Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (22 page)

It turned out that an actress named Megan Mullally, who was one of the stars of a popular television comedy entitled
Will & Grace
, was cast in the lead of the play. This fact was dangled as an incentive when I was meeting the directors of the company, but I said, “Hey, I’m a man of the theatre”—real theatre folk (nerds) spell it with the old-school -
re
—“so I’m not that crazy about working with a TV lady, but I’m going to audition
despite
the fact that you’re planning to include her.”

Regardless of that jackassery, I got the job. And it, and indeed she, saved my life.

The show was
The Berlin Circle
by Chuck Mee. He takes Bertolt Brecht’s
Caucasian Chalk Circle
and sets it at the Berlin Wall coming down. During the first read-through, the cast of twenty-four people was sitting in a large circle of chairs in this empty warehouse when Megan came walking in, all turned out and wearing very cute clothing and what I used to call her “fashion shoes.” She was beautiful, okay, sure, and I thought, “All right, let’s see what you got, hotshot.”

We read through the script, and my attitude and, well, everything changed. She was so funny and so masterful, such a total pro, that she immediately went from seeming like some sort of TV actor with my own imagined inadequacies to clearly existing as a living, breathing, gorgeous pack of talent. Adroitly extinguishing my misplaced snobbery was the discovery that she had done two Broadway shows by that point. To my embarrassment, I was to learn that she had cut her teeth in the exact same Chicago theater community as my own snotty ass, just some years before me. Beyond that, she was simply hilarious. I am still so besotted by her talent that thirteen years into our relationship, I am amazed that I am the partner to such a bright and shining powerhouse of entertainment. In the play, I was doing a sort of cheap Colonel Klink (from
Hogan’s Heroes
) German dialect, which, thankfully, she found funny. After the read-through I went up to her, thinking, “Of course, you fool—they have good people on TV, too.” My first words to my future bride were, “Hey, I’m Nick. You’re hilarious and I think this is going to be really fun.” Little did I realize how effective this opening salvo would prove.

As it turned out, literally no one else spoke to her that day because they were all freaked out by loving her on TV. So my humble greeting turned out to be a huge windfall, unwittingly.

We had a lot of factors working against our becoming a couple. A rule I believe I’ve mentioned: One doesn’t date another actor in one’s play. Of course, we all end up breaking that rule, obviously, at some point, but everybody knows better. If you have your shit together and you’re an adult, but you are feeling randy toward a castmate, you might make your urgings known to each other, but you simply wait until the play is over to seal the deal. Otherwise, chances are you’re just signing up for little more than an afternoon delight (which can also be a pleasing option). I guess my point is that if you feel strongly enough about your fellow actor that you want to try to make a go at something lasting, then your amour has a better chance of surviving if you cultivate it outside of the theater, ideally after the play closes.

Beyond that rule of thumb, we were also both staunchly single. Despite the matchmaking glamour that Pat and I had conjured together a few weeks before, I was still being protective of myself because LA and her cute, superficial women had been very painful to me thus far. Megan was extra self-protective because she was on a popular TV show, and I’m sure she had prospecting gold diggers at every available turn. She had been dating guys who were slightly more rock-and-roll style, leather-pants wearing, skinny sort of guys. So we were sort of blindsided when we mutually snuck up on each other.

Because of our similar theater careers, we became really good friends pretty immediately. Plus, we were the two outsiders in the cast. The Evidence Room was an existing company with a couple of shows under its belt moving to this new home, and we were the two hired guns. This arrangement saw us banding together during rehearsal, during which we discovered that we also shared a filthy, irreverent sense of humor. It didn’t take long, probably a couple of weeks into rehearsals, for us both to realize, “Oh, hang on. Holy crap. I’m really attracted to you.” I can certainly say that for myself, at any rate. Megan’s thoughts might have run with just a modicum of increased elegance.

