a wasted weekend

it’s Sunday morning and I’m still recovering.  I simply cannot go out like i used to.  It’s just a fact, no use denying it.  Why is it that you have to go out to meet people in L.A., but if you go out (and obviously can’t handle it) you end up in over your head and recovering all weekend, wasting beautiful days that you could be hiking in?  I suppose you don’t have to get in over your head, but it’s fun..in the moment, and being responsible can get annoying sometimes.  To myself, not others.  I guess that was my one night of the year, you know, to just stay up all night and get it all out.  Now ill go back to being myself…going to movies, coffee, dinner, and the farmer’s market.  The things i actually enjoy doing. 

The best moment on Friday was by far when i walked into this bar and the d.j. was playing nothing but Micheal Jackson.  After forced minutes of dancing, i sat (my feet were killing me) and just watched everyone.  Having a great time dancing their hearts out and singing in unison to his music.  This is what he would have wanted.  Whatever your thoughts on him, his career, or his personal life, you cannot deny that he was an incredibly talented, and misunderstood individual.  He transcended international borders, race, sex and any other line people put between themselves for whatever reason.  He will be greatly missed.

lovehate

I have a love/hate relationship with my days off.  I’m sure you can guess why…free time but not making money.  But i am feeling better today after a fantastic and suppotive email from a friend a short drive north of me.  Lately i have been feeling stuck.  I think i’ve figured out the pattern that i fall into.  If i do the same thing everyday for more than a couple of months, i start to lose my mind.  I have worked for seven, yes i said seven retailers, four gyms, and have had countless other temporary jobs.  Once im in a routine, then it’s time to leave!  There could be many reasons or this, but I am really not interested in the reasons right now.  I just want a change.  Luckily it is coming, in three weeks, and after an enlightning conversation with our first A.D., i have come to the conclusion that standing in is just not for me.  I have learned so much from this experience and i have memories that i will cherish for the rest of my life.  How many young, inexperienced actors get to watch some of the best in the business work everyday?  Not many.  And i came out of it with my SAG membership.  What will i do now?  I really have no idea.  I am sure ill have to do background for a bit until i find something that pays enough and can accomadate auditions, but i will find it.  It is time to make this happen,  and do what i came here to do.  L.A. is such a catch 22.  All the opportunity in the world is right next door, but it all costs money.  So you get a job to pay for it, then you don’t have the time to spend on classes, workshops, and all the other glorious things this city has to offer.  There is a method to this madness and dammit if i won’t figure it out eventually.  So in much the same way that i feel about my days off…i have a love/hate relationship with this city.  Right now i just want to get out.  But i know, this is where i must be.  If it would only rain…off to hike.  The only free thing you can do in L.A.

Who ever said it was supposed to be easy?

Like the sweet kiss of alcohol, depression sneaks up on me so discreetly, that i do not know it until there is no turning back.  I feel like a failure today…for no apparent reason.  Everything seems bleak.  No money, soon to be unemployed without the prospect of a new job.  Los Angelesis a lonely place.  No family, few friends with no time to see them in, and a dream that you just cannot escape.  Going to the movies helps.  I do not regret my decision.  I knew that there would be days, maybe even weeks like this.  I just hope that i am not giving up living my life, for a dream that i cannot live my life without. 

I saw “Away We Go” on Sunday.  It was beautiful.  Displaying complex relationships between thirty something year old men and women and their journeys through family and life together.  It made me want to be in love.  It made me want to be a mom.  It made me want to be an actor…all at the same time.  But will i ever have those things all at the same time?  They are like oil and water it seems.  Like those “soups” i used to make as a kid in my playhouse in the back yard.  Full of ingredients that were great alone; mud, grass, berries, eggs stolen from the kitchen; but when combined, just didn’t quite work out.  I guess this is what your twenties is all about.  Questioning your life and the direction it is going in.  I wish i could quiet my mind from it all and just focus on the moment.  I am sure by tomorrow…all these feelings will have passed, waiting to rear their ugly heads in a couple of weeks just to remind me that i’m not where i want to be yet.

