Tdawg4eva

This One is About Me (Again) and Change (Again)

2009-09-23T21:11:00.001-07:00

I turned down a job offer from Quentin Tarantino's producer today. I've also decided the time has come for a blog-reinvention.

Granted, it was an offer to be his personal assistant (not even his first, his lowly, grocery-shopping second) but still. It took me a long time to come to this decision, and I think I can still feel a phantom leg kicking myself subconsciously. This ties into the renovation of this page because I could've so easily and happily taken this job, because I wanted it. I really did. I could feel my lips forming the vowels out, "yeeeeees," without a breath behind it. I would get a paycheck. I'd work hard, and often, and want to work well. I would do a good job for him, and be proud of it.

But I would change, and become the other Teresa, the one who goes out to bars and shops intensely at Express, and carries clutches. The one who is confident in how the world works: wake, work, play, sleep. Sometimes I wish I was that other girl, the one who sees movies only for fun, and sees manila envelopes without envisioning headshots inside of it. I would tell every person I meet to be that other me, rather than this one, because this Teresa struggles, and lives twelve lives at once, on a good day. I highly suggest living just one, if you can help it.

I never said this blog would be about anything other than me. I've only ever written here for myself, but it's gotten all messy, because I forget what I'm writing about sometimes. Just like I forget what I'm working for sometimes. And, in the case of rent jobs, it's not to afford pretty, pricey things, it's for that paycheck, so I can pay for the other things I really want more than a purse: classes, websites, pictures, networking events, bla bla bla. (Sometimes I really loathe all I know how to write about is myself. BOR-ing.) So. Tdawg4eva is getting a makeover, in the effort, that I too will give myelf one. I've gotten lost in the mess, and have stopped working for what I want, and have gotten caught up in working for...stability.

I think it was St. Augustine who said you should cherish your poverty, and love it, because it keeps the artistic drive alive. Then again, St. Augustine is a saint, and completely dead, and I'm neither of those things. So I'm not being too mean to myself about sometimes cherishing designer handbags over my lofty artistic poverty. This blog will now be about another actor's life, not to write a witty internet sensation that might get me Julie Powell's good luck, but to keep me on track. Because if I'm going to give up a job I could've loved, betrayed my other self once again, then I better make this poor girl's life worthwhile.

Sigh. I really loved Kill Bill 2.

Last Time:

2009-09-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

Clearly, I suck at this daily writing thing seeing as I write every other day, if Blogger is lucky.

So. What have you missed out on? EXCITING STUFF, my friend! Ah, yes, exciting stuff, indeed!

- Checked out some bizarre photos on facebook of a guy I went on one date with in New York. He is really buff now. Like, scary buff.

- Lamely agreed to an apartment. Still not very happy. I excuse myself by saying I should be uncomfortable. It'll keep my artistic nature flowing. Or some shit.

- Drank coffee every morning this week. Starting to feel nast.

- Sat for an 8 week old yesterday, and about to go do it again. She hated me. Her parents hated me. I hated me. I'm sure it wasn't that bad, but...you start having really dark insights into your life when an infant is screaming at you and you can't figure out why.

- Became obsessed with Fallenfruit.org. Not sure if I'm ballsy enough to follow through.

- Got drunk at 4 PM. Watched Inglorious Basterds. Ate too many Puffens.

- Panicked, lied, smiled, cried. I didn't mean for that to rhyme. Sometimes life does it anyway.

I See You Have an Oscar Too

2009-08-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

I wonder if celebrities, when they go to Starbucks or wherever, when they see other celebrities who they don't know personally, but who they recognize as fellow famous people, will go up and say, "Hey. Looks like we're the only two household names in here." Or whatever.

I think I might just leave quickly. Less awkward.

Letters

2009-08-30T09:03:00.001-07:00

"...you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change..."- Rainer Maria Rilke

I read "Letters to a Young Poet" the summer after my freshman year at college. I was reeling from my first year living in New York, working with professional actors who had such cynicism and experience backing up their talent, hazy from the tumultuous end of my first serious relationship, and back under my parents' heavy wings. (Heavy from love and decade-old rulebooks, but mostly love.) Truthfully, I'd been assigned the book at the beginning of the year, bought it, and hadn't read it. When I finally did read it nine months later, it was if the world halted and started rotating in a different direction. It had all been written for me, somehow. I read and reread the letters as I sat outside the district library in my neon-pink summer concert series Staff t-shirt where I worked for minimum wage. I copied whole paragraphs down in my journal in flowing lettering and doodles of stars. I felt really connected to that dead German guy, and very included in the adult world.

The second time "Letters to a Young Poet" crossed my path was two years later. I was in the early days of my second very serious relationship, and living the half-crazed life of the actor-in-training. Everything in my life was about art, except the part about living, which was about stress and panic. Perhaps feeling that same angsty pull all twenty-year olds feel, a dear friend of mine became very, very sick, and couldn't see the next steps in her path. I packed her off one weekend to see her grandmother, and slipped her one of my most cherished snippets from Rainer Maria.

"So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall."

She said it saved her. I don't know if the written word can save anyone, but I suppose it must have for someone at some point, so it very well have done the same for her.

Over the years, I've trucked my copy of "Letters to a Young Poet" all over the country. I don't always open it, but it's a comfort knowing it's there, with my underlinings and highlights in my 18-year old handwriting, stained and bent from years of prayerful readings. I don't particularly love Rilke's poetry, it's a little too pious and rambling for me, but so are his letters. Maybe what touches me is that these are letters to a young person, so familiarly lost and hopeful to please and confused, and it came two hundred years before my own bumblings through my artistic life. Rilke's advice applies to my own plight just as much as it does to Mr. Kappus'. And beyond the similarities of our paths, there is also the extraordinary honor of a correspondence between an amateur and his hero; furthermore, the wholly special joy it must have been to receive life lessons and advice from Rilke, and not just critiques to his work. I would've killed to have had a mentor. I still would. A good one, I mean. No use committing murder for a crappy mentor.

I didn't mean to write a post about a book we've all been assigned to read at some point. It's just, when I'm worried, or unsure of how I've come to a particular crossroads and even more uncertain of where to go next, years of reading and rereading Rilke has ingrained itself in my brain. His words flash through my brain, and I'm reminded I've felt this all before, and so have long-gone Europeans, and words and letters probably can save you.

I could go on, and delve into my cheesier feelings towards Mr. Rilke, but I won't, because he always ended his letters rather abruptly after a long and winding shpeil about life and art and bla bla bla and sometimes it's better just to leave it at that.

Caffeine is the Devil

2009-08-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

I really hate the idea of being dependent on anything on a daily basis, but it seems to be a losing battle with caffeine. I've had a true love-hate relationship with diet coke the past few years, especially when it comes down to the fact I just feel better off it. And now I'm leaning towards becoming a coffee drinker, strangely enough. I like the idea of it, just like some people like the idea of living in a dingy Paris apartment overlooking the Seine and smoking for breakfast and feeling depressed about life. People are weird.

I'm thinking about moving to a one bedroom apartment. I worry that I'm not good living alone, that I wouldn't go out and I'd be a hermit, but that's a bullshit response. It might have been true a year ago, but not now. I worry also that if anything goes wrong the only person who pays is me. I also worry some strange man will follow me home and accost me outside my door. I worry too that if I die in the bathroom no one will find me and I'll rot for weeks until someone downstairs complains about the smell. But really, I mostly worry about the strange man.

I've decided to go get a cup of coffee on my way to work today. I'm really, really looking forward to it. Also, I'm not looking forward to work. Sigh. I have to find another job because this one isn't giving me enough hours. Stupid job.

Things will get better. Coffee will fix it all.

Tara

2009-08-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

I left my apartment about an hour and a half early tonight, because I was abruptly reminded how much I hate the place. The physical space is not bad, so...you'll have to imagine what it is about the 2 BR+2 B I don't like. I'd like to, but I won't name names. But just now I'm doing it in my head right now. "IT'S BLANK BLANKYBLANK'S FAULT I HATE MY HOME! BLANK BLANKYBLAAAANK!!!"

Moving on...

After ample consideration this past week, here is a rough idea of my ideal home. Sums me up pretty well. As it should.

- Lots of light, lots of windows, lots of windowpanes.
- Older is better, but not so old I fear ghosts after dark.
- Hardwood floors.
- A sunny breakfast nook.
- Built-in shelves.
- A record player next to a comfy rug.
- Basil plants. Heck, a whole damn herb garden. (Rosemary, mint, thyme)
- Plush carpets you can sink your feet into.
- A lemon tree. I'll settle for a lime tree, it's not a deal-breaker.
- A big, private yard with lots of old, big trees. Favorites include weeping willows, ginkgos, dogwoods, cherry trees, elms, oaks.
- Creeping vines that hug the outside of the house. The ideal would be if they were spotted with flowers. But only spotted! I want to SEE the vines.
- Exposed Brick walls. One will do.
- A library! A room full of books! Books, books, books! If I had my way, there'd be two stories, with a rolling ladder and a circular staircase, just like Henry Higgins. (Who also had a record player. Oh, well, a Victrola, if you want to be picky, stickler.)
- Old fixtures a la Anthropologie. But if they were actually old, rather than faux old, that'd be better. No ghosty fixtures though. I don't want any spirits stuck in my doorknobs.
- Good china. Good china I use. Old china. See above.
- Flowers! Magenta flowers!
- Fireplaces. If that can't be arranged, a wood stove will do very nicely. Something to toast the toes that doesn't require batteries or a plug.
- Quilts. Quilts for every room. Handmade and flawed and warm.
- Nooks, nooks, and more nooks. Each painted a different color.
- Big closets. Places for little children to hide and play.
- Walls in every color. Deep burgundies, golds, bright blues, warm greens, happy oranges and reds.

It's amazing, because the things I seem care about in my current apartment search don't even make this list. Who gives a fuck if I have a dishwasher? Or a garbage disposal? I mean, I am actually worrying about ghosts, but that was just the one place, and she'd died, like, yesterday. I don't want to have to call Ghost Hunters. Although, I do want to be on SyFy...no, still don't want to have to call Ghost Hunters. I don't do well with the paranormal.

The important thing here is that my old apartment had none of these things. None. Not one. Except for the quilt I brought with me, and some shit rug. I want so much from the world, I want love and happiness and fulfillment and an agent and national health care, but I want a good home too. If there was ever an American Dream, I think that would be it. A home, a bit of earth, a place to want to be, a place that carries my name. When I get tired of fighting to find a role and/or a film to carry my moniker, I'll remind myself of the home I want just as badly, and maybe that will carry me through, until the day I come home.

Moving Sucks

2009-08-25T15:31:00.001-07:00

Moving sucks, from start to finish.

You pack, you heave, you hem, you haw, you haul, you unpack, you sleep, you live, you despair, you pack, etc.

I'm not particularly happy with where I live now. I wasn't when I moved in. I'm currently in that apartment, in the room I never go, the living room, and find the irony embarrassing at this point. I did a bad job of living here.

My first year in LA could be summed up that way. Not that I haven't seen so much of what this city encompasses. I have a rough idea of how to get around Silverlake and Los Feliz. I have climbed the hills, driven Mulholland at Sunset, cursed the 10 and 101 and the 405, cursed the 5, found some beauty in the Valley. I have California plates and a California driver's license. I've gone to a club. Gone to the beach. Driven the PCH. Corrected foreigners on the correct pronunciation of "Wilshire."

Not home yet.

I don't have high hopes for this next apartment either. After a certain point, they all start looking alike. White walls, whitish carpets, oh look another toilet. Great. I always think I don't need very much, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm as high-mai as any other girl, and I just like to pretend I'm not until I realize I'm miserable.

Moving sucks. The only thing is, I can't stay here. I really, really can't stay here.

BTW JWP

2009-08-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

By the way, did I mention Joanna Wilson Photography posted my headshot photos on their blog?

Best photographers on two coasts...

Libraries are for Lovers

2009-08-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

I rotate between several writing spots in my neighborhood. The community Starbucks, of course, whose many downsides include constant seating limitations and a complicated Wi-Fi process that makes me feel angry. Then there's the hip & funky local coffee shop (owned by the same family who runs the hip & funky local bar next door) which used to have free Wi-Fi until a day ago ($5 minimum now, and of course, the drinks are just sliiiightly underpriced and the food is waaaay overpriced), and often is either too hot or too cold for this fussy chica. And then there's the library. Which is where I am today.

The library is undervalued, I think, except by the blossoming seas of underemployed. I realized the other night, as I lay in bed (because apparently when I lay in bed I think about public book lenders), the problem with the influx of job-seekers is that the library becomes...not a library. The books are forgotten. There aren't even that many of them. There's a good DVD section. Some very useful free computer stations. A printer. Lots of little round tables with midget chairs for children. Three open rooms with once-plush chairs. And an entire center section for all those desperately searching for jobs to spread out their resumes and laptop wiring as they click "Submit," "Submit," "Submit." Don't get me wrong, I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I have spent disgusting amounts of time in these miniature chairs. (NOTE: There is not one child in any of the children chairs today. Eleven adults, though...) But, I love a good library for what it represents: available literature to all who crave words. Ready worlds that don't exist but in your hands and your eyes.

Maybe libraries are on the way out. Who reads books anymore? Who read newspapers? Who needs a building when you can spend a couple hundred on a Kindle and take your library with you? No, I refuse to believe it. Nothing is free in this world. Not even, really, libraries, since they are paid for by taxes and by the town. But this is a safe place, in a world of meanies and jerks. This is a place where you are allowed to escape, and it's meant to be quiet, and cell phones are not allowed. (Can you hear my typing, lady in pink shirt and blue shorts?! CELL PHONES ARE NOT ALLOWED. Gah!) It's a vortex in here, like I don't even really exist. Except for the fact that I am here, typing on my laptop, connected to the internet, still hooked into the beeping, charging world outside. Oh poo.

I go to the library to write because it is free. I don't have to buy a coffee I don't want. The bathrooms are clean. The floor is clean. It is (mostly) quiet. I can pick up a DVD for a couple days while I am here. I am reminded that I am constantly looking for a job, but it's okay, because so is everyone else. I am reminded that I love words. I put them together into strings as I sit here surrounded by the strings of others who did the exact same thing I did with many of the same words and the exact same letters, and one day found themselves employed.

