Requiem for a Ferret

On November 22nd, 2009, my moustache died.

It lived peacefully, though not altogether unnoticed, beneath the shade of my gigantic, Semitic proboscis since I began growing it in early September, in preparation for its stage debut in "The Pirates of Penzance."

The director had decided that Major-General Stanley ought to have "a long, flowing walrus-style moustache, sweeping down to the jawline."

I looked at her and said, "I'll see what I can do."

"Good," she said, giving my shoulder an affectionate rub, "Oh, and great big mutton-chops, too."

Back in my high school days, I wore a fake moustache in a cataclysmically terrible production of "Kiss Me, Kate." The spirit gum used to epoxy the fur to my face left burns under my nose and, when it came time to remove the moustache, some of my skin invariably got removed, too. Not only that, but, during the show one night, I did an unexpected comedic improvisation on-stage that had the audience howling (I fell off a couch and crashed to the floor with a huge thud) but the conductor, a gigantic lesbian who herself had a moustache, was not amused. Backstage after the show, when I was getting changed, she charged up to me and, while I had my trousers around my ankles and fake, dead fuzz under my nose, she screamed at me and jabbed her conductor's baton into my sternum. And I think it was at that moment when I decided never to improvise during a production and never to wear fake facial hair.

So, when it came time to do "Pirates" I knew I was going to grow it myself. And grow it I did. In the style of Brevet Major-General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Mark Twain, and even Sir W. S. Gilbert himself, I went about my daily life sporting a 'stache any 19th century gent would have been proud to twirl.

I called it "my ferret."

Unfortunately, being Jewish as I am, my ferret never achieved the sweeping, flowing grace I had hoped for and had fantasized about wearing since middle school, when I longed for the day when I could be the epitome of the elegant, handsome chivalric gentleman.

The very model of a modern Major-General.

"Do people ever tell you you look like Groucho Marx?" the chef making my wife penne at IKEA said to me. I frowned.

"Yes," I replied dryly. He was the third person to make that precise remark that week.

The curse of the wiry, kinky Jew hair had struck again. And how.

I know it isn't right to say, but, even though it was Jewy, I liked the moustache. The crazy sideburns I could have done without, and indeed it was the sideburns that attracted the most attention, usually from goth teenagers congregating outside the neighborhood's local supermarkets. I can't tell you the number of sarcastic, sneering, "Nice sideburns!" I was the recipient of from September through November.

Even though I liked the moustache, and even though the sideburns might have been considered cool by hipster waitresses on the lower East Side, I promised my wife and myself that, once "Pirates" was done, I would massacre my facial hair. And, after our curtain calls on closing night, after we schmoozed with the audience, after I hung up my costume for the final time, that's just what I did. What had taken me over two months to cultivate was hacked off, thanks to my trusty Braun nazi shaving machine, in under six minutes. I was surprised the job did not require the services of a wheat thresher.

My wife squealed with delight when she saw me totally clean-shaven for the first time in a long while, and that made me feel good, but I was despondent over the copious amounts of my facial hair that resided in the theatre's bathroom trashcan.

That's.... mine.

Of course, being half-Israeli, I can grow facial hair simply by grimmacing during an episode of constipation, so I'm not really sweating it. I just miss my moustache. I guess the grass really is greener on the other side. The moustache, fortunately, wasn't green at all. Mostly brown, flecks of red here and there, and, of course, a very, very little gray.

The Very Model of a Modern Major-General

As many of you know, I am an actor.

Well, I'm lots of things, but an actor, is, I suppose, one of them.

I even got paid to be an actor. Once. $20.00 an hour. I was hired by the University of Pennsylvania Medical School's Cultural Sensitivity Department to portray a mega-prick doctor treating (and mistreating) a patient with AIDS in a training web video for med students and physicians. You can watch me critically raise one eyebrow as I spout off insensitive gems like,"You're not gay, are you?" And, if you're a doc, you can get one whole CME credit, just for watching that shit!

All the other times I've appeared on stage and on film it's been for free, and, usually, it's been degrading. In 8th grade, I appeared in my middle school's production of The Pajama Game in a pair of boxer-shorts in front of hundreds and hundreds of amused (or were they bemused?) parents of my peers. And that was just the beginning.

Recently, I've run into a bit of a streak of portraying men from the armed forces. Sort of. In 2006, I appeared as Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. in a production of H.M.S. Pinafore, and it was easily one of the gayest, twittiest roles I've ever done. And, as they say, I've been doin' this for a minute. Next Friday, I will inhabit the body and yellow shoes of the slightly psychotic General Genghis Khan Schmitz in a production of Seussical. In November, it's back to the merry and silly world of G&S where I will once again don a uniform to play Major-General Stanley.

