Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

Run for your lives!

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Image via geishboy500 on flickr

Are you tired of the same old exercise routine but not quite brave enough to strap on the leg warmers and swing around a pole? Are you convinced that Max Brooks is a prophet and not just an international bestselling author? Do you get pissed off anytime someone makes a joke about zombies craving brains because that was something that was added in by the folks who made Return of the Living Dead and was never part of George Romero’s universe?

If so, we’ve got the workout for you.

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Works in progress (Dungeons & Dragons)

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Picture taken by Krystalle during one of our recent games

Editor’s Note – The following 2000+ word post is not going to be of any interest to you at all unless you’re into tabletop role-playing games (and even then you may not care if you aren’t playing Dungeons and Dragons). I give this warning in advance to spare your precious time.

If you follow my Twitter or Facebook feeds you’re probably aware that, over the last few months, some friends of mine and I have been regularly playing Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It has been a great deal of fun on many levels. Not only am I gaming again on a regular basis (a pastime that has played an integral role in my life since I was in my early teens), but I’m doing so with my family. Finding activities that all of us enjoy can be a bit of a challenge, and the fact role-playing fell into this category just makes it all the more awesome.

The more time I spend gaming these days, the more I realize that during the years where I spent most of my free time playing games like City of Heroes and World of Warcraft I was really just trying to fill the tabletop RPG void in my life. Now that I am tabletop gaming again on a regular basis I realize that it was a less-than-fulfilling replacement. As much fun as I had playing MMORPG’s (and let’s be clear – I DID have a lot of fun), there just isn’t anything quite like making up your OWN stories and having adventures that aren’t pre-determined by a set of programmers. The exhilaration of defeating an epic monster in a scripted encounter is nothing compared to the joy of defeating a party of kobolds while sitting around a table with your friends making Monty Python jokes.

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Sunday in the office with Mike

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There is a stillness to the world when you’re up at 7:30 AM on a Sunday morning. At least there is in my house. No televisions are on. No music is playing. Nobody is walking through my office to get to the kitchen or sitting in the living room playing on a console. It’s nice, but at the same time it’s somewhat disturbing. I truly enjoy moments of quiet and solitude when I can find them, but when they occur at any time after the sun comes up it feels somewhat unnatural.

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By the light of the silvery iPad

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Image via Silly Rabit, Trix are for Kids on flickr

Back in the late 1980’s Science Fiction and Fantasy author George R. R. Martin cobbled together a group of talented writers to create Wild Cards, a series of alternate history novels set in a universe where super heroes were real. One of the recurring characters in the series was a man named Croyd Crenson, alternately referred to as The Sleeper. In the Wild Cards universe people who were exposed to a virus had a chance to either die, become horribly deformed, or develop extraordinary abilities. The Sleeper was unique in that every time he fell asleep he would be infected with the virus anew, awaking in an entirely different form. Convinced that one day he would draw the “Black Queen” and die as a result of his re-infection with the virus, Crenson fought sleep for weeks on end.

Needless to say, this made him a bit crazy.

As anyone who has seen a Nightmare on Elm Street film can attest to, sleep is important (unless, that is, a scary dude who is covered in burns and has razors on his fingers is going to kill you in it). Going without sleep for long periods of time can have very negative effects on the psyche, but many of us aren’t likely to find ourselves in those kind of situations. What we do commonly face, however, are situations in which we simply do not get enough sleep. The average adult gets about 7 hours of sleep a night, but most studies suggest that in order to be fully rested they should be getting 8. Those numbers come from a study in Consumer Reports back in 1997. Chances are that if you did the same study today we’d probably be getting even less sleep.

One of the reasons? iPads.

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I’m going hungry

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Image via just_clicked on flickr

In the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street Michael Douglas, in the role of Gordon Gekko, uttered the famous words that defined the “me” era of the late 1980’s –

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the reviled Mr. Gekko, and while I won’t spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t, I do suggest you make an effort to do so) it is safe to say that by the end of the movie the philosophy that he espoused came back to bite him in the ass.

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National Security : It’s what’s for lunch

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Image by chidorian via flickr

I have many fond memories of my school days. I remember my friends and some of the teachers I had that really made a difference in my life. I remember all of the awesome things that I got to experience at the arts focused high school that I went to. I remember how fun my senior prom was, and how thankful I was that my date for the evening had convinced me to go. I even remember how much I just enjoyed learning new things, but that may be a case of me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. If my grades were any indicator learning was the last thing on my mind in school.

