The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: August

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

August

Our dreams get fulfilled at different times, for different reasons.

When I first discovered Disney as a real thing in 2007, I never realized it would become this much a part of my existence, entwined inextricably with who I am and how I live. I first visited Disneyland, way out in California, in 2010. When you look at that year, so oddly futuristic to a boy of the 1980s, it doesn’t seem so long ago. But Disneyland was a whole different place in 2010, and I was a whole different man.

Disneyland is eternal, but California Adventure, its sister park, is new. It opened only nine years before I’d visited, the newest stateside Disney park, and while that should have endeared it to me more, it didn’t, exactly. To call it a failure of vision would be a kindness. I remember walking through the entrance plaza and wondering why they were playing rock music at a Disney park. Wasn’t that a Universal thing?

By the time I’d gotten there the first time, plans were already underway to make some radical changes to California Adventure. Disney pumped over a billion dollars into a refurbishment to add a new land, new experiences, and to completely refurbish the strip-mall entrance plaza into something Disney-worthy. The fresh new land would be called Buena Vista Street, and it would be an idealized recreation of Walt Disney’s Los Angeles in the Roaring 20s. For years, I scoured blogs, watching the construction happen. From various temp-job computer screens, I saw Disney constructing new shops, new worlds, and the new central icon – the Carthay Circle Theater Restaurant. Everything was sparkling and beautiful, and one of the biggest dreams I’d held for years was actually stepping through those gates and seeing this park in person for the very first time, and seeing it with my friend Paul Timm, one of my very best friends.

Standing on Buena Vista Street took my breath away.

The fountain. The Red Car Trolley. The live singers, especially Five and Dime (a jazzy sextet that arrived on Buena Vista Street in a jalopy). The Fiddler, Fifer, and Practical Café (really a high-end, highly themed Starbucks). Part of it was that I was there with friends – Paul, Steven, Betsy, Lee, Lori, the Braunsteins, Scarlett, Jeff, everyone, all the people who started off as Disney friends and became more than that – especially Kristen and Doug, who spent most of a whole day alone with me until we couldn’t take anymore. (Literally. They wouldn’t go on the spine-busting Matterhorn with me one more time.) Of course also the Little Mermaid ride, and the changes to Paradise Pier, and the Mad Tea Party, and holy hell the majesty of Carsland, a land I never thought I’d like but ended up loving. But Buena Vista Street, that’s where I was in August.

But it’s not all, of course, because no month is made up of a single experience. Perhaps just as importantly, mine and Chris Cuddy’s Sketchhaus show, The August Monologues took off in a biggish way, selling out the first and last weeks. In the middle, it was a bit of a struggle to get an audience, but we were never empty. The most important thing for me, personally, was writing my own summer monologue, a story about the first person I ever fell in love with. It was called “No Strings Attached,” and for three out of the five weeks of The August Monologues, I shared one of the most personal stories of my life with an audience of strangers and friends. I keep saying I’m not a performer, but those moments on stage were major for me. Half of it was catharsis; the other half was entertaining the masses. I think I succeeded at both.

Speaking of which: the idea I had for the four-part show was blossoming. It was going to be called World of Hurt, and it would be four distinct shows focusing on four eras of live comedy: Vaudeville, Variety Show, Improv, and Saturday Night Live. I didn’t have any idea if anyone would want to do it, but my ambition had gotten me this far, and I thought it would get me my show. I read a book about improve specifically so I could write an “improvised” show.

On August 14, I traveled to Fenway Park by myself to see Bruce Springsteen perform for the second time that year. It was a solid show – Bruce’s first stateside in awhile – and of course I went home with my throat hoarse and the taste of Cracker Jack on my tongue. But the next night, I was with my buddy Ian. We sat high up in the bleachers and halfway through, the rain started coming down … and it was still one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. Later on, the Springsteen news site Backstreets would call it a “stratospheric performance,” and I cannot argue with that. He broke out rarities. He redefined classic songs. He was on, and so were we, and I thanked my lucky stars that I was there with a friend I loved who felt exactly what was happening.

Perich turned in my draft of I’m On Fire with … some reservations. The chief of which was that he didn’t like my main character. Hated her, in fact. So it was back to the drawing board for a third sweep through my novel, in which Laurie becomes a better person. That’s what beta-readers and third drafts are for.

Stephen King came out with two new short stories – “A Face In the Crowd” with Stewart O’Nan, and “Batman and Robin Have an Altercation,” one of his best-ever stories. I wrote reviews of both, plus one for the Peter Straub novella, The Buffalo Hunter. It remains my only month in which I have three FEARnet articles. I also wrote one poem, “A Place to Charge My Phone.” It would be the last poem I wrote until December.

I concluded August with another trip to Georgia, during which my buddy Joe and I took the drive up to Athens so I could once again see Drive-By Truckers. The concert in April had been such a life-changing exhilaration, and yes, maybe I wanted to capture that lightning in a bottle. Joe chose not to join me this time at the concert, but when I got inside the Athens Theater, I bellied right up to the stage, made a few new friends, bought some new merch, and screamed along with the show till I couldn't scream no more. On night one, Patterson Hood saw my tattoo - "It's Great to Be Alive." On night two, he sang the song it came from, "World of Hurt," and that's when I knew my show was going to work.

After my Disney trip, I headed out to Los Angeles for a few days to visit my

friends. My friend Josh and I drove back from Anaheim with the top down and listening to nerd music the whole way. And then my friend Paul Knepper picked me up and we drove through the Hollywood Hills. Paul K has become one of my unexpectedly fantastic friends; like every California Paul I know, he’s quietly infused himself into my life, making it better. Later on, we went to see Wrath of Khan at the theater and the director randomly was there talking about the movie, because that’s Los Angeles. We went to In & Out Burger and ordered off the secret menu. We walked down Hollywood Boulevard so I could find Roscoe Arbuckle. But I’ll keep going back to that drive through the Hills before we headed into the Valley. We were listening to the radio, and without warning, Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights” blasted on, and my world was bliss. Sometimes the moments don’t have to be grand to realize you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Books Read: Truth In Comedy, by Charna Halpern,Del Close,Kim Johnson; The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving