Mostly Star WARRRRSSS

I'm super excited about the new MMO The Old Republic, however, their last one, Star Wars Galaxies kinda blew, especially since everyone wanted to play a Jedi, and lets face it, they were really mismanaged when it came to every other class.  Now, this is a new publisher, and designers, and blah blah blah, but still, when there's a choice between a gambler and a blaster and fighting a religious war, I'd choose the religious war.

Lets just hope that they focus on every style of gameplay; there's a lot more to this universe than crazy monks.  Its a thing, I think, Star Trek did right - sure there was some psychic stuff going on, but the focus was that the majority of people out there really didn't have super powers, kinda like the real world.

Anyway, there's a cat on my lap right now that needs attention.  Did I mention that I'm house sitting?  Well, not anymore; I'll be done after I leave this morning, but goddamn if I'm going to miss this cat.

Who?

Oh golly I love Doctor Who. And even this new Doctor is pretty awesome, although it'll take a little bit before I really enjoy him compared to the old one. But at least he's pleasantly quirky. British shows really are more awesome... why is that? Better writers? Don't care enough about sex? Action? There's plenty of action in this... and a little bit of sex, but nothing that American audiences want.

Well. Perhaps its because we're prudes here, but in reality we really need sex, but because we're religious we can't have it... but... brain fart. I think it makes sense, if my brain didn't fart. hehe, fart.

Delve deep into my world...

Here's something about Ben's life:

For the past... oh year or so, the internet at my house blips on and off, even with lights on the modem. I've had hours of discussions with Earthlink about this, my mom has had hours of discussions with Earthlink about this, and I bet even the cat has had a few minutes. They're in India, so that's cool, and I understand all about not really knowing tech so they have to go by the book at the problems on our end, but our problem is a special problem, it turns out. But that's later in the story.

Finally, they've agreed to send a tech guy out to check out the internet here, saying it will "be fixed permanently." Mom and I both doubted that, but in any case, we said sure, why not, and was told that we would have to be here between 12 - 4 today.

11:55 rolls around (rock on!) and the guy comes, a slightly gruff sort of chap with a dark beard and a receeding hairline. He was nice enough, and was early, which was even awesomer. He told me all about what he was going to do re: the internet, and I followed him for the most part. After 15 minutes, he came downstairs (I was wrapping presents at the time) and gave me the scoop: it's more than just our house, he's had a problem, and has tracked it down to the load coils outside, which is good! He can't touch them (they're another businesses' property), which is bad! The best, he said, that he can do is tell them about it, but since its so close to the holidays, no one's really going to get out in the usual 3-4 days they'd take to fix the problem.

Beauracracy at its finest, I know, but I'm just happy we have a solution on the horizion.

By the way, did I mention that we chatted about this over eggnog? Oh yeah, I'm totally hospitable this holiday season.

More fun Ben stuff:

The tub at M and I's house was clogged big time. It was my fault, I poured sponge cake batter down it, and it turned into a sponge. Not really, it was sand. Anyway, Bob (m's dad) came over and we totally rocked out that shit, successfully unclogging the tub, and pushing all the sand out, or wherever. But everything drains! It made me feel very masculine.

Aaand I totally forgot a present that I was supposed to bring this evening. Luckily, I have plenty o' time to get it.

Boring to most

My morning was filled with Tasks. Eating. Exercising. Fixing the Taillight. Those certain things. I assumed these Tasks would take me most of the day, well, the fixing the taillight part, but nope, I'm done, and sitting at home going through some of my music collection, some of the bits that I never really get to.

It's odd having lots of music, and only really listening to the same things over and over. I never was one for listening to a wide variety of music, as Monica can attest. Over the years that I've kept my music collection in one piece, it's been growing bigger and bigger, with various "Track X" at the end of the collection, just sitting there waiting to be categorized. Theoretically, I could Shazam the entire bit of them, and see all their information, but that would take way too long, so I've been fucking around and putting songs that I think go together in playlists. It's a tedious late morning activity, but surprisingly fulfilling.

