A friend of mine recently called to ask if I would recommend some books for him. He wanted me to recommend good stuff that he was probably supposed to read in high school, but didn’t. He also mentioned that he wanted to read stuff that might be be fodder for allusions and pop-culture references. Finally, he’ll be listening to these books on audio books, which he’ll borrow from the library. Here’s what I recommended:

• Animal Farm – Very short political allegory about the Russian Revolution.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany – Long, but an excellent, excellent story. Occasional language, but not much at all.
• Catcher in the Rye – Medium length, good, classic story. The language is occasionally kind of rough because it’s written from the perspective of a teenage boy.
• 1984: This is a pretty long book, but it’s referred to a lot (both directly “Man, that’s straight out of 1984!” and indirectly, “That’s totally Orwellian!”). It’s very interesting, but dry reading.
• Fahrenheit 451: Shorter book, and a pretty interesting read. It’s about censorship and how governments try to control people… I think one of the more interesting aspects of this book was that it was written in the 50s as a futuristic book, and some of the author’s predictions into future technology are spot-on.
• Scarlet Letter: This is prototypical “Early American Literature”. It’s a medium-length book, pretty dark story. This is alluded to pretty frequently (I just saw it referenced on a TV show a couple nights ago).
• Catch-22: This is a very, very funny book. Heller’s sense of humor is almost exactly like mine (very dry, sarcastic), and he’s a fantastic writer to boot. It’s basically a satire of the American military. It’s pretty long, but very good. I think there may be some mildly “dirty” content… it is about soldiers after all!

I was careful to let him know when a book might contain cuss words or otherwise risqué language because he has two young kids and I’d hate for him to be cruising along with his two-year old, listening to Catcher in the Rye when Holden drops an F-bomb, dirtying up junior’s vocabulary forever.

That is all.

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A friend recommended this book, so I thought I’d give it a read. I was really impressed with the spirit of the book and I’d definitely recommend it. I felt like there were two themes to the book:

1) Correlation does not imply causality. People often find a correlation between two or more things and assume that correlation demonstrates a causal relationship between those things. This isn’t necessarily true and there are often many other factors that need to be considered.

2) Asking “Why?” can help us discover very unusual and interesting things. Accepting opinions and hypotheses without scrutiny can lead us to false conclusions and rob us of genuine understanding. Repeatedly asking “Why?”, even when the answer seems obvious or at least trivial, can help us uncover interesting relationships between seemingly unrelated things.

It was a pretty quick read, but it helped me see that I should probably be thinking deeper and more critically than I typically do.

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Two-week update

It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything here. Why? I’m lazy.

Ok, so what’ve I been up to? Well, I’ve had two basketball games since my last post and I’m finally starting to play pretty well. Last week, I had 12 points on 4-of-6 3-point shooting. This week, I had 10 points–2 3-pointers, an 18-foot jumper and a couple freethrows. Those are decent point totals since this league plays a 36 minute game with a running clock and a 2-minute half time. Our team is averaging somewhere in the low 30s per game. We lost both games, but against decent teams and both games were pretty close. Last week, we just couldn’t hit our freethrows and this week, we basically didn’t have an answer for their big man.

Poker

Well, I have played for about a year online and have seen moderate winnings. Mostly, I’d been playing to get experience and learn more about the game. Recently, I decided to try and grind out some actual steady money, so I started playing Limit Hold ‘em cash games. I started at Micro Limits–$.5/$1, 4-tabling–and am gradually moving up. My win-rate was just over 4BB/100 hands for almost 6,000 hands. I just moved up to $1/$2 Limit and I’m up, but I’ve only played a couple hundred hands. Anyway, I’ll play $1/$2 until I’ve won about 300BB, then I’ll jump to $2/$4. Slow and steady.

Reading

Since I returned from Europe, I’ve been reading a lot. Mostly, I’ve been reading books on poker, but I’ve also read some good fiction. Right now, I’m reading David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day. Sedaris is just a great author with a unique perspective and writing style. It’s just fun to read his stuff. Next, I think I’ll move on to John Irving’s latest book, but first it has to come out in paperback.

Work’s been rough

That about says it all. When I returned from Europe, I assumed the responsibilities that had previously been two peoples’ jobs. Actually, it seems I’ve taken on even more responsibility than that. Anyway, I’ve been ultra-busy and it’s been keeping me from pursuing acting like I want to. I know I should continue pursuing acting, but my schedule at work is very demanding and volatile and I don’t want to over commit myself. Hopefully, things will calm down by the end of the year and I can get back on the bus.

