Hopefully, I’m not being premature about this project. I’m trying to bring it to Hopkins and I’ve persuaded the Hopkins Office of Cultural Affairs to get involved, and they’ve agreed to pay the cost of bring “Telling” to town. It’s still early, but I could be directing. We’ll see. It’s been a pretty long process and I hope all the logistics fall into place.

I’m working on completing “B-Side Man,” especially now that I’ve gotten a bit more feedback from my friend Katie Kramer who suggested I “go long” (or words to that effect, meaning I needed more). So I am. And here’s a short excerpt about meeting my wife Nicole:

“Here’s what I know. If you’re in a relationship, no matter how comfortable you are, matter how happy you are, matter how alive, joyful and sexed-up you feel…….if you don’t see that person as someone you could take that next step with, then you already compromised. Next step ain’t gonna happen. I felt like I was in a Henry James novel. One where the innocent American traveler goes to Europe, then comes home disillusioned cause Europeans was just gritty and tribal, not classy and elegant. So they reflect on who they were in the past, who they are in the present and who they might could be in the future. I was that traveler.

When I met that 20-something world-beater I was just standing in a doorway. As the weekend progressed I felt destiny pushing me into the room. She knew me as a guest who arrived with his girlfriend. She could have turned out the lights on the enterprise. I should have turned out the lights. But this traveler had instincts that Henry James could only dream about. No stranger to indecency, I slipped away and found moments with her. She didn’t think I was that disgusting male who did this everywhere he went. I slipped away and saw that our eyes could meet, and gave us each such strange, piercing sight. Needing to push it all down, I lingered. What kind of world we living in where someone staring back at you, can bring you to a crisis point. I came to her in such a wrong way—-and she didn’t budge.”

Yessssss, it’s a play. But “B-Side Man” is a story-telling EVENT, my friends. It gets pretty juicy along the way. I’m very proud of it. It tackles Alonzo front to back.

I usually like to bring a picture or two into my posts. Here’s one that I hope to repeat this summer. It’s the 2010 MS ride on the eastern shore of Maryland. I’m doing it again this summer. This picture brings me back to that feeling I had when the ride was over. A hot day, long ride but the successful sensation of DOING IT was like riding the crest of a big-ass wave.We’ll see if I can top that in 2014.