Other news: my pants are looser. This could be stretching, but I like to think its because I'm losing weight.

Other news: Drew and Keith are in town, and Monica and I went to see them last night at a gig drew was playing. It was awkward for some reason.

For the most part, the weird sense of disappontment is going away,
it's taken more time than most, but in the end it always evaporates;
it's my defence mechanism after all. I think why it's been so
prevalent in my thoughts for the past few days is because my good
friend from Ben Franklin DID get cast, and she thought she did a bad
audition, and I ( as you know) didn't, and I thought I rocked their
socks off.

Their loss after all.

CAPS LOCK

Read an article earlier this week about quick workouts THAT ACTUALLY WORK! I'm not one for fads, but the exercises in here actually seem pretty interesting, and can be adapted for longer workouts THAT PROBABLY WORK BETTER! I did double the reps I would normally have done, for example, and realized my workout went about an hour, during most of the daily Bordain that I happen to watch in the mornings whilst unemployed. Because of my extra long workout, and reading an article about pushup technique, I am exceptionally sore, even in my gut, and I didn't do any crunches... my theory is that they tense up during my AWESOME PUSHUP WORK. Whatever works. It's a good sore.

Because my other reader (hi, jenny!) doesn't read about auditions, I'll keep this short: just got a rejection email this morning from Fountain of Youth: "While you're audition made an impresson on us, we decided to go in a different direction." What they really mean, however, is when they ask for "all shapes and sizes" they really mean "one shape and size." Story of my life, but hey, that's why I'm exercising, for good health and to look even more exceptionally sexier than I already do.

Mon has made a TV watcher out of me, and this holiday season reminds me why I don't make a habit of watching TV; the commercials are so consumer happy, and my continuing and increased belief in socialism has made them even more vile to my taste. And those cheesy diamond ones? I long for a time when I can kill 4000 people so I can bring a not so precious rock to the country and give it to someone who I'll have a statistically 50% chance of not being with in 7 years. FanTAStic. In any case, we did watch some Heroes last night, and it was fun, even if Mon decided to go to bed in the middle. Come on! Don't want to watch what Sylar has to say?

Daphne was here this weekend - Mon's college roomate/bff. She was a great houseguest, and an awesome, intelligent, cool person, and I dig cool people like that. Let's hope she comes back soon... or we can go to Phoenix. Yeah...

Merry Consumermas One And All!

My Rant

So yes I've been reading the Twilight series, and no, I'm not a teen or pre-teen girl. There's a lot of good in these novels, to be sure, and they definitely keep me hooked and wanting to read the next chapter when it comes to the lore of the world. It's a good story, and there's a reason why it's been so popular. However...

This whole world of Bella not being able to live without Edward and Edward going through so much angst about not living with Bella is bullshit. People breakup, and they deal with it, they don't become zombies for months at a time, and even if they do, they eventually get better! Gasp! I know, Stephanie, that you've made a fortune out of these books, but you need to take your little mormon head out of your mormon ass and realize that real people don't behave like this. And fuck, vampires don't behave like this either, if you're painting them as complex people in every other sense, with complex emotions.

Additionally, it's painting a stupid picture for young women. Bella, at the beginning of the series, is a strong, independent and smart young woman, ready for everything, can do everything, even survive a new high school (although why she'd move... whatever) and live successfully with a steriotypical dad who can't cook and a steriotypical all caring, but can't do anything mom. But why oh why does she lose all this independence when she meets her boyfriend? Yes, it happens, you don't see your friends as often, whatever, but now everything in her life is focused on this man. This man who, incidentally, makes all her decisions for her, and she just smiles and goes along with it. Jesus.

Why is this popular? It makes me sick. Whatever happened to strong women? I guess we don't need them when we have strong men around.

My New Plan by Ben Knoll

Starting next week, I will also be starting the rest of my life. The Rest of My Life includes:

• Applying for grad schools. I need to start my research again.
• Uh, I guess apply for a voice over class. I still have the money saved for that.

