventually broke. (It’s hard to clean up the liquid from a lava lamp) and hours of bonding with kids who needed a grown up to pay attention to them.  

My students have followed different paths.  It’s crazy to think they are in the late 40’s now.  And I’m proud to say, several went on to be successful theater professionals. 

I will never know how I affected their lives, but for those reading this, you changed my life for good, to quote Wicked.  

Start spreading the news!

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I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Happy New Year!

For five years I worked at the Hard Rock Café in Times Square NYC.  It was a very lucrative job, and it afforded me the ability to pay my rent, as well as take time off to design shows that came my way.  

There were 120+ servers on the schedule, and 75% of them all had side gigs going on.  Artists, models, musicians, actors, comedians, and the list goes on.  On any given busy night there would be 40+ servers on the floor.  The restaurant sat around 800 people at one time and was often on a 2 hour wait.  There were nights that you’d run into a co-worker in the dish pit that you didn’t even know was working that shift.  

The Hard Rock was known for doing lots of events throughout the year, but the big event was New Year’s Eve.  We were closed to the public and did a private party for one of the sponsors for the Times Square ball drop.  It was a very all hands on deck kind of event, and I was scheduled almost every year.  

As a manager, I love working events.  As a server, I’d rather get a root canal.  Every year, I’d scheme to get out of the shift, and it never happened.  In 2009, my first New Year’s Eve with Adam, I paid a co-worker 50 bucks to work my shift so that I could spend the evening with him.

The next year, we were in Texas, and I managed to be off.  

The years preceding Adam, I always took the cut.  Around 11:00 they’d ask for volunteers to go home and I’d always say yes.  I hated being there, and I hated being in the crowd trying to get home.  

However, in 2011, Adam and I had just gotten back from Maine, where we’d spent Christmas.  On Christmas Day, my friend’s Lisa and Michelle, along with myself, sat Adam down and did an intervention.  We explained to him that he was moving to Maine the followiong summer, and just to embrace it.  After about 30 minutes he craved, and the plan was put into motion that got us moved to the northeast.  

When we got home, I was of course scheduled to work New Year’s Eve.  This year was different.  Although, I’d not yet given my notice, I knew that this would be my last New Year’s Eve in NYC.  And although, I hated working events I was excited to work New Year’s Eve 2011.  Because the Hard Rock Café is at the base of the building where the ball drops.  And for all my years in NYC, I’d never been in Times Square to watch the ball drop.  

So in 2011, when volunteers were asked to speak up, I didn’t volunteer.  At 11:45 for the first time ever, I was present, when the staff gathered on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.  And at 11:59:59, I watched the ball being to descend, I experienced the playing of New York, New York, I saw the confetti fly, as all of my co-workers hugged each other. 

Somewhere on this laptop, I have the video of that night saved.  It is buried in files and files of photos off lots of different phones and cameras I’ve had since grad school.  I have looked for the last three days, but have yet to be able to find it.  I’ve found lots of other fun surpriseds, but not the video.  

I’m glad that I worked that night.  I’m glad before I left the city for good that I got to see the ball drop.  It’s one of those New York City memories that I will always cherish.