I will never forget the feeling of returning to Denver after Urban Method filmed Season 3. Specifically, one morning I went for a haircut downtown. Somebody recognized me and I spent the rest of the day walking a little taller. It was cool! I was famous! Maybe like an E-List celebrity, but that was way more than I had ever experienced.
This time I returned from the show to Vancouver where it was a little different. No watch parties, no friends calling to hang out, hardly any advertising. That said I did a little promo and had a couple of interviews over Skype the night before the show aired. We watched, had some beers, and I got a bunch of calls from people who saw the show.
But it was one episode and we didn’t even win it. So the hype died down quickly.
During our time there, however, we met some of the organizers for Timothy’s Gift. They told us more about their mission: to visit maximum security prisons (mostly in Florida) on a fellowship/outreach mission. Ron Miller invited us to come and surprise them. So Alfredo, Aaron, and I went to Florida mid-December for a Christmas version of their tour.
Early in the morning before they hit the road, we surprised them on their tour bus. Then following them in our rental, we pulled up to a huge complex in the foggy Florida morning, lined with heavy layers of razor wire and guard towers. I already felt the sense of prison authority.
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Sad Tree
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Yaas Meryl
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Lobstah
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Alfredo Austin, Aaron Sperber, Ron Miller, Richard Robot Steighner
You certainly don’t walk into a prison without requisite security, and the only thing you can bring in (aside from a few bucks for the vending machine) are your preconceptions, and we each had ours. From Oz to the Stanford Zimbardo experiment in the 1970s to Orange Is The New Black, prison has stigmas that are hard to shake. Most inmates have an average of 2 visits per sentence, so not a lot of information leaves the walls.
Somberly and cautiously, we helped set up in a generic worship hall with pews and a sort of altar and the sense of a grade-school auditorium. We would later learn that this was a very standard venue for Timothy’s Gift. As us noobs sat awkwardly while the inmates silently filed in the room, the TG crew was smiling and shaking hands as if they knew the inmates were about to get hooked up with a hell of a show.
And they were.
Timothy’s Gift was in their element (granted with a band at their disposal now); a far cry from the painfully unreal stage the SingOff offered. They shined. They laughed. They cried. And everybody in the room followed suit. It was a sight to behold and more humbling an experience than I’ve seen in a while. The message was simple: you are loved. I was not an inmate or even on stage, but I felt like Melissa’s sermon was delivered right to me. It was contagious, even for somebody who’s rejected his younger, unshakeable spirituality in favor of an atheistic outlook. Still, everything made sense, and it shook my beliefs.
We visited a handful of prisons, enjoyed the hospitality of the grateful guards and wardens (I suspect they enjoy a less defiant population after Timothy’s Gift visits, so it was hard to tell if they genuinely subscribed to their message or if their workload was just lighter), and bid them an emotionally and physically exhausted “Til next time.”
That afternoon we stayed at Paul’s house in Orlando before flying out the next morning. I binged watched OITNB for comparison sake (it seemed pretty close, minus, frankly, the necessary positivity of a Sit-Com) and we went out for dollar beers and so Paul could meet his Tinder date.
It was a hell of a good night, maybe because of the contrast, maybe because of the catharsis. I flew back to Vancouver to spend Christmas with Maria.
Over the next few weeks, we went out for a beautiful seafood dinner, made a little Christmas movie for our families back home, hung out with Kate and Jacki, and had a Scottish feast for New Years’ with their parents.
This was a mind-numbing year. So much done and so much to do. But on to 2015 we go.