Introductions

I’ve finally given in. After almost a year of balking and making excuses, I finally have a blog that’s open for business. Whether or not I’ll actually stick with it and keep doing the updating and maintenance remains to be seen. But at least for the next few weeks until I get busy again, I’ll be doing my best to provide a scintillating blog that’s at least moderately worth reading. And by that I of course mean cynical, opinionated, callous, inappropriate, and wholly offensive.

I’m a twenty-something college student who, in clear punishment for horrible sins committed in a past life, was born and raised in the upper Midwest. Anyone who knows me will attest that my physical location is by no means in keeping with my personality – I like tall buildings, pavement, expressways, public transit, (to say nothing about arts and culture), along with the people around me having a combined IQ that’s above room temperature. Since I don’t live in Chicago (one of the few oases of culture and style in the arid desert of misfortune I like to call home) finding more than two of these things in any one place is a minor miracle.

I am a theatrical lighting designer and stage electrician by trade, and I go to college as a sort of self-inflicted punishment. Time was, I thought college was great. Then I turned 20. I found out that college is just as much of a rigged, politically charged bureaucracy as any other big business, and I got tired of drinking the same shitty beer out of a keg in a desperate attempt to forget the former, and at that point I kind of stopped having a fun college experience. Then I realized I go to a top tier liberal arts university that is one of the only viable artistic and cultural outlets within 200 miles and I started drinking vodka. And all that did was focus my attention on how difficult it is to get a decent bottle of vodka in the middle of Iowa and then I got sad.

For this and many other reasons, not the least of which was a steady paycheck, I started living and working summers on the east coast, in Massachusetts, and then New York. And I was in heaven. the social and cultural climate is worlds away from any other part of the country in so many ways. Like there are multiple theatres presenting outstanding work on the same night. And there are multiple art galleries, each catering to a different style and genre. Bars serve Absolut as their well, not their top shelf. Seafood comes out of the water, not out of the freezer. I could go on.

All this is to say that I am basically a walking contradiction of myself. And along with a few others, I thought that might provide suitable – or at least entertaining – blog material. I’d love to hear your feedback; especially if you like the site. If you don’t, your best recourse is probably to just not come back. You can send me an email telling me how much you hate my work, but in addition to disregarding your opinion in favor of my own huge ego, I will probably also write you off as a bad person. So here goes: ready, set, blog.