Pendleton Dog Bed

i was a marine with 1/1 weapons company, 81's platoon, out in camp pendleton, california. oorah! audience: oorah!

Pendleton Dog Bed, (laughter) i joined a few months after september 11, feeling like i think most peoplein the country did at the time, filled with a senseof patriotism and retribution

and the desire to do something -- that, coupled with that factthat i wasn't doing anything. i was 17, just graduatedfrom high school that past summer, living in the back roomof my parents' house paying rent, in the small town i was raised inin northern indiana, called mishawaka. i can spell that laterfor people who are interested -- mishawaka is many good thingsbut cultural hub of the world it is not, so my only exposure to theater and film

was limited to the playsi did in high school and blockbuster video,may she rest in peace. i was serious enough about acting that i auditioned for juilliardwhen i was a senior in high school, didn't get in, determined college wasn't for meand applied nowhere else, which was a genius move. i also did that hail maryla acting odyssey that i always heard stories about,

of actors moving to lawith, like, seven dollars and finding work and successful careers. i got as far as amarillo, texas,before my car broke down. i spent all my money repairing it, finally made it to santa monica -- not even la -- stayed for 48 hours wanderingthe beach, basically, got in my car, drove home, thus ending my acting career, so --

seventeen, mishawaka ... parents' house, paying rent,selling vacuums ... telemarketing, cutting grass at the local4-h fairgrounds. this was my worldgoing into september, 2001. so after the 11th, and feeling an overwhelming sense of duty, and just being pissed offin general -- at myself, my parents, the government;

not having confidence,not having a respectable job, my shitty mini-fridge that i justdrove to california and back -- i joined the marine corps and loved it.i loved being a marine. it's one of the things i'm most proudof having done in my life. firing weapons was cool, driving and detonatingexpensive things was great. but i found i lovedthe marine corps the most for the thing i was lookingfor the least when i joined, which was the people:

these weird dudes --a motley crew of characters from a cross sectionof the united states -- that on the surface i hadnothing in common with. and over time, all the political and personal bravado that led me to the military dissolved, and for me, the marine corpsbecame synonymous with my friends. and then, a few years into my service and months away from deploying to iraq,

i dislocated my sternumin a mountain-biking accident, and had to be medically separated. those never in the militarymay find this hard to understand, but being told i wasn't getting deployedto iraq or afghanistan was very devastating for me. i have a very clear image of leavingthe base hospital on a stretcher and my entire platoon is waitingoutside to see if i was ok. and then, suddenly,i was a civilian again. i knew i wanted to giveacting another shot,

because -- again, this is me -- i thought all civilian problemsare small compared to the military. i mean, what can you reallybitch about now, you know? "it's hot. someone should turnon the air conditioner." "this coffee line is too long." i was a marine, i knew how to survive. i'd go to new york and become an actor.

if things didn't work out, i'd live in central parkand dumpster-dive behind panera bread. i re-auditioned for juilliardand this time i was lucky, i got in. but i was surprisedby how complex the transition was from military to civilian. and i was relatively healthy; i can'timagine going through that process on top of a mental or physical injury. but regardless, it was difficult.

in part, because i was in acting school -- i couldn't justify goingto voice and speech class, throwing imaginary balls of energyat the back of the room, doing acting exerciseswhere i gave birth to myself -- while my friends were servingwithout me overseas. but also, because i didn'tknow how to apply the things i learned in the militaryto a civilian context. i mean that both practicallyand emotionally. practically, i had to get a job.

and i was an infantry marine, where you're shooting machine gunsand firing mortars. there's not a lot of places you canput those skills in the civilian world. emotionally, i struggled to find meaning. in the military, everything has meaning. everything you dois either steeped in tradition or has a practical purpose. you can't smoke in the field because you don't wantto give away your position.

you don't touch your face --you have to maintain a personal level of health and hygiene. you face this way when "colors" plays, out of respect for peoplewho went before you. walk this way, talk this waybecause of this. your uniform is maintained to the inch. how diligently you followedthose rules spoke volumes about the kind of marine you were. your rank said somethingabout your history

and the respect you had earned. in the civilian world there's no rank. here you're just another body, and i felt like i constantly hadto prove my worth all over again. and the respect civilians were giving mewhile i was in uniform didn't exist when i was out of it. there didn't seem to be a ... a sense of community, whereas in the military,i felt this sense of community.

how often in the civilian world are you put in a life-or-death situationwith your closest friends and they constantly demonstratethat they're not going to abandon you? and meanwhile, at acting school ... i was really, for the first time, discovering playwrightsand characters and plays that had nothing to do with the military, but were somehow describingmy military experience in a way that beforeto me was indescribable.

and i felt myself becoming less aggressive as i was able to put wordsto feelings for the first time and realizing whata valuable tool that was. and when i was reflectingon my time in the military, i wasn't first thinkingon the stereotypical drills and discipline and pain of it; but rather, the small,intimate human moments, moments of great feeling: friends going awolbecause they missed their families,

friends getting divorced, grieving together, celebrating together, all within the backdrop of the military. i saw my friends battlingthese circumstances, and i watched the anxietyit produced in them and me, not being able to expressour feelings about it. the military and theater communitiesare actually very similar. you have a group of peopletrying to accomplish a mission greater than themselves;it's not about you.