Fear of Flying…or Something Like it.

It’s been a week since i last posted with not much to tell.  We had a week off work and i wasn’t able to pick up any work, so i am a bit under the weather in a financial way.  I’ll pull it out this month, but it will be close.  I realize now i should have been saving more money, but it is hard when you haven’t been able to go out and do anything fun for almost a year, and now suddenly you can.  The temptation is overwhelming!  I have learned my lesson…be more frugal in my finances.  Think of the future. 

Last week we had a blood drive at work.  I premise this with the fact that i am terrified of needles.  Like, my mom used to have to chase me around doctors offices when i went to have shots, and when i got to college and found out i needed a shot, i worked really hard to prove i was a part of the Christian Science church to get out of it.   With a letter, under perjury of law, you can get out of it on religious grounds.  Ultimately, i decided the legal ramifications weren’t worth it, and in the end didn’t need the shot anyway.   So, back to last week.  I have tried to give blood before, but ended up crying my eyes out on the table and was turned down because the nurses said “it looked involuntary.”  So the day it was announced i get this overwhelming urge to do it.  I have to.  I have to overcome this fear.  I march right down, tears in my eyes, fill out my paperwork, go and eat lunch (because they made me) and return to finally overcome this lifelong fear.   So did i do it?

Yes I did!!!  Tears rolling down my cheeks the whole time, but this time they didn’t turn me away.  I was so proud of myself.  It felt amazing.  So, the moral of the story is…conquer your fears.  I will probably give blood again, even though it will take a few more times to get the overwhelming need to rip it out of my arm and run screaming the opposite direction out, but i did it and would do it again.  Hey, i saved three lives with that blood and that feels pretty darn good!

Next up…improv.  This conquering fears thing, could really get me somewhere.

That $61 coffee sure was good!

So, on my way to my training appointment today, i stopped to get a coffee.  I parked, read the signs, checked the meter (26 minutes remaining) and proceeded to go inside.  When i come out, the meter maid (who was actually a man) was finishing up my ticket.  I asked why and he says, as he runs away, “if you read the signs it clearly states that there is street cleaning until 10.”  The time: 9:56.  I contemplate following him, cutting him off in traffic, and causing an accident that is his fault that would inevitably cause his dismissal from this horrible job of his; but instead i cry in my car over my cappucino, suck it up, and go work out.  The thing is, he actually was sitting there when i pulled up, watching me cover all my bases, and then watched me walk inside without saying a word.  These are the moments when i hope Karma is real, and a real bitch. 

I made cookies today and hiked at sunset to cure my sadness over this…the most expensive coffee i have ever, and hopefully WILL ever, purchase in my life.

read

i am awake at 4:30…again.  It’s been happening more and more lately.  I decided to go home after work tonight when i was surprisingly wrapped around 9pm…which is unheard of on a Friday.  We usually work until at least midnight and then have beers on the lot.  I have been doing alot of reading on set, which is sort of the nature of being a stand in.  I must tell you about this book i recently read.  It is called “In defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto.”  The title alone should draw you to it if you love food even a fraction of how much i do, but there is so much more to this book.  The bottom line is this.  Our relationship, as Americans, to food is horrible.  In a study done between French and Americans, people were shown a picture of chocolate cake and asked to say the first word that comes to mind.  The French, overwhlemingly, said “celebration.”  Do you know what the Americans said?…..”GUILT.”

We have been so confused by the government and advertising and left it up to scientists to tell us how, when, why, and what we should eat we have forgotten the many pleasures of sitting down and enjoying our food.  “Western Diseases” are on the rise…that’s what they are called in the book because no other country stuggles with heart disease, high blood pressure,diabetes, and heart attacks like we do; and small farms are slowly but surely being replaced with environment destroying factory farms. 

