Living a Dream

Not like that fake 100th post from a week or two ago. This is actually my 100th post at kevinpaulnye.blogspot.com, which would be more of an accomplishment if it didn't actually take me 6+ years. That's right, the first post on this site was in July of 2009 - about seven weeks after I graduated college, which is a seriously distant memory at this point. There've been some ups and downs along the way. Originally it was meant to be a journal of finding some legs in the entertainment world: I talked about my first ever stand-up comedy audition , talked about the week-long trip I took to New York with Lou-Chaz Bitsko, and even what my life would look like if it were a movie . Life changed: I moved to Chicago and wrote about people on the train biting each other's ears and just being gross , posted a total of five times in 2011, pretended to get back into blogging in 2012, then left this old thing dormant from August 2012 until November 2014. Oops. But now that I...

(See last week's post for Rome part 1 , which covered the following: Outside the Colosseum, inside the Forum, first trip to the Pantheon, Torre Argentina/Area Sacra, Piazza Navona, the outside of Castel Sant'Angelo, and a few other incidental visits.) After a wild first day in Rome, we jumped out of bed early for an over-fill of our hotel breakfast because we knew we'd need calories. By 8:30 we were queued for the Colosseum and were inside before 9:00. Of course, it was still head-scratching to walk there and pass Trajan's Market, the various forums, and the Arch of Constantine to get there, but that's just part of being in Rome. Inside the Colosseum though...that place is a trip. They do a pretty good job of loading the concourse-area with information and artifacts, allowing you to learn about the building instead of just rushing to the inside area and looking around (which is obviously what everyone wants to do anyway). There's not a whole lot I can say ab...

One of the best things about having a wildly popular blog is that celebrities from all walks of life find their way to it and express their gratitude for what tremendous work I'm creating. On rare occasions they even express interest about how they can get involved. Unfortunately, I don't accept guest posts from these attention-hogs - I know they're just trying to use me for publicity and that's not how it works here at LaD. However, I'm a man of the people, and I know what the people want. With that in mind, and with the presidential race taking center stage over the last couple of months (and continuing to hold center stage for the next year), I was able to get some time on the phone with a man very familiar with presidential races: Former President of the United States of America, Billy Bob Thornton . Me: Mr. President, thank you for taking some time out for me - I know you're a busy man. POTUSA BBT: Well you're certainly welcome, although I feel li...

One thing I probably didn't do enough of while tutoring in Italy was to actually tell stories about tutoring in Italy. Of course there are plenty of posts about where we went and what we did in those places, but not much about the actual teaching, save the vespa disaster . Shortly after we arrived in Italy we started making flyers to advertise our services, and we proceeded to post them around the city (near schools, mostly). We received a few bites from these, including one from a woman named Flaminia*. She wanted to meet me to talk about a few things and she had specific questions in her attempt to learn English. I agreed to meet her at a bookstore which held a cafe in the basement and we began talking about what might be a good way to get her started with the language. She very quickly began asking me specific questions that I was completely unprepared for: Things like "how is my pronunciation?" or "When these 2 letters go together, how do I make that sound?...

People ask if every idea has been had before by someone else. The theory is that there are so many people in the world - and so many who have already lived - that you don't have a truly original thought in your head. In response to this question, I pose a question of my own. Who cares? It doesn't matter if no one has ever thought the exact things that you're thinking, because you're you and that means that it's different. No one has the exact experiences and lenses that you see the world through. When taking improv classes at Second City and iO Chicago, there were plenty of recurring themes, and while the majority of the lessons centered around freeing your mind and being in the moment as you're onstage, there was a specific explanation that stuck with me. As per Colleen Doyle (a teacher I had/genius whose shows with Dummy at iO were/are absolutely incredible), the characters you play are affected by your own life; you see what the character sees, but you...

Ever have one of those days when you wake up and something is a little bit off? Maybe the blanket has bunched up around your knees, maybe the alarm clock didn't go off, or maybe the person you thought you were sleeping next to is already awake and in the bathroom...or doesn't exist. Whatever it is, the day just starts wrong. Ever have one of those days when it gets worse? Maybe you're out of cereal, maybe you miss the train by 30 seconds and end up late for work, maybe someone spills coffee on you - if you'd made it onto the first train you probably wouldn't have had a stranger with coffee right next to you, so this is technically your fault. So things get worse. So work starts and you suddenly realize you forgot about a presentation you were going to give and have to scramble to piece it together. It doesn't go well, and the proof is when your boss gives you a resigned *sigh* instead of a congratulatory handshake before walking out of the room. You need ...

The Eternal City, the birthplace of seemingly everything, one of the most history-rich places on the planet, and a hell of a place to spend four days. We planned to visit Rome for a while but we needed a long-weekend to make it work. We found that long weekend in February (normally the worst month of the year, but it wasn't bad in Italy) and headed out Thursday morning with a return train Sunday night. The train to Rome took us farther south in Italy than we'd previously been, so that was cool. We got to see more countryside from the train than before and even spotted a few hill-towns off in the distance. The difficult thing with writing about Rome, and the reason I've been putting this off for months, is that everything in Rome deserves your attention. Everything that we took a photo of has a story, and those stories are slightly more familiar than they are in other places. Everything is so grand, so incredible, so ostentatious, so brilliant, or so classically lovely, ...