I made the first overtures, although we were both sending pretty clear signals. My first hurdle, strangely enough, was a feeling of insecurity at being so outclassed by Megan. I saw her as a “fancy lady” who couldn’t possibly have an eye for a working jack like myself. She wore “fashion shoes,” for fuck’s sake. In a way, my perceived class difference probably helped matters progress, as I felt like I could grow safely close to Megan without any danger of romantic feelings, because of my “low station.” That dastardly Cupid snuck right up in my shadow and filled me full of arrows. Eventually the penny dropped, and I was understandably in some disbelief. To myself, I thought, “What?! No. No way is this happening. Who do you think you are? Is this
Beauty and the Beast
? She be a lady, the finest of ladies, and you be but a pagan laborer,” but it was too late. Far, far too late.

Almost nightly, I was saying to Pat Roberts, “This is crazy. I think we like each other.” I would call him constantly to say, “Jesus. Check out what Megan just said,” because she said just the funniest shit. I couldn’t believe that a woman that beautiful and sophisticated would say something so wonderfully pornographic about my balls.

Things started falling into place, and finally, we were becoming really winky and flirtatious with each other. One day, as she was leaving the theater in her Range Rover, I ran out and stopped her. I knocked on the window and climbed in the passenger seat and looked her in the eye as I said, “This is going on, right? I’m not that smart, but I’m also no dummy. This is happening.”

She was very old-fashioned and businesslike about it. She said, “Okay. There might be something happening down the road, but I can guarantee you nothing is going to happen before the end of our play. But yeah, I think you’re all right.” Then we drove to Los Feliz (which means “The Happy”) where we proceeded to park and make out for two hours. Beck’s
Midnite Vultures
album had just come out, which included the song “Beautiful Way,” and we played that song on repeat thirty-eight times. Seems like it was go time. We kept it a secret for a while but got busted opening night. The sound designer spotted us kissing out on the deck (that I had built).

* * *

M
an, brother, I’ll tell you, I was head over heels. I was solid gone, baby, but Megan was extremely old-fangled in her courting allowances. It didn’t take long before I had moved out of the unfinished basement I was living in and moved in with her, but she stepped us through the process in small increments. I got to take her home and make out on the couch, but then I had to leave. Then I was allowed to start spending the night, but I had to sleep on the couch. Eventually, when I finally got to sleep in the bed I had to face the wall and behave myself. She did it for real, because she wanted to be sure that I was for real. It took veritable calendar months before she, as she puts it, “gave up the puss.”

I had a job at the time hanging lights for Disney Imagineering. I was driving the forty minutes up Highway 5 to Valencia one morning when it hit me—I remember exactly where I was—that I was going to marry Megan. And I have to say, I was quite pissed off because I hadn’t been consulted. Life just dropped it in my lap—“You’re getting married.” She’s eleven years older than me, so it wasn’t the most likely pairing for that reason and more. Didn’t matter. I was hers. I thought, “Okay, I’m done.” I was incredibly happy at this realization, but I was a little angry, as a man, that I hadn’t been given the opportunity to weigh the options. I guess I got over it, but not for a solid thirty seconds or so.

Looking back on that period, I have to laud Megan and Courtenay for their ability to see any goodness in Pat and me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of both myself and Pat, but in all fairness to us, we were looking like a pretty dubious wager at that point, when our noble wives had the guts to hold their horses, reach down from their regal coaches into the muddy road, haul us to our feet, clean us off, and make men of us. As I’d suspected it would, doing that play with Megan in 2000 really did save my life, in so many more ways than I ever could have fathomed.

I guess the moral of the story would have to be: Read
The Secret
!

Measure Twice, Cut Once

When I encourage people to pick up a chisel and begin woodworking, I have to remember that I had a pretty solid twelve or so years of tool training before I ever sharpened a chisel myself. But I don’t think that should be daunting to anyone who is brand-new to the practice. My education was probably accelerated by my existing shop skills, but basic woodworking comes pretty easily whether or not you’ve been running a table saw for years.

I had spent some time framing houses before learning to build scenery and props and then becoming a full-time scenic carpenter in Chicago. I have always loved building scenery. It holds a magical quality for me, the fabrication of some illusion upon which to place the action of a play or musical to best facilitate the imagination of the audience. Compared to, say, cladding the rafters of a roof in sheets of plywood, building scenic elements can be a lot more fun, containing a playful or whimsical quality that regular construction lacks. Building houses, both in the framing and the finish work, not to mention the cabinetry, is also mightily satisfying, in that one is creating a solidly comfortable dwelling in which people can make their lives, but, having become soundly ensnared in theater’s web, I thrived best spending my formative years in the scene shop. That is, until I moved to LA.

