Criss MISS 2024 

I find creating a cheery holiday letter more than a bit of a task this year, mainly because of how our country has so clearly turned on itself. I’ve spent most of my long life trying to fight the good fight for justice and equality—and today I feel as though most of that effort was for nothing. Like so many of us, my hope for the future and faith in humanity has dwindled to just about zero.

Personally, 2024 has also been a challenge in many ways, some of it connected to the world situation, some of it connected to turning 78. Einstein was once asked what he thought was the greatest challenge in life. He said, “For any living creature, it’s growing old.” I have slowed down considerably, especially in the last month as I recover from detached retina surgery in early November. Staring down at the floor for weeks and only sleeping on my left side has been an effort, especially considering some nasty arthritis and osteoporosis in my neck and back. I know… I sound like an old duffer, something I fight on a daily basis, but there it is.

We also had to cancel our annual Crissmiss in New Orleans this month because of my eye; due to the pressure, I can’t fly until late January. We hope to go in the Spring during the annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival if we can work around Hugh’s busy work schedule then. Being in NOLA is the closest thing I know to “going home” for me and I need a fix badly.

"Crissmuss in the Quarter" by Travis Michael Holder, 2024, from my photo taken in December, 2023

 

Speaking of thwarted travel, I was thrilled to be teaching acting intensives last year in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; and Montevideo, Uruguay (my favorite) in May and then in Madrid and Barcelona in October. I expected to return again this year on the same route and schedule but, thanks to the global economy, the production company found the cost of bringing us there had more than doubled since the pandemic and chose to conduct the workshops online this year, not an easy task when teaching the theatre arts—and the scenery is nowhere near as nice.

Still, a dozen of the students from my South American and Spanish classes I chose to receive scholarships to study for a month here in LA arrived last April and made an otherwise fairly crappy year far better, especially since we rehearsed and performed my 1997 play STR8 2 PRDRS., which I rewrote especially for them. It was gloriously soul-redefining.

I miss acting tremendously since I’ve basically aged out of being castable as the only geriatric juvenile in the business with an ass the size of Texas (and I have no interest in playing Doc in West Side Story at the Gooberville Civic Light Opera in Podunk, Anywhere), but I do miss teaching almost as much. Both the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts here and Theatre of Arts have gone ka-put this year and I fear the west coast campus of the New York Film Academy, where I taught for a decade before the pandemic, is in danger of following.

I’ve also made a sizable part of my drastically fluctuating income as an acting coach for film and auditions over the last decade but, thanks to the lowest point ever for film and tv production in LA, that income has also dried up, as has selling my paintings now that people are no longer locked inside their homes staring at blank walls. Someone last year made a crack asking if I am Hugh’s “sugar daddy,” which I found especially funny since these days his income is about five times more impressive than mine.

Good stuff? Well, Victor is still home, which is both wonderful and a double-edged sword. I’m glad he’s still well enough to not be in a care facility but caring for him is a lottalotta work, which is even more difficult while I recuperate myself right now. Thank Geebus for Hugh, who has taken care of both of us tirelessly while I heal.

It goes without saying that Hugh is the very best thing to ever happen in my life. We have been together 12 years next month and they have been deliriously happy years at that—I just wish I could shake the feeling that he’s wasting some good years stuck with someone old enough to be his… well, let’s not go there. To him, this is an unconscionable non-issue because what we share is so incredibly special. Wish I could just accept that, but Jewish guilt is more than a myth and I’ve become a posterchild for the concept, especially this past year. 

I swore when Oreo died in late 2022 that I was done with rescuing animals, but after all those months without a canine or feline roommate (literally the first time in my life), we agreed to temporarily take in a sweet little pug who had been a breeder, housed in an outdoor cage with concrete floor all her life until she was unceremoniously dumped at a shelter. She has eye issues of her own to overcome and the lovely people who were fostering her found she was not dealing well around other dogs and needed a nice quiet place to get better where she could be the only one. Well, of course Mrs. Melody Lindgerzohn immediately became a permanent member of our household and is not going anywhere. Our dysfunctional little family is complete once again. 

I’m sorry this little epistle of dubious joy isn’t my usual declaration of how bright and shiny the world is. Truly, I have much, much for which to be grateful, including being deemed cancer free this year after my latest bout with mortality in 2020, so I should just shuddafuckup right now. Let me apologetically blame 2024 in general and all my 77 million selfish and deluded countrymen in particular for my (hopefully temporary) attitude this time ‘round; maybe I should try holding ol’ Ebenezer’s undigested bit of beef and fragment of underdone potato responsible for my descent into holiday cynicism and humbuggery.

I wonder how the Cratchitts would have voted?

Hopefully next year, if I haven’t shuffled off my mortal coil and am not planted next to Tiny Tim by then, I’ll be back to my usual Pollyanna self. I wish you all well regardless and…

... buy my damned book if you haven’t yet, won’t you? I need the income.

Waiting for Walk is available (with five friggin’ stars, no less!) on Amazon or at my publisher’s website at www.incunabulamedia.com/the-world.

You can also read more about it here on my site by clicking on "WAITING FOR WALK" or at www.TicketHoldersLA.com/waiting4walk

Happier holidays.

TravASS

 

P.S.!!! And hey! While I'm here blatantly trying to sell stuff, although Hugh's amazing Urban Native, a "biographical tale of sanity, tolerance, and true humanity" that I edited, designed (and titled), is selling far better than mine but if you haven't read it, you're missing something special. It's also available from Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and on our publisher's website at www.incunabulamedia.com/the-world.