Planet Earth is STILL blue...

Roughly six weeks ago I began rehearsing Hamlet.

Part of me wanted to make a very public record of what was going on in rehearsals...

...but the other, older, and wiser part of me that said, "Umm, no..." won out.

But I will say it's been...quick. This Hamletprocess.

Lots of information to digest, daily, and then build with...to...well, create "something".

That something opens in four days, and will, in its short life continue to grow.

I'm proud of the work. Everybody's work. It's an ensemble. It shouldn't be called Hamlet. It should be called A Group of Crazies Played Together For Six Weeks To Bring You The Story Of A Really Troubled Royal Family In Denmark. But it shouldn't be called just...well...you know.

And I'm really proud to be an actor.

Proud to be an artist.

Proud to be free to create these stories with a lot of like-minded (or not so like-minded) individuals, in the hopes that someday, somewhere, somehow someone will be touched enough by what they see to make a positive change in their own lives.

Because it's all dust in the end.

Might as well make something beautiful with what we have while we have it.

Much love, all of you, for these last few weeks.

'08

'Nuff said.

My friend Joe recently posted a listing of all of the books Sarah Barracuda Palin attempted to have banned from the Wasilla Public Library, according to the official minutes of the Library Board.

When she was unsuccessful at having these books banned, she tried to have the librarian fired.

Thanks, Joe, for finding this.

Keep scrolling down, the list is long. super long. far too long...

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K.
Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K.
Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K.
Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K.
Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H.
Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye b y J.D.
Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C.
Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna Barth

Planet Earth is Blue...

...and there's nothing I can do.

Yep. Space Oddity, I have decided, just may be the best song ever written.

I mean, we're all almost past a hundred-thousand miles...

Feeling like we're floating in tin cans...

But what of that?

I finished my first "week" back at school.

I say, "week", because I started classes mid-week, due to my tardy arrival from Utah.

From "The Shakes".

We've started rehearsals for Hamlet.

Which is good.

Grand, really.

I'm an emotional raw nerve most of the time...which, let me tell you, is actually a nice place to be...for where I am at. For what I need to do...

It's like a hundred-thousand-plus shafts of light entering me at once, circulating, bouncing around, and then shooting out in an infinite number of directions.

I'm not shutting off.

Which is rad.

I have no idea why this is.

But I want to build real estate here, and live in that for as long as I can.

I've also told a couple of friends its like my chest cavity being cracked open, and instead of the internal organs, millions of butterflies, mostly all lavender, bursting out into the air.

Welcome to playing Hamlet.

The Conduit.

The Experiment.

The Training.

It is, as they say, going to be a ride.

California Dreaming

Well, I'm in California.

And I miss it more than I ever thought possible.

I miss the break of the surf in the afternoon.

I miss the fog rolling into the bay as I drive down the highway.

I miss the family that I have in my friends and the friends I have in my family.

My friends are all getting married...perhaps I'm sentimental.

Perhaps I'm not doing everything I want to...

...Perhaps there is still time.

The Second Transport Has Been Vaporized

Well, the goals are getting eradicated one by one.

The Omelette is on its way.

I thru-hiked all 16 mikes of the Zion Narrows--in 5 hours and 55 minutes.

I have started to prep Hamlet.

So, things are moving along.

I'm getting restless though.

I keep questioning "what's next?", though I really should be concentrating solely on each individual moment.

Such is life.

There are more things in heaven and earth...

More soon.

-J

The first transport is away...

...or, rather, the habit of blogging (almost typed "blooging") has been away.

I'm still in the deserts of Southern Utah, still acting away at the Shakespeare Festival.

Still wrapping my mind around training.

Still wrapping my body around wellness.

Still wrapping my senses around mother nature.

The summer has gone well, so far. I've done some serious hiking, though I want to do much more than I've done.

The shows are going well. Still battling the "In Training" monster every time I walk on stage. Some breakthroughs, some breakdowns, some broken joints. Well, not broken. Strained. All for a cause, to be sure.

In a change of pace, The Dark Knight opens in a couple days.

Those of you who know me, well, you know how I feel about this.

"Giddy" and "Schoolgirl" fit into a sentence of sorts.

Goals for remaining Utah time:

-Through Hike the Zion Narrows
-Camp in Bryce
-Seek Anazazi Ruins
-Return to The Escalante and Hell's Backbone
-Take a Canyoneering Class
-Master the perfect omelette.
-Start on Hamlet
-Keep on Keepin' On

Cheers,

Justin

I Want to be Captain America.

Yep. I want to play Captain America.

That is all.

-J

Utah's for Lovers...

...or people who want to do what they can to find a drink, and/or seek death in Mother Nature's arms.

I choose to do both of those things.

The initial two weeks here at USF have been going well. I'm loving rehearsals, loving my company members, and loving getting to wake up, go to the gym, go to rehearsal, have a drink, lather, rinse, repeat. I do well with this life. Or this life does well with me. Or something.

Also, I'm loving hitting the trails every weekend.

This last week I went on a solo hike in Zion National Park. I chose Angel's Landing, which is pretty much a 5 mile round-trip involving serious elevation gains and a lot of open exposure during the last half-mile. Here's the view from the top:



Which, you know, is cool.

I attempted to speed-hike the trail, which was all good. I made good time from the trailhead to the beginning of the climbing/scramble section.



But the tight trail-space and volume of touristas on the trail pretty much killed my goal of ascending and descending in 1:30. 'Cause, well, it's a tight space with massive drop-offs.



But that's cool. I still had a fantastic time.

Anyway, things go well, here.

More to come anon, and such.

