Hey all, Please visit WALL STREET (cares) Ham is now doing his shit starting on film.
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Thanks, Ham
"Words are good." ~ Ham Adams
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Wall Street Cares (Coming soon!)
Howdy, long time no write. Sorry there were several reasons. One, I've jumped between Blogger and WordPress. The WordPress layout was perfect but I missed much of the functionality of Blogger. Also, I think much of the fire was out. At a subconscious level I knew partisan politics was not the big issue. As we see now, the system is defective on both sides. Don't get me wrong I'm backing Obama and think the Republican Party has been co-opted by pod people and any sane or moderate voice in it is long gone or in hiding.
Lastly, I've been preoccupied with some other writing in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like the protesters, It's taken me some time to get a grasp on the central issue. I woke up laughing at what I thought Wall Street might say in response in some unified way. As if they, A. Cared. or B. Were a unified body.
I've written about a dozen ads and showed them to a producer and director and they loved it.
We shot some promos and a pitch for funding. It's a low budget affair so I'll just be passing the hat on Face Book and emailing friends. My partners are already doing this type of stuff. The director Ryan Kleier is a UCB guy and is hilarious with a sharp ear and eye for satire. You can see his stuff by visiting Funkanomics. My producer is Steven Attema who, months ago, rather presciently came up with the idea of a film where Wall Street miscreants get kidnapped and beat up on TV for the amusement of the viewing audience. (I played a particularly awful guy and well, you'll see.) His movie is called Kill Street.
So Ham Adams is back and I'll be bloviating here once a week any way. And I'll keep you updated with my project WALL STREET CARES. I'll have video posted here and on FB in a couple of weeks.
We are living in difficult, but exciting times. Solidarity and love to you all. Ham
Lastly, I've been preoccupied with some other writing in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like the protesters, It's taken me some time to get a grasp on the central issue. I woke up laughing at what I thought Wall Street might say in response in some unified way. As if they, A. Cared. or B. Were a unified body.
I've written about a dozen ads and showed them to a producer and director and they loved it.
We shot some promos and a pitch for funding. It's a low budget affair so I'll just be passing the hat on Face Book and emailing friends. My partners are already doing this type of stuff. The director Ryan Kleier is a UCB guy and is hilarious with a sharp ear and eye for satire. You can see his stuff by visiting Funkanomics. My producer is Steven Attema who, months ago, rather presciently came up with the idea of a film where Wall Street miscreants get kidnapped and beat up on TV for the amusement of the viewing audience. (I played a particularly awful guy and well, you'll see.) His movie is called Kill Street.
So Ham Adams is back and I'll be bloviating here once a week any way. And I'll keep you updated with my project WALL STREET CARES. I'll have video posted here and on FB in a couple of weeks.
We are living in difficult, but exciting times. Solidarity and love to you all. Ham
Thursday, March 17, 2011
FAREWELL TO FUZZ - FAREWELL TO ED
I cried when he died of course, but I don't think it hit me as hard as it did my brothers and sisters. Partly because of my philosophy. I think people live on in memory and partly because I was carrying his ghost. I was possessed by the ghost of "Fuzz," hale fellow well met.
That's how a therapist labeled him when I was trying to sort something out years ago.
I think now he was being kind. It would be fairer to say my dad played a role. Slightly foolish, well liked, but not respected.
I am not saying he was a fool. On the contrary, he was a quiet, serious, shy, thoughtful, and steady Eddie.
Friends who read this might be saying WTF?
That's because they didn't know the real Ed. They only knew Fuzz, the joker, hale fellow well met, usually after a beer or two under his belt. That was the other part. This facade needed fuel to stay up. I believe now he was really very very shy. Pictures of him as a young man show a loner. As a boy he worked solitary jobs. Trapping muskrat and mink was one of the things he did as a boy to bring home much needed money.
I can see him rising early to check and set his long string of traps before school.
I can see his H.S. photo, a slightly lost look in his eyes.
No sign yet of the guy people knew as Fuzz.
I got to know that quiet solitary boy when I would get up early for school. I somehow knew I was invading an old old habit of solitude before going out to bring home the "pelts," only now the pelts were paychecks provided by a company he went to work for after his stab at his own business went bankrupt. Not for lack of hard work or even lack of business. It failed because my father had that bad for business trait shared by his sons, he trusted people and assumed they where good like him, even the partner who ran off with all the money and left him feeling like he'd failed.
I got to know that quiet solitary boy when I would get up early for school. I somehow knew I was invading an old old habit of solitude before going out to bring home the "pelts," only now the pelts were paychecks provided by a company he went to work for after his stab at his own business went bankrupt. Not for lack of hard work or even lack of business. It failed because my father had that bad for business trait shared by his sons, he trusted people and assumed they where good like him, even the partner who ran off with all the money and left him feeling like he'd failed.
My mother said it was the only time she saw him cry.
So he took the job he would work the rest of his working life, save for a few odd jobs in retirement to keep him from the agitation of nothing to do until it was seemly to crack a beer. Noon, I think.
It wasn't a solitary job like he was used to. He had to work with other people. I think that is where Fuzz really took over.
So he took the job he would work the rest of his working life, save for a few odd jobs in retirement to keep him from the agitation of nothing to do until it was seemly to crack a beer. Noon, I think.
It wasn't a solitary job like he was used to. He had to work with other people. I think that is where Fuzz really took over.
He was liked at work, but I don't think he was respected.
Fuzz made friends by joking. He could be liked but a joker isn't taken seriously and that pained him. It pains me. No one had met the serious man who sat quietly before he went to the job where no one listened to him seriously. He had to go. To support his family.
I've carried both men around with me these 50 odd years. I've carried the ghost for 5.
