Last week, I was mentioned (briefly) in the Burbank Leader’s coverage of a forum that I agreed to moderate about developments within our fair city’s police department. Click here if you’d like to read it. Public response so far, on some blogs, is that no doubt I was paid to intentionally get some people’s names wrong. Good theory — and I wish I’d thought of that.

Also in the Burbank Leader comes news that Gun World is closing.  For those of you who’ve seen my play “About the Deep Woods Killer,” this may strike a chord. Here’s Scene Three, in which Jack, the son of the Deep Woods Killer, struggles to stay on a good path:

 

 

                                                (Scene Three: Testimony.)

           

(Spotlight on Jack. He stands alone, addressing us as though we were a group. He holds his baseball cap in his hands and fidgets with it, at times twisting and turning it.)

 

                        JACK

My name is Jack. I’m an alcoholic. But you know that. I had a tough week. Well, a tough day. The same thing happened at work, again, the thing that happens every time I think it’s okay. They hired this new girl, woman, Alice, and somebody told her. About me. Well, about my father. I know you all already know, so what’s the point. It’s about honesty in here. So at work, nobody said anything to me but I could tell. Monday morning Alice was filling out paperwork while I was in the breakroom and she smiled and said hello. I didn’t want to talk to her, I wasn’t trying to talk to her, I wasn’t even trying to look at her, but I did like her hair, it was red, pulled up behind. She talked to me and I looked up and looked up at her hair, that was when I saw it, and she smiled again. And after lunch she wouldn’t look at me. She came into the breakroom and I was there again and she acted like she didn’t mean to come in there and turned and left, and I knew what that was. I was… I was really down after that. The whole day that feeling was back, it felt like there was something on me, something heavy I couldn’t get off and the drive home took me past the Dew Drop Inn, and the Rustic Inn, and the Pitney Tavern, and the Stop and Go Liquor – I don’t know why we have so many of these places, it’s like they build ‘em right where I’m going to drive by, that’s what I was thinking – then I stopped at the light at Leeds Road and there was Gun World. And I looked at myself in the rearview and I just looked tired, real tired. The light changed… and after a bit I drove home and I got inside and I –

(He starts to choke up.)

–  I called Tony. I got through it all, I got home, but I might not’ve gotten further ‘cept for Tony. He saved me. So I thank him and I praise God for him. I am a strong person, a strong man, but sometimes everybody needs a little help, and I had Tony. Thank you.

 

This play was performed in the Moving Arts one-act festival two years ago here in Los Angeles. One of the actors was walking down Magnolia Boulevard and did a double-take. He called our producer, Steve, to say, “You’re not going to believe this… but I’m standing in front of Gun World.” He later told me how very strange it felt to one moment be leading his normal life, and the next moment to feel that he’d entered the world of the play. For this reason alone, I’m sad that Gun World is closing.

Finally,  the current issue of Inc. magazine has a profile of my company, Counterintuity. Counterintuity is the place where I write those other things that blur the lines between reality and fantasy (we call that marketing copy). Click here if you’d like to read it and use my image for target practice.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Theatre, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.