Warning – political post ahead.

Okay, you were warned. If you follow me on Facebook, this is your official warning that from now until May 8th, there will be a bunch of posts decrying Amendment One, the ballot measure that NC will be voting on to outlaw gay marriage. I’m staunchly against this, as I am in favor of equal rights for all people, and taking away someone’s right to stand in front of a justice of the peace, put their fifty bucks on the counter and say “Til Death Do Us Part” seems wrong to me. I would like to think that my stance on gay rights doesn’t influence my writing too much, but I’m sure it’s pretty apparent to the readers of Back in Black that I’m all in favor of gay marriage. Or as we like to call it amongst my friends – marriage.

I’m not going to debate all the pros and cons of the issue here, but suffice to say if you see me at a con and I’m wearing a shirt that says something about equality, and I have several, that’s what is being referenced. I was loathe to use my modest notoriety as a bully pulpit until I realized that the opponents of civil liberty in our country don’t share my reticence. So I’m speaking out, in no uncertain terms, about my opposition to any constitutional amendment, or law in general, that reduces freedoms. And this is the first one that hits home for me, because it impacts so many of my friends.

I’m a straight white southern guy, happily married for over sixteen years. So why is this important to me? Because I think that all of my friends should be able to declare their love for each other openly without fear of reprisals from society, government or anyone else, as long as both parties are of legal age. Because I think it’s stupid that one couple that’s been together for ten years can have visitation rights in the ICU, and another one can’t. Because I think that it’s stupid that if Suzy and I adopted a kid, and something happened to either one of us, the kid stays with the other one, but a committed lesbian couple can be together for decades and have their children taken away from one mother if the other one dies. And this isn’t a random possibility – these are things that happen. And it seems unfair to me. So I’m speaking out. I’d like to think that my readers will mostly agree with my positions on this issue, but if not, that’s okay. I have friends and relatives that I disagree with too. But I just wanted to warn you that I think this amendment is bullshit, and you’re probably going to hear a lot from me about it for the next few months.

I’ve spent more than half my life working in theatre. I did my first show as an actor at 16, which would be 22 years ago now. I auditioned for that show because I thought the teacher directing the play was hot, and there were cute girls in it. I got the male lead in Up the Down Staircase, and a career somehow sprang from that. I was one of the two or three best actors in my high school, so I figured when I went to college I’d have no problem getting cast in a show.

Except that everyone there was the best actor in his or her high school, and a lot of them had way better high school programs than I had. Some of them had more than one drama class in high school. And some of them did more than one show each year. Some schools even had a teacher for nothing but drama! To say I was behind the curve would be putting it mildly. But I auditioned, and I took classes, and I worked, and I didn’t get cast.

Then I ran into my buddy Clark, and he changed my life with a simple question – “Do you want to run spotlight for this show for me?” Clark was the Technical Director at Winthrop when I started there, and I had come from another audition where I didn’t get cast. Clark and I knew each other from working together on weekends at the museum in Rock Hill, SC. I helped out with the front desk and gift shop, and Clark worked in the planetarium. So when he saw me wandering around the theatre building, he offered me a gig running spotlight for the show.

And that’s where it all started for me. I had fun running the spot, and I felt like I was part of something for a change. At the time I was an English major, which is a fairly solitary endeavor, so the feeling of working together with a bunch of people to get something done was really welcome. The theatre folks welcomed me with open arms, probably because they were (and still are) as weird, awkward and dysfunctional as I was (am). So by the end of that year I had double-majored, gotten some small roles in shows, but more importantly I had discovered a whole new world. A world that over the next twenty years would feed my family, buy my house, my cars, send me all over the country, and eventually turn me into a professional writer.

That year I joined a brotherhood that I’ve strayed away from for while, but always find myself drawn back into it. We’re the ones in black, with tools hanging from out belts, probably with tattoos and piercings, and we might look more like a motorcycle gang than highly skilled professionals in an extremely technical field, but we’re the people you want on your side when it absolutely, positively has to get done right away. We’re rude, crude and obscene. We drink too much, eat too much greasy food, frequently have unreliable relationships with barbers and razors, but we can make sure that the show happens right, and happens on time, and then gets the hell out of our building so we can go drink. We’re technicians.

We’re not “techies.” A “techie” is a high school kid running props for extra credit. A “techie” is an actor who might be able to run the light board if everything is programmed for them. A “techie” is someone who you’ll let help push road cases but you’d never trust them to stack motor boxes in the back of a semi with you. I haven’t been a “techie”for a couple decades now, and I’m pretty damn quick to correct anyone who tosses that term around.

We’re techs, stagehands, crew, technicians, squints, squeals, riggers, truss monkeys, wood butchers, sparkies, board ops, spot ops, deckhands, truck trolls and a thousand other names that we’ve given ourselves. But you might not get to use those. Nicknames are like kid brothers – I can beat the shit out of mine, but you’d better not even look at him funny.

