Darren Radar

The late afternoon light is quite beautiful here. Everything is pink except the deep chalky green palm trees. The buildings and the sky are soaked in a fuzzy, hypnotic haze. It’s nearly enough to distract from the helicopters that seem constantly in the sky from 3pm to 9pm. I hear them as I putter around the walk-in freezer that is my apartment. It's cold for California. I had to buy a space heater! In California! The unexpected is the only reliable element in any plot, plan, or circumstance. I futz with my computer. I call service support. I call Bestbuy. I research computer info on line. I strive to understand this machine and make it work for me. I search for cheap software on-line and end up creating a flyer for some second-hand software pusher in the hopes that he'll give me what I need for free. I sit and surf, worry, experiment, try desperately to teach this old brain something new, and when I can breath back some worry I move from the ice chamber and swim ...

We arrived on what seemed to be a scrambled signal. After leaving Barstow in the early afternoon, two Saturday's ago, my beautiful sister, my cat, and I became a red blood cell in a large clog in the artery if Interstate 15. The subsequent detour added 4 hours to what would normally have been and hour and a half trip. By the time we arrived in Los Angeles it was dark. There were a number of phone calls made to my new roommate and to the U-haul station where I was planning to drop of the truck and the trailer I was pulling behind it, which contained my car. After three or four missed or mistaken exits my sister and I reached the Uhaul place 30 minutes before they were going to close. I figured I would just drop off the trailer that night and then drive the truck to my new apartment, unload it, and return it the following day. Getting the car off the trailer took no time, but due to the angle of the turn from the street getting the truck and trailer into the Uhaul lot wasn...

Moon Over Buffalo opened four weeks ago and it’s been nothing short of delightful. It's that rare theater experience where the ensemble clicks and grows and treats each other respectfully, even when tensions are running high. I am grateful for the personalities I get to share a stage and greenroom with and am honored to be close to so much talent. The cast and crew have socialized in various groups and sets over the course of the run and every single gathering has been warm and entertaining - so much so that I'm losing way too much sleep and consuming way too many libations for my own good. This experience is a welcome reminder of just how satisfying theater can be. My mother, younger sister, and two of my younger brothers and their wives came from Utah to see this show. I was a bit nervous when anticipating their visit. I tend to get more nervous when someone I know is in the audience. But, for whatever reason I was not nervous as I peeked through the curtains and saw ...

Eleven days since arriving back in Denver and my sinuses are finally (re)adjusting to the dusty heights of Colorado's capitol city. When I first moved to Denver some...well, some years ago I spent the first two weeks beset with headaches and bloody noses. While this return experience isn't as intense as my initial introduction to these climes, I’m still playing the lead in an itching, burning, twitching and turning opera of the sinuses. It seems everyone here suffers from some sort of allergy or infection or sinus...of the times -- pollution and global warming are hell on the heady mucous membranes. The play I'm currently rehearsing seems to be shaping up quite well. The cast is funny, dedicated and flexible. The director is a charming and talented veteran of the stage who's love for theater breaks forth from her delicious laugh at every rehearsal. She is also an amazing actress, which makes her sensitive to the actor's process and for that I cannot be too tha...

Today my car and I head northeast on a return route to Denver. Tim and I rode the roller coaster on the Santa Monica Pier earlier. The ocean shines today like giant chunks of blue and white glitter; sailboats cloud their way across it. Hazy, wet air seeps into my head thickening it like pudding. I don't want to drive. I don't want to go. I want to lay on the beach with hot sand pressing into my back. I want to see the sun drop into the sea like a fiery iris disappearing beneath the heavy blue lid of night. It will be relieving to see familiar faces and clearer highways, but this adventure into the forward past has my heart jangled.

I heard a haunting song on the radio yesterday. William S. Burroughs pushed his pleasing, prickly drone through the speakers while a random, slow-tempo beat and jazzy noise played underneath. "The road to the western lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world. For it is a journey beyond death, beyond the basic God-standard of fear and danger. It is the most heavily guarded road in the world. For it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts; immortality." It sounded like a song about LA. But then, everything sounds like a song about LA to me at this point - even commercial jingles. It is, quite literally, the border between land and sea, and less literally the border between desires fulfilled and not. The search for immortality, both physical and historical, is a strong, palpable drive for many of the denizens of this city by the sea. So, I'm not here for even two weeks before I head north to see a short play of mine produced at my ...

Saturday. One official week since my landing here on the coast Pacific. What has happened? Sleep, driving, drinking, and lots of traffic and coffee. Got eleven spider bites (if these spiders were casting directors I would SO be cast in a show right now. They love me.) Courtesy of my current host, I went to the Hollywood Bowl for a staged reading of the screen play for Sunset Boulevard, complete will a full orchestra playing the entire score of the movie under the reading (fabulous!). Signed up for Central Casting - which is basically like signing up for a temp job in the world of camera acting - a strange, funny, totally LA-ish experience. And right outside the doors of Central Casting I met the Scientologists. Nice group. Good hair. Today is my good friend Lindsey's birthday. It's an important birthday and I regret not being in Denver so I can take her to dinner and flatter her and give her a smidgen of the attention she deserves. Everyone here seems to speak onl...

Night before I blow the town of Denver as my town of home. Big feelings. Some of them involve keen frustration. Though, I only point that truth out to prevent myself from crying again about the things I am leaving behind...the people...the situations...and who I am. Some parts of me are supposed to die as a result of this move. I want to think that I know what those parts are. It's apparently the good kind of death. I can only hope. I've experienced enough of the bad kind of death, thank you. Not that any one person is really prescribed a limit of death in their lifetime. No one gets a pass, as they say. And as I have learned. Is this life about the life or is it a long (or short) preparation for the end that follows it? An almost pointless question. Is the mind most important? It is the mind that causes the most change? Or prevents it? Or...seems to prevent it? Stupid questions for one as I am. Stupid because I can only worry and never commit to understanding. Stupid because I...

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