Forbidden, For Biden: ForBiden - a parody cologne commercial roasting Joe Biden

For my sketch team last month I had the idea to write a parody cologne commercial roasting Vice President Joe Biden. His status as an entrenched Washington bureaucrat and his inability to see that his well documented creepery made him a prime target. Anyway, it was really fun to write something and cut together this ad in the style of a Martin Scorsese cologne short film/advertisement. Enjoy :)

I am an endless well of love. I really am, and I don't want to be any other way.

In my whole life, the only thing I've ever been certain I wanted, but didn't know it was certain I could have, is encapsulated by this TS Eliot poem:

It’s called, “A Dedication to My Wife,”

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
the breathing in unison.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,
And babble the same speech without need of meaning...

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.

I read this piece in The Cut -- and among other things, it solidified more deeply my belief that I am in fact courageous for loving deeply. I am vulnerable enough to say "I love you" first. I am honest enough to admit to myself and to others that I have hurt them, and I am so sorry.

As someone who consistently feels like I have to justify my presence, I want to keep being someone that looks at others and lets them know that they deserve to be there. I want to treat myself with the same love and care I have for others. And I deserve that same care back. I might not always get it, but I know I deserve it.

I can be empathetic, compassionate and loving, and still know my worth when someone makes me feel like I am less than worthy. I can understand that they didn't mean to. I can know that whatever is or was perhaps had nothing to do with me at all, but know it affected me, and it hurt me. And I can even know that I don't have to be OK with that to move past it. I can forgive them, and I can love myself and them more still.

This quote from Rumi echoes these feelings too.

I've said this aloud before, but sometimes it helps me to write it so I can remember this moment later -- I am an endless well of love. I really am, and I don't want to be any other way.

It might seem like too much, and I might be too much, but we all deserve to be deeply loved; I deserve to be deeply loved. Any other way is selling ourselves short because the truth is everything you want... you can have it.

xx

I would sure like to feel different.

I've always been a sucker for Death Cab for Cutie. I know. Such a 2000s band name, but laying that aside for a moment, they've got this one lyric. It gets in my head fairly often, and to me that means it's a solid line:

"So this is the new year.
And I don't feel any different."

What a poignant observation. Time is a construct. We are a construct. The concept of the individual is a construct. Nothing matters unless we give it meaning. What in the actual fuck is going on and why? Anyone who claims to know has just put forth hope in an idea. That doesn't mean anything necessarily. It has the meaning one has given it.

I've always found religion one of the most frustrating aspects of living. It's amazing to me that people can so fully "believe" in something. And then someone else can so fully "believe" in something else. And one belief system can negate the other's. How amazing and insane and confusing and, fuck.

2018 was a strange year. I jumped in with a sort of laissez- faire-fuck-you attitude, ambivalent, excited, tired, and waiting for the shoe to drop, while just trying to do what I wanted to do. For so long so many of us are told it's wrong to have wants, to do what we want to do. Why the hell is that such a bad thing? Why shouldn't we do the thing we want to do? Do the thing that will make us happy? If we're all following our bliss, and perhaps not following the blind construct some other person told us we wanted, then won't we be the happier? I guess murderers want to murder, and that's tough if you don't want to be murdered. But, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about going for the career you want (save for murderer as career path), having or not having a family, going on the trip, spending frivolously if you've got it. Why must we always save for the rainy day? Some people save their whole lives waiting for the bottom to drop out, so they could say, oh, good! I'm glad I never did anything so I can try to beat cancer with all this money I've saved, never you mind that the cancer was caused by XYZ factor that maybe could have been avoided if you'd just have LIVED a little.

I'm ranting here. I'm tired. But, mostly I'm tired of being confused about what it is I want out of life. I'm tired of watching people make decisions and be happy about those decisions, while I dabble in the here and there, never certain of any choice I've ever made. I'm tired that the thing I was told would make me happy, isn't actually the thing I want, and I've wasted so much energy chasing after bullshit. Energy I could have spent figuring out my shit earlier.

