Scito Te Ipsum(am) (o) Dilige Te Ipsum(am)

My Friday entries (when Friday entries there have been) have been characteristically short, and I offer up a similar serving this Friday, but I find this interesting. It's rather my version of a 'blog quiz. (I always did prefer the essay questions.) As I sat in

the deli a block from work

this morning, drinking my bean juice and trying to finish up

Jitterbug Perfume

before the bell tolled, a curious question occurred to me: Is it more important to A) Know thyself; or B) Love thyself?

Please feel free to share your opinions. If you write at any length elsewhere on the subject, please give unto us a link.

Like Soundwave, I've Got Something To Get Off My Chest.

Fellow victims, I caved and rented

Transformers

(2007). I'm aware of my crime. This is equivalent to buying one of the new

VW

bugs, or digging that "new song" by Elvis, which is actually an unused, dance-remastered vocal track. I have been sold my own nostalgia back to me, and I bought (in to) it. One moment I was Principled Actor Jeff, and then--

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENCH

--the

Deceptacon

,

Eightiesdork

.

The worst part is that I knew, going in, that it was directed by Michael Bay. Now look: Sure, I liked Michael Bay. When I was eighteen. I can admit that. I was young, and I needed the stimulation. I DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE. Somehow, it was easier for me to accept the idea that I

was

the camera, back then, and capable of that sort of camera

kung

fu

he's made his name with. Now, I prefer the long shot, and the relatively grounded camera that shows me precisely what is going on, so I can appreciate moments more than general motion.

I didn't even go in to the movie with high expectations. There was a reason I was renting it, and didn't catch it in the theaters. In point of fact, the only reason I rented it at all was that I caught

The Battle of Shaker Heights

on TV the other day, which convinced me that this

Shia

LaBeouf

lad might just have something to him. (Though my jury remains resolutely not-in on his worthiness to

wield

the Indiana Jones mantle in 2008.) Indeed,

Shia

made the movie for me, which would be an accomplishment of sorts, considering he was up against two-storey robots (and the gorgeous, not-remotely-in-high-school Megan Fox) most of the time.

"Would be," I say, because said two-storey robots were rendered hopelessly uninteresting by the same aesthetic that directs Bay's camera. They were astoundingly complex and animated, and utterly uninteresting. I see the need to update the dozen motion points found on the first

Transformer

designs, to spin them into something more conceivably versatile and bad-ass, but I would submit for Hollywood's consideration the idea that part of the fun of a Transformer is being able to appreciate exactly

how

it changes shape. Also, imagine if those endless man-hours spent designing and rendering the 'bots had been spent, even fractionally, on, oh, I don't know, the script?

Bay makes kids' movies, essentially. Gratuitously violent, often verbally lewd, but kids' movies, all the same, for their attention span and priority on visual stimulation over elements such as story and character.

I begin to question why these things are important to me. They shouldn't be, right? I mean, by all standards, selfish and selfless, I and the world stand to gain nothing from the successful or unsuccessful update of my childhood enthusiasms. Yet somehow it really matters. All this childish stuff from my youth is something I cherish, and I want to see it--if it must be

resurrected

--done to my current standards.

At least now I can relax. They couldn't possibly

rehash any other favorite cartoons into movies

.

Hi. I'm an actor.

It's true. I act. Not just, you know, the way everybody acts. I mean, everyone takes action. I do it differently. See, I do it in front of people.

Oh. Oh, you do too? Well, I'm not making myself clear, obviously. See, I take action that I plan out days or weeks in advance, according to a specific order. Except that, see, when I'm acting

well

, I usually don't know what I'll do next. I'll do something else instead, and that makes everything go better. More unpredictable, and real. But I have to use lots of planning, too, to make that spontenaity more useful to me.

That sounds familiar too, huh? Okay. All right. Oh! Oh! How about this? I have to learn and memorize all this information that means little-to-nothing to anyone else, and am expected to regurgitate that information on cue. In fact, in terms of job security, I have to keep re-applying to my job. Sometimes my life seems like nothing more than a series of challenges, a sequence of putting out fires or keeping multiple pots from boiling over, so that it's all I can do to keep up with it all and get to the next day.

This really doesn't sound unique to you, does it? I can tell by your silence, and your facial expression.