What I do not have fond memories of, however, were the school lunches. In fact, I distinctly remember hating the cafeteria so much that I never set foot in it once after my Freshman year in high school.  (My friends and I would either brown bag it or go without and hang out in the theater or a sympathetic teacher’s classroom.) Not only was the threat of bullying higher in the loosely supervised cafeteria, but the food was horrible. Our school’s gastronomical oddities included strange, pinkish meat on rectangular slices of pizza, spaghetti with thick, rubbery noodles coated in disgustingly sweet sauce, and cheeseburgers made from some kind of textured vegetable protein that were often dotted with a slimy gray substance.

The school cafeteria was a pit of doom that smelled of death and sadness. It was my version of Hell, and a few years ago when I sent to my son’s school to have lunch with him I confirmed that nothing has changed. In fact, there were a few items there even more disturbing than I recalled.

What I didn’t know, though, was that the food being served in our schools was not just a threat to the emotional and physical well being of the poor children who actually have to eat it. The problem, it turns out, is far more acute than bad taste.

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Gross Generalizations (Not A Lot Of Truth Here)

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One of my former High School classmates recently posted a note on her Facebook page that was titled “A Lot Of Truth Here.” The post was a laundry lists of “truths” about Liberals vs. Conservatives, and it was clearly written by someone who sympathized with the Right side of that particular battle.

I didn’t respond in depth to that particular post. For one it was pretty clear that she agreed with it and nothing I could say was going to convince her otherwise. Two, she very clearly didn’t write it herself. Lastly, however, was due to the fact that the post ended with a “Oh ha-ha, this is just a joke and if it offends you clearly that means you’re a liberal and everything that is written here is true” kind of statement.

As I said to her there, it didn’t offend me. It was just wrong.

At the time I pretty much tried to leave it at that, but it has stuck with me since reading it so I’ve gone back and grabbed the post so that I can respond on my turf. My thoughts are behind the cut.

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Squeezing into your genes

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image via dullhunk on flickr

Tell me why, oh why, are my genetics such a bitch?

– Shiloh from Repo: The Genetic Opera

The 1997 movie GATTACA portrayed an ugly future where people were pigeon-holed in society based upon their genetic make up. In order to live up to his life-long dream of being an astronaut, Ethan Hawke’s character in the movie had to assume the genetic identity of another man (played by Jude Law) who did not suffer from the same genetic impurities that Hawke did. Hawke was considered to be an ‘in-valid’ – someone who would never succeed in life because his genes would prevent him from doing so.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but if you understand Hollywood at all, you can probably assume that one of the central themes in the story is that our genetic make-up does not necessarily have to determine our fate. Yes, you might be born with some kind of flaw in your DNA that makes you more likely to suffer from heart disease, but that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to.

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Are you there, God? It’s me, Michael.

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The post that follows is not intended as an attack on any individuals religious beliefs, nor is it intended to offend. It is an honest account of my personal feelings on a very sensitive subject. If you read on, please understand that this is how I feel about the subject and respect that. I will do the same for you.

I did a search on the old blog here and have discovered that, much to my surprise, I do not seem to have ever chronicled the story behind what prompted me to turn my back on God. I’ve told the story many times in the past, but for some reason I don’t seem to have ever jotted it down here.

As some of you are aware I was recently in a church production called “The Case For Christ” in which I actually played Jesus. I did this as a favor for a former teacher of mine from middle school who was a key player in my early development as an actor and who I will, as a result, always owe a debt of gratitude to. Beyond that, I consider her a friend. One of my super close inner circle? No, perhaps not. But she was one of those people who actually treated me like a human being back when I wasn’t even sure I was one, and during those transitional years when you are crossing from childhood to being a young adult it’s important who have people that treat you like you didn’t just step out of diapers the day before. She did that, and she’s awesome for it.

The play in and of itself was written and being performed by members of her church. This was not something that was intended to be a piece of high art. It was intended to tell part of the story of Jesus and to, perhaps, convince some people to accept him into their lives. It was, for all intents and purposes, a sermon in theatrical format.

I won’t go into too much more detail about the play itself, as it will one day be an episode in my podcast about the theater. Suffice it to say that before I agreed to do the show I warned her that I was an agnostic and that I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable if they found that out. She assured me that it was ok, and as a favor to her I agreed to do the show.

In the aftermath she sent me an email to ask about my beliefs. I thought I’d be able to take the easy way out and point her to a post here. When I realized that I could not do so, I decided I’d go ahead and correct that oversight.

So here we go.

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Being broke

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Earlier this morning I ran an application on Facebook known as UnFriender. As the name should obviously imply, the application compares your current Friends list to previous snapshots and lets you know who has dropped you from their list since you last checked.

I do this because I am a horrible combination of narcissism and insecurity. I want everyone to like me, and when someone doesn’t I get all angst-ridden trying to figure out why. I blame my lifelong struggle with obesity. I’m sure I could explain that, but it’s easier to just say “It’s because I was fat as a teenager and nobody loved me” and leave it at that.

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