Why have I been putting these off, you may ask? I don't know; I've been pretty consistently in shows for a while (hurray!) and focusing on my job hunt (uh, boo) and after Ben Franklin is over, it will be the first break from a show I've had in... wow... 6 months? 9 months? It's been a long time. And now with the break in sight, I'll focus on my further future, rather than just the short future (which includes more shows! woohoo!).

Also: I have a bump on my nose. I think its a weird form of skin weirdness. If it breaks off (which it does sometimes), it bleeds, and it also hurts. Then it grows back. It is a weird skin thing, for sure.

Port of Amsterdam

I could use one of those PsiCards the Doctor has. It'd be nice to be able to show anyone anything they wanted to see. How fun.

I'm having even more of a blast working at moon; I knew it would be a good idea. Even better though, I sent some information to a new production coming up next year, and they had come to see moon last night, and liked my performance, calling me in! I don't quite know if it's a callback or an audition... could be a little bit of both, or all, or whatever. Any way, it's more exposure, and a possible show, with some new friends. If Ben Franklin has done anything to me, it's refueled my belief that making friends doing shows will bring friends for life; I am very happy with this cast, and it proves my point.

Been working a lot on applying for jobs, no shit, and for some reason keep forgetting to bring myself a snack or a lunch. Budgeting myself some time, I believe if I went a little bit early to the show, giving myself an extra 20 minutes or so, I can stop by Panda and relive my days of eating Panda all the time. Why is it that Panda is the tastiest? It simply is. Perhaps its the most bang for your buck.

Noticed lately that my entries are less and less thoughtful. I suppose that's my life right about now; I'm not much of a thinker on who or where or what's going on, other than simply trying to fix my life right now.

That being said, if perhaps the companies didn't have to buy health insurance for their employees and instead the government took care of that (as they should, and many other things), then the companies could worry more about what they do best, then maybe these companies would be doing slightly better. And perhaps then people who wanted to be certain places would stay there, and people who didn't want to be in certain jobs would have the opportunity to leave, since they weren't held there against their will because they're afraid of not having enough money in an emergency or a fucking birth. The most natural of all the things we have happen in our life.

Conversely, in France, England, or Cuba, (and practically every other civilized country out there) has medicine for everyone. Sounds like its time to move to Amsterdam.

As Usual

I'm on my Day Of Auditioning, and having, for the most part, a great
time; I feel like a real working actor. ( I will do some minor
bitching about it also being the Day Of Sickness, but right now I'm
feeling better, sitting in a cafe with some delicious hot apple cider.
Woah, too hot!)

As usual, however, something always sticks in my amazingly sensual
craw... the theatre I auditioned in didn't have very solid walls, and
I heard the person before me, a guy not REALLY my rival, but we'd be
up for the same roles in certain circumstances. Anyway, he did a lot
of yelling in his piece, and I knew, KNEW, that he would be given
sides to study. I was right. And he commenced to studying the sides
loudly.

After I blew them away - and I am confident that I did, I was given a
thank you, a "we'll be in touch" and a smile. I walked past the large
actor and his incredible ego, knowing for sure that he'll be cast.

But this pumpkin bread makes me smile.

Botching

I'm tired of botching my career. If this were a good world, they'd see
I just misread and didn't bring two songs, simply because I was
focusing on one, and they'd realize I'm a hard worker, blah blah.

Or maybe they did, since I got a callback. I think I just had an
epiphany; my reputation now helps me, even when I fuck up an audition.
(I know I didn't really fuck it up, I just sort of messed up my second
song. And then did what you should never do, make an excuse. Whatever,
what's done is done, and it doesn't really matter considering I *did*
get a callback. Was this all one paranthetical citation? Oops.)

So my botch wasn't that bad, for sure, and I'm not dwelling on it as I
would have in the past; maybe I am getting better.