Headin’ home for football

I will be going to Florida to see the UT vs. UF football game next month. Really, I’ll be hoping to see the game since I don’t have a ticket. Basically, I plan to fly into Orlando, rent a car, drive to G-ville and start hunting for a ticket. I’ll be getting to G-ville on Thursday afternoon, so that’ll give me almost two full days to find a ticket.

I really should find something more interesting to write about.

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Finding Neverland

Several people have told me that I should see this one and since I recently spent some time in Hyde Park, I figured I’d give it a go. Turns out, it’s a super movie and I really enjoyed it. It’s easily one of the best films written about writing. It really seems to capture the writing process and, of course, it’s interesting to see how Peter Pan may have come to be.

Jazz in the Park

Last night, some friends and I went to see a jazz concert in Addison. It was pretty cool and I was glad to get out. I haven’t listened to much jazz and I was reminded that I should definitely go out and get some. It’s great music and it’s refreshing to hear something so different from most of the music I typically listen to. I also think listening to some jazz would give me a little more to work with when I’m trying to write.

Reading, but nothing exciting

I’ve been reading through some poker books lately, but that’s about all. I need to get ahold of some good fiction, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude on my way to Europe, but I just couldn’t get into it. That’s probably because I’m very shallow and not very cultured.

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Where have I been?

Right here, of course. And I’ve been here doing absolutely nothing exciting. I’ve been playing a lot of basketball, reading a lot and being a slacker. July 4th weekend was a long one for me–we got a four-day weekend–but I was pretty bored before it was all over.

Basketball has been ok, but we’ve been getting worked. We’re now 0-3, but I guess we’re showing improvement. I don’t really wanna’ talk about why we stink, but we do. Now that we’ve got guys showing up, I hope we start to learn how to play together (I don’t know some of the guys on our team).

I’ve mostly been reading poker books. It’s not the most entertaining reading, but I’ve been improving my game, so it’s worth it. I would like to read some good fiction, but that’ll have to wait.

I’d like to go to Florida soon, but I’m afraid it won’t work out until September when I hope to get back to Gainesville for the Tennessee game. I will definitely be getting back for that one, but I’d like to get back at least once before then. I’m just kind of playing it by ear (read: waiting for really cheap plane tickets to fall into my lap). I’ve really been craving Newberry Backyard BBQ.

I really wish I had something else to say…anything…but I don’t. I really need to jump back into acting.

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Same ol’, Same ol’

Not much going on. I’ll give a quick summary:

First, I finally bought a new car. I had been driving a 98 Pontiac Grand Am for almost 5 years. It had 115,000 miles on it and I hated it with a furious passion. It was formerly a Mary Kay car. I bought a new (2005) Infiniti G35 and I couldn’t be happier with it. I described the difference to a friend as follows: “It’s not even like I upgraded. It’s like I moved to a different planet!”

Second, I’ve been playing a lot of poker lately. Essentially, I’ve been breaking even for a couple weeks. Before that, I had a pretty nasty losing streak at $2/$4 Hold ‘Em, so I backed off for a while. That streak came after a big fat winning streak at the same stakes. I’ve been playing tons of smaller stakes tournaments lately (max $10 buy-in) and doing ok. I’ve moneyed a couple times and played some good poker. The highlight was the other night when I played a $3 + re-buys satellite to a WSOP qualifier. The prize was a $650 seat and the top 4 got paid. I finished 6th… but only because my internet connection went out for 20 minutes. I’m convinced I would’ve made the money about 90% of the time… I lost about half my stack while disconnected (blinds were pretty high) and I was dealt KK once while gone.

I’ve also been reading Harington on Hold ‘em, by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. It’s definitely the best book on NL Hold ‘Em that I’ve read and it could be tied for best tournament poker book I’ve read. I’m trying to let the info sink in because…

I am playing in a $45 buy-in tournament with 37 other players next weekend. First place pays over $700 and the top 5 places get paid. Last time I played with this group, it was an 17-person $50 buy-in tournament and I finished second and made about $200 bucks. I hadn’t played at all in six months before that tournament and I’m much better now. I just hope luck is on my side. If it is, I’m confident I can win it.

Time for sleep!

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Reading Sanford Meisner On Acting

Another student in my Meisner class told me he’s been reading this book and it’s helped him out a lot. I started reading it yesterday and it’s already been very helpful. The first thing I’ve noticed is that our class went much faster than Meisner did with his classes. After two weeks, we were where he was in over a month.

Moreover, it seems he was a little less strict with his repetition exercise than our instructor has been. This is true for a few aspects of the exercise. First, our instructor seems to want us to keep repeating each line for quite a while. I know there’s a fine line between flowing in repetition and doing a scene, but I always felt like we were closer to repetition than doing a scene while our instructor seemed to feel the opposite. I’m not saying I think she was wrong, just that we were more right than we thought. Also, one thing Meisner seems to emphasize is that we not say anything until we feel we need to say it, until our partner does something that makes us want to speak. This has been something I’ve felt is necessary and yet I’ve felt our instructor pushing us to answer quickly and passionately… problem is I often don’t feel like answering right away and the passion isn’t there.