If you want to live a happy and healthy life, and enjoy the many things involved in and that result from peparing a meal and sitting down with friends over a table of real food and good wine, please read this book.  It will change your perspective and challenge you to take back REAL food over the many “food products” we have available to us as Americans.

I am now reading “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, and i have ordered “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” “The Great Gatspy, and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”  I’ll keep you updated on how they are.

Rare day off

So i am off work today because Mary Louise isn’t working and i am getting some much needed reading and writing done.  I have ordered some books off Amazon because i am about to finish Wicked and need new reading material.  I also walked to a cafe nearby this morning to enjoy crepes, cappucino, and Movie Maker and i stumbled upon a fantastic interview with actor James Cromwell.  In it he said something so beautiful i thought i would share it with you…

“As an actor, I’ve had this experience of sitting offstage waiting to go onstage.  There is a line on the floor:  On one side of the line it is dark, it is offstage, and on the other side of the line it is lit, it is bright.  And in that lit space, in your line of sight, there is a conversation going on.  There’s an audience.  There are observers of this conversation which you are about to have with some cost, some effort and some energy.  And you will never know how it is really perceived by the people in the dark, beyond that lit space.  I think of that as a metaphor:  We are in a womb and we make our entrance onto a stage, into a play we may have played many times before and we assume a character. which we think is us.  The idea is to so inhabit it that it becomes us and we have this conversation, which is a play–it is a fiction.  There is a real event in the darkness that exists and there are watchers.  There are the generations, there are the gods, there are the others who watch and listen and make we know not what of all we do.  So all we have is that moment in the light and what you do with it–how you inform it, how you enjoy it, how you expand it and how you live it.  Then you’re off into the darkness once again.  You disappear.  The lights go down.  It’s over.  Whatever is beyond is unknown and will always remain unknown.”

I think this may possibly become my new favorite movie…

la nights

I haven’t had a chance to update on the job because i am literally dead when i get home and up the next morning too early to type anything coherent. But thanks to some excedrin too late in the evening, i am just bursting with energy at 11:30, sitting on the porch feeling the cool night breeze, and doing a little spiritual healing to Griffin House.
Job’s going well, really exciting and i am learning alot. I have been warned about talking too much but other than that, i haven’t fucked up too badly. Mary Louise is nice and talks to me from time to time and that is seriously all that i can ask for. The entire cast is so talented and down to earth, and i learn alot about acting technique just from watching them work everyday. I talk to the writers and producers too, to better understand every aspect of this industry and have picked up a few choice technical terms in the world of lighting. The paychecks aren’t half bad either!  I am SAG now, so that should help push the process of finding and agent and going out on auditions a bit further. I am really beginining to feel like i am establishing a life here. I new one, that is mine and no one else’s. I make decisions based on my needs and wants and not that of others.  It is an empowering feeling i have to say. The only downside to working such long hours is that i don’t have time to take any classes or really go on auditions. I have been sent out on one for Johnson and Johnson but other than that i am expected to be at work and available, although i have wonderful people there who want me to succeed and therefore will let me go on the occasional audition if i ask. I do feel the slightest bit like i don’t have a life. Going out isn’t really in my vocabulary and being young, i feel that it should be. Not to go out and get wasted, but to just get out of the house and be social. I guess that will come later…nothing worth having ever came easy, right? Or so they say…time will tell.

Exciting News!!

So, i was waiting to officially post this because sometimes things seem too good to be true, and i didn’t want to jinx anything, but…I am officially starting tomorrow on Weeds as a stand-in for Ms. Mary Louise Parker!  I was offered this job because i was recommended by the first A.D. on the show, whom i also worked with on my first background job.  I asked him how i could get work as a stand-in and he made good on his word, and made a call.  This is a perfect example of what can happen if you do background, and utilize the experience.   Don’t let anyone tell you that it is a waste of time!  Through this opportunity, i will also become elligible for and join the Screen Actors Guild!  I feel so lucky for this opportunity and i’ll keep you all posted on my progress.  Wish me luck!