I can't sleep…
TS: “Seasoned rocker that she is, Pink knows how to work an arena.”
Pink: “If there are 10,000 people in an arena, I can pick out that one person that is the brother that had to drive his sister. 9,999 people are having a good time, I can pick out the one that isn’t.
~ Tracy Smith, “Pink”
Don’t miss the entire segment on CBS Sunday Morning (October 8, 2017)
Photo: Pink | Alecia Beth Moore | singer | portrait | glamor | ram2013
Take 7.
Yep, 7th attempt to produce something, Anything, Something, Anything, that’s worthy.
I’m walking across Manhattan on 47th street and the weight bears down. Tuesday morning after a long weekend. Shoes feel heavy. Shoulders slouched. A Sherpa hauling a full load.
It’s 9 days and counting. I’ve run out of puppy pictures. I’ve finished Will Schwalbe’s Books for a Living and I’m finished with my quotidian shares of his wisdom.
So, I conduct an autopsy of the prior six attempts on partially completed blog posts:
“People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you never see the headlines say, ‘Six billion people got along rather well today.’ You’ll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.”
~ John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich, 59, was born in Christopher, Illinois. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. He is an American actor, producer, director, and fashion designer. Over the last 30 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award nominations. He has also appeared in critically acclaimed films such as Empire of the Sun, The Killing Fields, Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men, Being John Malkovich, and RED, and has produced numerous films, including Juno and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Image Source: m.antena.ro portrait of John Malkovich
“If you grew up very self-conscious, feeling that you’re not as good as other people, I think that it defines you,” she said.
A sense of shame has never entirely departed. “Owning it, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing,” Ms. Walls said. “It’s important to tap into it and be in touch with it. For me, it’s part of process of storytelling.”
With the writing of her memoir, she let go of trying to bury the fact that she slept in a rope bed, defecated in a ditch and lived in ramshackle quarters whose ceilings and floorboards threatened to crumble at any hour.
“Somebody told me the secret to happiness is low expectations,” she said. “I still can’t believe that I have flush toilets, that I can go to a grocery store and buy whatever I want, which will never fail to amaze me.” […]
Nothing doing for Ms. Walls. “I wanted a place where I could go broke and still grow vegetables, bail water out of the creek and shoot deer,” she said. “If worse comes to worst, I’ll survive.”
~ Ruth La Ferla, excerpts from Jeannette Walls Settles Down Far From the Noise of New York, (The New York Times, August 5, 2017)
Notes: Jeannette Walls is the author of the best selling (and must read) memoir: The Glass Castle: A Memoir
You’ve been doing stand-up since the late ‘80s. Do you remember your worst night?
Oh, there are so many of them. In the beginning, there are endless amounts of worst nights. But there was one, after “Everybody Loves Raymond” had been on for a year, out at the University of Florida’s Gator Growl. It’s in the stadium, like, 30,000 people, Dave Chappelle, Larry the Cable Guy and me. Five minutes in, I heard a woman yell out, “You better start getting funny.”
Anything you miss about those early days?
There was something gratifying about going up onstage in front of a room full of total strangers. They’ve never seen you in their life, and they’re kind of like, who is this guy? And then you win that crowd over. That will never happen again, only because somebody in the audience has seen me. Seinfeld said, they give you the first 10 minutes if you’re well known. But you still gotta be funny.
When you first started taking on dramatic roles, what was your biggest worry?
You wonder, are you any good? It’s just doubt, that’s the biggest thing. The desire is there. But then I also want to be a pro golfer, and that’s never gonna happen.
You still have worries like that?
Oh yeah. No matter how successful you are. I hear that from other comedians all the time. You’re just waiting for the funny police to come and arrest you as an impostor.
~ Robert Ito, excerpts from his interview with Ray Romano in “Ray Romano Still Fears the ‘Funny Police’” (NY Times, June 30, 2017)
Photo of Ray Romano: Aces Comedy