That's it! I have an extraordinary sense of people's emotions! I am an emotional communicator extraordinaire, to the extant that, when I see people smile, I know I've made them happy, and when their eyes get wet, I know they're sort of overcome by...something...and...and...

Crap. I give up. I don't know distinguishes an actor from a "normal person." I've heard it said before that actors are simply normal people with the volume turned up, or slightly different balances of priorities, but the undefined-ness of those statements bugs the detritus from out of my person (look at the lengths I'll go to just not to repeat "crap" [Crap!] in the same paragraph). What is normal? Who defines that? Is it merely a statistical average? Median? Mean? (That does seem pretty mean, but who am I to judge?) Is it community defined? In which case, is that why so many actors feel more normal living in New York, because everyone's a bit more neurotic than the rest of the country?

I quote

The Muppets Take Manhattan

: "Peoples is peoples."

Not quite a fart joke . . .

But you gotta love Steven Wright:
"Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!"

Misanthropic

Last night, with Friends Kate and Patrick, I went to see, of all things, a production of Moliere's

The Misanthrope

. ("Of all things," because of

my recent entry

on eschewing email.) I say "Moliere's," but that not quite where all credit is due when it comes to this production. The play was reinterpreted--as is often

New York Theatre Workshop

's wont--through Messrs. Tony Harrison (translating playwright) and Ivo van Hove (director). I knew this going in, and feared the worst. "Deconstruction" is one of my least favorite words, and I feel a similar hostility toward the process in most cases. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to discover that the interpretation didn't fudge with the language in any grotesque ways. We still had rhyming couplets. We still had scene partners, and all that good (albeit old-fashioned) stuff.

I loved the show overall. The only moments it really lost me were a couple of scenes in which some of the actors playing supporting characters (Moliere is so great about every character getting a good bit in) seemed to make a choice to alternate suddenly between two volume levels: conversational and very VERY LOUD. These moments, though distinct and perplexing, were few, and for the most part the show was exceedingly interesting and accessible at the same time, which is no mean feat. The set design and choreography were striking, and may have overshadowed the acting, had the leads not been so bold within them. The space was like a minimalist/brutalist architect's waiting room, with fluorescent lighting and grey walls, encased on three sides in smoked glass. Up center were three flat-screen monitors rigged side-by-side and set in the back wall to function as a unit. Throughout the action of the play, the set was gradually (though occasionally also suddenly) besmoot with food stuff and garbage, which was just marvelous. There's nothing like the unconventional use of food products on stage.

There's a bit of an informal axiom bandied about by theatre types regarding Chekhov's full-length plays, particularly

The Cherry Orchard

. It has to do with everyone loving to inform and remind one another that good ol' Chekhov called it a COMEDY, and that the play is usually taken too seriously. Well, I'm no authority on Chekhov, God knows. God also knows I'm not acredited as a Moliere expert. However. I would like to posit that, in the converse of the Chekhov axiom, Moliere rarely gets taken seriously enough. It seems to me that he wrote with incredible humor and lightness (not to mention rhythm), but that he was writing about very serious things and, in some cases, unanswerable questions of the human condition. So I like my Moliere with plenty of physical humor, yes, and as many dirty jokes as possible, but I also like at least the occasional bitter-sweet moment of truth. Think Charlie Chaplin. Give your clown a moment or two to cry.

This production of

The Misanthrope

struck what I thought was a wonderful balance between elements of madness and melancholy. If anything, it leaned a little more in the direction of serious theatre than I would have, but I think this is an important part of why it will leave a lasting impression on me. When I saw it last, in college, this play made me feel as though the misanthropic character, Alceste, was completely irrational. In this, though he acts more irrationally, I was convinced of his argument against hypocrisy. The party scene, which Alceste interrupts, was so familiar to me with its group seated around a meal of take-out food, cell phones and laptops flipping in and out, and talk of people not in the room. When he brings it to a halt, laying himself across the table, I thought, "Thank God." And somehow, when his tirade against them erupted into an incredible mess of food, mostly smeared all over himself, I was still with him.

One of the ideas that this interpretation in particular seemed to bring across was that there is no cure for hypocrisy. It's a part of human nature, be it a legitimate survival tool, or absurd self-defense, and a tool for ingratiation. Like hatred or greed, however, it needs to be brought to bear under more virtuous impulses, like love or charity. Or sincerity.

And don't buy an iPhone.