We’re brothers and sisters in black, a family forged in the backs of tractor-trailer trucks and in the high steel. We’re the people who make your entertainment happen, and without us, your favorite performer naked on a bare stage in the dark and no one can hear them whine about it. No matter how long I’m out of the business, or just tangentially attached to it, I can walk into a theatre with a black shirt, gloves and a crescent wrench and step right back into that world. I’m not nearly as nimble as I once was scurrying up a rope ladder to focus a front of house rig, but I’m still able to get into the back of a truck and sling a lot of steel.

I was reminded this week of what it means to be part of that brotherhood, because we lost another on of our own here in Charlotte. Ironically,I met Chris Burchett when neither one of us were doing much stagehand work. I was selling him lighting gear as he was the tech director for a local private school. We weren’t friends, really, but buddies. Acquaintances. The guys who shake hands and catch up briefly when you work a gig together every three or four years. But in the sense that he was one of us – the crew, he was my brother. And I’ll miss him. Being a theatre technician in a small community like Charlotte is very much a John Donne kinda thing – each man’s death diminishes me. I’m diminished by Chris’ passing, as is our whole brotherhood. And even though the audiences will never know it, backstage there is a void.

Vaya con Dios, Chris. You are missed.

There’s a lot going around about the SOPA/PIPA legislation and why we should black out our websites and why it’s a bad idea. There are a lot of people who have said it better than me. Here’s one of them.

Here’s another one – Wil Wheaton

Please, write your congressman/woman/person/puppet and tell them why they should be unemployed if they support this bill. Because a lot of us who create content certainly will be.

Bet you never thought you’d read that here, did you?

Full disclosure – I’m not terribly religious. I believe in stuff, but I’m as organized in my religion as I am in everything else in my life, which is to say not much at all. So I don’t love Tim Tebow because he’s the second, third or fourth coming of anything.

I like him because he’s a winner. He’s a quarterback who wants to win. This scene from The Replacements shows what a winner is – he’s the guy who wants the ball when it’s all on the line.

Tebow wants the ball. He’s a winner. He’s not afraid to put the entire team on his back and carry them across the goal line. He did it at Florida, and I remember watching him in a press conference where he was so fired up about losing a game that he basically promised not to do it again. And he didn’t. On his way to a record-setting college season and another national championship, he put the Gators on his back and carried them to the title.

I don’t think he’ll do that in Denver this year. I don’t know if he’ll ever win a Super Bowl. Dan Marino didn’t, and is still considered one of the best of all time. And I don’t think Tebow is a Dan Marino, a perfect passer and field general with a Hall of Fame career. But I think he’s a winner.

And I think he’s a nice guy. Everything I’ve seen about him says that he’s a genuinely nice, respectful human being. And he’s pretty unlikely to commit a  felony, unlike certain other starting quarterbacks I could name in the league. My point is not that Tebow is a better person than Mike Vick, I don’t know either of them. My point is not that Tebow is a perfect quarterback, because he certainly isn’t.

But if I couldn’t have Cam Newton and had to take a QB that entered the league in the past two years, I’d take Tebow over any other rookie or sophomore QB. I’m certainly not going to trade Newton for Tebow, because I think Newton is amazing now and will be an elite QB in the next few years.

But Tebow is one of my favorite quarterbacks in the league right now. Because he wants to win. He knows how to win. And he gives a lot back to the community. He’s a sports star that kids can look up to, and I really hope that it stays sincere and he doesn’t get caught up in the cult of personality that we can create. Because it’s awfully fun to watch a nice guy win now and then.

Tim Tebow is the kind of guy I can root for. As long as he’s not playing against the Panthers.

Just for the record, five hours of tattooing is a lot. A whole lot. This is my third tattoo, and by a mile the most extensive. I went in wanting something to symbolize rebirth and transformation as I move from one career into another one entirely. So I looked around for a while before I decided on a tattoo shop, Fu’s Custom Tattoo’s here in Charlotte. I met with Christian Dunn, set an appointment and gave him a piece of reference art to think about.

We started here.

Or more specifically, here, because as much as I love Jean Grey, she wasn’t what I was shooting for.

only without the ginormous boobs. I love boobs, but I don’t want them tattooed on my shoulder.

I left that with Christian to think about, and we scheduled an appointment. I’ll admit to a certain level of nerves when he said that I should come in at 12:30 in the afternoon and that I would be his only appointment that day, because it would be extremely detailed. And a very long process. And take multiple sessions.

I was nervous because I knew what that meant. Pain. Lots of Pain.

