Gates and Sun
Originally uploaded by akfirefly76.

Guess where I was on saturday....
Yup! Central Park, enjoying the last few days of the cool Orange Gates. I took a few pictures, this is probably my favorite though, taken as I walked along 5th avenue and looked back up and into the park.

Thanks for all the coffee-emails people! I was really hit hard by the caffein monster on Wednesday. Yesterday, I had zero coffee. Today, I'm slowly-slowly working my way through one cup of regular brewed office coffee. And... I only allowed myself coffee after finishing 64 ounces of water.

That's not why I'm posting however. I'm posting because I've got an insane amount of free-time (sorta) on my hands, and an urge to share this blog that I've been inching my way through for the last month or so. Just Another Soldier is its name. And it is really blowing my mind. Not only is the author an infantryman in Iraq, he's witty, very intelligent, and his posts never cease to horrify me and fill me with a sense of hope. I'm only up to April of 2004, which is where I found this tidbit wherin he says, "I have a hard time being okay with dead civilians." This is a bad example of the blog and why y'all should go read it... but, I figured I'd post something instead of continually trying to find that funny/horrific/human bit that sums this thing up... So, here ya go:

As I try to fathom what it must feel like to be a poverty-stricken eight-year-old Muslim girl and experience the epic pain of having your family suddenly and violently killed in front of you, I have to pause and ask myself, Now what am I doing here again? I know this kind of thing happens in combat and I kind of expected to see it, but jesus, the record is pretty bad so far. Since I've been in Iraq, in situations that my platoon has responded to there have been three dead bad guys, two wounded civilians (one critically), and seven dead civilians to include four women, one three-year-old girl and one mentally-unstable homosexual man on a moped. Hell, if you count the suicide of the latter's lover-- an excellent two-for-one dead civilian deal-- and the de-familied guy who got his balls blown off who even if he lived will wish to Allah that he was dead, that makes the tally 3 to 9, a 1:3 ratio of dead evildoers to innocent and ridiculously poor Iraqis who couldn't care less who leads their country just so long as they are able to feed themselves. Now that I think about it, there have actually been more civilian casualties in our area, but these are the only ones that I remember very well right now. Thank god none of this carnage has been carried out by anyone in my platoon or even my battalion for that matter. My battalion has sustained only one casualty of its own so far, and there has been at least one engagement by another company that netted a few dozen dead bad guys, so the numbers are at least decent in that regard, but still, I'm having a hard time being okay with all the dead civilians. It's like we should have bumper stickers that read, "I {heart} dead civilians". [link]

Every time I read this guys stuff, I want to show it to everyone. And I've really only read through the training/deployment period. Now that he's actually in Iraq, the pictures and stories and thoughts are getting more and more interesting.

Just for everyone's information, writing this post took me almost forty-five minutes because of phone interruptions. Have I mentioned that my phone number is currently listed in Playbill, Backstage and who knows where else for actors to call for an audition? So, I've got hundreds of crazy actors calling me wanting their appointment, and all I really want to do is scream at them and say, "you fools! We aren't actually casting our show from these auditions! We're just doing it because Equity requires it! Stop calling me!" But they all sound so hopeful, it's almost sad. If the 40 gazillion phone messages that I can't keep up with weren't so annoying, I'd let myself feel human sympathy towards these folks who're just trying to climb the career ladder anyway they can.

One of the cool things I get to do with my job is direct one of the winning plays in a highschool playwrighting contest. The program is called Youth Ink! and basically the students in districts all around New Jersey meet with the teaching artists at McCarter. They learn all about what makes a good play, they talk to our dramaturg, Emily goes in and talks to some of them about playwrighting. Then, once everyone's play is in, they get piled through a reading committee here at the theater, we score them, and the top plays from each district make it to the finals. I get to direct one of them. A chance to direct! yay!

Part of this also means I have to go out to a couple of the classes to listen and give constructive criticicm, talk about what I look for in a play, etc. Today was one of those days. Highschool starts at an ungodly time. This meant that in order to get to the high school, I had to be up way before the sun, catch the 5:53am train to meet my ride, drive forever, and then finally get there. No longer being acclimated to that time of day, I consumed coffee before the trainride. Then, we got there early, so I got a latte. Then, between schools, I got another latte. I don't think I've ever had this much caffein in my system before in my life. And my body is crashing. I just want to go home, curl up and sleep.

And I was doing so well in my journey to kicking my newly acquired coffee habit. Damn those high school operating hours!

I am a Google addict.

There, I've said it. I've made Google my homepage. I google every single little thing that pops in my head. Got a date with someone, Google them. A new play coming out, google. Health problems... google. It is my oracle.

Today, I decided to google myself. This is not a new thing. I google myself on a bi-monthly basis. This time, however, I ran across some strange links that were not me. Even though I was careful in my search. I input: ["Tracy Campbell" Theater]. I find the quotation marks and one subject related to what I assume most links pertaining to me might contain keep the hits down to about 13 to 15 pages of results.

Usually when I google myself, I pay attention only to the links that might really be me. Rarely do I let the obvious non-me entries distract me. But today I had some doozies... here are some of the sample titles.

Where Do Balloons Go? An Uplifting Mystery
MrSkin - Nude Celebrity Movie Reviews
The politics of economic despair
Timeline California 1984 to 1995
... On Aug 11 the body of Tracy Campbell was found in the Mohave Desert
Death On Visit To The Dentist
Captive Women Series
... "Captured, Tied, Trained", by Tracy Campbell
Discover The Benefits of Florence Parks & Rec!
Prisoner of Love
Machine Politics, Police Corruption, and the ...

