The Wait (The Weight?)

Plus a new monologue for an actor of a certain age.

I’m still waiting on movement for the three big finished pieces from last year (one TV spec, one feature spec, one novel). One of them looks like it may pick up speed this week (TV). Right now, there are too many big things on the runway for me to get excited about rolling out a new one, so I’ve been catching up on reading other peoples work and playing around with some short form ideas.

The main thing I’ve been focused on is my health.

When I got back from traveling over the holidays, my one good knee was having some major issues, which made a big impact on my everyday mobility. I also brought back a lingering trace of a sinus infection, which is a regular souvenir from my visits back home. By December 29th I was feeling pretty wrecked.

With three weeks of a quiet January ahead (post-New Year’s hangover, MLK holiday, Sundance), I decided to make me the new project. I put myself on a weight loss plan. I started six weeks of physical therapy that will hopefully get me back to full speed at the gym. I did my six month checkup at the dentist, saw my orthopedist, and made 90% of my meals at home. I check my blood pressure and weight daily with devices that let me track my progress on my smart phone. At some point this weekend I’m going to get my eyes checked and see if I’m ready for glasses.

It feels a little like taking a car in for an overhaul. I did turn 50 last year, so that’s half a century of wear and tear, and most of it spent carrying a lot of extra weight. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t a big guy. As a kid I shopped in the “husky” section. My weight stayed fairly steady from 2001 until around 2013, which is when I made my first big sale and broke into the business. It’s been climbing, year by year, ever since.

Part of this is due to the fact that food is one of the things I truly enjoy spending money on, and I suddenly had a lot more of it to spend. There were so many people in my life who bought me dinner or paid for things when I was broke, who waved away my crumpled cash or maxed out card, saying, “Pay me back when you make it big.” So, I did A LOT of that for the first few years. There were many nights spent celebrating at Musso and Frank or Ruth’s Chris.

During the day I was sitting.

I love making TV but it’s primarily an office job. Even if you get up a few times or take a walk around the lot after lunch, you can still wind up sitting for six to eight hours a day in the room, and that’s not counting the time you spend in the chair doing the actual writing. At one point I bought a treadmill desk after seeing them at WME, but it eventually just became a standing desk because you can’t type while walking.

In 2016, I had a break between gigs and I decided I was going to finally drop the new weight I’d gained. I started working out hard in the gym at my apartment complex and walking around the neighborhood. At some point I asked myself, “When was the last time you ran as hard as you possibly can?” Which led me to doing wind sprints in various parks around Glendale for about a week.

I genuinely loved it, until one evening at the track I came down hard on my left leg and felt a loud pop inside the joint. By the time I finished the mile walk home my leg was swollen and I had to take the stairs one at a time. My general practitioner thought it might just be tendonitis so I did the whole RICE routine (rest, ice, compression, elevation). It never got better.

A couple of months later I started working on THE STRAIN, which led to me spending a month in Toronto for pre-production. I sold REVERIE and went right to Vancouver to make the pilot, all while dealing with a jacked up knee. It wasn’t until I got back in April that I finally took the time to get an MRI. By that point my left knee was royally messed up from osteoarthritis. It was hard to walk long distances, running was obviously out, I didn’t have enough range of motion to pedal a stationary bike. I was less active than before while not changing my eating habits at all. In fact, I doubled down and got really good at making pizza at home.

My saving grace came in the form of a little white fur ball from The Pasadena Humane Society. When we got Ellie I didn’t have a choice. I knew she needed exercise, not just for her physical health but also for her mental and emotional health as well. I had to take her out twice a day. We went from just walking around the block to doing longer stretches. Now we’re regularly doing 2 miles a day together.

It’s not an exaggeration to say, I think getting a dog may have saved my life.

When the three of us are out together, taking in the neighborhood, saying hello to the neighbors, meeting other dogs, going to the wilderness park, that’s my favorite part of any day. Aside from our daily walks, I did a lot of hiking last year, not to mention the miles I put on while walking the picket line. When the strike ended I went back to the Y and hiked the trails near my house. Hiking and lifting weights are the only two exercises I genuinely enjoy, so it was a blow when my good knee went down and put a stop to both in mid-December.

I wasn’t planning on writing about this because I didn’t think it would be all that interesting, then I realized that 90% of my YouTube time over the past two months has been spent watching videos on knee rehab, ways to get more protein into your daily diet, and “day in the life” vlogs of fitness influencers. So, maybe there’s somebody out there who could benefit from hearing me talk about it as well.