Gene Kelly was Right All Along

2009-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while in an actor's life, (say, every 6 months or so) you develop a weird stuffed-up feeling. It's uncomfortable. It sneaks up on you. It makes you want to use a blow-up butt pillow. The problem, my friends, is creative constipation.

Creative Constipation occurs in the animal world because actors are artists, and to be actors we have to do all kinds of crap just to attempt to get work, things that have nothing at all to do with the actual physical experience of acting. Just like the old pros predicted, once you get out of school...you actually don't get to act THAT much. Now, because actors are artists, there rises a level of non-acting bile in the body, creeping up over time as you go through days and weeks and months of juggling rent jobs and paperwork and everyday crap without the balancing effect of a creative outlet. Oh sure, you can exercise all day long, and go see movies, and watch great tv shows on HBO, and say things like, "I just LOVE Dostoeyevsky," but there's nothing quite like that release of built-up real world sludge, like the expenditure of that glorious creative soup welling up behind your eyeballs.

In the winter of 2008, I found myself writhing with creative blockage, so I started blogging. Lo and behold, I was released, more joyful, eager to awake and write in the mornings. Then, I began to blog more. People were reading it! Soon, I began to get actual jobs blogging, ("People want to pay ME to WRITE?! My life is gloooorious!") and then more jobs, and then bad jobs, and then non-paying awful jobs, and then I became bitter and jealous as I started to receive rejections, and then I stopped. I stopped because the writing had become like the acting: bad work to find good work. Unjoyful. Bad. I found myself getting pissed off that everybody had a blog, and they were so prolific, and funny, and orginal, their writing was just as good, if not much, much better than my own. ("Does that mean I'm not...*sniff*...special?") The appropriate response seemed to be: STOP WRITING.

That's never the answer, by the way. Just stopping. It's never right. Unless we're talking about meth, and, after watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU last night, I have to say...you should really stop taking meth if you're on it. That shit is crazy.

But here I am, again, feeling my creative juices have solidified into that nasty form hot fat takes when it cools into jello-lard. I wrote because it made me happy, and I wrote a lot because it worked the same muscles I used on-camera, or onstage. (It's all tied to the same organs, you see?) And I never did it for anyone but me until I started thinking, as I do all day every day, "Maybe I can make money off this skill!"

I'm still not sure what this blog is about. My career? My goals? My wholly original and ceaselessly interesting thoughts on everything me-related in this world? Yeesh. I sort of want to scrap the whole darn thing and start over...but then, it would only be the same as before, and it would only be paving a giant exit-less rotary for myself. And what this little chickie needs more than anything is a release, and not a loop.

In any case, I'll be back tomorrow...

Why The Heck Am I Dairy Free?

2009-07-08T10:15:00.001-07:00

Well, Lauren, that's a good question. And before I start, let me be totally truthful: I was not dairy free on Days 4 & 5 in July. It was a holiday, and I was with the Lopes Family and they made us a carrot cake for our birthdays and I couldn't say no! However! I'm back on the path and feeling great!

It all started with a random comment from Laura Hughes, lovely vegan extraordinaire. She mentioned that she was so happy being dairy free and she really felt a difference, and it was one thing she didn't miss in her no-meat, no-dairy, no-fish diet. Huh. Really? But, doesn't milk do a body good?

Well, yes, when you're a baby. You're supposed to have milk! It's fortifying, full of fat, and delightful! Yet, who ever thought to drink it from another species?! WEIRD. And when you tumble the idea of milk around more, it gets weeeeirder. You're basically sloshing the mucus of another animal down your throat. Eeeew...And not to be TMI, but ever since I damaged my vocal cords in high school, I've had enough problems with my own coating of my throat, and have gone through periods of going dairy free anyway to try to maximize vocal clarity. (IE My voice sounds like poo sometimes because of humidity, seasons, or, yes, dairy intake. What kind of actor am I? Aiiee!)

Beyond the gross factor, I've been reading up on the website Go Dairy Free (www.godairyfree.org) and it seems that the ol' cheese & milk intake does indeed screw some people up. GDF says, "Milk protein allergies and lactose intolerance have been linked to a wide array of physical symptoms. For some, it is as simple as lethargy or weight gain, for others crippling migraines and "autoimmune" type symptoms are a lifestyle complication." Everyone in my family is officially lactose intolerant but me. Yet! I do however get funky 2 day headaches and stomaches sometimes at night. Could it be the dairy? Beats the crap out of me! I may as well try cutting it out for a little while.

Besides, I'm only trying it for a month. And it's been surprisingly easy so far! Sure, I can't eat carrot cake with cream cheese frosting whenever I want, but that's probably not a terrible thing. I figure I only need to do it til July 31st, and then the cow-world is my oyster! Or something...

But, if I like it I can always remain
yours truly,
Dairy Free

DAY ONE OF DAIRY FREE JULY

2009-07-02T10:11:00.001-07:00

It went pretty well. I ate a yogurt at breakfast.

My head hurts so much today. Gah! It'll stay around all day long, and possibly into tomorrow. I hate this.

In other news...Episode 2 is up. www.getJLoSHed.com. I'm happy. Despite the headache. And no more yogurts.

I Heart the Alphabet

2009-03-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of quality time in rooms with writers lately. I don't know any of them, it's not that sort of room. In fact, I'm with them right now. Tee hee. None of them know I'm typing away about their focused, frozen faces! Ha ha! You all look so funny! Making your serious writer pouts..."I'm writing the next Graham Greene," "I'm like Dave Eggers, sort of!" "I'm a blogger! I'm mocking everybody else!" Haha. Silly.

We're all plugged in, and wearing headphones so we can pretend like none of us actually exist together in this big, fast city. We search out this perfect room, full of other people who wheeze big sighs and drink too much overpriced coffee and store odd wi-fi passwords like baseball cards and won't judge our frizzed, unwashed hair and chunky glasses. Does it make me a hipster, just being here? I do have holes in my jeans. And my bra strap is showing. I don't have an iphone. Crap. No, I'm just regular poor.

This is my warmup, by the way. I think that makes me more writerly. I mean, there had to be a reason they always made us do this in high school, right? Keep a notebook of the five minute warmup exercises, one sentence topics. No one reads them but you.

The reason I post it online, for any old weirdo to read (not that I'm calling you weird, but you could be. I don't really care. I didn't wash my hair.) rather than storing them faithfully in a blue notebook to lodge in a drawer in my closet, is because I'm lazy. It's totally true. My hand will hurt. I'll not care. I'll not use periods. I'll start skipping the bothersome letters, like "s" and "g". At least my imaginary internet audience might have standards. You make me write better. (And if I wasn't such a serious, and diligent author, I'd insert a smiley face right there, just to prove to you that I love writing this shit for you.) (But I won't. Because I'm serious about this shit.)

Oh, fuck it.

: )

Italians

2009-01-21T23:42:00.000-08:00

Today, I went to the Beverly Hills Cheese Shop with my quasi-employer, who made me try too many cheeses as she fussed over what kind of cheese plate to make for her friend/quasi-employer's birthday. After complaining of dairy tongue, snacking on Dead Sea Salt crackers, and finally prosciutto, she spotted the Toblerone. If you aren't Italian, you probably won't care about Toblerone. It's a white nougat, cut into squares, soft and doughy, springy, filled with pistachios.

I haven't eaten Toblerone in a long time. (I use the brand as a generalized name, but it's not, btw.) My grandpa gives a box to my sister every year at Christmas. It's a funny gift that we all know is coming, and which he dutifully passes to her with a mischievous laugh, like they share an ancient Italian secret. We all cheer.

We're half Italian, did I mention that? My sister, Erin, is the least so of all of us. With blonde hair and blue eyes, and a heavily Irish name, she is the oldest of the cousins. She gets special gifts because she is.

I tried some of the Toblerone in my car today, after dropping aforementioned faux-boss off. It's made of sugar, honey, vanilla, but I could taste something else. Lemons? It tastes like warmth, of home. I called my sister. I told her why I was thinking of her. She laughed, and cooed over the connection. She told me our grandmother loved Toblerone, she was the one who always had it in the house, and the winter after she died, when Erin was 17, my grandfather presented it to her on Christmas morning. He wanted her to have it, because he wanted to keep doing what my grandmother always had done: give her first grandchild a soft sweet to make her feel loved, to remind her where her blood came from.

I didn't remember that about my grandmother. I remember she had soft and perfect skin, evenly powdered with layers of gentle smells and rose colors. I'm named after her, did I tell you that too? Theresa Saltarelli. She didn't want that, she thought I'd be teased, but my mother promised she'd drop the "h", and I was named Teresa.

It wasn't until I was 17 myself, the first time I went to the beach overnight without my parents, the first time I went to Senior Week, when I learned something else about my heritage. All my best friends had just graduated, a year ahead of me, so I went to Maryland to celebrate with them. A handful of us went to the beach, late at night, and didn't leave til morning. We counted stars, and did flips in the sand, and talked. I curled up with a boy, who later would become a boyfriend, and felt like I was so incredibly awake. He'd been drinking, not beer, I guess it was liquor, and all I could think of was my grandfather. I know, it's very strange, disconcerting to me, being wrapped up with a teenage boy, while all my thoughts were wrapped around my grandpa.

It was because that smell of liquor, of whiskey, was his smell. My grandfather drank, not til he was drunk, but enough so that I knew alcohol was his mark. I associated that breathy heat with him, with being cradled in his arms in a warm, orange kitchen, with Christmas trees, with cookies. My sister had nougat, and I had bourbon.

I wish I could write my grandpa's story. He's writing it himself. A whole memoir, his whole life. I wouldn't know what to say about him anyway.

Maybe, "He loved a woman who loved candy, and he gave little pieces of himself away every Christmas in soft, doughy squares, and he held me tight in his arms, and no boy will ever not be sort of like him." I think he'd hate it.

Just Be Yourself, Stupid

2009-01-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

Does it ever occur that you talk to yourself in a way you'd never let anyone else talk to you? I fancy myself to be a generally kind and genuinely caring person, but not in reference to myself. Take for example, this class I've been taking. I think I'm the dumbest person in there. I make the stupidest mistakes. I flub up. I fluster. Meanwhile, the teacher is literally shouting, "JUST BE YOURSELF." And I keep thinking, "Yes, but how can I make myself more interesting?" And then I think of how much I'm spending on aforementioned class and whip myself into more of a frenzy. "JESUS CHRIST BE MORE INTERESTING, LOOSE-POCKETS MCBORING!"

Which is why I love my car. She's my buddy. I spend more time with her than anyone else. If I have nothing else in this town, I have Tawanda Jane. I try to take care of her, but I know I'm not great at it. I feel safe with her. She doesn't judge me. She doesn't think I'm interesting or care. She's a car. So far I haven't damaged her too much, although I worry she'll rebel against me one day and I'll have to call Car Talk, the Click and Clack Brothers, and get their opinion on my feisty and broken Toyota Matrix. And they'll laugh at me, and make fun of my name.

Minus One Point LP McBoring.

Plus One Tawanda J.

Warmup for a New Year

2009-01-01T18:13:00.000-08:00

I'm about to work on some writing assignments, and I quickly want to stretch my fingers in the 40 minutes before Whole Foods closes. (I bought a minimum amount to be able to steal a booth guilt free. It's just me and a bag of dried organic cranberries sitting here.)

So it's 2009. It's bound to be an anxious year, fringed with angsty bill payments and group worrying over future security, with a sprig of terror decorating our global landscape as the days warm and the bees keel over. After an intense 2008 in which I flushed everything normal down the toilet and restarted my life in California, I'm hoping 2009 will be nothing but good. I have to believe in a universe that cares, and so I have to believe the energy I put out will one day reciprocate. I'm not asking for the lottery, I just want a guest spot.

Or a paycheck. Or some respect. Or some fulfillment. Or hope.

I guess I already have hope. I couldn't have moved if I didn't. I realized, as I literally tore myself away from my warm childhood home in Pennsylvania in the early morning after Christmas, loneliness is crowding my head right now. Even when I'm with friends, I feel so lonely. I don't know what will change that, other than work that has the potential to fill me up. (Fill, for non-artists, as a verb to describe the feeling that you are using your whole body, mind, and voice, to do something wonderful, useful.) Lonely or not, I, for the first time in a long time, believe happiness is possible. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing as I stumble through blindingly sunny days here, but some part of me has to know that good things exist. It's an epiphany really. I guess I always assumed that wasn't really true.

I have to believe in 2009 I'm not alone. I have to keep putting out the good, and keep hoping it'll come back. It already has, really (hey, Obama won, right?), but it's easy to look down on myself, like Jack and the Giant roaring down the beanstalk, and think, "I'm so insignificant. I'm so small. I'm so easy to crush." I have to remember, Jack wins.

Don't Fuck With Muffins

2008-12-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

I really hate how muffins have become the new cupcake. I like muffins. Scratch that, I LOVE muffins. But a muffin is no cupcake. Not a cupcake, I say! A muffin should be a delightful bread substitute, often with a delicious swirl of carrots or zucchini, perhaps banana. None of this chocolate chip, frosted fudge whirl. That's dessert shit!

I hate other things. I hate waiting for my free online episodes of Mad Men to buffer. I hate buffering! I hate hangovers. I hate fake girls. I hate salmon. I hate how bad Heroes has gotten.

But I really, really hate the muffin thing! When did this happen? Have they always been a sugary, cuppy cake? At Thanksgiving, I wanted to make carroty wonderful muffins, and my friend said, surprised at my choice for her dinner table, "Muffins? Really?" Yes. Really! REALLY!

You may think I'm ridiculous, but I'm sad at the state this world is in. Muffins are small, muffins are tasty, muffins are without a liner, and muffins are nutritious, depending what you put in them. MUFFINS!

On Coming Home for Christmas

2008-12-19T21:49:00.001-08:00

I lapse into old habits.

I eat frozen cookies out of the basement freezer while watching old movies late at night. I snap at my mother. I often leave the discussion at the dining room table to sit alone in my room, silent.

My mother hugs me too much, and tells me adamantly she won't share me with anyone. She doesn't want me to go to New York. She wants to snuggle me until I fuse to her breastplate.

My grandfather laughs at my bad jokes about Franz Ferdinand, and then shakes his head when I talk about books he doesn't like or movies he didn't understand.

