Poker twice in two nights

First with aaron, j.p., sherin and brendan at my place on friday night. Fun, natch; such cool people - won a little bit during dealers choice, but was first out in the hold 'em tournament. D'oh!

Then last night with brandon and jason (not his brother jason, but jason from north carolina shakespeare, etc.) We'd been out catching mcclain at dive 96 - met with maria and a bunch of her friends (birds of a feather and all) - and at the end of the last set we wanted to continue the night, and rather than walk up to smoke in the rain to see if some jazz guys were blowing a late-night jam, we chose to hit brandon's place in inwood for poker till about 5 this morning. Not the highest quality poker, i must say; we were pretty tired by the end. But i won a couple bucks and it was GREAT hanging with my boy - hadn't seen him in a long time. Speaking of great, that's pretty much how things are going for b: married crystal this summer; big triumphs in atlanta, including starring in his own 6-actor cutting of 'othello,' to raves; and, oh yeah, his job in new york? That'd be prelude to a kiss on b-way. Couldn't happen to a better, kinder, more talented guy.

Does shine a light on the audition stage i'm going through. This is definitely the hard part of the job of being an actor, for me at least. Not that the prep, rehearsals and performances are necessarily easy. They can be really hard at times, although like most trades it's usually a matter of learning how to do certain things and then just putting in the work and doing them. Which can be said about the audition/self-promotion process too, i suppose. But i find those processes harder, or maybe just harder to enjoy. Or maybe those two things are the same.

And in other news, i've been thinking about open source a bit lately.

Also, and somewhat along the same lines, i wanted to make clear that i'm not against podcasts - on the contrary. In fact, here's one from somerville called cindycast in the alt/folk/acoustic vein i've been listening to a little bit lately. Nothing life-changing maybe, but kinda fun; some familiar names, some new ones.