rants, reports, raves, and embarrassments from eric trules

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gratitude and appreciation

From My Front Door, Remembering a Time When Things Were Not So Sweet

There was a time – not toooo long along – probably about 4 winters ago around this same Holiday and Christmas time, when I was still morbidly stuck in the LA desert. I was perhaps 73 years old, had already retired from USC (the over-priced University of Southern California) as a theater professor after 31 years, had gotten married for the first time to an Indonesian woman, also 31 years younger than myself at 55 years old, adopted our 8-year-old Indonesian son at age 68, and was still renting at “Lucretia Gardens” in Echo Park, having been in Los Angeles…

Portrait of an Artist Becoming a Modern Dancer

I’m working on a Memoir called “Discovering the Fountain of Youth, Becoming a First-Time Father at 70”. How do you like the title? ___________________ Here’s a small excerpt.  ___________________ It’s 1970. I’m  22 years old. I’ve just randomly arrived in the Windy City of Chicago, climbed an old wooden staircase up into a rehearsal room on Wells Street in Old Town. A month later, my life will change forever……. ___________________ “Somehow, miraculously, at least to me, I become a modern dancer. Soon a professional one. In the summer of 1970, I’m invited to take a hard-working, new piece-creating, summer workshop for six…

Vaccine Tale with a Twist

Also posted on the ” Cultural Weekly“: https://www.culturalweekly.com/synchronous-vaccination-tale/ ———- So I’m driving home past Dodger Stadium, perhaps the biggest Covid vaccination site in our country. And living in Echo Park, as I do, actually in the hills called Elysian Heights, I live only 4 stops signs away from the World Series Champs of 2020. Seeing a very short line of cars on my way home from grocery shopping with the Fam about 4:30 on January 19, I slow down near the entrance gate at Stadium and Academy Ways, and using my gregarious New York cab driver persona, I shout out to…

Family & Christmas. Like Love & Marriage, rrrrright?

December 24, 2013 Family and Christmas go together, right? Like love and marriage. Like horse and carriage, right? Well, I won’t disagree. But growing up in a mostly non-practicing Jewish family, I didn’t know much about it. Sure, we had Christmas in Salisbury Elementary School and W. Tresper Clarke High School in the 1950s and 60s suburbs of Long Island, New York. Of course, the other-side-of-the tracks O’Farrells and the D’Agostinos let us upper middle class Jewish kids know all about their Irish and Italian blue collar ways, with their anti-Semitic middle school harassment and their Catholic jock-swearing braggadocio. “Fuck…

Turkey Day in the Time of Corona

        Frozen turkey’s in the oven since last night. Special Trules recipe. Last employed almost forty years ago, on 23rd Street and Park Avenue South in New York City, in my clown loft, when my parents were still alive, in the early 1980s. Slow roast. Get the bird to stew overnight in its own juices. Guarantees a moist, delicious feast. Or least it used to, as I said. Let’s see. Forty years is a lonnnnnng time. The times, they have-a changed. Indeed. Bob Dylan, the sage himself, is almost 80. I’m 73. I’ve lived in sunny California…

On Losing Kobe

— Every weekday morning I wake up at 5:45 a.m., to carve out 45 minutes for myself in the bathroom (ok, on the toilet) – before I start my daily “personal homework routine” with my still English-learning, almost 13 year old, son… alternating spelling with dictation, and every morning, reading: “Charlotte’s Web”, “The BFG”… parents, you know the drill.—Ok, I sit and read the newspaper – the old fashioned way – turning the pages to find what I want to read. I have to be judicious, with just 45 minutes at hand. I look at the headlines, page 2 &…

The Big Day, 6th Grade Graduation

The big day. Exsel graduates elementary school! He is in the last 6th grade class in Elysian Heights Elementary School’s 100 year history. (It will become a K-5 arts magnet next year) I remember the 1st day we got there, May 2015, the very end of the school year. I found out that I HAD to bring him to school, otherwise he would be “truant”! So we arrived just down the street from us on Baxter & Echo Park – to this sweet old school, elementary school. He would get to attend the last 2 weeks of 2nd grade –…

Karma, Coincidence, and Clowns, or… a Perfect Circle of People

Sometimes… on a certain night…. or on a certain day…. or in a certain moment, people come together in your life… in an inexplicable, maybe karmic, and if you believe in it, even in a magical way. There’s no logic for it. It’s just something like “life is stranger than fiction”.

On Retirement from a Life in the Theater

Tomorrow I’ll pick up my final pay check. It’s my “last day of service” at the great University of Southern California, where I’ve taught in the School of Dramatic Arts for 31 years. I started as a simple adjunct instructor with a single improv class, and I ended up improvising my way to becoming a full-time “Associate Professor of Theater Practice”. Non- tenured… but still impressive in my parents’ eyes, and not anything I could have anticipated or imagined when I graduated college in 1969 with a degree in Frisbee. That’s almost 50 years ago… during which time I grew…

Chicken Little

We all know the story of Chicken Little, right? “The sky is falling! The sky is falling?” Well, do you remember how that little folk tale and bedtime story ended? I didn’t. So I looked it up. Actually there are two different endings… one much more optimistic than the other. And this little blog entry is about optimism, or…. the lack thereof. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start: “Chicken Little likes to walk in the woods. She likes to look at the trees. She likes to smell the flowers. She likes to listen to…

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