The rain sleets across the green lawns like hissing spit. It's almost frozen, but not quite. Once, when I was seven, I sat in front of the tv on a Sunday night, and asked my father what it took for snow to fall. He told me that it had to be 32 degrees, and the clouds must be full of precipitation. I was disappointed. I had wanted him to tell me that he could make the snow fall, if I wanted. I did.

Another time the sky was purple, it was nighttime, and we went outside and made mazes in the frosty street without speaking, and my sister wore her boyfriend's oversized green coat, and my brother was quiet, and I was utterly fulfilled with my life.

The house is warm, because there's a new heater. And a new tv. And a new boat is coming too. Santa is no longer a person, he's actually the internet.

We eat too much, and drink wine at every meal. My grandfather drinks margaritas afterwards, and it knocks him out until 2 am, when I hear him sighing in his sleep, and waking up to pace his room.

Christmas is about these five people. But I'm strung between worlds. I have Pennsylvania health insurance and Pennsylvania plates, but I live far away now. I ran away from them, I think. I didn't mean to. They picked the wrong place to live, twenty-one years ago. It's not my fault.

My brother-in-law hugs me and says, "You really haven't been away that long, you know." So why does it seem like years? I've changed. Can't you see it? No one comments. Maybe I haven't changed that much, or not at all.

It's Christmas, and every year since I was twelve I lit one particular candle on Christmas Eve so I could talk to God on the holiest of holy days: the Present Day. (I didn't mean it that way.) I wanted to believe in Jesus Christ, and one time I even wrote him a note on the computer so Santa could give it to him, and my parents wrote me a note back. My parents the Agnostics played Jesus for me. If that's not the spirit of Christmas, I don't know what is.

This year, I don't have much to give. Sure, it's because I'm poor, but also because I feel empty. I feel like I gave so much away this year, I tried to give myself away too, but I stuck.

Once, my brother and sister and I walked to the church down the street because it was snowing, and we threw some snowballs, and then we lay down in the road, and listened to the snow falling on our faces. It sounded like sugar sifting, or hair freshly cut sweeping past your ears. My sister whispered, "Listen. Isn't that beautiful?"

I must have changed. I think I did.

Persimmon

2008-12-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to New York, I trained with a girl from Manhattan Beach, California. Like the island itself, and like the girl who came from there, Manhattan Beach seemed highly exotic to me. I knew, from what she had told me, it was near Los Angeles (Land of Beautiful People) and that is was, indeed, a beach. I daydreamed of white sands and houses filled with overflowing ferns and sundresses year round. I liked the idea of being this girl. She was someone I knew, but not well, and so, of course, it seemed like her life could only ever have been perfect. She was kind, and beautiful. She had long, golden-brown hair, and she wore white boots with mint green tights and a matching coat. She laughed, and men turned. And she ate persimmons.

I'd never seen a persimmon before I watched her eat one. Was it a tomato? Was it a sort of apple? Where do they come from?

I asked her what it tasted like. "Brown sugar," she said.

Years have turned since then. I've moved away from Manhattan, to Los Angeles, closer to the beach, though not into a house right up on the waves. I do wear sundresses year round, even though it is December. I talk to my friend once in a long while. And, today, I bought a persimmon. I think it must be fitting. I want my life to be brown sugar, packed, dense, sweet on my tongue.

I put the persimmon in the refrigerator. It seems very cold. It's a perfect orange-red, with four flat leaves greening its peak. Its the color of tomato soup, when you mix it with cheese, or creme.

Wow. The first bite tastes like nothing. What a letdown.

I won't be stopped. I close my eyes. Still, the second bite tastes like nothing. It's a very mushy fruit inside.

The third bite. Ah, there's a little sweetness. Not much. I am biting more quickly now. Maybe it's a quantity thing? There's a little gravel taste, mixed in with the softness. The stiff leaves are thick, and they're getting in the way. How do you eat this thing?

It's almost gelatinous on the inside. I can taste more of the sweetness, but its not much. This is no peach, no plum at all. This persimmon is an odd duck indeed, not entirely tasteless, but not flaunting itself either. This persimmon holds secrets.

The inside is not one solid color, its a portrait of flushing reds. There are caverns of deep juiciness, and smooth strings of vertical orange. Still, it's no mango. The juice spreads across my mouth. This is no pear, either. No, this is a persimmon, and I couldn't cut it into slices if I wanted to, I couldn't divide it like a clementine easily parts with its sections, I couldn't do anything with this persimmon it didn't want to do.

Hm. I guess that's the end. A little bit of a disappointment. But. I don't feel hungry. I can taste the heavy creme of sweet in my mouth. The leaved core sits a little slumped, used.

I am a Manhattan Beach girl now, I guess. I live in sunshine, I wear dresses that swing, and I eat persimmons. I don't do anything I don't want to do. I laugh, and I don't care who turns. I am exotic.

A Little Homesick, A Little Regular Sick

2008-11-07T15:00:00.001-08:00

My cold is still hanging on like a persistant itchy booger, and it's making me even less of a productive unemployed actor than ever before. Not that I'm not being productive, because I actually am, but...I just wish I was getting paid for my productivity.

One of the weirdest things about LA is, of course, the weather. It's beautiful. All the time. The reason it's so weird is that because every day is sort of the same, and it hasn't really gotten that much colder since I've gotten here, there is a strange sort of time lapse. What month is it? What day is it? Who am I? It's the WALL-E effect: if every day is the same, you are apt to lapse into a sort of coma in paradise. You eat, you doze, you can't quite look at yourself objectively. You watch a lot of tv. (Although, to be fair, ALL of my tv watching is done on Hulu, so at least I've gotten myself hooked on internet rather than cable.)

I'm trying to find more blogging jobs, because it makes me royally happy. Could you imagine that? A job that pays you AND you love it? I can't do what I've done, and wake up every day to spend 9 hours in Hell, blackmail my soul for a paycheck. I have a varied skill set, but it can be a curse: sure, you want me to what? Okaaaay. Fuck that shit! I don't want to be unhappy anymore. I want to look for joy in everything I can, and I need a job, and I need a job that makes me happy. It's out there somewhere...

The only problem with blogging is that you can't be completely open. What you write will love on in cyberspace, festering in 1's and 0's, and do you really want everything you think to be open for all the world to read forever and ever? Which is why I need the acting. It can be terrifying to do, but sometimes, you get to play a character where you can open up all your dirty little sweaty pores to the world and unleash yourself. I need so much.

I went to this networking event at AFTRA last night with an actor/coach named Scott Mosenson, and he quoted "Franny and Zooey." Franny's boyfriend says, after she says maybe she'll be an actress, "Acting is the business of wanting." It is. I think about that a lot. Sure, it's wanting, wanting, wanting parts, money, agents, casting directors, but it's also about characters' wants and objectives, stories full of wanting passions and hidden needs. It's all a want. How can I turn that into a positive thing? How can I, as Scott says, reframe for the positive?

I miss you guys. I know that there are probably only three people reading this, and it might not be til January til you do, but I miss you. (Brian also might be reading this. What up, Bri.) I wish my heart wasn't always so torn up across wide spaces, but it is, and probably will be for the rest of my life. Reframe: I love you. How lucky to be me.

ROAD TRIP 08: WEDNESDAY

2008-10-01T21:05:00.001-07:00

The final day of our cross-country journey. Josh and I will finally pull over at my bff Beth’s apartment in Irvine around dinner, and I can’t wait to see her new home in her new town. The last time we saw each other was Labor Day, right before Beth moved to grad school. It seems like no time at all since I last hugged her and said, “See you on the west coast! See you when our lives are completely different!” And now…they are.

We spent the last two days at the Grand Canyon, an odd mix of natural grandeur, old white Americans, foreign tourists with large cameras and many children, bitter and bored exchange students working the cashiers, and a Disneyified version of camping in the wilderness. Bees swarmed around our car, and the squirrels scurried up to our toes hoping for junk trail mix handouts.

We spent yesterday hiking halfway down the canyon on a red dust trail. We made friends along the way from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and spent the return trip heaving and pulling ourselves up like a couple of old smokers. After dinner at the canteen, we crowded onto the lowest observation spot at Mather Point to listen to a Star Talk. You know you can see the Milky Way from the Grand Canyon? They have laws about the light and sound emittance from the park, so even their emergency helicopters are virtually silent. It was an incredible way to end our stay, craning our necks up above, thinking about how little our lives our, and short. Josh questioned the futility of our existence, while I couldn’t stop thinking about how I must remind myself, whether I can see the night sky or not, it is no way worth it to spend my life afraid and worrying. Par example, I spent the first hour of the day worrying about dying on the hike yesterday morning. (Josh is part of the most dangerous demographic who visit the park: 18-30 year old males.) Lo and behold, we survived.

We crossed the Colorado River into California a few hours ago, and shrieked with glee when we saw the “Welcome to California!” sign. I was driving, and Josh put on the ipod Gene Kelly singing, “Singing in the Rain.” That’s when I started crying. I never thought I’d move to the west coast. I never thought I’d want to live near palm trees and Baywatch and the desert. But I watched Gene Kelly, literally, thousands of times. He made me want to be an actor, in the cheesiest of ways. And now, here I am, in my car, with my love, in California. Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at apartments.

I have to remember the Milky Way.

ROAD TRIP 08: MONDAY

2008-10-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

Day Four and we’re driving through New Mexico on our way to the Grand Canyon. At this point, I think we both loathe the car a little bit. My sweet little Toyota Matrix is a champ, even though I’m paranoid her tires are going flat, or her engine is making mouse-squeaks, or her alignment is fucked. She’s fine, despite a constant smattering of bug guts on her white exterior. We, however, are starting to go crazy.

I think it really took hold in Texas. Ugh, Texas. The panhandle, at least, sucks. It was both Josh and my first time there, and it was just flat, flat, and more flat. The only good things about Texas: the Free 72 oz. Steak repeatedly and boldly advertised (but only if you eat it in a hour) and the tall, alien windmills spread pell-mell across the horizon. They tried really hard to redeem the landscape.

And then we entered New Mexico, and almost immediately, I felt better. Broad mountains dotted with low-lying trees swept across the sky. Hills dipped the road. Bushes speckled the dusty fields that stretched forever out of sight. We stopped at a gas station in a three building town called Newkirk, where the pumps seem to have been installed in the early 60’s, and a train sped past us for several minutes. An abandoned church, forgotten by everyone (God too?), stood awkwardly beside the road, its front door boarded up and a foot-wide crack bisecting the adobe walls. I was utterly sold on the state when we got to Santa Fe. All the houses are adobe, and there are lush gardens of bright, reaching flowers everywhere. At the first sign of a dreadlocked hippie artist, I felt at home. It’s a liberal, apparently well-moneyed town, and everyone was very polite and welcoming.

And now we’re off again, through these rolling swathes of land, empty and totally silent. A man came up to our window with his small girl and told a long story about his family going through Sky City, and how he lost his wallet. Poor people are everywhere in this world, not all of them homeless, but looking around my car with two ipods, a garmin nuvi, two laptops, cell phones and Bluetooth devices in our pockets, I felt a tiny bit embarrassed. I can’t tell if I’m greedy or normal, but I have an inkling I might still be that desperate kid in elementary school, pleading my mom to take me shopping, to be like the other kids and buy new things, new, newer. I want and I want, and I ask for so much, when all I really need is food, a safe place to live, water, sunshine. That’s one thing I really despise about my career: it encourages you to want and want, and never be satisfied. Good for the ambition, detrimental to the soul.

So, Josh gave this man $5 to feed his daughter, or whatever. Maybe he’s like the New Yorkers, and he just needs to drink, or maybe to gamble, or maybe he does need something to feed his little children. It almost doesn’t matter. He’s doing what all Americans do: we beg for more. For something. We prostrate ourselves at the feet of our government, do this for me, give me my fix of more and more.

We’re crossing Arizona now, and just passed Flagstaff. It’s funny to me, knowing nothing about Flagstaff, I always imagined it as a singularly unattractive town, tan and dusty and treeless, nothing but an oversized American flag in the middle of an unhappy village of very tan old people. Lo and behold, Flagstaff in reality is forested and beautiful, and my imagined counterpart is instead more of an accurate description of Albuquerque. Yuck. A low point in NM’s map.

Arizona’s flag, interestingly, looks like an 80’s t-shirt now being resold for $40 at Urban Outfitters: bright blues, reds, and oranges, exploding out of a center star. Everyone who pastes it onto their car windows are automatically cool.

I heard an NPR interview once with an American Flag representative, who said that the rules for handling flags so specifically were instated because of the worry the flag would be overused, overdisplayed. That seems to have been lost somewhere. We’ve driven through 480 miles today of empty lots of land, sometimes with nothing but a shanty and a flag in the middle of a sea of lonely shrubbery. Signs for “America’s Restaurant,” or “Patriot’s Place” dot the billboards. When there’s nothing else around you, just sky and sagebrush, maybe patriotism for your country and fervent belief in God are the only things to keep you sane, or to keep you from wallowing in an intense and justified loneliness.

Ninety percent of the other billboards today have been for Indian wares: Indian blankets, Indian pottery, Indian polished petrified wood, Indian smokes, Indian food, Indian maps, Indian merchandise of all kinds. When we pulled off at a “Scenic Spot,” which consisted of six plywood shacks, half of which were empty, the other half selling Indian merchandise, I told Josh it reminded me of Jamaica. Jamaica is a frightening place full of restless bodies, a whole country full of displaced people who didn’t ask to be where they are, the ancestors of enslaved workers from another world. The Native Americans, even more recently displaced, have turned their misplacement into the most American activity possible: capitalism. They do what actors do. They are so desperate to survive, they sell the most precious thing they have left: themselves. Their identity is for sale on wide, chipping billboards: REAL INDIANS. Some day long ago, somebody mistook them for someone else, but after persecution and all but annihilation, they turned in their identities. They market the mistake.

It’s hard to believe with all this space, it’s still not enough. Wanting, wanting.

On the Road: Saturday in Missouri!