I have a fear of wasting time, and it seems all I have done my whole life is waste time. Granted it, I wouldn't be "me" if I hadn't do all of this, but still, who's to say "me" now is a better version than "me" as the ideal version of myself. Sometimes it gives me comfort to think of alternate universe me's, and knowing maybe there's a version of myself out there that is the best version of me. I don't want to rag on myself too much, because in general I like myself, my life, what I'm up to, etc. But, when I really let myself think about it, the anxiety and stress of living eats me up.

So it's 2019. This is the new year, and I guess I don't feel any different. I would sure like to though.

Autonomy and the Oops!, Gritty Details

This year I think I turned into myself. Really, it's who I always was, but I didn't have the confidence to carry her around. Through the grapevine that is my family's way of communicating, I learned that they think I have dum dum dum! CHANGED! It was weird to hear this, like a far-off thought that was slung my way from behind a barrier, meant to define me, categorize me, hurt me... I honestly don't care.

I went through a lot this past year. Sparing you the gritty details, I was essentially tossed to the wayside without explanation after three years of building what I thought was a castle with someone, but was actually a sandcastle. It's what I imagine great cinematographers feel like they can do when filming a miniature set, tricking audiences into thinking it's the real thing. Behind the scenes, we see if they'd just zoomed-out that it's not real. It's make believe. It was marvelous, but in the end, it's not feasible. You can't live in a sandcastle. So he crushed it, packed both our bags without telling me, and told me to go home.

My therapist loves my metaphors. What I'm saying is, I was dumped, and dumped hard. We had celebrated our three-year anniversary days before, him taking care to call the restaurant and tell them we were celebrating this occasion, them giving us two glasses of champagne and dessert. The actions of a man in love, I thought, and all romantic comedies would lead one to believe. Thanks to an overly shall we say "helpful" aunt, I had read He's Just Not That Into  and The Rules and even Not Your Mothers Rules. If I wanted the things that conventional society says I want, then I knew what to look for and, more importantly, what to avoid. (Note part of my growth is realizing, um, I don't want what conventional society says I do... that's why I moved to Los Angeles to become a star. Cue the music!) Anyway, we had had a hard couple of days, but the ship was righting itself until I walked into his apartment, swinging by just to pick up some paint cans I'd left in his garage. I opened the door and before I could say, "Hello," before I could register sadness, toil, trouble in, well — it wasn't paradise, but aren't all relationships this way?— I heard the words, "I need to break up with you."

You know that feeling when your heart is beating fast, and you're wondering: is my blood outside my veins? Are my veins outside my body? Should I grab a pen, because this is too good to make up, and eventually I'll want to write about the person who made trust seem like a luxury I'd never known I had until it was gone? That feeling? That feeling where you're wondering, how did I let this happen? How did I not cut and run before he did? Aren't I worth something? Aren't I worth more than this? Is every self-help book lying to me about my inherent, undeniable value? Aren't I worth more than this moment suggests?

In the first few months after I'd wonder nightly if I had just not gone over that day, would we have worked it out? I'm glad we didn't. And this isn't all to say that every person who rids themselves of another person is pure trash, because that isn't true. I actually wish him nothing but the best. But, in sharing this I get to own a little bit more of my life. We are a combination of what happens to us, whether it's our own doing or the doing of others.

So, I guess I didn't spare you all the gritty details. There's a lot more to this — obviously more family, learning about boundaries and how I'm allowed to have them (What?! Who knew!? I did not. Irish Catholics don't love autonomy), and a bottomless pit of anxiety quantified by a black sphere holding space behind ribs for too long. That probably hurt the most. The metaphysical ambiguity was startling and, frankly, pretentious.

I started this with the intention of showing how I turned into myself, and this was a big thing that catapulted that growth. I'm grateful for it. I wish it didn't have to happen the way it happened, but it did. I've turned into myself in the way that only traumatic experiences can show you who you are. Spending time and money on self-care is worth it. These days I look at it like its making up for all the years where I didn't even think I was worth caring for. I didn't know I felt that way until I saw what I was and didn't recognize her. This year has been one of authenticity, speaking up, and setting boundaries to help me maintain my autonomy, then tripping, falling and getting back up again to do it over and over and over.