you have a role, you have to knowyour role within that team. every team has a leader or director; sometimes they're smart,sometimes they're not. you're forced to be intimatewith complete strangers in a short amount of time; the self-discipline, the self-maintenance. i thought, how great would it beto create a space that combined these two seeminglydissimilar communities, that brought entertainmentto a group of people

that, considering their occupation, could handle somethinga bit more thought-provoking than the typical mandatory-fun events that i remember being"volun-told" to go to in the military -- all well-intended but slightlyoffensive events, like "win a date with a san diegochargers cheerleader," where you answer a questionabout pop culture, and if you get it right you win a date, which was a chaperoned walkaround the parade deck

with this already married,pregnant cheerleader -- nothing against cheerleaders,i love cheerleaders. the point is more, how great would itbe to have theater presented through characters that were accessiblewithout being condescending. so we started this nonprofitcalled arts in the armed forces, where we tried to do that, tried to join these two seeminglydissimilar communities. we pick a play or select monologuesfrom contemporary american plays that are diverse in age and racelike a military audience is,

grab a group of incredibletheater-trained actors, arm them with incredible material, keep production valueas minimal as possible -- no sets, no costumes,no lights, just reading it -- to throw all the emphasis on the language and to show that theater canbe created at any setting. it's a powerful thing, getting in a room with complete strangers and reminding ourselves of our humanity,

and that self-expressionis just as valuable a tool as a rifle on your shoulder. and for an organization like the military, that prides itself on havingacronyms for acronyms, you can get lost in the sauce when it comes to explaininga collective experience. and i can think of no better community to arm with a new means of self-expression than those protecting our country.

we've gone all overthe united states and the world, from walter reed in bethesda, maryland, to camp pendleton,to camp arifjan in kuwait, to usag bavaria, on- and off-broadway theaters in new york. and for the performing artists we bring, it's a window into a culture they otherwise would nothave had exposure to. and for the military, it's the exact same.

and in doing this for the past six years, i'm always remindedthat acting is many things. it's a craft, it's a political act,it's a business, it's -- whatever adjectiveis most applicable to you. but it's also a service. i didn't get to finish mine, so whenever i get to be of service to this ultimate service industry,the military, for me, again -- there's not many things better than that.

thank you. (applause) we're going to be doing a piecefrom marco ramirez, called "i am not batman." an incredible actorand good friend of mine, jesse perez, is going to be reading, and matt johnson,who i just met a couple hours ago. they're doing it togetherfor the first time, so we'll see how it goes.

jesse perez and matt johnson. jesse perez: it's the middle of the night and the sky is glowinglike mad, radioactive red. and if you squint,you can maybe see the moon through a thick layer of cigarette smokeand airplane exhaust that covers the whole city, like a mosquito netthat won't let the angels in. (drum beat) and if you look up high enough,

you can see me standingon the edge of an 87-story building. and up there, a place for gargoylesand broken clock towers that have stayed still and deadfor maybe like 100 years, up there is me. (beat) and i'm frickin' batman. and i gots batmobiles and batarangs and frickin' bat caves, like, for real. and all it takes is a broom closet

or a back room or a fire escape, and danny's hand-me-down jeans are gone. and my navy blue polo shirt, the one that looks kinda good on mebut has that hole on it near the butt from when it got snaggedon the chain-link fence behind arturo's but it isn't even a big dealbecause i tuck that part in and it's, like, all good. that blue polo shirt -- it's gone, too! and i get like, like ... transformational.

and nobody pulls out a beltand whips batman for talkin' back. or for not talkin' back. and nobody calls batman simple or stupid or skinny. and nobody fires batman's brotherfrom the eastern taxi company 'cause they was making cutbacks, neither. 'cause they got nothing but respect. and not like afraid-respect,

just, like, respect-respect. 'cause nobody's afraid of you. 'cause batman doesn't mean nobody no harm. ever.(double beat) 'cause all batman really wantsto do is save people and maybe pay abuela's bills one day and die happy. and maybe get, like, mad-famous for real. oh -- and kill the joker.