2008-09-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

Second day of the Road Trip! Yesterday, we spent 13 1/2 hours driving, which wouldn’t be so bad if we were driving through fun America, but we weren’t, we were driving thorugh boring, flat, fielded, America. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri. Today will be just as bad. No hilariiouis signs, like there were in South Dakota, lots of trucks. I’ve seen no Obama bumper stickers, and only two McCain. That doesn't mean anything. Josh said driving through the midwest makes him understand better why Obama won't win. I could see that too.

We just passed a billboard of a small girl playing, with the italicized command: “Pornography Destroys.” Maybe we’re transitioning into fun sign land. Oh there’s another one, it says simply, “JESUS.” Well, when you say it like that...

This trip is, clearly, special to me, because, duh, I’m moving across the country for the first time. Beyond that, we are driving across America in the final month of a cutthroat presidential election during an economic crisis.

(New sign: “Jesse James Wax Museum: LIVE video of Jesse James!” Now we’re getting somewhere!)

We listened to the presidential debate last night on the radio as we sped through black fields in the last two hours of our first day of traveling. Ignorant of what most people saw last night, we could only hear their tones, their frustrated sighs, how they carefully worded their comebacks and defenses. Here are two intelligent men, wildly ambitious and hopeful, and they resort to exploiting dead soldiers’ bracelets. It reminds me of that acting exercise where each actor has to enter the picture and physically change the stage picture in order to upstage the other person. Look at me! Look at ME! LOOK AT ME!

(“Missouri Hick B-B-Q Next Exit.”)

I think that might be half of a generalized American personality: immediate attention satisfaction. We are stereotypically loud, demanding, selfish, and persistent. The other half, which is in essence the soul of our government in 2008, is about money. This election is about money. The failure of our government is about money. Their arguments are about money. The legacy of the Bush government, if not pathetic before, will be about a loss of money, a destruction of our financial supplies. Our government, whatever size, boils down to a collection of accountants, stewards of our cash. The final and only way to grab the attention of the non-voting, uninterested American population is to collapse their economy and shut down their savings.

(“JESUS.” Is this like a Mad Libs thing? “JESUS poops!” “JESUS in bed!” “JESUS in bed with your mom!”)

This is a trip about me, but this is also a trip about America. I’ve never felt so involved with my own citizenship as I do now. We have driven across five states in one day, safely, and efficiently, and we are listening to a radio station that is playing a song called “Blood of My Freedom” whose lyrics go, “Thank God for the Red, White & Blue/Someone Died that we might be Free.” We value our independence, our freedom to buy, sell, and live how we want, but to do that we find it necessary to damn everyone else. At times, our only similarity between states is roughly the same language and the constant presence of McDonalds.

This is a trip about me, and this is a trip about America. There are local politicians’ signs hammered into the heathery fields next to I-44 W, reminding me it’s almost time to vote.

Ooooh! “Pleasure Zone.” This is getting good…

In case I'm too sleepy at 7 am tomorrow...

2008-09-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

THE ROADTRIP HAS BEGUN!!!!

To be frank, the roadtrip has, in fact, not begun. To be frankly frank, Josh is actually still in an airplane. Over Illinois. Three hours late. Poor boy.

On the bright side: Phases One and Two are complete in Operation Move to LA! My car is stocked, I have Pirate's Booty and Dried Fruit overflowing their bags, sunscreen, camera, maps up the butt...I AM READY. Minus one sweet law student with a big mustache and an ipod stuffed with new music. No matter! The roadtrip is infinitely changeable! Like Poseidon on a good day!

But now...off to the airport! So Josh can turn right around...and hit the road!!!

See you on the west side, lovers!

PS McCain is RIDICULOUS. Sarah Palin is RIDICULOUS. I was watching the Simpsons episode where Lisa has a substitute teacher and it's Dustin Hoffman, and Bart runs for class president, and it looked just like my life. Why does our country remind me of an animated 4th grader's campaign? "More asbestos! More asbestos!"

One Small Step. One Big-Ass Roadtrip!

2008-09-24T19:12:00.001-07:00

Friends!

I'm dedicating this post to the small, but loyal and loving band of buddies who have been so supportive of this blog. It has been a true joy writing here, and I've discovered (and re-discovered) some wonderful things about myself. For instance, how much I really enjoy writing.

And now I'm absolutely thrilled to say I get to do more of it! On a bigger scale than my humble little tdawg4eva page! Tonight, I published my first post on Backstage.com's blogger section, Unscripted. It took me (no lie) like 3 hours to write 5 paragraphs, but it's a start.

Blogging, and the release it gives me, reminds me that no matter what I do, however down or dejected this business may make me feel, I am an artist and I need the release to give me balance in my life. Furthermore, in the giant shift that's about to occur on Friday, writing gives me hope for myself. If I can keep writing, if I can turn this experience into a story, into an adventure, I don't have to be scared.

So check out Unscripted under "Moving to Los Angeles." I'll be posting three times a week for the next two months, and this scrappy little bug of a blog won't be dying either. Now I can just talk more about my other passion: Loathing Sarah Palin.

Which reminds me! I submitted my short play "Paulette Rudd: Anyone Can Be Me!" to "23 Degrees of Sarah Palin" play festival in Los Angeles. Let's hope all my negative energy gets me some more work!

Aaand on Move News: I have started to tape boxes up, and finished my very last day of work. Josh is thinking about packing something into a bag and has started putting large quantities of music onto his ipod, which is equal to packing. I've started crying at random parts of the day, and doing too many loads of laundry. Randy has offered to teach me to juggle and to tap, and we have tentative plans to go surfing. Beth has agreed to be the recipient of my absentee ballot in CA. I've started having nightmares about driving, none of which involve Sarah Palin.

I love you,
Teresa

Things

2008-09-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

THINGS I WISH SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT ME:
1. How to fold a fitted sheet.
2. How to curl my hair.
3. How to apply stage makeup.
4. How to dive. And not the lame "Ducky Fall into the Water" Dive.
5. How to make a clover with my tongue.
6. How to whistle with my fingers.
7. How to snap.
8. How to surf.
9. How to ski.
10. How to grill. Anything.
11. How to play the piano.
12. How to not feel shame.
13. How to play the violin.
14. How to pray.
15. How to apply eye makeup.
16. How to fish.
17. How to jump double-dutch.
18. How to tap.
19. How to do a keg-stand.
20. How to juggle.

THINGS MY FATHER TAUGHT ME:
1. How to fall asleep.
2. How to cook pancakes.
3. How to measure balance using a hose.
4. How to wash the car.
5. How to mow a lawn.
6. How to do algebra.
7. How to help.
8. How to be polite.
9. How to swim.
10. How to parallel park.
11. How to take care of an apple tree thats fallen over.
12. How to make oatmeal.
13. How to put things together.
14. How to measure oil.
15. How to do my taxes.
16. How to ride a bike.
17. How to wash a dog.
18. How to get rid of a tick.
19. How to keep a fire going.
20. How to jump a car battery.

#20 was today. Everything else I've learned for myself.

How to Fit Your Life Into a Box:

2008-09-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

Beats me.

I did just spend an hour with my dad, investigating my car, prodding the tires and fiddling with oil and gauges. Did I tell you I named her Tawanda Jane? Tawanda for the mischievous alter-ego in "Fried Green Tomatoes" and Jane for my great-aunt, whose car it is I've snatched as my own. I love her.

As I lovingly scrubbed the dirt off her sweet alabaster paint, the awareness sunk in that Tawanda Jane will be my real and true companion for this leg of my life. When Josh leaves to go back to Berkeley, whether I've found an apartment or not, it will be me and my car. I gently wiped the pine sap off her wheel well, and thought, "It's you and me, baby. You better not break down in New Mexico!" Ay carumba.

Countdown: 6 Days!!!

2008-09-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, friends, we are now down to less than a week til Pennsylvania is given the big heave-ho in favor of palm trees and movie stars. And, happily, great things are happening in preparation!

1. Got my AAA card. Hot dog, now I can get towed across Texas for up to 200 miles!

2. Just as days are getting colder, boxes are filling up. My biggest problem is paring down the books. ("But I must have three copies of 'Letters to a Young Poet." I MUST!")

3. The big news, indeed! Starting this week, I'll be blogging for Backstage.com on their Unscripted page! You can check out my first columns under the category "From New York to LA." I'm so so excited about writing for them, and happy to be part of a whole host of talented artists on both coasts.

4. Many things are happening in this world. My favorite Pennsylvania regional theater, Theatre Horizon, had a wildly successful fundraiser gala last night, Wall Street has turned to a big pile of steaming poo, and I found a dollar in my pocket. Wa-HOO. I would love to talk more about it all, and maybe through a little jibe in there about the Lady of the Night, the big SP, but I won't, because I'm tired.

I bid you adieu, blogger, and will update soon...

I'm so confused

2008-09-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Last January, I paid $35 to meet with a cool hip young agent at One on One in New York. One on One is this actor business where you pay agents and casting directors to slightly pay attention to you for 7 minutes. Sometimes, someone will like you. Most times, you're out 40 bucks.

It was a really crappy New York night, pouring snow-rain and frigid. To quote my journal after the meeting, "I just sent a dud missile at him." Yeesh. It was terrible. I did, quite literally, everything wrong I ever possibly could have. He called me in the next day. I think the only reason is because, while wetly launching my spud of a acting career at him, I got really flustered and I just wouldn't shut up. Like, I could not shut my trap if you tied a weight to my upper lip. I just was babbling. He thought it was funny.

Regardless, he called me in. The commercial department said they wanted to freelance with me. They sent me an email to sent up my casting networks page. I never heard from them again. In a big sense, it's my failure completely. I sent them postcards, but never got up the guts to call them. I asked if I could ask him to submit for me, and he said no. I didn't know how to use them as my tool. And they, apparently, just forgot. Who knows? I take this as a lesson, and a warning.

And so, here I am, agentless again, but now...with this casting networks page! Actually, the NY Casting networks page just expired (that was a sad, sad reminder two months ago when I checked it to realize: yes, yes indeed they have forgotten about me. Aw.) but I weirdly have another free page on Now Casting. Where did that come from?! Did they sign me up for two pages? If I spend four hours setting it up, will it disappear next week when they realize I've been orphaned by my agent? Will my non-agent call me up when they realize I'm stealing, curse the day I was born into this world, and vow I'll never work again? Am I too dramatic?

Many questions, have I. Answers only to the last one: YES.

In other news, my nightmares about Sarah Palin have all come true! On Slate.com that is! Check out page two, for yours truly's overactive political imagination.

11 Days and Countiiiiing...

2008-09-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

I just typed a whole post about lists. It was a list of lists. THE List of Lists. And I erased it all. I think I have a list addiction. It's starting to hurt my relationships with others. (Picture Elizabeth Berkeley on uppers in the early nineties. "I'm so excited!!!! I'm so excited!!!! I'm so...scared." Where's Zack Morris when you need him?!)

Today is beautiful. Not too warm, like yesterday, just sunshiney and autumny and gorgeous. It's utterly incredible how my mood changes in good weather. I'm a beast in the rain. I think it makes me self-pitying. I need to get off this computer and get outside.

I'm planning my Christmas vacation. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and I won't be coming home for it. When I was in college, I always was sick and exhausted by Thanksgiving, and I would undoubtedly be unable to come back till the night before. There were always scenes to do, and all the California kids had ditched New York days before. I would come home, and the grass would be frosty and the air would be sharp, and my home would be at the pinnacle of comfy. (My home is best at the holidays. Deep green holly decorations everywhere and oranges from Florida and chocolate overflowing bowls my mother has put on the Thanksgiving table for 35 years.) And for the first time in weeks, I would sleep deeply, in a squeaky old bed with my grandmother's quilts piled high, and I would know I had nothing to do for days except watch parades and eat. This year, it'll be warm outside. I'm not sure where I'll be breaking bread, or sleeping, or anything for that matter. But Christmas, I've decided I will be home for that. I'm afraid I'll be desperate for cold weather by late December.

I don't know why I've been in a overly serious mood lately. I would go five months without seeing my family when I lived in New York, so it's not like I've never done that before. I guess I'm just worried about the turkey.

11 days. I have to remember: I'm not dying. I don't have to do everything in the next week and a half. I should enjoy this afternoon. I wish the leaves had turned more colors by now, but wishes are like fishes. They don't make good pets.

Regardless of my doubts in my own strength, I am excited for this move. Today was the first time I've sat in my car, and sped up my street, and been really, truly excited for the morning I do so with my life packed in the back, and my boyfriend next to me, holding maps of California in his lap.

11 days, friends, and counting.

On Layering

2008-09-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

The past few days I have been in a fuuuuuuunky mood. Like, the funkiest of funks. Just crabby, and irrationally unwilling to cooperate, and stubborn, and wanting to be alone and needy and just all over funky. I didn't even want to be around me. And fine, Big Roadtrip bla bla bla Big Life Change bla bla moving away from everything I've ever known bla bleh. Fine! I get it!

So summed up my overexcited, overextended thoughts just abooooooout 2.5 seconds before I burst hysterically into tears. You would have thought a Capulet had just died, I was crying that hard. Flung out all over my bed, my nose spewing snotty liquids on my pillows, surrounded by the messy unorganized shitpile that make up my belongings. I tried to get a hold of myself, I did. I tried to breathe. I thought about God. Then I thought about what a brat I am. Then I quite literally thought, "I have nothing. NOOOOOTHING!!!!" Then I did a rundown on my life, in defense of my brattiness: no apartment, no roommate, no job, no life plans, no friends nearby, boyfriend far away, a little nest of money that will quickly be dispersed on gas, insurance, acting classes, and, please please, a deposit on an apartment. I HAVE NOTHING!!!!

Then I caught my breath, and sat down to the write this post. Then I started sobbing again. Oooooh the misery! Ooooh the suffering of the overwhelmed girl in a almost-quarter life crisis.

Then I walked into the kitchen, burbled something unintelligable to my mother, and burst into tears on my parents' shoulders, like the small child I am, and they proceeded to calm me down and reassure me I didn't have to move. Which was not what I wanted to hear. I don't not want to move. I do. I'm just not ready. Which is to say, I will never be ready. I'm driving myself off the fucking shoddy wall trying to prepare myself for every possible thing that could ever happen to me in LA. (Last night, I caught myself daydreaming about making a playlist on my ipod for every situation I might find myself: lonely, peppy, angry, feeling poor, feeling fat, feeling self-destructive, and then I imagined going up to the Apple genius bar saying, "Um, I think my low self esteem broke my ipod. It's still smoking, a little." At which point Bill Gates puts me in technology jail.) Do you ever just wish you could go to sleep for four months, and then wake up, and most of your problems are, if not totally solved, at least mildly unimportant? I just want to get through these next weeks and months, through the move, and the probably heinous apartment search, and the decorating, and the first shitty auditions, through my first Thanksgiving not at home, through Christmas which might ultimately suck, and then right through to 2009, when things, please please, will all be better. A (anxiety-ridden) girl can hope...