I'm currently growing out my beard so that I can sport ridiculous facial hair for General Schmitz. For dress rehearsal, I'll shave off most of it, probably leaving a silly moustache and perhaps a pair of mutton chop sideburns to complete the effect. I've gone back and forth about what to do with the facial hair. Not that it's especially important, but I'm a fan of concerning myself with the irrelevant.

Keeps me off drugs.

All of these recent affiliations with militaria have gotten me thinking about the image of the military man over the centuries and how it's changed. Of course, the ideal of manhood has changed significantly over time, but I don't know how often it's been seriously considered. We give a lot of thought in this society about the image of the ideal woman, because women are hot. There's always talk about the ideal shape of a woman. Perfection of the female form in the 1860s was quite different from that of the 1950s, which was, of course, very, very different from the feminine ideal of, say, the 1990s.

But nobody looks much at the change in men, much less military men. Today, we don't even think twice about our image of the perfect military man. He's butch. He's tough. He could kill you with his pinkie finger. Fuck, he's so tough, he doesn't even have pinkie fingers. He's too fucking tough for pinkie fingers. He's got 10 fucking middle fingers-- to flip off OSAMA!

FUCKIN' AYE FUCK YEAH! HERE HE IS, YOU LITTLE FUCKPUSSIES!

This is what we expect our military men to look like nowadays. This is the modern ideal of a soldier. Macho. Threatening. Butch. Crewcut. Armed to the teeth. A negative grimace. Piercing eyes. Of course, it also doesn't hurt if his little dogtags rest in between two killer pecs, too.

Isn't that right, Major Hottie?

Though it might be hard to believe, this isn't always how it was. Bullet-chomping bunk-hunks weren't always the way military men rolled. Macho wasn't always the preferred aesthetic for the men of the armed forces. I mean, take a ride in the old DeLorean with me back just a couple centuries and get a load of old Lieutenant General Cornwallis.

Macho? Hardly. Fit-and-finish? Lacking. His dog-tag must have resided quite comfortably between his boobies. Look at the walking stick. Look at the effete positioning of the left arm and hand, as if to say, "A battle? Now? Oh, no, luv-- I just had these nails done!"

Now, I know what you're going to say: He's British-- of course he's gay. They're practically synonyms. Well, that may be true, but let's look at someone from the other side of the pond, from that same time period.

Look at this string-beany little wank. Just look at him. The father of our country. He's trying to be macho, but look at how he's forcing his arms to rest straight at his sides. You know he's doing everything in his power to restrain himself from resting one hand daintily on his hip. Come on, look at how he's straining. He's dying to do it. It's okay, George. Do it. Do what feels natural. It'll feel good.

Ahhhhhhhh...... See? Doesn't that feel better? Good. Now get away from that horse, you fucking pervyderv.

Moving up a century or so, we see that much as changed in the realm of the military ideal. As in the civilian world, powdered wigs are out, and facial hair is in. The advent of the photograph and the daguerreotype have brought us copious images of the military ideal during the Civil War. There's my personal favorite, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Brevet Major-General:

Now that is a 'stache that says "knock off that slave and secession bullshit already," am I right? See-- we're getting butch-er, but we're not quite there yet. Can't you just picture the photographer giving out his instructions for this photograph?

"Okay, Lawrence. I see you've blown-dry your moustache. That's okay, I guess. No harm done. Just... listen-- just put your hands in your lap. Stare off vacantly into space and, please, for the love of God, try not to look gay. Just, you know-- don't do anything gay. I mean, this is 1865 already, you know? Just, remember: D.B.G. Don't be gay."

And I think, for the time, he's doing a pretty good job of keepin' it D.B.G. It's not easy. It's just hard for modern Americans to believe that people who looked like this seriously picked up guns and swords and bayonets and fucking killed other people who looked like this. We could maybe picture Joshua Chamberlain inviting a regiment from the 15th Alabama over to his house and poisoning their tea, but shoving his sword through one of their heads? I don't think so.

And then there's this guy-- he just screws up all valiant attempts at butchness.

You just had to put your hand on your hip, didn't you?

World War I was, I feel, the turning point. It was the transitional, liminal period between the genteel warrior/gentleman and the fightin' bastard that we have come to expect. I mean, I wouldn't want to fuck with these guys:

Then again, I'm pretty sure that this gentleman would rather join me for cocktails than shoot me in the face.

So three cheers for our military men, whether they fit into our stereotypical bullshit ideals of manhood or not. You're all patriots, valorous, dutiful and brave viscous killers in my book. And God Bless you for it. Better you than me.

Apparently, I AM the Very Model of a Modern Major-General

In the heady excitement of stripping wallpaper, scheduling allergist's appointments and generally running about like an epileptic chipmunk, I forgot to mention that I got cast as Major-General Stanley in "The Pirates of Penzance."