Anyway, one day we'll be dead. :)

I'm Out. Drops the Mic. & a Critique Involving How Life is Improv (whaaaaat? I am so original)

**I found this in my drafts just now, and I can't believe I never posted it. Feel free to read it, and then read my thoughts on it at the end.**

"And, that's my time. Thanks, guys. You've been a great audience. Sincerely."

I twisted the microphone back into it's holder. The audience still clapping. It was a lazy clap though, like they felt they had to do it. I've been in those audiences, been the person who just did not want to keep being there.

This has been my fear for so long, I don't even know how to quantify it. I mean, I suppose I could say for the last 27 years. Or, I could say for the past 7, or I could say, for as long as I knew what stand up was — imagining all the while that talking is difficult. Talking in front of strangers is difficult. Talking. Difficult. Frozen.

BUT. That's not how it is at all. Man, if only I knew. There was one time about two years ago now where I was at a birthday for a friend, well, the birthday of a friend's boyfriend and we were all comedy people, doing improv in Chicago for the last four years, whataever, some standups, some writers, some actors, all jokesters. Anyway, there was a microphone you could use to roast the birthday boy.

I've always been a rather funny person, I guess. I make people laugh in conversation and tend to be opinionated about things that have no bearing on anything. I hold fast to my ideals even if it means that I stick with the wrong thing because I thought it was something else and then I realized I was wrong but don't want to admit it.

Basically. I am a one woman show wherever I go.

Stand up just makes it such that no one can interrupt me when I'm going on my verbal expeditions. Taking a crowd of people with me on my journey from learning how to play a guitar, numb fingers and all to why firemen have the easiest job on the planet.

If people do interrupt me, there's a special name for them (heckler) and they get thrown out! If only this happened in my real life when people are being real dicks.


**It would be nice if people would stop interrupting my verbal expeditions. What a great phrase, Bridge. But in all seriousness -- I think why I didn't publish this is perhaps I had the fear that I then would be accountable to becoming a standup, and not just a standup, but a good standup, a female standup, always held to a different higher standard, because god forbid, we have a female Dane Cook.

I chalk it up to this feeling: if I missed a mic I couldn't call myself a standup anymore. Some arbitrary rule I made myself follow. Throughout my life, and I'm sure most of us do this, I've had nearly one-billion irrational fears. Because I grew up competitive, and have a brother who one could say was a natural athlete, it escaped me that practice was necessary for most everyone. And the truth was, my brother was given a ball when he was a baby, so he'd actually been practicing his whole life, so scratch that, practice as necessary for everyone. My brother just never lost interest in his thing. And, what happens to most of us, I'm learning, is we lose interest in that first thing. It happens in improv all the time. You could say most people's lives are rather rough improv shows, that we trudge through hoping somehow it will all tie together, everything will make sense in the end because we remembered our suggestion.

We remembered, "Ball," and we can trick ourselves into thinking we were going to get back there all the time. That there is some invisible hand guiding us home, and maybe there is. I like to think so.

My goal at the present moment is to not just cut myself some slack with my purpose in being alive, but to remind myself I'm just making all of this up as I go along. I've never done this before. I've never done today before. Have you? How can I possibly know what I don't know? And when I strike gold, when I have those little victories that makeup a life, when I remember something I did learn, and I then put it into practice, that's a gift, it's not the rule.

We're just doing a bad improv show most of the time, and it's fine. We just made it up. Just do as much as you can with what you have, and it's pretty tough to regret those choices. It's sort of nice to think of life this way.

That said, I don't do standup, but I should again because it was fun, and man, some of my Twitter jokes get a lot of favs. I see you, favs. Thanks!**

c.s. lewis, wordsmith

been reading a lot as of late. re-reading one of my dearest books: a severe mercy. reminded me of my once passionate love of all things c.s. lewis. so, in reading some of his work, and came across this beautiful quote:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

it sparked in me real joy. and real frustration. because real vulnerability is not something that comes easily, to me or anyone else. but vulnerability begets vulnerability. like all things worthy in life, it's a chicken versus the egg scenario. a catch 22.

and just like my chosen career path as an actor, writer, creative -- there is a catch 22.
and just like with all relationships -- there is a catch 22.

tired bones

My feet hurt, do yours?

We danced for a long, long time

But we love to dance