I apologize if this blog has become whiner central. I apologize to everyone if I've become lame. (Especially Josh.) I can't help it. I want to go, I can't stay here, that's for sure, but I can't go back, and I have no idea how to go forward. What's worse is that I feel like everyone I talk to, I put up this faux confidence and am all like, "Oh yeah, so I have no plans, whatever...it's all an adventure! If it works, great, if not, oh well! Ah ha! Ha ha ha cha cha!" Ugh.

I apologize. Again. This post needs to end.

In one of my favorite books of the Chroni(what)cles of Narnia, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," there is a scene where snotty cousin Eustace selfishly takes a golden bracelet from a dead dragon, transforming him into (what else)a dragon. His scaly arm swells, so he can't take off the bracelet, and he can't talk, and no one knows that he isn't a little British boy anymore. No one really cares anyway, he's so snotty. And then Aslan comes to him, and leads him to a beautiful garden (an Eden, you might say) where there is a beautiful pool. He dips himself in this steaming water, and his dragon skin starts to peel off. Layer after layer, he keeps ripping off these old shells of his old self, the dead scales and the meanness and self-absorption and the fears. But there's so much to it, he can't get it all. So Aslan jumps him, and digs his claws into his back, and just slashes the rest off. And then he's a boy again.

I guess I just want that. I want this move to be the slash.

Or maybe, it's just a move. And dragons and talking lions aren't involved at all.

Darn.

Change: The Blog

2008-09-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

This blog is about to Change.

As the wise and introspective Garth Algar said memorably in the 1992 film, Wayne's World, "We fear change."

I certainly resist it. My parents were always renovating something in the house I grew up in, and I would constantly be adding on to this list I had made of all the things that had been changed in the house since we moved in. The carpets, the back door, the new addition to the kitchen, the trees cut down. It might not have been better, but the past was always safer. I knew where I had been.

Not to say I don't yearn for it as much as anyone. (This is the only time I'll plug Obama in this post, I promise. OBAMA! Aaaand, if you find yourself captivated by Sarah Palin's speaking voice to the extent you aren't actually listening to her words, go here, my friends, whether you're a woman or not.) That's why I'm moving to LA: I want to change my career, my life. I want to change how I do business with myself, I want to work and be challenged, and I have lost that here in the Northeast. I'm moving because movement fosters change, big change, that's for freaking sure! I realized this morning that nothing in my life is going to be staying the same. Terrifying! Exciting.

Last night was the closing performance of my Fringe Play. Not our best performance, but to give an offering to the people of 9/11 on the anniversary was truly stunning for me. Regardless. What's notable here is that when I came out to greet my parents, they were talking to a woman who is the mother of one of my earliest childhood friends. (We'll call her Mrs. Lee.) She just happened to be there at the performance, and recognized me midway through the show. Huh. I immediately shut off. I could feel myself revolting against this situation. I haven't seen this woman in a decade. I haven't seen her daughter in just as long. They were never unkind to me (except that one time when I was 11 when they left me in a rainstorm alone after a softball game when she was supposed to drive me home. whatever. Tdawg don't carry grudges. Usually.) but the Lees represent this horrible feeling of judgement that comes from the awkwardness of growing up with ambitious and fiercely defensive people.

Mrs. Lee: "So....you're REALLY moving to LA?" *Concerned face*
Me: "Yeeeeees."
Mrs. Lee: "Oh." PAUSE. "But what are you going to DO there?" *Overly concerned face*
Me: "The same thing I did in New York. Work." At this point the conversation ended for me.

This is why actors feel embarassed to tell people what they do. If you're lucky, you get the "God-I-hope-you-get-famous-so-you-can-help-me-meet-Oprah" response, but more than likely you'll get the "You know, a lot of people TRY to be famous" or even better, my personal favorite "You know, that's a really hard job, don't you? Not everybody is like Lindsay Lohan, Teresa." Like I just want someone to take pictures of me while I get drunk. (Um, hello, I have friends for that.) And PS, they only use your name when it's utilized in a condescending manner. It's like, you are so small, I'm going to say your name like you are a preschooler, or a little dog weeing on the sham.

Why do people do this? Because they don't want you to change. They want you to be a weeing dog, in a nice neat little category: Small, Strange, Struggling Artist. Let's add successful to that list, people, because I am changing to succeed in my life. I refuse to stay little, or stay home, or stay unhappy because I'm afraid. It's not worth it, because, in the end, what am I afraid of?

Poverty? Check that off, I've already done the poor thing.
Rejection? Done that too, bitches.
Loneliness? Who isn't lonely? I won't be codependent because I'm scared to be alone.
Scammed? Robbed? Swindled? Well, I've already done 1/3 of those things. And we'll refer back to the first thing, which was poverty, so do your best, suckers!
Failure? Yes, well...I guess that's up to me to define that. And I don't think I'll ever feel like I've truly got everything I want so...I guess you could say I've already done that too!

In the end, there's nothing to be afraid of. Look what happened to Garth. He changed, and things sucked for a while, but in the end, he got a foxy lady. And so did Wayne. Change is good.

I'm a Celebrity! On Public Access!

2008-09-09T14:23:00.001-07:00

What are you doing at 5:57 PM on Thursday September 11, 2008? Paying respects to our country? Saluting heroes? Going to see my show "9/11: A Day in the Life of a People?" No! Watching me be interviewed on "Vikings Come Home" on the Viking Channel? Yes, you are!

So today was my interview about (haha. hahaaaaaa!) my career with my high school french teacher in our township television channel studio. It was incredible. I laughed, I advised, I sang. Yes, that's right. After grilling me about every show I ever did 5th-12th grade and the grading system of NYU (what? I don't know, I just took the easy classes and some stage combat, sheesh)she ended the 63 minute long interview by asking me what advice I had for young people. (Deeeerrrrr...if there's anything else you could possibly do besides acting do that? Follow your bliss? Leaves of three let them be, leaves of four eat some more? Beats me! The best advice I ever got was, "You might want to stop eating so many of those sugar-free gummi bears, it'll give you the runs.") THEN she topped it off by asking me to sing something from "The Sound of Music." The show I did 9 years ago. When I was fifteen. Dear lord.

Anyhoo, I decided that instead of looking at this experience as mindnumbingly unentertaining to watch (I apologize to the residents of Montgomery County for my rant about vocal folds) or extraordinarily embarassing ("So why did you quit doing musical theater? I always wanted to ask you that.") I should look at this in a positive light. After talking for 63 long minutes about my struggling little career, gasping for breath like a baby fish on a sunny dock, what are my goals/dreams/aspirations? What am I most proud of? What do I wish I was doing better/more of/less of? Why can you be unequivocally untalented and still be successful?

You'll have to watch the interview.

This one's for You.

2008-09-07T20:35:00.001-07:00

Hrm.

Blogging is a difficult task, and, ultimately, as satisfying as it is, it does not solve any problems. Sometimes it makes things clearer, or releases some pent-up emotions. But fix things it does not. Like a diary, it will never respond to me. Or love me. It just accepts my bad typing. And then: bloop. Posted.

I feel like EVE in "Wall-E," when she blows up those oil tankers out of frustration, and sadness. "Where are the f*&cking plants?!!" Little does she know...beep beep beep beep! Love is right behind that garbage heap!

So. I musn't just use my blog to blow things up. I must use it for good.

So here's what I'm ending with tonight: 9/11 Play in State College went well overall. Today was the best performance yet, and I'm so glad to have gotten this opportunity. Besides the acting itself, I love my Super Director and my castmates, and, going further, I've realized some important things about myself. This is the most intense play I've ever done. Mostly because we as Americans have open wounds we carefully placed band-aids over, and I just realized mine are barely pusing over. I'm scared of dying. I'm terrified of my loved ones dying. I'm terrified of painful deaths, and of painful choices. This whole weekend I've felt nauseaus and ill during the shows. This is a true challenge, and for the first time, I feel real stage fright knowing I have to go onstage to die. One more on Thursday, on the day itself.

Hrm. Hrrrrrrm. "WHERE ARE THOSE F*CKING PLANTS?????!"

On the upside, I'm being interviewed Tuesday for my local cable access channel by my high school French teacher about my career. HAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!! HAA!!!!

Oh God. HAAAAAAHAHAHAAAA!

Oh God. Even the oil tankers are laughing.

Oh Poo, Tears Again.

2008-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

I finally added that last post 7 hours after I wrote it (faulty coffee shop wi-fi, damn you!) and now I'm on to a new one before I conk out. Tdawg is ti-ti, ladies and gentlemen. (As in rhymes with "mai-tai", no dirty thoughts just because I'm in frat land.) Translation: I'M TIRED.

This freaking show gets me in a new way every time. Tonight I had a full on freak out after my last speech in the first act, right before I die. I went offstage, and my hands and legs were tingling, and then lost feeling, then I got dizzy so I got down on the floor in Child's Pose while tears just started streaming out. I don't know what specifically will set me off sometimes more than others in this show. Tonight I definitely lost some breath when the actor who plays the farmer (a dear, sweet man named Lloyd who was a Jesuit priest 1960-69, and then dropped out and had four kids, all of whom go to Penn State) talked about the plane that crashed into Pennsylvania, and how people were calling their loved ones to tell them what they were trying to do. How they were trying to save some people on the ground. More on that in a paragraph...

Usually, I always leak a tear or two when the waiter does his second speech about having to choose between the window or the fire in Tower One, and how when he got up that morning he never thought he'd be thinking of suicide. At that point, they flash this absolutely horrifying slide behind us of a man freefalling out of the Twin Towers. His arms and legs are splayed in the air as the pressure pins his body against gravity. But tonight, I just couldn't get my breath back. And then I have to get up and speak, alone, to this audience I can barely see past the blinding lights, and jump off a building myself as I tell them about mangled and charred body parts on Church Street, and then describe looking up at the sky while a skyscraper topples down. That's it. That's my death scene. I walk off, and everyone keeps talking, and I just lose it. I lose my shit, alone, backstage.

So. I do have some idea why the farmer got to me. Yesterday afternoon, right before I left Philly to come here, I had a discussion with my mother about the movie "United 93," and how she thought it was great, and how I had zero interest in seeing it. Truly, I have not had one desire to watch that movie. So then she says to me, "Oh, but there is this one part, where this young, 22 year old girl calls her mother and says she doesn't think she'll make it, and her mother just says, 'Just stay on the phone with me,' and she stays there, talking to her daughter, watching out the window at the children playing outside." And my mother and I just stared at each other for a second, and I think the meaning of that hit both of us. Ugh, I'm crying right now. In one sense, that's amazing, because she could be there for her daughter when she was facing her own death. But then I think, that woman had to listen, and then be there when the phone went dead, and then had to keep breathing and living after that. How do you go through something like that? How do you listen to your child die? I'm not sure who I'm weeping for, me or that girl. Or her mother.

What's interesting about this show is how it has rocked my world in such unexpected ways. I had no idea I had such a well of emotion thinking of death, mine, or my loved ones, or thinking about my country, about war and children and the future and the clear lineage of 9/11, about our connection as human beings. By far, what's been shocking to me is how difficult it is as a performer to keep doing your job when you are terrified on stage. These are issues I buried so deep inside me, I didn't know they existed. Once I get onstage and my buttnaked emotions flash themselves like sunfish with machetes for fins, I have these full-on flip-out sessions once I exit. Because when I'm onstage, I can barely hold it together. Fine, I know that my good old acting teachers would be like, "That's what's interesting, Teresa. Act THAT." Bullshit. I'm trying to act that, but there are sunfish everywhere! With MACHETE-FINS!!!I wonder how anyone could do a run like this long-term. I don't know if I could. I guess I'd have to get some therapy first.

One final thought. My senior year, I did a NYU School of Ed production of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly." It's based on the true story of one of the few survivors of a children's concentration camp outside of Prague. Similar writing style to 9/11 Fringe Play. I could not eke out a tear for the life of me in that show. I couldn't get involved. I did research. I assigned sad songs to scenes. I analyzed and over-analyzed. I did movement exercises. I painted watercolor word-associations. NOTHING. But for this...I couldn't stop the overflow of pain and fear if I wanted to. Maybe it's because "Butterfly" issues were never my fears, and jumping out of buildings and loving my mother so much I can't deal with it are. (PS I'm crying AGAIN.) I've never been persecuted. My childhood was happy, and safe. There is so much suffering in this world, but, as an actor, I don't know how to talk about them all yet.

From Beaver Ave, On Banning Books

2008-09-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday brings me to the aptly (and/or ironically) named Happy Valley to perform the 9/11 Fringe Play for two nights in the heart of Penn State's campus. Unfortunately, it's also a game weekend here, so...attendance for our little show shall be low. Hrm. We actually drove in late last night, and at every stop sign our van was swarmed with scantily dressed undergrads prepping to get sloshed, make out, and watch some football. It's so interesting to me, since my college experience at NYU consisted of going to red wine parties in lofts and stalking Rufus Wainwright's East Village neighborhood. The only rushing I did was to see "Wicked" on a Tuesday night. (PS um, who knew frat houses are palaces?!)

The upside of this experience is that A) I've never been to Penn State before B) I've never been to a frat town on a game weekend B) we're performing in a pretty theater. It's newly renovated, with beautiful new dressing rooms, gorgeous seats, and a really sweet little stage. Plus, they put up signs everywhere for us: "Welcome 9/11 Play!" I'm not kidding. So sweet. It's been very fun so far.

