And now: I get to talk about ME!

Answers to Lauralu's Questions!

1. you’ve received numerous recognitions for “i hate this” - in your heart of hearts, which one do you secretly find most flattering?

Flattering? That's tough. Flatter: To please or gratify the vanity of: “What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering” (George Bernard Shaw). Cleveland Scene qualified their "Best Actor" nod by noting 2003 was "a year with surpisingly few stellar performances by male actors." In calling the show one of the "Top Ten of 2003" the Plain Dealer credited it for being "never soupy or exploitative" - true, but icky to read. And the New York Times said I have "the somber, cavernous face of an old man."

Like how I denigrate myself while simultaneously taking the opportunity to detail all these honors? Shaw may well have said, "What really flatters Dave is Dave."

The most flattering was probably the Poets & Writers Event last year. My work was featured in the company of many of Cleveland's great writers, and in that way I was recognized as one of them. I don't believe I am actually anywhere near as good a writer of any of them, but I can't deny it's a good feeling.

Having said all that, I have to acknowledge how uncomfortable I feel being "flattered" by the attention, the success this show has achieved. Generally, I have taken each award or special notice as a chance to further promote the show - to get more performances, to take it to more audiences. Kind criticsm feels good, to be sure, but that's never been why I do this show, which I am sure you all know and understand.

A large number of people stayed to speak with me following that last gig at MetroHealth. What they said to me made me feel the best way I can about performing this show again and again. And that's not appealing to my vanity. That's knowing I did something good for someone else, that it was worth it, and letting people know they aren't alone in their grief.

And I get to talk about Calvin.

2. which of your birthday compatriots would you rather be: mick jagger or george bernard shaw? do tell.

Would I rather be? I'd rather be Jagger because he's Mick Frigging Jagger, because in spite of any artistic pretentions I might have, being blindingly rich and violating Marianne Faithful with Mars bar trumps pretty much everything. I'd even apologize for doing that cover version of "Dancing in the Streets" with David Bowie (though I would not apologize for doing Bowie.)

Okay, seriously, I'd rather be Shaw. As a playwright who can't seem to write more than two plays, however, I will never be as profilic as Shaw. On the other hand, I do not have a pathological fear of the female sex organ, so I have that over him. I wish I wrote letters to the editor, I admire his music criticism, I share his view of spiritualism and politics ... maybe that just means I am more like him than Jagger.

And there's that cool quote about flattery.

There's finally something to be said for longevity. The man died at the age of ninety - when he fell from a ladder while fixing his house. But then, isn't Mick celebrating his eightieth with this tour?

3. you’ve created/acted in/seen more theater than most of the rest of us. if you were to recommend one show i should see if i ever had the chance (besides yours, which i’d like to see again), what would it be?

My first impulse is to say Hamlet, because it's the best play ever written, and the one open to the most interpretation. If you can't see it onstage, see Gibson's version, see Branagh's version, find the video of Richard Burton performing it, see the one with Ethan Hawke in it, watch Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Strange Brew."

But that's not it. The play you should see, this or any weekend you happen to be in Chicago, is Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (an attempt to perform 30 plays in sixty minutes) by the Neo Futurists. I first saw that show in 1991, on the drive home from an aborted attempt to live in Los Angeles (think of it as a three-day walk-of-shame, that drive) and the show literally changed my life.

Apart from being a tremednously exciting experience, and always very funny, TML dares to respect the intelligence of its audience and offer up insightful, original, and politically and emotionally charged material every single week (since 1988.). And unlike so many other movements of its kind, they never fail to make the audience feel like they are part of the joke.

Their philosophy of presenting the actor as themself, with a minimum of artifice and a maximum of honesty, has found its way into pretty much everything I have done since - including, and especially IHT, which, you might notice, is also an attempt to perform thirty plays in sixty minutes.

4. if we were going to take a cross-country trip tomorrow, what route should we take to see the best of ordinary america? what would the must-stop stops be?

"Ordinary America" is everywhere, only rarely any of us see it. When I was 20 I spent spring break driving to see a dying grandfather (the other one - he only lived to be 94) and an estranged girlfriend, both of whom lived in Florida at the time. I took Interstates the entire journey, which I regret to this day. Everything looks the same from an Interstate, the way it does from any of the chain restaurants I ate at on that trip.

Eating alone in a Denny's. How depressing is that? And to think I had only just read William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. I read it, I didn't get it.

Take the two-laners, whenever it is practical, and sometimes when it is not. I would not have visited Twain's gravesite last year if we had not, and we never would have seen the Mummies of the Insane.

And if there is a law we live by when taking long road trips, even when on the Interstate, it is absolutely no chain restaurants. This is not simply some anti-corporate decision - but if you just drive five minutes or less past the clutch of familiar national restaurants, gas stations and hotels, you will more than likely find the city that it grew up next to, and they will have a main street and on that main street there will be a local establishment that has been there for decades where all the locals eat, and you know, it is a very good chance the food and atmosphere is much more enjoyable there. And you will learn something about somewhere you didn't know existed.

Now, as to your original question, I will be downright dull and suggest the original Route 66, or as much of it as still exists. Starting in Chicago, it goes to St. Louis, down to Missouri - Oklahoma City looks oh, so pretty - you’ll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona (don’t forget Wynonna) Kingman, Barstow, blah blah blah.

Seriously, however, two-laning it through the Midwest, and then down through the desert for several days is some Real America I'd like to check out.

5. you take your music pretty seriously. is there a frustrated musician in there?

To think I have never joined a band. Sometimes I think my life is The Truman Show and everything is going to happen to me just once, you know, to keep the ratings. Sure, I've been reviewed in the New York Times, and had a role as a featured extra on a national sit-com. I've also been divorced and lost a child.

But no, there isn't part of me that has ever even seriously fantisized about being a musician.

I am a frustrated club kid. I fantasize about smoking cigarettes, taking E and Viagara, going to clubs and dancing and screwing until daylight.

Just so you know who you're dealing with. In these fantasies, I am also gay.