Lacking the bountiful theater community of Chicago, Los Angeles did not provide me the opportunity to make much of a living building scenery. Sure, there are a multitude of scenery shops for television and film, but the best ones are all run by a union to which I did not claim membership, and I couldn’t find a position at the nonunion shops I investigated. My problem was that I was too honest with them. I told them up front that I was an actor, and so I would need to be able to go to auditions and then likely miss work if and when I booked a job. No shop foreman wants to begin a relationship like that, nor should they. My strategy should have entailed a little more smoke screen, as I could have gotten a job, then asked about auditions later, once they were crazy about me. I guess I knew better than to depend upon my ability to charm a bunch of carpenters.

Whatever the case, I had to revert to basic construction carpentry, picking up work wherever I could. I built some mediocre editing-suite tables and shelf units for a friend from plywood and construction lumber. I did some custom built-in work at a sports bar, a couple of closet built-ins for another pal, etc. Then a plum assignment came my way. Kara, an old Defiant pal, was living in a Hollywood Hills apartment building. The landlord, Chuck, wanted a really nice deck built on the hillside below the building. I drew up some ideas and got him to green-light one of them that had a Frank Lloyd Wright feeling to the railing details. I enlisted another old Defiant pal, Marty McClendon, who had designed a lot of our more incredible sets in Chicago, to help me out, as we had always had a great time building together.

We first dug six large holes and poured cylindrical concrete piers deep in the ground, upon which to anchor our structure. Next we built the legs, beams, joists, and cross-bracing of Douglas fir, treated for termite resistance, finally cladding the actual deck in redwood, which is naturally impervious to rot and the elements. It felt fantastic to be outside working, earning some recompense with our brains and muscles, instead of sitting around wondering when our agents were going to call with an audition. The railings were last, and they were comprised of six panel sections with an interior geometric pattern of rectangles reminiscent of a Wright stained-glass window. I designed these patterns by simply messing around with different combinations drawn to scale with a ruler on some graph paper until I found the iteration that was most pleasing to mine eye.

This was a big moment for me, looking back, as it was the first time that I was filling the role of designer. I had always enjoyed working alongside great designers in the theater, taking their plans and engineering the best method by which to accomplish their desired results, but now I was wielding the pencil! Once I had perfected my railing design, I then had to deduce the best way to build it, which led Marty and me to our first use of a common woodworking joint known as the shiplap joint. We cut them primarily on the table saw, a tool we had known and loved for many years but had never utilized for cutting joinery. This was a major development that was soon to provide further inspiration.

Soon after I had begun courting Megan, a well-heeled acquaintance of hers wanted a really nifty folly built on his property. His exceptionally nice, new house in the hills had an extra acre of what was basically park land tacked onto the backyard. Out in this “park” he wanted a cabin where he could go and have a glass of wine with his guests before dinner. Marty and I jumped and took on this project as well, hiring a couple more helpers, and once again we were thrilled to be working on such a substantial structure. We’d begin each day’s work at seven
A.M
., and drinking our coffee as the morning sun burned off the mist in the trees made us feel like we could have been in the middle of nowhere instead of smack-dab in the center of Los Angeles, creating such a satisfying sense of escape from the shitty, superficial grind of “the business.” Our design was built around a post-and-beam structure, with some of our first attempts at beefy joinery connecting the six-by-six-inch posts. With a hexagonal deck off the front corner, there was plenty of floor space to clad with reclaimed Douglas fir two-by-fours that we had salvaged from a one-hundred-year-old house in Santa Monica, igniting our desire to reuse as much of the valuable timber that goes to waste every day as we could. If we as a society properly reclaimed all of the construction lumber heading to the landfill and the bonfire every day, we wouldn’t need to cut down another tree for twenty years, if ever.