Cheers,

Justin

I lived, by-the-way. Thanks for asking.

The Road to Utah: Day 1

We're on the road.

Me, Drew, and Corey. On the road to Utah.

After an EXTREMELY exciting morning of packing up the car.

Ever duct tape a bike to the roof of an SUV?

You should try it sometime. Really.

And yes. It works. So far.

Although I keep waiting for the sudden sound of aluminum ripping away from its "secure" tape at 70 miles per hour, chaos ensuing behind our car as our bikes are turned to pollen by a semi-truck.

We. Shall. See.

So, after a pretty easy 8 hours, and multiple stops at Army Surplus stores, fireworks "super shops" and one too many Cracker Barrels, we arrived in Kansas City, KS (where Drew is from), only to be greeted by his parents with open arms and a tornado warning. Yep. Tornado warning. Good times.

However, the storm passed, we had some dinner, and all is well.

A note about non-urban Middle America:

All males must wear sleeveless t-shirts and sport goatees, on pain of death.

Apparently.

Something I do dig: the way you can drive for hours through farm country, sparsely populated, and then suddenly: BAM. Urban center, choked with life.

There's something kind of, well, soothing about it.

I don't know why.

Because I'm tired.

So it's off to bed.

Tomorrow, it's on through Kansas to Denver.

Cheers.

Busy is as Busy Does

My name is Justin Matthew Gordon.

I am a workaholic.

I took on a few too many things for the month of April, but I'm making due.

Hence the whole "not blog much" thing.

However, I would like to report that all is well in the Land of Lincoln.

I just closed a very rewarding production of Measure for Measure, in which I feel I made some serious leaps in my training here at UIUC.

Also, I'm getting ready to open a production of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winterwhich I directed. It's going to be pretty great, thanks to my actors and design team. I just sit and make observations and clean up some blocking...they're doing a great job.

Then, in three-ish weeks it's off to Mormon country again for a summer of Shakespeare and hiking. Things are, as they say, looking up.

It's only everything...

...isn't it, though?

My best friend Rob is the lead singer of a tremendous Indie band, known as Beezle.

As Rob is my aforementioned best friend and therefore brother, it is only natural that I have been following Beezle since their conception several years ago.

Currently, one of their songs is my favorite songs amongst favorite songs.

The name of this song is "It's Only Everything."

This song is my said favorite because it's hook, it's title, pretty much sums up where I am at during this stage in my life: I have to focus on Only Everything.

Year Two of "The Great Illinois Sojourn" I call grad school is over in six week. Then it's a summer of Shakespeare in Utah and one more year here in the cornfields. Then it is...where? Possibilities are endless, yet limited. Ostensibly, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago (in descending order) are my viable choices, career-speaking.

So, if I descend on one of these cities, what do I give?

Why, Only Everything.

And what does Everything entail? My talent, my relationship, my friendships, my family, my self? Can I give everything I have to be something I aspire to? Is greatness derived from absolute success in my field, or is success in my field derived from absolute greatness?

Do I want to hold my cake and taste it at once?

I have friends who are fans but no fans who are friends.

I have everything and nothing, which is Only Everything.

I'm just a drunk in a band.

A band of actors, making their way forward, ever forward.

However, one thing can be said now: I love where I'm at. I love where I am headed. What's missing is...Only Everything.

Thanks, Rob...for writing this song.

Jobby Job

Heyo!

Just some summer job update stuff:

I'll be back at the Utah Shakespearean Festival this summer, playing Valentine in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" and Cassio in "Othello."

I'm pretty stoked.

School goes well. Currently playing Angelo in "Measure for Measure" and directing "Red Light Winter" by Adam Rapp. I'm also learning to juggle, do backflips, be a ninja, and generally being a clown.

Seriously.

Hope all is well with all y'all.

Much love.

-J

RIP, Heath Ledger

So, like much of the world today, I was shocked and saddened to hear of Heath Ledger's sudden death.

And I'm sure I'm not the first person to write about it in a blog, either.

But as an artist, as an ACTOR, this hit me hard.

He was several months younger than me.

He had nothing but potential. His work in 'Brokeback Mountain' was superb. And after 'The Dark Knight' comes out, and the mass public sees what he did with The Joker, I'm sure his career would have sky-rocketed. And now, naked in a subleased apartment surrounded by pills, his candle burns out. It's a damn shame.

Life can go away at any moment. It's important to remember that. When we, as actors, complain about our roles. Are slow to memorize our lines. Moan about how hard our life is.

But it is the life we've chosen.

We should work our asses. Off.

Heath Ledger's passing has made me realize one thing: work as hard as I can, because tomorrow I may not get the chance.

RIP, Mr. Ledger. You're an inspiration, and you'll be missed.

J Matt's Winter Vacation-Epilogue

Wow. Fell off of the road-trip blog wagon there. Sorry about that.

Anyhoo...

I'm now back in Urbana after 4-ish weeks in Cali. I had a good time. Saw friends, family, animals...some all at the same time. The highlights, I'd have to say, involved the animals. Take for instance these Elephant Seals I saw outside of Cambria, CA. I give ye seal videos:






I dug them.

Quite.

At any rate, I don't have much to say. Home was, and continues to be, exhausting and welcoming at the same time. Nostalgia, distance, regret, hope...all of these feeling carried equal weight with me.

And if I learned anything from the trip, it was this:

No regrets. Move forward.

Happy 2008!

Some more photos:

A bridge in Big Sur, near where I used to live:



The Donner Party Memorial...I drove past here 2 days before this whole area was snowed out.

Happy to be back home!

Cheers,

J