Author: Matthew Groff

  • I Dress Like a Conservative White Guy

    I have had this thought in my head for a while now… I have started wearing khaki pants more than jeans. I own just about the same number of button down shirts as I do t-shirts. I do wear a tie and blazer to work, but I don’t have to… I choose to do it. And the thing is that I feel very comfortable in these clothes. I can honestly admit, dressing this way does make me look like a conservative white guy. Rather vanilla.

    How did I get here?

    First of all, I do work on the business end of the arts industry, and I was raised that if you do business, then you wear a coat and tie. My father went to work in a suit every day, though I’m not really sure what he did. Something with computers and utilities. We are creatures of examples, but a suit seems to formal even for me. Hence the khakis, button down, tie, and blazer. I do still wear a pair of black low top All-Stars with the get up.

    Being in theatre, and especially with all the time I spent working on costuming, do understand and respect the role clothing can make in defining a character. With this knowledge, I know that I am making an impression with these clothes, which is straight laced, predictable, non-confrontational, as well as collected, and mature. When the dress code in the arts is casual clothing and being comfortable, then a coat and tie does make you stand out.

    Okay, maybe that’s it; I’m just counter programming the people around me.

    Am I dressing for the job I want? Is the clothing defining the person? Can the costume begin to influence the thinking of the character?

  • One Sick Kid

    Over the past two weeks, me and the wife have been dealing with our child’s first truly difficult illness. The kid is three, and we have battled some colds, and teeth cutting that involved some fevers. This time around, we got a full on high fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. It wasn’t the flu, which we all got the vaccine for, and when she first got sick, we had the test run to eliminate it as a possibility. Her fever got so bad at one point and wouldn’t come down, that we went to the emergency room in the middle of the night. It was just a virus that was in her lungs, and we were told the same thing by every doctor; it just has to run its course. Though true, miles from comforting.

    It was two miserable weeks for the three of us. Juggling sick kid, work, and all the other complications that life can throw at you. Finally, this weekend, the kid-o started to return to normal. We the parents are still wrecked, over tired and feeling on the verge of getting sick ourselves. The other unforeseen ramification from all of this is that the kid has back slid on potty training, and it pretty much feels like we have to start over.

    The other thing is that illness makes you have to harshly confront is the limit of your power as a parent. That there is so much out there that you cannot control and stop from happening. Some nights, all we could do was snuggle her and hold her until she fell asleep.

  • Everything is Just Disgusting

    It would be nice to live in a world where people played fair and approached things like an adult. I speak of what has happened since the Florida shooting. (The killing is too disgusting in its own right, and so many have done better than I ever will in capturing its horror.) The students of that high school have every right to demand change, to call BS on politicians, lobby their government, and march. To me, nothing could be more American. But, let’s be honest, the adults in the room aren’t doing their job, and they should be held to account for that.

    What is disgusting to me is the reaction, or reactionary response from the far, and I mean far right, to the students. I have an uncle who is very extreme in his beliefs, and his reaction to the high school students is that if they are pro-choice, then they are not allowed to demand changes to gun laws. (Now brain hurts…) I think what my uncle is saying is that if you are for killing fetuses, then you have to be for killing high school kids. He cannot fathom a moral structure wherein the opposite is true. What hurts my brain more is that I don’t think he owns a gun, so I don’t know why he cares so much for protecting gun rights in the first place?

    The other thing that is turning my stomach about the reaction to the high school students is the conspiracy theories that are flying around right now; False flags, paid actors, government operatives. Not everyone believes this, I get that, yet there are people out there that look at intelligent, focused, and driven kids as a pure impossibility. No way that high school kids could organize themselves… Never…

    I don’t know if this effort will succeed. It may fail like all the others, but I will be at the NYC march, and I will encourage others to do the same. We have to have hope, and these high school students seem to be the only ones providing it.

  • Nostalgia

    A good friend of mine told me once that nostalgia is nothing more than falling in love with old things you never really liked that much. It was a sham and should be avoided. It’s a great line, though rather pessimistic, but he was going through a divorce at the time.

    I agree with the sentiment of the statement, and want to fully commit to its concept, but as I have crossed into the realm of where some of my past was twenty years ago, nostalgia has started to creep into my thoughts. I tried to deflect, that was merely a remembrance, which was influencing current creative decisions. Such as an inspiration for a collage of some sort.

    I don’t want to be the person that starts thinking that the past was a better place, as I believe that is what leads to sedimentary thinking, and stifles growth. The past was the past, and it really wasn’t that great.

    But…

    It sure was a lot of fun listen to Oasis’ new album with all my friends spread – dabbled- around my living room. Each of us silently flipping through a magazine (EW or Maxim,) nodding in approval as each song ended.

    That was a good time, and I do miss it.

    But…

    Nothing that I do will ever take me back to that time. It’s sadly and fondly in the past.

    But, it is fun to listen to the Oasis catalogue on Spotify.

  • Snow

    I went to work in the snow this morning. It wasn’t a major storm, as the snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it did coat cars and the trees. I did have to put my hat on, puffy coat and snow boots (more for aesthetic than need) to commute across the city.

    Having grown up in Texas, snow was such a rare and life disrupting event. In New York, it takes a blizzard to shut the City down. In Texas, everything comes to a halt if it starts snowing, regardless if it sticks or not.

    The first time I saw snow was when I was five or six. I had gone to bed, and in the morning, my mother got me up, saying that she had a surprise for me. She took me to the sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. She had the curtain drawn, and made me stand in front of it. I remember being so sleepy confused as to what was happening. Then she pulled the curtain with a whoosh, and I saw the perfect white of snow covering our bare rectangled backyard. I just had to go out in it, and she dressed me and let me run free. I made a snowman, and threw snowballs at the fence and over it. Snow angels and just stomping around in it. I’m 40 years old, and snow is still a treat to me.