DID YOU EAT TIL IT HURT?

I hope so...
By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)

Preface: A few days ago, Miss Sara Bareilles, that girl who refuses to write you a love song no matter how many times you ask her, tweeted a link to my blog post from last Friday.

WHAT?!

I know. Rude. She didn’t even ask permission.

As it turns out, thousands of you read the blog and many of you wrote to me on Twitter saying that it put a little sunshine in your day and a little pep in your step. I just wanted to take a quick moment to express to you how humbled and grateful I am that my silly little post – which I wrote while coming down from a night of drinking to numb the pain – had such a positive influence on folks out there in the Twitterverse. So, thanks. I appreciate it.

And now back to your regularly scheduled snark…

They say your body is a temple, right? But let’s get real: Who are “they,” and why do they insist on running around telling everyone what to do? “They” should probably just piss off before “I” turn around and smack “them” on the mouth.

(Wow. Unresolved childhood anger issues. Nice to see you’re alive and well this Friday after Thanksgiving. Sorry.)

In truth, I do try to live my life as though my body were a temple but, considering the fact that I’m neither Jewish, nor Buddhist, nor Indiana Jones, I don’t really know how to behave in a temple.

I’m telling you all of this because I want you to understand that I really shouldn’t be held responsible for the fact that yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, while my fancy Broadway friends were dancing and lip-syncying for their lives at the Macy’s Parade, I ate and drank and slept and ate and drank and slept and ate and drank and slept until I literally felt like that little bitch in Willy Wonka who blows up into a huge ball and has to be rolled out by those little slaves with self-tanning addictions.

It was just like this.

 

It all started on the drive up to the holiday festivities with these tiny confections called, Dream Bars, which, considering their layers of chocolate, coconut, and butterscotch, are aptly named.

The experience of consuming one of these little squares of bliss really did induce an intense dreamlike state – kind of like those dreams you used to have in high school, but less messy. Oh and you don’t have to hide the evidence. (Gross. Sorry mom.)

If my body is indeed a temple, then I spent the day running up and down its aisles screaming all kinds of obscenities, knocking over statues, and generally behaving like a recalcitrant (how’s that for a fifty cent word?) child.

And you know what?

I hope you did the same thing. I hope you threw caution to the wind and your diet in the damn toilet. I hope you ate until you felt like you were going to cry. I hope you drank until you thought you might drown in a sea of Sangiovese and I hope you laughed until your cheeks became sore and you thought to yourself you might never have felt such joy.

And then…I hope you take all that joy, bundle it up, and store it in your coat pocket so that on a day when maybe you don’t book that big job or that gallery decides not to show your work, you remember that what actually matters…really…are the connections we experience with the people we love most.

Now don’t get me wrong: Go get your shit done. Get yours. Be a success. But remember to smile. Remember to laugh.

(But not too hard. Smiling causes wrinkles.)

Love you. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

AND NOW...THE WEEK IN WHITNEY HOUSTON!!!

You know what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving? Clips like the one below. Here is Miss Houston singing, A House Is Not A Home in 1997. Sensible wig. Sensible dress. Sensible belted high notes. Thank you, Miss Houston. Thank you.

 

GEOFFREY KIDWELL Geoffrey is an actor/manny in NYC. He spends his days just trying to figure it out.
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