So what if no one will be in the audience tonight? Just because this is a play about real people, does that mean a whole truckload of real people need to witness it? Or, in this particular case, as it is a quasi-workshop, is this particular performance just a step in the play's longer life, not necessitating a large reception? It brings me to my old wondering about whether great art is measured by its audience. Just because Sean Penn was seen on millions of giant movie screens flipping his shit in "Mystic River," does that make his performance any better than a 17 year old flipping his shit in his college acting class, seen by 10 other people? Some of the best acting I've ever done was in my bedroom, reciting Antigone soliliquoys to the darkness. ("O Thebes! My own flesh and blood—dear sister, dear Ismene!") Furthermore, my Super Director doesn't seem to be too worried about the turnout. I get this sense from him that whoever is meant to see it will be there. Which is beautiful. But, maybe not practical? I guess it comes down to whether you believe the art is about the audience or about the acting. Or the money.

Speaking of Super Director, he and his wonderful wife/co-producer cooked us this amazing feast for lunch, before they ran off to the game. (I find this hilarious. This town is craaaaazy! I'm slightly jealous. I wish sometimes I'd gone to a football school. Then I realized I just want to be in "The Prince & Me." Then I realized I just want to be Julia Stiles. Then I realized I just miss Heath Ledger.) And all over their walls were framed posters of all of the shows they've produced, directed, performed in. Next to those pictures were the pictures of their children, their friends, people important to their heritage, They are such loving, open, honest people. Maybe our show is about none of the things I thought it was about. Or all of them, actually. It's about the people who happen to be in the dark, and the people who happen to be in the light, and a common story we all share. We do, actually. We all end up thinking, "Where was I on September 11th? What am I scared of? Would I pick the fire or the window? Would I go in to save strangers or would I run run away?" It's definitely not about money. Heath would have liked it, I think.

A few more hours til call...I think I'll do some work on Roadtrip 2008. Plans are being planned, my friends! Twenty more days. I think I'll leave you with a link to Anne Kilkenny's words about her neighbor Sarah Palin. Just click on the quote below, spoken with dignity in grace by your favorite and mine, Sean Connery, as the wise and true Professor Henry Jones in "Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade."

Yours in Happy Valley,

Teresa Claire

Professor Henry Jones: It tells me, that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try *reading* books instead of *burning* them!

I Poke you with my Leadership Stick! (ow.)

2008-09-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

I've been debating whether or not I should tone down my political rants on this blog, as it is primarily in existence to reflect upon...my Acting Career. (Said in snooty faux-Brit voice. Ah, yes. Ah-cting!)Because, what I really want to do right now is explode with frustration and disappointment over three days of watching Republicans talk me down, pick apart my needs and desires for my country, and insult my femininity by parading around a woman who has experience assembling molecules into babies and is familiar with the workings of Ebay and wishes good lives for embryos but not Islamists. Right, toning down the rants... Am I too angry? Am I not utlizing this space for my art?

And then I read (of course, my well of inspiration) Ming Ming on Backstage.com, and here's what the lady said:

"...how lucky we are to do what we do and live where we live. Of course everything's got pros and cons, and certainly our road is not the easiest one to travel. But anyone who's able to identify something that excites them and actually do it is a lucky bastard. The trick is staying excited and continuing to find opportunities to actually do it of course. In any case, regardless of what anyone does, if they are able to find joy in the present no matter what or where or with whom, they are pretty blessed...Having no idea how many people actually read this thing, or how many people can actually stand reading mine, if you're still there, Dear Reader, at the risk of sounding fruity or cheesy or gooey or sticky like coconut rice, know that you and only you determine your worth and your value. It's got nothing to do with getting an agent, scoring an audition, or booking a job. I believe that as soon as you figure out exactly why you are pursuing what you are pursuing and genuinely feel good about that, and you realize that everything about you as you are right now in this very moment is absolutely perfect and as it should be, it'll straighten out your confidence and that's the single most important thing to get you where you want to go...Now I could continue going off on random tangents. Or I could get back to working on my ridiculously long sides. Or I could take a photo of McCain and Palin and draw devil horns and goatees on their faces and pray to the Lord Almighty that the good people of our country are intelligent enough to see that they are useless, ignorant, lying hand puppets.

All good things I needed to read! Sure, I may not have a job right now. Sure, I may be terrified of my life in one month, but I'm also terrified of my country in two. What if we lose again? I believe in America because I believe that there must be a place where safety exists among chaos, where choices are fair and equal, where people actually have the freedom to protect themselves and their children, and where we all have the opportunity to work as hard as we choose. I don't think we can do that on our own, I think we need a government to help guide us, because large groups of people are stupid, scared, and mean. Just like small groups of people. Or just people. Which is why it is forever frustrating to meet people who do not VOTE. Every single thing the candidates talk about in their rounds of the USA are meaningful and relevant to me. And to you. Yes, you, silly!

Maybe why I'm fixating on government and politics here is because I tend to feel there is no rhyme or reason to the acting business. You can work and work and be talented up the butt, but if you're not at the right place at the right time, if you're not exactly in the right light with the right people and happen upon some magic showbiz fairy dust, you might get nowhere. There are no rules, there are no bylaws or protective codes. Sure, in the unions maybe, but you have to sell your soul just to have basic basic human rights as an actor! I have endlessly talented friends, but all of us get passed over at some time or another for some uglier, stupider person. Kind of like the past 2 national elections...And this time, goddamnit, I want my candidate to be cast! Because he's right for it, he's so good for this job, and we need him! (I hesitate to go further, because I don't want any more "he's a celebrity" fodder, and I'm sure every political news site will be looking at my blog for quotes.)

Regardless. I move to LA in 21 days. That's like saying, "There's a tax cutter on the loose! It's JOHN MCCAIN!!!!" IE I'm scared. (Because he's not really going to cut our taxes, people...Be forewarned!)

Western

2008-09-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my first (and overdue) conference call with Josh to plan our Roadtrip to LA 2008, please enjoy some YouTube loving.

GUY DRIVING ACROSS AMERICA

Crushered!

2008-09-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

Okay. Try not to get too excited. But I just found Wil Wheaton's blog.

Wil Wheaton says, "Don't be a dick."

That's right, Trekkers and Geekies! WESLEY CRUSHER! Speaking of crushe(r)s, that little man-child had a maroon saddlepant license on my heart. For serious, what could be hotter than making out with a teenage genius in outer space?! NOTHING. Let's get trashed in Ten-Forward and warp drive to my intergalactic fantasy, Number One!

He even has a little FAQ's section for aspiring actors:

I want to be an actor. Do you have any advice?
My immediate advice is: study, study, study. Read the classic plays and see the great movies. And for the love of Bob, study! And read Backstage. Get yourself into some sort of acting program or workshop. Just avoid anything that tells you they'll give you a free book by L.Ron Hubbard. It's a scheme to recruit you into Scientology.

Done, Ensign Crusher. I was thinking about joining up, see if L. Ron could boost the old Tdawgydawg's star status, but you are the captain of my career, the Worf to my Tasha Yar.

Ah. In other news, I love Backstage bloggers. It's like they read my mind. Stacey Jackson is one of my favorites to read, and she's adorable to boot. I want to steal her wardrobe. Read all about the things she should have done when she moved to LA here: Things I Wish I'd Done.

Okay. I now have to go simmer down and watch the GOP convention and then get all riled up again. Oh man. Oh man oh man!

Oh for Palin's Sake!

2008-08-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

So first up, let's all take a moment and appreciate my friend Lee's blog Cupcake Monster, highlighted on CNN.com today due to her witty and spot-on take on Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin:

Cupcake Monster!
"According to Dana Perino, the White House is "energized" by the Palin pick. Yeah, you get pretty energized running around screaming "WTF."

Aaaaand...last night was our opening night of Fringe Play, which was actually a dress rehearsal/first read/tech rehearsal. It went off okay. Although, talking about 9/11 for 6 hours is exhausting.

Naked & Fringed

2008-08-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

So Fringe Play opens tonight. It might be scary, given that we've never had a full cast rehearse together. Or that I've never met several of the cast at all. Or the costumer designer. Or had tech. Hm. But Super Director/Writer/Actor Charles gave us a pep talk last night before we started a run, and he reminded us this is a workshop. It's a play in progress, and what matters is that we are true to the characters. So what if there's no blocking in the last scene? So what if we have new pages of monologues a day before the show? So what? An interesting experience, no doubt. But a challenging one, and, fittingly, a scary one. True enough.

We fling around the term 9/11 like dirty laundry. We use it every day. Cars wear "Never Forget" bumper stickers like elitist band-aids. (I loathe those bumper stickers. You think your peice of sticky plastic on your ugly truck is going to jog my memory? I seem to remember...oh, that's right, I remember all about it just fine without your egotistical help.) I think the problem is (and one which I had forgotten until rehearsals started)that we wall ourselves over in order to toss around our dirty laundry memories. It's human instinct.

Super D/W/A Charles sent out some videos yesterday of the initial news reports on September 11th. I had 15 minutes between work and my commute to Philly, so I started watching, thinking this will be good to see some of those news reports I hadn't looked at in years. Usually, I don't do a huge amount of research, relying instead on that Mamet-ian thinking that what is essential is the analysis of the scene, the understanding of the character's objective rather than what kind of bacon she ate for breakfast. (Organic. Pleeeease.) So, in a rather stupid move, I watched these two little videos, and I immediately started to freak out. I think what I did forget, instead of the general idea of 9/11 itself, an idea that can only be eloquently illuminated by a cheap-ass bumper sticker, is how terrified I was that day that we were all going to die. I was a senior at Upper Merion High School in King of Prussia, PA, in acting class of all places, when the first plane hit and we turned on the television. At first, it was a horrible accident, smoky and so strange, and sad. But when the second plane hit, suddenly the world started to cave in on itself. Were all the planes going to start falling from the clouds? Would all the buildings start collapsing into their roots out of terror? When Flight 93 crashed into that field in Pennsylvania, looking at my own mortality, even sitting at my faux-wood desk in Room 909, was my only option.

So. I watched those videos. Drove to rehearsal. Found a fantastic parking space. (Thank you, Julie, for your excellent karma.) Got to rehearsal. Ate a yogurt. Started the run. Listened to my castmate Michael's speech about making a decision between burning to death in a fire or jumping out of the 99th floor window. And I lost it. I started shaking. I was listening to the other speeches, and when I got up to do my 2nd monologue, I thought I was going to pass out. At the end of my speech, my character dies. I barely finished it. I kind of sped off stage. Which, fine, as an actor, what I should have probably done was lived in that moment, and breathed it in, and shared it with my castmates, and let it be what it was. And I did, for the most part. But in popped that human instinct, to shut it off, to hide yourself when you're vulnerable. So I ran offstage, huddled in the dark, and sobbed.

When you're onstage, and you find yourself finally tiptoeing into the picture, and you yourself are poking your timid little feelings out into the light, it can be utterly debilitating. It's not anybody's natural state to let it all out. Except for crazy people. Which is why crazy people are usually great actors. The trick is finding the balance between crazy and socially existent. (All my actor friends are nodding.)

It's exactly like being in a romantic relationship. How much do you let out in the first month of love? How much can you let out to your partner when you want to marry them? How much can you let out at all? What if they stop loving you? The goal, I guess, onstage, and in life, is to keep no secrets at all. To be truthful and to be naked. In this case, I actually I had no idea I was covering anything up at all. But crouching in the black backstage, once I let out some tears over my freakout feelings about 9/11, suddenly I got this rush of freakout feelings about a whole buttload of issues. I hate planes. I hate heights. I love New York, I hate New York. I believe in Obama so much. What if Obama doesn't win? I hate this war. I protested this war. I held up the sign with my brother and sister at the front of the March 17th March in Philadelphia on the 1st anniversary of the war, and screamed, "What do we want?! Peace! When do we want it?! NOW!" until my voice was gone and tears were streaking my cold face. My grandfather walked beside me in the January march on DC in 2004, and he started to cry when he realized he'd fought in WWII because he thought it would be the very last war. Oh look...it's 2008.

Doing a play about 9/11 is doing a play about today. Literally, I'm speaking lines about my life. I didn't know that when I signed up for this shindig. I thought, "Ah. Fringe. Another goal for the summer checked off!" It breaks my heart to think about the what if. What if Al Gore had won in 2000? What if we had protested the war more? What if I'd given up my artistic life and become a soldier? The day John Kerry relinquished the election to George Bush, the only person I could reach was my brother, Michael. He told me that we had to keep working for the America we were raised to believe in. Even if it doesn't exist, we have to keep believing that dream is possible. Even when bad things happen, and planes fall out of the sky, and our cities change, and our fears are released into the world, and we crack open our chests like dusty attic trunks, we have to keep believing in the possibilities of hope, and change, and America. That's the best part about Obama. He's not the keeper of hope, he's just a person who reminded us it's okay if we each have some.

I'm a little scared about our opening night. I'm a little nervous about how I'm going to react. It is my story, after all. And you know, this reminds me that I truly look forward to my drive across America in a month. I like looking at my country. I'll put on a bumper sticker that says, "Obama Biden 2008."

Pros

2008-08-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Now that my Hell Job has entered a new era, I'm hoping that I will be able to settle down for my remaining weeks in King of Prussia before I head out west. (EEEEE!!!! That's my happy/scared/excited/peeing in my pants noise that erupts out of my throat when I talk about LA. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee!)

My To Do Lists are overwhelming. I like to categorize them, type them up, print them out, and paste them in books. The most organized TD I've ever worked with would carefully handprint every single one of his lists and put a tiny little box next to each item, so that he could carefully X it when he had completed his task. I like doing that too. I looooooove X-ing out To Do tasks. It's because it rarely happens.

Which is why my lists are overwhelming! I have my "To Do for LA" list, my "To Do for LA Before I leave PA" list, my "To Buy in PA for LA" list, my "To Buy in LA" list which is attached to my "To Buy in PA for LA Roadtrip," list, my "To Stay in PA" and "To Bring to LA" book lists, and my "What to Do in LA When I'm Poor, Sad, Hungry, And/Or Unemployed and Miss PA" list.

EEEEEeeeeeeSPLAT!

However, last night I stumbled onto Nicole J. Butler's blog on Backstage.com's Unscripted section. She's celebrating her 10th Anniversary of moving to LA. I particularly felt it when she said, "I arrived as an artist, and along the way I discovered that I needed to become a business woman as well." And she so neatly broke it down into this handy equation: "Success = Preparation + Opportunity." (I love blogging.) I feel like this is a reminder from some higher power that I'm not going to die. Just because I have NO CLUE what I'm doing, doesn't mean I'm going to move west and fall down dead. I do know what I'm doing. Roughly. Hey! I've made lists! Many, MANY lists!

