I’m a big fan of knowing things. Not in a “I know something and it’s wildly important to me that you DON’T” kind of way. There is nothing worse than the person, common here in Los Angeles, who ate a meal yesterday, WITHOUT YOU, that was ten times better than the the one they are sharing with you. Or the deal they got that you DIDN’T get, or the movie they saw that is now closed forever and the print was burned in a bonfire that now you can never see.

One way to avoid these unfortunate mishaps is to of course avoid those kind of insecure people. The other way is to not walk around as a dumbass. There are discounts and free crap all around us. If you are lucky enough to live in NY, TimeOut NY online has lists of TONS of free stuff to do every day, the site saved me on many a day with young Nathen. He probably talks about the warm summer night we sat on the pier, eating FREE popcorn, watching “The Wizard of Oz” for FREE, with him in my lap, more than just about anything else we do in NY. Not ONE of my NY friends knew about it, and all I had done, because I’m such a freakin genius, is READ about it. There are deals that can be emailed to you every day, there are entertainment events, discount coupons, INFORMATION about stuff every day online and in the paper.

If people are struggling with work, there are resources galore on the internet, and if they don’t have computers, libraries do. Here in LA, or anywhere for that matter cause its the internet, people are teaching wonderful things to people who want to be actors, or navigate the treacherous ‘business’ of acting. Marci Liroff’s site http://youractormba.com is wicked smart to pass along to your pals who are trying to figure out how to make a living. And tons of it is free. I imagine there are resources just like that for many industries. We used a service to help us clean out my mother’s apartment after her death which was AMAZING. And guess what, it’s a franchise that does not have one in Los Angeles. I’ve told people who I knew were looking for something. Pass things on to your friends, it’s a good thing, but please avoid the “I’m so friggin smart and that’s why I am smugly letting you know that I know about this” behavior, it’s nauseating. It’s not about being pushy, other people have their own realities and decisions to make, it’s just about SHARING INFORMATION…..HELPING EACH OTHER OUT. John Stewarts’ Reality March on Washington, later this month, has the right idea. 

We have a deal in my house. When Nathen wants to know about something, I tell him what I know, then we go to the computer. There is nothing better in the world than him singing “Sunshine on My Shoulders Makes Me Happy” at full voice in the morning. So he wants to know about John Denver——he doesn’t need to know that sunshine on his shoulders AND Bourbon made John Denver happy, but he did want to know about a clear-voiced singer with environmental concerns who one time long ago made a very very very bad TV movie with his Dad, so we FIND THE INFORMATION. I guarantee he will tell 2 kids at school today, and hopefully not in a snotty “I know something you don’t” kind of way.

And please, if you are in a coffee shop or a park, and you are done with the paper, please ask the person next to you if they would like to read it. They should. The NY Times costs 2 friggin dollars now, which is a crime in and of itself. 

Who told us we can sit and watch reality TV all day, that we all ‘deserve’ a bigscreen TV and week in Vegas? Who told us that we should stop learning about what we do for a living and that everything should just ‘come’ to us, without any effort or time spent being interested in what we set out to do in the first place? Whoever told us that was wrong. We owe it to our children, our families, and—-to ourselves, to be informed, available and open for information…….

Tomorrow I start a bit on travel, a subject near and dear to my heart….obviously we are probably past the point where anyone just calls up a hotel and says “gimme a room”, or calls Hertz and says “whatta ya got?”, but I will go through some strategies that have served me well, and after all, I am the mental patient who is writing this, so as always, just one man’s opinion……

Please keep forwarding this site, bookmarking it, subscribing to it, etc….and thanks for the comments, they are warmly received…….

WG