What I find amazing, though, is this next one. The entry said something about french kissing, Say Anything, and me. How could I resist? And so, I dove in... I read the whole thing, and part of me wishes that I'd been as brazen as this Tracy Campbell when I was in fifth grade. Maybe this whole thing is an anecdote from a parallel universe and it is really me. But the switches got crossed in cyberspace and somehow I've found a window into that alternate reality.

JamesKramer77

Another hour lunch break, another walk down to Virgin Megastore.

Every time I'm in a cd store, I check to see if:
a) I over-paid for whatever my last music purchase was
b) the new posthumous Elliott Smith album has come out yet

Today's visit proved a negative in both categories.

I'd never been in the downstairs section of the Union Square Virgin before. I had plenty of time, so I decided to have myself a little exploratory adventure. I was immediately overwhelmed by how cavernous the downstairs seemed, and my first thought upon descending down the escalator was a very ominious "I think I may die down here." For some reason, I next considered that, in the event of a nuclear war, the fact that I was so far below the earth's surface meant that I might actually survive down here, which cheered me up a little.

I made my way to the "Under $15" bargain bin to see what was what, and came across a copy of Say Anything, the classic Cameron Crowe film that made dorkiness cool again. This is also, incidentally, the movie to which a young Jimmy Kramer had his first ever kiss with a girl, Tracy Campbell.

In the course of my developing memory montage, just before my eyes glazed over in the bliss of thoughts of innocence lost, they wandered down to the copyright date: 1989!

Could this be true? I've been kissing girls for 14 years! This means that next year, I'm going to have to kiss someone special, or blow the entire event out by somehow finding Tracy Campbell, renting Say Anything, and reliving the moment...only better this time...and without any of my mother's spies.

Allow me to explain.

Some girl from a neighboring town frenched my friend Sammy Suckoneck when we were at a Phillies baseball game in the fifth grade. My friend Scott Goldman then got that girl's number and asked her out. I was dragged along for protection.

We went to the Marlton 8 in Cherry Hill, where we sneaked in to see the PG-13 Say Anything. I first met Tracy in the darkness of the theater. We did not speak during the film.

Let's back up a bit.

Picture my fifth grade classroom on a rainy day recess. It's the day after the baseball game debacle, and a few of my friends and I are peering into Sammy Suckoneck's mouth, inspecting for tell-tale tongue bumps, which, as every fifth grade boy knows, only emerge after whatever chemical miracle occurs when a boy's tongue touches a girl's tongue. It was, and is, as far as I can tell, common knowledge that only people who have french kissed have these "tongue bumps." Upon close inspection, Sammy had them, right where they always appear: on the back of the tongue near the uvula. Check your mirrors after reading this; sience doesn't lie.

Despite the teasing that inevitably went on, I didn't dare show my tongue for fear that there were no bumps. My secret shame: I'd never kissed a girl, and it seemed that I was a quickly dying breed at Brett Harte Elementary School. It should also be noted that I wore a condom in my shoe, "just in case." My ideas of what happens in the normal course of a date, or a day at elementary school, were muddled to say the least.

So, back to the night of nights.

The four of us watched the movie in complete silence. I would occassionally look over at Goldman to see if he was "doing it," which he never was.

We filed out, and realized that we had about fifteen minutes before our parents were scheduled to pick us up. We decided to hang out in back of the movie theater, by the dumpsters. It started to rain.

We made for the shelter of a nearby fire-escape, where the girls stood, their backs to the brick wall, and we, facing our dates. I tried to make some pathetic small talk, but cut myself short when I looked over and saw Goldman forcibly attacked by his date, his face all but swallowed by what looked like to me a very experienced kisser. I hardly had time to react before I felt two hands on my face pulling me, YANKING me, forward, where I too was swallowed in love's embrace. Something was alive in my mouth, and it wasn't anything that belonged to me.

It was slippery. It was disgusting. It was awesome.

Once the deed was done, I got Tracy's number, and Goldman and I sprinted to the front of the theater where his mom was waiting to pick us up. On the way home, Sam Cooke's "What A Wonderful World" was on the radio. I remember the line: "Don't know much about the French I took" coming on, and Scott and I losing it. Dopes.

A week passed. Tracy called once, we talked, but over all, I was too terrified to ever see her again. I was going out to play a Saturday afternoon's worth of war games over at David Foell's house when my mom snagged me while I was going to the garage to get on my bike.

"Jimmy, I never heard how that movie was last week."

"It was good Mom. I gotta ru..."

"Did you watch it with a girl?"

Pause. Oh shit. I didn't tell ANYone about that, not even my little brother. Damn my mother's ex-nun powers! She could pick out the shame in my soul like diners viewing a salad bar through the sneeze guard.

"I...uh..."

"I heard you were kissing some girl after the movie. A friend of mine saw you and told me about it in the supermarket."

This was possibly the worst moment I'd experienced up until that point. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if she'd pulled the condom out of my shoe, which, thankfully, she did not.

We had a short conversation about my thoughts on the kiss, which was every bit as awkward as it sounds, at which point I was allowed to go, drenched in guilty sweat, to play. I didn't kiss another girl again until high school.

Ahh. Sweet memories. I might have recalled more, but my gaze landed on American Psycho 2. My disposition soon turned from nastolgic to nauseous.

If you actually read through this whole thing you are probably my mother. (Hi mom! Love you!)

So, yes... my camera did indeed finally stop the westward travel and arrived in my hot little hands. Also, I've discovered a fabulous method of posting photos to the blog. Yay flickr! I always carry my camera with me, because you never know when beautiful pictures make themselves available. And this one... I just love.

activist squirrel,
originally uploaded by akfirefly76.

This squirrel and I had a bonding moment as I waited for the train. I fed it some nuts. He spray painted a trashcan. Moments like this make life in Princeton surreal and wonderful.