A Trilogy of Plays now available
Available for the first time from Smith & Kraus, the complete texts for the award-winning plays, The Common Air, Unequalibrium and Desperelics, written by Alex Lyras and Robert McCaskill, produced […]
alex lyras
Love Nietzsche at The Blank Theatre
A Ray of Hope
What if you never had to pay another utility bill for the rest of your life? What if, instead of dishing-out for oil, gas, or electric every month, you got paid […]
Missive From Morocco #5 – critical crew
Making television is a high pressure gig. If you’re in a crucial position, one mistake will have you packing your bags– fired and replaced– before the footage gets downloaded from the camera. The […]
Missive From Morocco #2 – allies & enemies
5:30 am and I’m ferreting in the dark for a snooze button. My alarm is weaker than usual. Maybe I forgot to kick the volume up before I hit the sack. What’s […]
Missive From Morocco #1 – the adventure begins
Week one of working on Tut, Spike TV’s maiden drama series, directed by David Von Ancken and starring Sir Ben Kingsley. I’m playing a general in King Tut’s army and I’ve been knee […]
The Dope on Dope
The New York Times editorial board recently and wholeheartedly endorsed the legalization of marijuana. Stop the presses. Break out the herb grinder. Prepare to add a little more vapor to […]
Small Swigs From The World Cup
The World Cup intensifies, bringing the planet earth together to witness what our host nation so elegantly calls fu-chee-bol. It’s been a rewarding tournament, but in a perfect world, a few […]
Shark Fins and Royal Perseverance
Los Angeles is a notoriously fickle town. Perhaps it comes with territory to over hype the shit out of something and then bail on it the moment it under performs. […]
The Internet Thingy and the Technopocalypse
Prepare yourself for a zeitgeist shift. Or don’t prepare. The transition will update automatically. Your “things” are already smarter than you… All kinds of objects, from highway entrances to clothing […]
Look Out Multiverse, Here We Come
Since the Industrial Age kicked off three hundred years ago, our glorious species has been gleefully pillaging and polluting the planet with the impunity most often reserved for maladapted viruses– […]
I’m Walkin’ Here!
As a decade long New York transplant, there’s nothing more galvanizing than witnessing downtown Los Angeles come to life– explode, might be a better adjective– with nationally recognized restaurants, brand […]
Google Brain, On Sale Now
Flip on any screen that plays a moving image and you’ll see a fast spreading cultural meme in films, TV series and TED talks alike: human beings are integrating technology […]
Waiter, There’s a Soup In My Fly
There’s an old adage that goes something like this: the only two creatures on the planet who will survive a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches… and Keith Richards. The good news […]
Jelly Roll Blues and Antigravity
So the facts are out, and the news is devastating. If you’ve been living in a cave and haven’t heard, brace yourself: Jellyfish born in space have “massive vertigo” when […]
Hurry Up Right Now Too Late You Missed it!
Anyone else getting the sinking feeling that no matter what you achieve in life it’ll be quickly lost in the spiraling eddy of data-overload that now engrosses every aspect of […]
Notes From The Underground: LA vs NYC subways
Yeah, LA’s got a subway. Make all the jokes you want. Skip riding it. Inhale gridlock fumes while inching forward at 2 miles an hour instead. We’ll be thrilled to […]
The World Is My Recliner
We’ve all seen Wall-E, right? It’s starting to feel like if the film wasn’t animated it could be a documentary about the near future. The floating fatsos in their all encompassing […]
Epic America, Happy 273rd
There’s nothing more patriotic than a July 4th roadtrip up Rt. 1 along the literal edge of America to put all the miniscule bullshit of your life into immediate perspective. […]
Human Exceptionalism And The Zombie Apocalypse
Now that we’ve Zombified ourselves to death in tv and film– Wikipedia lists 641 individual titles– let us pause and contemplate our fascination with the denigration of the human race […]
Five For A Buck
There used to be a bar I loved. There have been many over the years. Almost all of them were dives and there ain’t an ounce of irony in that […]
The Agony/Ecstasy of a Solo Show
The most disheartening question you will ever hear from an actor friend is “Will you come see my solo show?” We’ve all cringed in our seats, eyeing the cell phone […]
Talking Timbuktu
You have to marvel at a culture that prides itself on intolerance, denial and annihilation. No, this is not another rant on our gridlocked, be-uncooperative-at-any-cost US Senate, though they do […]
Here’s the (Sandy) Hook
Why is it easier for a teenager to get a semi-automatic weapon and enough bullets to level a school full of children than it is to get a case of […]
When “Blank” Friday Comes…
It got a little misty in the hours after Thanksgiving dinner. A marine layer filled the air just enough to blur the omnipresent police flashers as a gaggle of cops redirected […]
Sandy and The Meta-storm
For all the pandemonium Sandy spewed on New York and Jersey, there was one meme that spread as far as the arms of the spiral itself, and it was this: […]
Instant Eradification
All of those unshowered, vagrant conspiracy theorists– the 99 percent who claimed the system was intrinsically stacked against them, the ones the main stream and liberal media pigeon holed– were […]
Tellin’ It Like It Should Be
Discerning what’s real and what’s not in our increasingly byte-sized reality is becoming a savagely challenging task. Add a home address in Hollywood, CA. and it can become downright surrealistic. […]
Olympics As They Oughta Be
The Olympics have commenced, and highlights abound, as do the smaller scandals of minor doping, misconstrued tweets, badminton game throwing and an oddly ominous opening ceremony. Hail to Danny Boyle’s […]
Oh Beautiful, For Perspicacious Skies
What shall we celebrate this 4th of July this year? For many in this great republic America, it’s the all too traditional answer: freedom from Canada, after a protracted and […]