I feel as if my feet have barely touched the ground this week. It's been an unusually busy time for me, both at work, and in my personal life. On Saturday, I had the first dinner party I've held in years. There were only two guests, but it still entailed a day of rushing around planning the courses, shopping, and buying stuff that more civilized people take for granted (such as a pepper grinder). I used to cook regularly for friends back when I lived in Philly. But I fell out of the habit, and as my cooking "skills" ossified, I grew increasingly scared of poisoning people

On Sunday, I had my fourth date with Chris, a young masseur whom I met in December. For me, making it through four dates with someone is something of a modern record. He's a sweet, kind-hearted, intelligent guy, and he's fun to be around. Not to mention that I have no objections to dating someone who's an expert in back-rubbing.

At dusk, on Sunday, I took my friend Terry up the hill towards Twin Peaks to a street I'd chosen as the perfect setting for publicity photos for my next big movie project, "Pursuit." The main character in the movie was somewhat influenced by Terry (a unique and charismatic person who's worth a whole journal entry to himself), and so I'd asked Terry to pose for the publicity still. The movie will be a romantic thriller about a man stalked by a gay serial killer. I was to end up spending my spare hours over the next couple of days in creating a fake movie poster, a version of which you'll see below.

I'm beginning to spend hours tossing in bed, almost nightly, thinking about this project. The next step is to find a producer, and after that to set a budget, which I'm expecting to be something in the area of $50,000, which is an absolutely huge step up in my ambitions. Expect fund-raising pitches to follow soon thereafter. The biggest question I have for myself is how to overcome what I see as my biggest failing as a director; my lack of experience in directing actors. When I look at my last movie, "Rico is Back", I almost cringe at the lack of direction. I'm planning on taking acting classes as a first step towards increasing my understanding of acting.

Fast-forward to Tuesday, passing by Monday (another busy day where I spent the daytime hours programming up a storm at work, and my evening hours continuing to edit on a flat-bed, with my fellow class-mates, a 16mm movie that we shot a year ago), and I began the first of those acting classes. This one was at ACT. As the hour approached, I was suddenly overcome with nerves. As a somewhat shy person, someone who can freeze stiffly even when just talking to my doctor, I was asking myself what was I thinking when I enrolled in a class in improvisation at one of America's foremost theater organizations? As I came up in the elevator, I had visions of fruity-voiced, willowy actors floating around the room, wearing leg-warmers, and making strange vocalizations.

But as I opened the door, I found, instead, thirteen (mostly) ordinary looking people, scattered with age and ethnicity, waiting as nervously as myself for what was about to happen. As we introduced ourselves around the room, it turned out that most of them were indeed actors, but, as I was to learn, improvisation is not a common component in the typical actor's bag-of-tricks.

I had a double agenda in taking the class, only half of which I was willing to own up to in the class. The half I owned up to is the desire to learn how to work better with actors. The secret half of my agenda is that I also felt a class in improvisation would help just to generally free me up. I can be so stiff and self-conscious in my relations with others, at times. It's something very deep that plays a part in almost all my relationships, and comes from a long-term core of doubt about myself, and my value to the world.

Taking a class in improvisation is something like suddenly being eight years old again and going to a birthday party for one of your friends. Most of what you do is play games. For instance, we formed a circle, and somebody would volunteer to enter the circle and form some kind of pose. Then anybody could step into the circle and complete that person's pose, either literally or abstractly, while making some kind of statement. The results were frequently hilarious, and I found it entirely liberating. My favorite moment was when somebody's pose left them holding their hands together in front of themselves, as if gripping a golf club. I chose to interpret it as a man peeing, and stepped in with a gesture to the toilet bowl, admonishing him to next time get it all in the bowl. Ahhh, but in my excitement, I'd forgotten one of the principle tenets we'd learned that evening; that improvisation should always make the positive choice. So I changed my admonishment to praise that he was finally learning to get most of it in the toilet instead of on the floor.

The only difficult moments for me were the more unstructured ones. For instance, there was the early exercise when we had to walk around the room doing the "wiggly dance" (where you simultaneously wiggle all your body parts, including your facial features, while making wild, gobbledegook sounds). Part of the exercise included dancing for brief moments, with the other students, and that was the part that pushed my buttons. It meant that the other person had to accept dancing with me. Those moments where you make eye contact with an almost complete stranger while doing the wiggly dance, I'll not soon forget.

What's left of the week. Oh, Wednesday, where I had my first meeting with a potential producer for my movie. It was low stress, since it was with my friend Scott, with whom I've worked on other projects. But it forced me for the first time to tell somebody else why I believed in my project. Then on to rainy Thursday, where I, somewhat exhaustedly, had dinner with a friend. Thank God that tonight, Friday, I have nothing planned.