I'm grieving for my father tonight because a friend shocked me. She said, you say some pretty unkind things. I knew what she meant. Fuzz takes over when I'm playing cards and drinking beer, two of the three things that we did together. Golf being the third.
I'm not mean. I'm joking. I was shocked because she couldn't see past that nonsense to the serious person I am. I thought we were better friends. It stung. But it set in motion a train of thought that would leave me weeping on the Q train in Brooklyn for a man who's been dead 5 years.
See that facade, that ghost isn't just a way to be funny and liked. It's also a test, and a gauntlet. I think I adopted the ghost to weed out the undeserving. If you can't navigate and see through this persona to the real me, you can't be my friend.
Why had I surrounded myself with this moat? The one that made my father liked but not respected? I guess it's what we do. We try on daddy's clothes to face the world.
But also I wanted to vindicate him. You want to love me? Love my father too! Goddamn it! He deserved better. Also I am my father's son in that I am a bit of a loner and shyer than you'd thinks and much more serious than you'd think.
It's hard enough to navigate and map my own psyche without fighting my father's feud with the world. So tonight I buried Fuzz. I remember how funny he was and how humor was the currency of the house and the test of whether you belonged. The last woman I brought home failed miserably. I stayed with her anyway. Got a son out of it but, Jesus! What a wet blanket she turned out to be. As foretold!
I wasn't able to eulogize my father 5 years ago. I kind of knew what I wanted to say but it seemed too much about me. Now I know why.
So now that I’ve buried fuzz, let me say good by to Ed.
My father was a flat bottomed boat. The seas of life would rock us but we could count on the steadfast love and support he always provided. He was a quiet, shy, and uncomplicated man. I think he would have been much happier as a farmer. He was a man of the earth. He never made much money. I often thought that was a big regret and one of the things that made him feel like a failure. My mother says no. She says he often talked of his portfolio or legacy, his children. I heard him say that too. Now I believe it. So good bye to the little blond boy who rose before dawn to help the household by walking over miles of ice and snow to check his traps in dark winter solitude. Good bye to the handsome high school graduate with the lost look and unsure future. Good bye to the soldier who took his only trip over seas and returned home saftley but changed, good bye to the smiling newlywed happier that I've ever seen him, good bye to the father standing with his small boys at the beach, his daughters making four, then me making five in the portfolio. Good bye to the man who's in the hospital where his wife and two of his children are hurt, one of them badly, after a car accident. Good bye to the father who is mystified be a son so overwhelmed by life, he doesn't know if he can go on. Good bye to the man who watches as his son learns that he will go on not because of anything he says but because the son sees that he is his father's son so of course he'll find it in himself to go on. And he does. Good bye to the loving grandfather, favorite golf partner, dirty joke lover, consummate word coiner, and yes, hale fellow well met.
Your battles are won. Your legacy grows. And you will be for ever remembered and deeply, deeply loved.
I've carried both men around with me these 50 odd years. I've carried the ghost for 5.
I'm grieving for my father tonight because a friend shocked me. She said, you say some pretty unkind things. I knew what she meant. Fuzz takes over when I'm playing cards and drinking beer, two of the three things that we did together. Golf being the third.
I'm not mean. I'm joking. I was shocked because she couldn't see past that nonsense to the serious person I am. I thought we were better friends. It stung. But it set in motion a train of thought that would leave me weeping on the Q train in Brooklyn for a man who's been dead 5 years.
See that facade, that ghost isn't just a way to be funny and liked. It's also a test, and a gauntlet. I think I adopted the ghost to weed out the undeserving. If you can't navigate and see through this persona to the real me, you can't be my friend.
Why had I surrounded myself with this moat? The one that made my father liked but not respected? I guess it's what we do. We try on daddy's clothes to face the world.
But also I wanted to vindicate him. You want to love me? Love my father too! Goddamn it! He deserved better. Also I am my father's son in that I am a bit of a loner and shyer than you'd thinks and much more serious than you'd think.
It's hard enough to navigate and map my own psyche without fighting my father's feud with the world. So tonight I buried Fuzz. I remember how funny he was and how humor was the currency of the house and the test of whether you belonged. The last woman I brought home failed miserably. I stayed with her anyway. Got a son out of it but, Jesus! What a wet blanket she turned out to be. As foretold!
I wasn't able to eulogize my father 5 years ago. I kind of knew what I wanted to say but it seemed too much about me. Now I know why.
So now that I’ve buried fuzz, let me say good by to Ed.
My father was a flat bottomed boat. The seas of life would rock us but we could count on the steadfast love and support he always provided. He was a quiet, shy, and uncomplicated man. I think he would have been much happier as a farmer. He was a man of the earth. He never made much money. I often thought that was a big regret and one of the things that made him feel like a failure. My mother says no. She says he often talked of his portfolio or legacy, his children. I heard him say that too. Now I believe it. So good bye to the little blond boy who rose before dawn to help the household by walking over miles of ice and snow to check his traps in dark winter solitude. Good bye to the handsome high school graduate with the lost look and unsure future. Good bye to the soldier who took his only trip over seas and returned home saftley but changed, good bye to the smiling newlywed happier that I've ever seen him, good bye to the father standing with his small boys at the beach, his daughters making four, then me making five in the portfolio. Good bye to the man who's in the hospital where his wife and two of his children are hurt, one of them badly, after a car accident. Good bye to the father who is mystified be a son so overwhelmed by life, he doesn't know if he can go on. Good bye to the man who watches as his son learns that he will go on not because of anything he says but because the son sees that he is his father's son so of course he'll find it in himself to go on. And he does. Good bye to the loving grandfather, favorite golf partner, dirty joke lover, consummate word coiner, and yes, hale fellow well met.
Your battles are won. Your legacy grows. And you will be for ever remembered and deeply, deeply loved.
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