(drum roll) tonight, like most nights, i'm all alone. and i'm watchin' and i'm waitin' like a eagle or like a -- no, yeah, like a eagle. and my cape is flapping in the windcause it's frickin' long and my pointy ears are on, and that mask that covers like halfmy face is on, too,

and i got, like, bulletproof stuffall in my chest so no one can hurt me. and nobody -- nobody! -- is gonna come between batman ... and justice. (drums)(laughter) from where i am, i can hear everything. (silence) somewhere in the city,

there's a old lady pickingstyrofoam leftovers up out of a trash can and she's putting a pieceof sesame chicken someone spit out into her own mouth. and somewhere there's a doctorwith a wack haircut in a black lab coat trying to find a cure for the diseases that are gonna make usall extinct for real one day. and somewhere there's a man, a man in a janitor's uniform, stumbling home drunk and dizzy

after spending half his paycheckon 40-ounce bottles of twist-off beer, and the other half on a four-hour visitto some lady's house on a street where the lightshave all been shot out by people who'd rather dowhat they do in this city in the dark. and half a block away from janitor man, there's a group of good-for-nothingswho don't know no better, waiting for janitor manwith rusted bicycle chains and imitation louisville sluggers, and if they don't find a cent on him,

which they won't, they'll just pound at him till the musclesin their arms start burning, till there's no more teeth to crack out. but they don't count on me. they don't count on no dark knight, with a stomach full of grocery-storebrand macaroni and cheese and cut-up vienna sausages. 'cause they'd rather believei don't exist. and from 87 stories up, i can hearone of the good-for-nothings say,

"gimme the cash!" -- real fast like that, just, "gimme me the fuckin' cash!" and i see janitor man mumble somethingin drunk language and turn pale, and from 87 stories up, i can hear his stomach tryingto hurl its way out his dickies. so i swoop down, like, mad-fast and i'm like darkness, i'm like, "swoosh!" and i throw a batarangat the one naked lightbulb. (cymbal)

and they're all like, "whoa, muthafucker! who just turned out the lights?" "what's that over there?""what?" "gimme me what you got, old man!" "did anybody hear that?" "hear what? there ain't nothing.no, really -- there ain't no bat!" but then ... one out of the three good-for-nothingsgets it to the head -- pow! and number two swings blindlyinto the dark cape before him,

but before his fist hits anything, i grab a trash can lid and -- right in the gut! and number one comesback with the jump kick, but i know judo karate, too,so i'm like -- (drums) twice! but before i can do any more damage, suddenly we all hear a "click-click."

and suddenly everything gets quiet. and the one good-for-nothing left standing grips a handgun and aims it straight up, like he's holding jesus hostage, like he's threatening maybeto blow a hole in the moon. and the good-for-nothingwho got it to the head, who tried to jump-kick me, and the other good-for-nothingwho got it in the gut, is both scrambling back awayfrom the dark figure before 'em.

and the drunk man, the janitor man, is huddled in a corner,praying to saint anthony 'cause that's the only onehe could remember. (double beat) and there's me: eyes glowing white, cape blowing softly in the wind. bulletproof chest heaving, my heart beating right through itin a morse code for:

"fuck with me just once come on just try." and the one good-for-nothingleft standing, the one with the handgun -- yeah, he laughs. and he lowers his arm. and he points it at me

and gives the moon a break. and he aims it rightbetween my pointy ears, like goal posts and he's special teams. and janitor man is stillcalling saint anthony, but he ain't pickin' up. and for a second, it seems like ... maybe i'm gonna lose. nah!

shoot! shoot! fwa-ka-ka! "don't kill me, man!" snap! wrist crack! neck! slash! skin meets acid:"ahhhhhhh!" and he's on the floor and i'm standing over him and i got the gun in my hands now and i hate guns, i hate holding 'em'cause i'm batman. and, asterisk:

batman don't like guns 'cause his parentsgot iced by guns a long time ago. but for just a second, my eyes glow white, and i hold this thing for i could speak to the good-for-nothing in a language he maybe understands. click-click! and the good-for-nothingsbecome good-for-disappearing into whatever toxic waste, chemicalsludge shithole they crawled out of.

and it's just me and janitor man. and i pick him up, and i wipe sweat and cheap perfumeoff his forehead. and he begs me not to hurt him and i grab him tightby his janitor-man shirt collar, and i pull him to my face and he's taller than mebut the cape helps, so he listens when i look himstraight in the eyes. and i say two words to him:

"go home." and he does, checking behind his shoulderevery 10 feet. and i swoosh from buildingto building on his way there 'cause i know where he lives. and i watch his hands trembleas he pulls out his key chain and opens the door to his building. and i'm back in bed before he even walks inthrough the front door.

and i hear him turn on the faucet and pour himself a glassof warm tap water. and he puts the glass back in the sink. and i hear his footsteps. and they get sloweras they get to my room. and he creaks my door open,like, mad-slow. and he takes a step in, which he never does. and he's staring off into nowhere,

his face, the colorof sidewalks in summer. and i act like i'm just waking up and i say, "ah, what's up, pop?" and janitor man says nothing to me. but i see in the dark, i see his arms go limp and his head turns back, like, towards me. and he lifts it for i can see his face, for i could see his eyes.

and his cheeks is drippin',but not with sweat. and he just stands there breathing, like he remembers my eyes glowing white, like he remembers my bulletproof chest, like he remembers he's my pop. and for a long time i don't say nothin'. and he turns around, hand on the doorknob. and he ain't looking my way, but i hear him mumble two words to me:

"i'm sorry." and i lean over, and i openmy window just a crack. if you look up high enough,

you could see me. and from where i am -- (cymbals) i could hear everything.