More of Nothing

Nothing to post! I love posting, but there's been nothing new. I have an audition tomorrow, monday, and a little bit from now for shotgun. That's new, that's fun. Perhaps I'll be singing tomorrow. Well, it's a definite that I'll be singing, since there's a show tomorrow night; a show that's been going amazingly well. It really came into its own from the rehearsals... with a combination of input from a really good cast and a terrific director. I've been lucky with some really good directors lately.

I think I'm going to capitalize Nothing from now on, in my life. At least, until Something happens, Anything, really. Change is coming, I know that, but for right now, I might need to affect my own change - colleges come to mind at this point in time. A new tactic. After my show closes, I'm going to double my efforts of school searching, and its going to work. Maybe 2009 will be my year...

Also, I think my big request for the holiday season this year is:

http://www.amazon.com/10-Inch-Netbook-Intel-Processor-Battery/dp/B001BY97IU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_10?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1228264647&sr=8-10

Or a Playstation 3.

Goddamn it Chief

Decided against Lucky's piece from Waiting for Godot; too long, and I'd have to cut it... I don't really want to cut something like that. It's way too weird and disjointed as is. Besides, I think theatres around here don't want to see a what the fuck monologue like that, especially because I have about 10 monologues that I could use that have a little more... you know... coherent. Woot. Why learn something new when I can bring out something old and that I've used millions of times already?

More job searching today, more BSG action too. What an incredible piece of art.

I did take a shower today, and cleaned a bunch of the apartment. It's satisfying to do some work with your hands, as well as getting clean. It's been a while; why do I wait so long before I clean myself? Simple laziness, I would say. Why take 20 minutes out of my day to clean myself? Now, a pattern emerges: work out, get stinky and sweaty so even I can't deal with myself, shower! Done.

Monica and I are also doing better; we were having some troubles, but I'm happy to be with her and see her. Even watching the live action The Grinch was a joy when you're with the person you love.

And goddamn it Chief, find the fucking Eye of Jupiter already.

I have a series of auditions coming up, and have been checking out some new (for me) stuff. Lucky's monologue from Waiting for Godot, the "What a piece of work is man" speech from Hamlet. I've been happy with the choices, but I now realize that with all the work I've been putting in lately, I wasn't really checking with my time, and have instead run out of the little bit of time that I've had to prepare. This doesn't mean that I'm not going to learn them, it just means here I go again trotting out the same old shit. (Note: shit may not be shit and may actually be pretty good pieces.)

10 jobs applied for today, including some ones that aren't on craigslist. It's getting more depressing by the day.

And now I'm eating pretzels and formatting Kung Fu Panda for my iPhone.

An Attempt

In an attempt to upgrade my iPhone to the latest software, I've had to unplug it three times; "Backing up iPhone" has taken an hour or more in some cases. I've never had this problem before, but, as always, it might have something to do with the jailbreak. However, people aren't causing a hullabaloo in the online world about how jailbreaking fucks everything up... I'm just going to let it do its thing and see what happens, and if it's impossible, then I'll simply restore it without backing it up; I can shove all my crap on there again... it's not like I dont' have all the fucking time in the world.

Been looking into plane tickets to go home for the holidays. I miss my family, I miss snow, I miss cold weather. Isn't that weird? I think that once I do go home for the holidays, that'll be my cold weather fix, and I won't have to miss it for a long time afterwards.

Also, what's up with not being able to listen to music while the phone is upgrading? It's the 21st century! Come on!

Alright, back to applying.

Publicity

I haven't disappeared, but have been extremely busy with my job* and my show, Ben Franklin in Paris, as shown by these two articles:

Davis, Rhoads, Knoll and More Cast in 42nd Street Moon's Ben Franklin in Paris

42nd Street Moon's Ben Franklin in Paris Begins Performances Nov. 28

Yeah, that's right. I'm in PLAYBILL! Exciting stuff for a little fancypants like myself. Let's hope it's the start of a huge career.

Oh, and thanksgiving was wonderful.