The other thing that motivated me was reading someone’s desire to hear more men talk about their struggles with their weight. Maybe some men don’t think about it as much. I honestly don’t know if there’s been a day in my life from high school onward where I haven’t thought about it. The entirety of my negative self-talk has to do with my weight. I remember one time, I was in a conversation about therapy, and I thought, “Hmm, I don’t think I really have anything to work on, my inner monologue is pretty positive, I feel pretty well balanced. I mean, I guess I could talk about my weight —“ and immediately felt a giant lump on my throat, which I quickly shoved down into a deep, dark pit, never to be acknowledged again.

Until it became too painful to enjoy the simple pleasure of walking my dog.

That was my wake up call.

In order to take pressure off my knees, I have to lose weight. In order to lose weight I have to exercise. To do the exercises I enjoy I have to rehab my knees and fix a problem in my core called diastasis recti, which will also be helped by losing weight.

It’s all connected. I just had to pick a place to start.

Without getting into specific details because everybody (ever body) is different, here’s what I’m doing. If you read this newsletter you know I like systems. I came up with a system that lets me gamify it. These are the five things that I do every day:

1. Keep all of my meals within a certain time frame. (For me, it’s eight hours.)

2. Keep my food under a certain amount of calories.

3. Within those calories, get one gram of protein per pound of my goal weight.

4. Get one hour of exercise (in addition to my PT). Right now it’s a combo of walking/lifting.

5. Take all of my supplements and track my weight and blood pressure.

That’s it. If I do these five things, I win the day, regardless of what the scale says. But I’m three weeks in and I have lost some weight, as well as regained some mobility in my knee. There’s a long way to go. I’m trying to focus on markers instead of a goal number. I’ve had to stop making pizzas for a bit, but in the meantime I’ve mastered cooking steaks on the stove.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up. There’s always the possibility that I’m going to put a ton of effort into this project and have it not go the way I want it to go.

But the same could be said for pretty much every other project I talk about here, so… I guess in that way, it fits perfectly.

OLD PUNK monologue

This is one of the short pieces I wrote this month. I wrote it after I saw a man in his 60’s wearing a Ramones t-shirt, then a young kid wearing the same shirt the next day. In hindsight, it’s clear that my current struggles found their way into this piece. If you’re an actor looking for a monologue for something, feel free to take it and make it your own. In my head I’m picturing Steve Buscemi:

No, no, no, no, no, you and I are not the same, kid. Do you understand? I got my shirt in 1977 after seeing them play CBGB’s. You bought yours at Hot Topic. There’s blood on this shirt, there’s sweat, there’s beer, there’s all kinds of shit. I mean literal feces. One of the shows, a guy took a dump in his hand and flung it at the crowd.  Joey Ramone jumped down from the stage, punched the guy in the face, and got right back into the groove without missing a beat. You’re goddamn right it was awesome. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.  You know, your generation, you wouldn’t be able to handle it, everybody getting offended all the —

(off the kid, walking away —)

Ah, Jesus Christ.  Wait!  Kid.  Come back.  I’m sorry.  It’s not you. It’s just… look, this shirt, it’s not just a signal to the world that I have great taste. All right? It’s a time machine. That period of my life, I never felt that good before or since. Now I have one good eye, arthritis in both knees, I go to radiation five days a week for prostate cancer… I’ve buried more friends and family then I care to count. I put this shirt on and I travel back to a better time. I’m sorry for jumping down your throat. It’s not very punk. The young me would have thought I was a real asshole. You know, I hear you practicing through the wall, sometimes. You’ve got a lot of talent.

(Takes something out of his wallet)

This is a Ramones guitar pic… I keep it in my wallet for good luck. I want you to have it. Seriously, you go ahead. You keep it. What? You think I’d give it to you if it was real? Are you out of your fucking mind? No. I got it off Etsy.

AN EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY MAN

In my ode to THE BEAR and the Italian Beef sandwich in this issue, I talked about my first trip to Chicago and visiting the bakery owned my friend Stephen’s family. Stephen’s brother John created a one-man show about their dad and growing up in the bakery which he just premiered at The Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica.

It’s phenomenal.

I love the family and I dearly loved Mr. C, but I don’t think I’m biased on this one. The show is a perfect example of the power of theater, how you can make magic with a few simple props, some lights, a few key sound cues, and a really talented storyteller. If you’re in LA, he has a couple of shows left.

Find out more here!

Have a great weekend!