Overall, I think the book is giving me more of a perspective on what Meisner intended with his technique. I have been gleaning little bits from my class, but I’ve also felt sort of helpless and lost for a good portion of it. This book is filling in the gaps and answering lots of questions. Before our final session, I intend to read and re-read the first few chapters of the book since they cover what we’ve done in class. Hopefully, I’ll understand it better and perform better for our last session.

One thing I’m seeing more and more is that I have to get out of my head with this exercise. It’s frustrating because we moved so quickly into adding levels of complexity to the exercise that I almost have to stay in my head in order to just keep afloat. What I mean is that we have several levels to each exercise: my activity, my expectation of who’s coming to the door, my interpretation of the knock at the door and finally the need of the person on the other side of the door. We take all this into account and then do the repetition exercise. Problem is I never became totally comfortable with the raw exercise itself: two people repeating a line.

Anyway, I think I’m learning a lot, especially now that I’m supplementing the class with the book. Hopefully I’ll be better prepared by the time we meet again and I’ll do better work.

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Stephen Hawking: Genius, funny guy, kindergarten teacher

Well, after about a year, I have finally made more progress on A Brief History of Time. What really blows me away is his ability to explain some really complicated stuff in an interesting (well, I find it interesting… I wouldn’t want to speak for anyone else), entertaining and concise way. His writing isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, though it does have its moments, but at least it keeps my attention. More importantly, he’s able to cover ridiculous topics like black holes, the space-time continuum (Back to the Future flashback), mesons and time cones in just a few pages each. Not only that, but an idiot like me can actually understand some of what he’s writing. The guy’s got a unique combination of intellect and eloquence that I doubt I’ve seen elsewhere.

I guess one thing I’m learning as I read his stuff is that I’m probably always going to be a bit of a nerd at heart. Ten or fifteen years ago, that might’ve bothered me, but I’ve been learning for a while now that I just have to be comfortable in my own skin. I guess that’s an idea I’ll have to continue getting used to since I’m still just breakin’ it in.

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Weekend Update

This week, I read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris. I enjoyed it and I got the feeling that his “voice” is similar to what mine would be if I was actually a writer. He’s sarcastic, satirical, sardonic and short. Basically, the book is little vignettes from his life. A collection of autobiographical short-stories that are disturbing and interesting at the same time. I found myself compelled to continue reading by a sort of morbid curiosity. Anyway, I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a relatively quick read that will make you simultaneously laugh out loud and grimace for the characters.

I’m also still trying to finish reading other books I’ve started and put down. I’m working on The World According to Garp, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, The Truth in Comedy, Money Matters and probably a few others that aren’t coming to mind right now. Between these books, TiVo, GameCube, Netflix and the gym, I’ve been keeping pretty busy doing things that ultimately don’t matter. I guess maybe I feel like I’m educating myself and killing time until I start moving into the next phase of my life.

One other thing I think I’ll start pursuing is sign language. I’ve been wanting to learn another language and, although French, Italian and other languages have a sort of romantic allure, I feel that learning ASL could actually be a useful way to invest my time. I don’t know if I’ll actually do this, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

More on music

A while ago, I wrote about shopping for an electric guitar. Well, I eventually decided I just didn’t want to spend the money on something that is essentially a variation on something I’ve already invested a lot of money in. That being said, lately I’ve been looking at digital pianos. I played for about five years until 10th grade, then I quit and picked up the guitar a year later. Since I got to college, I’ve been itching to play piano again and just haven’t had any way of scratching that itch… until now. I figure I can get a decent digital piano–weighted, pressure sensitive keys, good sound, etc.–for $500 or so, which ain’t bad. I’m trying to take my time and be patient about it, but the truth is I’ve been patient for the last five years and I’m really gettin’ the itch.

Maybe it doesn’t help that I’ve been listening to a lot of Billy Joel lately.

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Almost done with Rich Dad, Poor Dad

I’ve only got about 20 pages left and I’m still wavering on how I feel about this book. I think it’s got good information, inspiring thoughts, nice anecdotes and other good qualities, but I’m having a hard time finding tangible ideas that I can use today. Maybe I need to find another book to address my particular situation: recent college grad with a pile of student loans to pay off, but also planning on trying to get out of my current profession and into the risky acting business.

Anyway, it’s definitely worth the $15 I paid for it, but I’m hoping the last 20 pages offer a little more practical and tangible advice.

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