I now get to share the stage with a bevy of adopted daughters, dodder and mince around like an affected prat, and sing the immortal song, "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," a piece of music which most Americans think is from "Animaniacs."

This will be my fourth principal patter role in a Gilbert & Sullivan operatta, and I'm proud to be ticking them off, one by one. Only ten left to go. It's a good thing I'm still young.

The audition was okay, as auditions go. I feel like my singing showed improvement while my comic timing was on the decline, but I guess the auditioners didn't feel that way. Or maybe they did, and there was just nobody else. I don't know, nor do I care that much either. I got the part, and it's always a nice thing to be wanted, except when it's by the police.

Rehearsals don't start until September, so it's difficult to get really excited about the show, and I have trouble getting excited about shows in general. Part of me thinks it's a waste of time and energy-- do audiences really give a shit about who's in a certain role in a given show? Does it really matter? There are many, many people who could do the part just as easily as me-- why does it have to be me? Sometimes I browbeat myself about doing community theatre. I could probably get paid work if I dusted up my resume, sent out headshots and put a little effort into it. But I don't.

G&S doesn't require serious acting chops (some would argue there's no acting involved at all, and that's true sometimes, but only if you can't act) and it satisfies my longing to pretend I'm British. Also, the Gilbert & Sullivan patter roles are relatively easy and comfortable for me-- it ain't Pinter and it ain't Arthur Miller or Eugene Ionesco. Not only do I appreciate and respect the talents and work of the two men intellectually, but I am over the moon for the music and the wit.

The thing I do have to work hard at, though, is the music. I can barely read music, so I fake a lot of things. I listen to recordings constantly to augment my meager sightreading abilities. Mrs. Apron tutors me privately, coaching me. I sing the songs constantly so that it is more muscle memory than anything else.

I'm pleased to have another opportunity to perform. I feel like I get better each time, and that's saying a lot because, the first time, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. If you had told me, six years ago, that I would be singing solo operetta roles I would have laughed so hard I would have soiled myself, and you. But, here we are. I'm pleased to have the opportunity because I feel like I do have some talent-- certainly not enough for film or Broadway or even Philly professional theatre, but, there's something-- and, as long as there's something, then it should be shared.

I suppose that's why I have this blog instead of a diary. It serves the same basic function, a record of thoughts and musings and feelings-- and that's what it's for. I suppose, if it were just for me, I wouldn't try as hard-- and there certainly wouldn't be funny, hyperlinked pictures-- but I recognize that this is a place for you, too. You're here for some reason, and maybe I don't know what that is, and maybe I don't need to know, but I'm glad that you're all there, sitting in the audience, clapping away as the lights go down.

It's a little army, I know. But I'm proud to be your Major-General.

My Own, Private American Idol

I have an audition tonight.

Pirates of Penzance.

Major-General Stanley.

Community theatre.

God, I hope I get it.

(Seriously.)

(You still take me seriously, right?)

I once pitched a book proposal to an agent in New York City. He was gay, so I was sure he'd enjoy a proposal involving Gilbert & Sullivan. It was a life-imitates-art story about local community theatre group putting on "Pirates" and doing battle with a bunch of scurvy attorneys.

"Please," the gay agent wrote back to me, "I like you, but no Gilbert & Sullivan." He and I don't converse anymore-- Gilbert & Sullivan obviously ruined our relationship.

Thanks, guys.

I am very ill-prepared for my audition tonight, as I am for every audition I've ever had since middle school. I don't have the sheet music. It's all available online, but I'm just too lazy to find it and print it out. I've gone over the solos so much in the car with Mrs. Apron on the way to and from Vermont this weekend that I've got lyrics coming out of my ears-- and not just any lyrics, either: Sir Gilbert's lyrics. Parabolous, animalculous, Heliogabalus, etc, etc. I'm practically projectile vomiting five syllable words.

Mother, help me.

In some ways, I guess I'm over-prepared. In most ways, though, I just show up and pull something out of my ass, throw it against the wall, and hope it sticks. My anxiety manifests itself in bewildering displays of humor and tongue-tied-ness, which often leaves directors cracking up, if for the wrong reasons. My singing is, well, there's a reason I only audition for the doddering, old patter roles.

It's funny-- I teach audition techniques, but, really, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing myself. And I'd never suggest to a student that they do what I do when I walk into an audition.

* Okay, so what you really want to do is walk in, fidgeting.

* Make sure your face is pale, like you're three seconds away from throwing up.

* If you can have your eyes dart around the room, that's always good, too.

* Directors also love it when you make them repeat everything they say to you because you're fucked in the head to listen properly.

* Blather on and on about something totally irrelevant. That's money."

That's me in a nutshell! Miraculously, I have a pretty solid batting average, for some reason.

Man...

I hope I remember to do all that stupid shit tonight.