I was right. After about an hour and a half of drawing, we were ready to start the outline. Yep, it took over an hour of freehanded drawing before we actually got to any tattoing. Another two hours of needle work, and we had this.

Two hours of having a needle jabbed into my flesh at a bajillion times per minute. A pretty good start. We took a dinner break, and I returned for the last three hours.

Three more hours of having a needle jabbed into my flesh at a bajillion times per minute. And honestly, Christian had a pretty light touch. There were only a few spots where I wanted to cry for my mommy. Mostly up around the top where there’s not much flesh between the skin and the bone. Those spots hurt like hell.

But after three more hours, a bout of lightheadedness, a stomach cramp that would NOT go away, and about a gallon of ink, here’s the end of session 1.

Today my upper arm feels pretty much like I’ve got a bad sunburn. And over the next week this piece will go from lovely to scabby, to flaky, to crappy, back to lovely.

Then in a month or so I get to go back in and get more color done. That will probably only take a couple of hours. I figure when all is said and done I will have spent at least 8 hours in the chair getting inked up.

And I already know what I want for my next one. And the one after that. And the two after that.

It’s a sickness, I know. But they don’t wear out like expensive boots.

Short answer, everything’s okay. Long answer is that next year, all I want for Christmas is nothing that makes me say “Oh shit” and hop in the truck hauling ass to South Carolina at any point. I don’t mind going to see my relatives, but I’d like for their to be no catastrophe involved. No near-death experiences, no medical mishaps, nothing that could remotely smell of tragedy. Just wanted to log that request early. It will be made often this year.

So if you’ve been reading here for a while, you may remember that last year on Christmas Eve my brother’s house burned to the ground. Everything he owned was destroyed, and his two adorable little dogs were killed. We as a family had a pretty craptacular Christmas, and spent a large portion of the first quarter recovering from that financially and emotionally. I want to take another quick second to thank all of you who gave me cash to give to him, it meant the world to me, and to my family, that you guys stepped up and lent a hand. If you ever need me, I’m there.

There will be no asking for donations at any point in this story, that’s another bit of good news.

So let’s hop in the Wayback Machine and go back to the beginning of the month. While I was getting a nice buzz in Las Vegas, my oldest brother was getting a nice buzz off a morphine drip from his second knee replacement of the year. Apparently they both wear out at roughly the same rate, and it made the most sense to get one done in June and then get the other one done in December, so he’d only have to hit one deductible this year. Makes sense to me, right? And the first one went off without a hitch, so I wasn’t worried. I think it was several days later before I even checked in on him. All was well, came the report, and I returned to the bar.

And all remained well as far as we knew until he went back to the doctor a week or so later. There was a little inflammation, and some swelling. The doc gave him a shot of some hefty antibiotics, and started talking about re-admitting him. Well, my brother Bob is a silver-tongued devil when he needs to be, and he really didn’t want to be in the hospital, so he persuaded the doc to let him go home. The doc reluctantly agreed, and checked in on him the following day. The knee looked a lot better, but the doc wanted to check a lab result or two.

Then they told him to get ready for a long stay and at least one more surgery on his knee, because he’d contracted MRSA and they were going to have to go back in and clean the incision. And remove a plastic part of the prosthetic knee. And probably go in again to clean it in a few days. And he was likely going to be in the hospital for at least a week. Maybe up to four weeks. And the antibiotics would be about a twelve-week course of treatment.

Merry Christmas, Bob! They did go back in and clean the wound, and replace the part that potentially had the bacteria living in it now, and they sewed him back up. I rode down to the hospital and took him a bag full of books (if there’s one thing my brother and I share aside from snark, it’s a love of reading). I hung out for a couple of hours and was there when the infectious disease specialist came in to talk to him. He had good news – the second drug they tried on him was “exquisitely effective” against this type of bacteria, so there was almost no chance that it wouldn’t eventually kill off the whole thing. The likelihood that they would have to remove his prosthetic knee entirely was down to around 5-10%, and he would be well enough to go home in a few days. If the insurance company agreed to allow him to administer the drugs at home.

Apparently the antibiotics he was on are incredibly expensive, and the insurance company typically thinks that if you’re so sick as to require that level of medication, that you should be in the hospital. There’s a logic there, but there’s a flaw or two in it as well. But this isn’t a state of healthcare post, so we’ll just get to the rest of the story.

Long story made slightly less long – he went home a few days after I went to see him, which I take full credit for. He still can’t really travel, and because he has a serious (read – can f’n kill you) infection that he’s fighting, he shouldn’t really be around too many people. So he and his family didn’t make it home for Christmas for the first time in my thirty-eight years.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! IT SLICES, IT DICES, IT DELIVERS BABIES!!

There’s more coming, but this is running long. I’ll leave you with a spoiler pic -

And God no, it’s not mine. What are you people, crazy?