In other news, I got a $300 check for my contract buyout from the Indie Film. Money!

Aaaand...9/11 Fringe Show is moving along. Kind of. I will literally be going into our opening night performance with 12 hours of rehearsal MAX. We won't even have the entire cast until our first performance. Last night I was done 1/4 of the way through the rehearsal, and tonight's rehearsal was cancelled. The writer/director is adding lines/scenes/monologues (uh, when am I getting that new scene? Um, okay...) and rewriting old ones. The twelve actors are all sort of rolling with it, because he is so calm, so not worried. Maybe it's because it's the Fringe, and it's low stress, or maybe because this is the truest Work in Progress ever. Every year we'll have a 9/11 anniversary, and every year he'll do this play, in new and varying forms. Last night he even said, "We're not going to do it this way this time, but next time I'm doing this and this..." Uh. Okay....Other than that, it's great! Everybody's very nice, of all different backgrounds, and I'm really enjoying just jumping in to a little adventure. I've worked with so many crazy people at this point in my life, and there really aren't crazies in this. Maybe it's because everybody's so damn professional, so desperate to do this play and this story some kind of justice, that even though no one knows which way is up, we're rolling with it like pros, letting the crap roll of our backs. And I'm looking forward to a free trip to Penn State on a game weekend...

So. Time to tackle some lists. Bah. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Where Fantasy RULES!

2008-08-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Call me a psychic, but as soon as I finished my last post, lo and behold I had the shittiest of shit days. This was followed directly by another shit day. Moral of the story: Procrastination is useless. When working for Hell Bosses, shit days are predictable and constant. Stop working for Hell Bosses.

Howeveeeeeer....this is not what this post is about. Nay, my friends! This post is about:

THE NEW YORK RENAISSANCE FAIRE!

Huzzah and Hallelujah, today was the annual trip to the Renaissance Faire to see our friend Seth prance about in tights and sling faux Elizabethan insults at similarly dressed thespians in Tuxedo, New York. One of the happiest and most ridiculous days of the year. This year I was again accompanied by my friends Beth, Randy, Gillian, and Teddy, all of whom are actors as well, none of whom have acted in a Renaissance Faire.

(For all you Ren Faire virgins, let me set the scene for you: Picture a forest in modern-day suburbia, where a small village of squat, thatch-roofed cottages (If you just sang out the word "Burninating," you just got an extra ten points. All others, please refer to Strongbad.) lie nestled around several mossy ponds, the green waters rippling with paddle boats and a floating dragon head. There is a maypole, a human chess board, stocks, pony rides and knife-throwing games, several taverns advertising "mead" and "steak on a stake," as well as a real-life sword in a stone. Wizards wander around and buxom young wenches cry out as they sell their wares, items that range from roses to elf ears to broadswords. Food tents offer such delicacies as "The Cone of Cookies," "Spycey Potatoes," "Flavored Snow," and turkey legs the size of a small dog. There are flush privies for those who prefer to not use the Port-a-Potty, and Ye Olde ATM for those who have forgotten to pack all their dubloons. This is not a place for the normal.)

There are several things that fascinate me about the Ren Faire, first of which are the actors themselves. These are people who dress up in leather and canvas in the thick of summer, and force generalized British accents through their modern American lips. They perform for 9 hours a day, and not only "onstage" as they perform huge amounts of stage combat in sweltering heat and pounding rain. They perform whole Shakespearan plays in an outdoor theater, fast, intense scenes on bridges and in wooded glens that further the plot of the entire day's overarching theme, but they also are consistently improvising as they move constantly through the audience. Most importantly, they work diligently and genuinely to create a magical foundation for their audience: Yes, you did stumble onto a lost Tudor age in upstate New York. Yes, we do all exist simultaneously in a mish-mash of history, including all of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Elizabeth I's entire court throughout her entire life, as well as a hodgepodge of other cast members such as Ivanhoe, Sir Ulrich Von Lichtenstein (which I'm fairly sure is the name of Heath Ledger's character in "A Knight's Tale,") Lucrecia Borge, Anne the Pirate Queen, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Yes, we do use a strange perversion of Elizabethan language. (Par example: "I thank thee, milady," "Where art mine mead mug, thou lump-headed dog?" "Thou shalt be mine champion at the joust, Robin of the Hood, at 4 of the Clock!") Yes, we do invite our audience to interact freely with us, onstage and off. Yes, we do invite the exploration of the bawdy side of England's court life by showcasing our breasts and making jokes with a really-not-so-vague sexual innuendo punchline. Yes, we do encourage you to wear your own homemade armour.

Whaaaaat?! Who makes homemade armour?! This audience does. Oh yes.

Second to speaketh about, my lords and ladies: the audience. It's as if the Ren Faire banners proclaim: "Bring me your oversexed dorks, your hopeless medievel fanatics who polish their own dagger collections, Bring me your crazies who own their own doublets, plaid hoop skirts, farthingales, petticoats, partlets and bumrolls, fairy wings, thigh-high leather boots, and corsets meant to be worn over top of your smock (your shirt, you 21st century loser)." These are men who grow their hair long so they can braid it like a "Scotsman." These are families who dress up their babies like pixies, shove their boobies into small strips of woven cloth, and whip out their handmade metal as decorative clothing pieces. They do not work at the faire. They come, they drink a ton of mead, they make lewd jokes. It's a strange, safe world, here at the Ren Faire, where anybody can be anybody. A tall, thin girl with too much acne can be a princess. A large man with copious amounts of hair can be a Celtic God. Couples come and dress in matching belted & tied fashion get turned on by the overwhelming amounts of cowhide and copper. Within the Ren Faire's thatched and paper mache walls, whatever we want to be is not only welcome, but stronger. Even if it is a wizard. It's a wizard with confidence. This is the place where you, my friend, are the coolest.

Third, I must clarify, I LOVETH THE REN FAIRE. I don't know what it is, whether it's being aware of the incredible acting challenge these people work through valiantly and energetically, whether it is observing a truly involved and passionate audience, or whether it's the knowledge that I am one of those people who so desperately want to believe in that strange, safe world where magic IS possible, where heroes DO fight tirelessly for love with swords and bare fists if necessary, where food is plentiful and entertainment is constant, and everything is tinged with sex and humor. We all belong, all children, all adults, all the weirdos, all the fatties, all the shy, all the brave. There are no boundaries. Fancy is free, and we are all part of the story.

They say in acting that when you go to a play, you are watching the action occur because an ordinary character is placed in an extraordinary circumstance. You are watching the normal within an urgent and dangerous abnormal. You go to see yourself be brave. You go to see yourself feel something. Hopefully, it'll rub off a little. We can hope. And here, at the Ren Faire, you are so a part of it, you can't help but feel that this urgent story they are telling is one which could not exist without your presence. You help the story along, by standing next to the actors while they cry their lines into the sky as they run through the town square, by cheering them on when they need you as they battle for the crown. We offer them advice as we pass by them, and while they can't change their scripts, they can hear us, react to us. The heroes themselves are so familiar: Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Little John, Queen Elizabeth. The villians are more varied: the Duke of Northumberland, of Percy, of Norfolk, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The prize is one that none of us have ever fought for in our lifetime: the throne of England. These are old stories that we tell and retell, embellish and choke. Shakespeare himself did the same thing, he stole old stories, well-known stories, and retold them. It's not the story itself that's important, but the retelling, because it gives us another opportunity, as audience and, in this case, as partners, to change the ending. I always thought I could save Romeo, could stop Juliet, but every time I watch it, even when I act it, no matter how I cry, they always die.

So, what is the Moral of Today? To seek out loving, passionate audiences who need you as much as you need them? To always tell a story in a new way? To foster safe spaces to tell the stories? To get archery lessons because I suck at shooting a bow-and-arrow? True, true, but without a doubt, I know the Renaissance Faire is beautiful and necessary, because we all need a place where fantasy rules (that's their motto, btw). Sure, it's not historically accurate, or even relevant. Sure, it's Six Flags on crack, with dragons instead of rollercoasters. Sure, I will never dress up like a wench to get a discount when I go there, but I will always always enjoy myself. I will always always cheer on the Queen's Champion when he gallops his horse down the jousting field. And I will always always wish I was dressed up in my own petticoat, calling out, "What ye olde fun we art having!"

I hate to say it...but this is another Procrastination Post

2008-08-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

I don't want to go to work! So I'm writing this post. Good things happened today! (Maybe deep down I'm worried once I start working, all the good things will be erased by bad, bad things. A viable outcome.)

1. Aetna loves me! Finally! I have health insurance! The only problem...I kind of lied on my application AND on my phone interview. And I'm afraid they're going to find out and kill me. Or not kill, but let me slowly, painfully die and not pay for any of it. Aetna hates me! Still!

2. The sweet IRS man fixed my economic stimulus payment! FREE MONEY!!!! Plus, it turns out I still had more of a refund coming to me, so that means: FREE MONEY + MORE FREE MONEY!!!! (that was actually my money before it was free. hm.) PS who knew the IRS actually had offices?! I just figured there was some windowless building in iowa that you could only reach by telephone.

3. Sweet yoga class that consisted of: ME! $15 bought me my own private session huzZAH! I'm going to be sore tomorrow though. And it turns out, I rely way too much on the other people around me to copy off of. Yeesh. I'm a yoga sham. Then, on my way out, while talking to the owner and my yoga teacher, I made a joke about how I was really just moving to LA to get rich, and they kind of stared at me and then I realized these zen people thought I was the devil and then I quickly left.

4. Almost done my friend Amy's wedding present! Even though the wedding was a week ago...

5. Drinking with the Theatre Horizon theater teachers tonight! woooooo!

6. Took my favorite puppy for a walk this morning. He's a dream.

7. Okay. Time to go to work. Shucks.

IMDB stands for I'M the goshDarn Best!!!!

2008-08-19T19:40:00.001-07:00

Well what the fuck, people, I made it on to IMDB!!!! Maybe this shouldn't be quite as monumentally exciting as it is...but....IT IS! IT IS!

Ah. AAAAAHHHHHHH. I feel happy! I feel pleasantly surprised. Shit, I'm ecstatic! Elated! Go look at my IMDB profile here, motherfuckers: I ROCK.

"Why?" You might ask. You might shake me while you ask, as I bounce around the room, giggling. (Then you tell me to "take a chill pill," at which point I mime tossing an entire bottle down my throat. You know what that was? MAD ACTING SKILLS.) "Big whoop. IMDBoring."

To which I reply, "Too often have I turned to IMDB to compare myself to my other more successful friends. Too often have I turned to IMDB to scan a celebrity's backstory, in hopes it resembles mine. TOO OFTEN have I turned to IMDB out of procrastination, out of loneliness, wishing I too could be profiled and, in turn, stalked. And now, now my friends, I can be stalked with the best of them. Because I was in A MOVIE! Mwahahahahaaaaaa!"

Ah. Not only that, I'm listed as a lead. For being in one scene, and standing in the background of another. I loved Happy Indie Movie. Loved it. AH. I'm so content right now. Speaking of Happy Indie Movie, last week I was talking to one of my wee small campers about swimming, and she confided to me how much she loved hot tubs, to which I responded, "Oh God, I hate hot tubs now, because I was just in this movie and I had to sit in this hot tub with a bunch of other people for, like, seven hours all night long. Oh god, we had a great time...." Immediately thereafter I realized this small child was going to think I was filming a porn. Sweet. What an awesome teacher I am.

In other news...hm. No other news. I'm happy to be forcing myself to write here again. I missed it. I'm starting to panic a little bit about the impending move (Josh bought his plane tickets today to come help me move! aiee!) and once I get out there I'm going to freak out and just write in my blog whenever I get scared, which will be all day long.

Still waiting to hear about my healthcare. I have a feeling Aetna will be rejecting me again. How upsetting. I have a bump on my knee and I'm trying not to assume it's cancer. I miss New York. I miss Pinkberry. And walking everywhere. I miss my friends. Aw, now I'm getting sad. Think of IMDB! Think of IMDB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah. Happy again.

All Things Grow, All Things Go

2008-08-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

As far as music goes, I'm a repeater. I listen to the same song over and over and over again, until the words are so ingrained in my brain I want to throw up. Bile has threatened to rise with "Viva la Vida," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "SOS" (ABBA and Rihanna, woah) and that large Hawaiian man's version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Right now, it's "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens, which has as much to do with the fact that I have only two cds in my car (which I currently live in) as it does with the fact that the song ROCKS. Hence the title. Which are the lyrics.

Anyway!

Good things happening lately. Not pee-your-pants-thrilling things, but exciting nonetheless! Number One, I had an uber stressful audition experience last week that evolved into a part in Charles Dumas' "9/11: A Day in the Life of the People," which is good, since most uber stressful auditions just end in either brownies or booze. This one ended in a Philly Fringe Fest show, waHOO! I'm so excited, because it's at the pretty pretty Painted Bride Arts Center on Vine Street, and because Charles is possibly the nicest man ever, and because we get to perform at Penn State, and because everyone is wonderful. Our first rehearsal was yesterday, and even though the rehearsal period is painfully short (like, four days short, yikes) the play is this real living, growing, breathing creation, and the people who are in it are bringing their honest, scary and painful feelings about 9/11 into the room. And frankly, I forgot I myself had them.

Number two, I have a job. It's a crazy, busy, exhausting job, and I am covered in bruises, and I find myself waking up from nightmares about it, but, sadly, it is one of the easiest and least upsetting jobs I've had. And on top of it all, it pays well. Well, thank God! And, fine, I was kind of falling asleep in our first read thru because of said "least upsetting" job, but really, it's been good. It's rather flexible, and I'm working in a beautiful house for a kind family, and I feel like I'm actually pretty good at it. I realized on my way home today that I will always always hate my rent jobs. I won't ever like what I'm doing to pay my bills, because it's not what I actually want to be doing. But this one...at least it's creative. At least it's not demeaning. Ahem. Like others...

Number three. Fun audition tonight! I was totally wrong for the part, and even if I wasn't I wouldn't be able to do it, but the audition came up, and I just made it happen. And I was so so soooo tired going into it, which is maybe why it was effortless to make choices ("Get out of my way, you!!! Oh wait...it's just me. Aw crap.") and I found myself laughing with the director, and being really really proud of myself when he thanked me for a "really great read." Hm. Nice. I feel good.

Number four. I'm having a good summer. I'm saving saving! Fine, I don't have a social life at all. (Aforementioned fun/exhausting/creative/stressful job has sucked up my time, life, and energy. I even sleep there. I'm still billing them for that, though...) But I'm working. And I'm working in theater too! I've done two shows and one film in two months. That's ten times better than the last 9 months in New York. And I feel so much more relaxed than I did there. Why is that? Because I don't have to pay rent right now? Because I don't have time to get caught up in all my friends' bullshit? Because my pond has gotten smaller and I've gotten to be a bigger fish because of that? Because I don't do anything fun? Or buy anything? Or have any time to sit around and worry myself into vomiting over music?

I saw some friends from New York this weekend, and in between the friends and the working, I listed to Sufjan sing over and over again, "All things grow, all things grow/All things go, All things go," and felt like that was my summer right there. I guess, my whole life. You fall in love, you make mistakes, you cry, and you fall in love again. I'll always be driving to new cities with new hopes glittering through my windshield, and I'll always get sad, and I'll always get happy again.

This has become a post for a friend, because when I hear the song I think of her, and I imagine it on a stage with a cast of thousands, because we all get scared, and we all get hurt, and then we fall in love again, and we grow, and we go.

I drove to New York in a van,

with my friend

we slept in parking lots

I don't mind, I don't mind

I was in love with the place

in my mind, in my mind

I made a lot of mistakes

in my mind, in my mind

if I was crying in the van,

with my friend

it was for freedom

from myself and from the land

I made a lot of mistakes

NO!

2008-08-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

So, a lot has happened in the two weeks since I've last posted (eep! two weeks!) but I'll just say this: I'm exhausted. The first thing that goes when I'm stressed and working hard is sleep. I have nightmares, I wake up every hour, I can't sleep later than 7. Right now is one of those times.

I've been teaching two theater camps during the day, the last one which was literal Hell on Earth. Like, very nearly the 7th circle of Hell. Like, some diety loathes me right now. 25 kids, 5 days, three with learning disabilities if not all on the autism spectrum, two others with serious attitude problems that resulted in a lot of emotional and physical injury, and a bunch of other crazies in between. Whatever. It's over.

At night, and all day on weekends, I've been assisting for this old money family on the Main Line, which just barely is better than the teaching. (It only loses out on being Number One Current Suckiest Job because it pays well. And under the table ha cha chaaaa!) That whole situation is too much to be posted now. I'm too tired.

I will say this. Because I've been spent 2 weeks repeating "Say 'Yes, and...' to your castmates" to thirty-eight unruly little beasts of children, somehow it got lodged way into my brain and Teresa the Optimist Perfectionist Who's Afraid of Conflict dug herself into a big fat Mansion-shaped hole. You know, "Yes, And...". It's that thing we do in improv, and as theater professionals. We find ourselves faced with unbearable obstacles, or even more often, unbearable castmates who create unbearable obstacles, and we grit our teeth and say, "Yes. I will help you correct your terrible foresight and will change my plans so you can completely change my rehearsal schedule. AND, I'll even help you out by referring you to my friend the TD because you suck ass and your own terrible TD quit on you." Or whatever. The idea is that you connect optimism and obstacles.

And here I am. Fucked over by Yes, And...

The ol' watering hole

2008-08-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

I aspire to be more like the Beijing Olympic Games Opening: bright, beautiful, joyful, confident. Ah, yes, and I'd like to wear some sort of lime jumpsuit adorned with lightbulbs. At one point, I guess the scene revolved around water, and how vital water is to the Chinese culture. As the NBC announcer said, they believe that water is the perfect objective: we can be strong and supple at the same time, always fluid and flexible, always changing. That's my new goal. How feng shui of me! Or whatever!

In other news, I've lucked into a fabulous job that pays awesome and under the table to boot. My sister hooked me up with this wealthy Main Line family who she assists for, and while they're vacationing in Jackson Hole (so jealous) their friend/interior decorator needs help renovating their house. Enter me. I'm an organizational beast. I'm a researching giant! IKEA: Give me everything you've got. Benjamin Moore: You are my paint slaves.

Unfortunately, the downside to happy fun wealthy job is that I'm spending every free moment there. A panic attack ensued. I don't know what I'm doing! I suck at this! I need more money! I hate my life!!!! Two things happened after that.

1. I realized this is the perfect job for me right now. It's fairly flexible, so I can go actually whenever I want. And one of my goals this summer was to become an organizational beast anyway. So here I am, practicing my skills that I will be employing on my own life. (My goal for my move to LA and subsequent successful business is to be so completely organized it's impossible for me to be lazy.

2. My good friend Julie reminded me that worrying about money is just about the most useless thing ever. I've been worrying about money in earnest since I was 17, and probably actively worrying since I was 5. (I have a clear memory of being anxious over my parents' financial woes and offering them back my $3 allowance. They didn't take it.) And it's never done me any good. I've never had much more money, or much less, than I do now. Oh well.

And now, I'm off to kayak. with my parents! Next up, make my social life more like water: flowing, active, existent. Bah!

Oh Baloney!

2008-07-30T19:43:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay, so I haven't updated this sucker for a while now. I kept thinking about how there were so many things I was dying to write about, but then I got distracted and forgot all of them. Awesome blogging, tdawg. And now, faced with filling out yet another health insurance application that I'm already forseeing being rejected, so in the glorious name of procrastination I declare: I blog tonight!

A. This is going to be short because I have to fill out my health insurance application.

B. Also, I potentially have to get up early and sub for another acting camp teacher. I love kids. (Oh right. Sarcasm is more of a vocal thing.)

C. I wrapped filming on the fun indie movie. So fun. So indie. Now I just have to successfully fax them my transportation receipts so I can be refunded $50 in gas. I'm procrastinating faxing too. Okay. Seriously, here's what I learned from fun indie movie: confidence gets me everywhere. I went into this, from my first slightly inebriated audition (one time only thing, fo reals, yo. It totally loosened me up! Who knew I was such a tightass?) to my last night of filming forcing myself to believe I was fantastic. And it caught on! Because I made the concerted effort to be as outgoing, confident, and intelligent as I could be, it made others around me believe it too, and then, lo and behold, I started believing I was outgoing, confident, and intelligent. Otherwise, I couldn't have done it. I think the secret to keep is that I'm a ball of nerves, and I'm most often scared, and rarely at ease. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. Pinky swear.

D. I just watched all of "Band of Brothers" in two days. Greatest miniseries ever. I dreamt about it last night. Everyone was so good. How do you play someone who actually existed? Or still exists? Without taking away their humanity?

D1. Man, if I was in a war, and lived to tell about it, I don't know how I could not be a pacifist
now. I would be PISSED if I faught in WWII, and survived a veteran, and here, 65 years
later, we're still at war. PS I love Donny Wahlberg.

D2. Why is it that men get to act in "Band of Brothers," but when they make a movie about
women, it's "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?! 2!!!"

E. I don't know why I'm complaining. I'm not. I don't want to. I secretly love Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I just feel like men have movies about living, about experience and journeys, and the majority of movies about women...are about men. Gwyneth Paltrow won an Oscar for a movie about a man. Charlize Theron won an Oscar for a character abused by men, which drives her to kill other men. The movies out right now: The Dark Knight (men killing men who kill the sole woman), Wanted (man trained by sole woman to kill other men), Step Brothers (emotionally stunted men living together), X-Files (crazy man looking for aliens with tag-along sole woman), Mummy 3 (crazy man journeys to center of the earth...oh wait. crazy man kills mummies. sole woman kills mummies and has a grown son, who apparently popped out of her when puberty had just begun) Hellboy (devil man kills other devil men, loves crazy sole woman who sets herself on fire) Hancock (drunk superman flies around. sole woman walks across background) Mamma Mia! (crazy slut mom sleeps with many men, daughter gets confused and has a big wedding in Greece and OF COURSE, can't help bursting into song about those crazy, crazy men) Space Chimps (some stupid man wasted a buttload of money making this shiesty film) AND Wall-E (robot man who loves sole woman with anger problem and giggle like an anime princess saves the universe purely because of the goodness of his little tin man heart). WHAAAAAAAHHHAAAAT?!!

F. Hm. This was supposed to be short. I have to go fill out forms and fax other ones. Now I'm all worked up. PHOOEY!

G. Gah.

Chinaball

2008-07-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Despite it being a sweltering and disgusting day in the suburbian jungle of Philadelphia, it was also a highly productive and rewarding one. Mostly for the 15 children between the ages of 7 and 11 performing in their homegrown, made-with-love play, "The Poisoned Pizza." I co-directed. I kind of was so happy I wanted to throw up. Might have been the humidity, though.

I'm working for my favorite non-profit professional theater company based in King of Prussia, PA, Theatre Horizon, directing four week-long drama camps throughout the summer. This was my first camp, and I was totally nervous. Children, though packaged in cute, small bodies with large Bambi eyes and generally adorable facial structures, are evil. They are maniacal, loud, sassy, mean, and they don't listen. They are messy. They are dirty. They smell weird sometimes. In short, the best free birth control this side of abstinence.

But, jesus christ, did they look like angels in my eyes at 1:30 pm today. After just 25 hours with this pack of scamps, they put on the most fantastic, articulate, and heartwarming play about stolen pizza you could ever imagine. After screaming "Aunt Hilda in the back row won't be able to hear you if you keep talking like THAT onstage!!!!" for three days at the top of my lungs, each one of them projected like pros. Even the girl who would get overly absorbed reading her prop book during runs remembered every single line. And they didn't actually eat the paper pizza this time! They were as silent as chattering mini monkeys backstage, and they were as energetic as twitterpated squirrels before a storm. They were wonderful.

So I have selective memory. So I forgot how I almost ALMOST said "If you touch that MOTHERFUCKING curtain one more time..." or when I ALMOST said, "Watching you yawn onstage while you wait to say your line is so boring, it makes me want to slit my wrists," while making a faux wrist-slitting gesticulation. Eep! I didn't! I didn't, okay? Simmer. But yes, there were times working with this group of kids that I hated everything, and wanted nothing more than to give up on them, on theater, on paychecks, on anything having to do with trying to pass on valuable theatrical information to anyone, much less bratty middle schoolers. And it's not like I haven't taught worse, because I have. It just wears on you. When you focus and focus yourself to keep improving, to keep desperately trying to move up in a professional world, and then you go back to square one and have to enunciate the most basic of rules of stagecraft...it's frustrating. And it's hellsa frustrating when they don't even listen. Don't you get it, kids?! This is THEATER GOLD. I'm passing you WORDS OF WISDOM!!! Shut up and take it!!! Oh, god, what karma. I'm sure I did this to Nancy, my summer camp director who would yell at us, "Hellooo?! Is there anybody in there? Did your brain take a trip to the 7-11???" and Joe, our choregrapher, who would scream, "No no no no no no no! Wrong wrong wrong wrong!" At the time, it was funny. Slash terrifying.

Anyway, the important part here is that they ended up doing a fantastic job. Really. I hate them, I love them, they were amazing. Kids who were silent and curled into themselves like snails on Monday were dancing and launching one-liners into the audience like baseballs today on Friday. Their ad-libs (aaarrgh!!! I told you to stop doing that!!!) were riotious. (The queen of ad-libbing, btw, turned out to be the most naturally present onstage because she was completely living in the moment. She was doing so easily what I struggle every time with, letting go of the self-doubt and self-assessment, and acting on every second as it came. Thinking of it, her ad-libs in the rehearsals were actually the ones that fostered the growth of some of the funniest moments of the show. Huh. Look at me, learning from an 11 year old.) The little ones my co-director and I worried would only be able to handle one easy line each blew everyone away with their confidence. Days like today make me even more-than-usual enraged it is arts programs that are cut first in schools. Don't you freaks get it, once kids have a real goal to work toward (ie a show, a band concert, an audition) the skills they lack in the real world become necessary to acquire. They are capable, they just need the forum to cultivate it, unlike their homes where their parents can only command them to mature, to sit up straight, to talk louder, to share themselves with others.

Today was an incredible day. I learned so much, and it was from a bunch of ordinary kids. And I was reminded of my own growth as an actress, from whiny kid to scared adult. How can I be more like them? How can I be less afraid again? How can I remember that I have the power to succeed, to launch my words like arcing baseballs into open rows of audience?

When discussing what it was like to be afraid, to have lost something and then find the hope that it will return, Chloe offered her most poignant knowledge: "It's like when your Mom and Dad go to China. And then they will come back, and everything is okay again." Riiiight.

Except, I guess, she is.

Schooled

2008-07-15T20:31:00.001-07:00

Oh my, what a whirlwind of a week. Today's the first day I've felt relatively back on my normal schedule after shooting this weekend, and I'm still feeling high about how it all went down. (I just re-read my last post, and I did literally seem a little high. High on sleep-deprivation, that is!!!)

I started my first of four weeks of teaching at the theater camps for Theatre Horizon on Monday. (FYI, Theatre Horizon is a non-profit theater co. in Philadelphia, headed by my sister Erin and our lifelong friend Matt Decker. It started with these shows we'd put on in the summers when I was 14, and then blossomed into music revues, Odets revivals, fundraiser parties, and then finally full on incorporation and state grants. But, like most theaters, the ticket sales don't pay the bills, but their education programs do. Most of them, in fact.) I was nervous, since the last time I taught was two years ago for the Women's Project in East Harlem, and that went badly. Not badly, per se, buuuut...let's just say it only took four 8 year old girls in public school uniforms and some attitudes the size of the V train to rip me a new one and make me feel like the dorky fat kid I was in elementary school. Ugh.

These children, however, have not ripped new assholes for me. Yet. If one more kid asks in the middle of "Zing Pow Boing" if their costume can include a handbag and magenta tights that look just so underneath their favorite new Hannah Montana shirt, my head might explode. (I envision that scene of baby Superman speeding away from Krypton as it erupts into a shower of sparky space stalactites.) These are not tough kids. These are materialistic kids. These are kids who want to be stars.

I can't blame them. So did I. My co-teacher and I bonded today over the fact that we both would sing "Annie" in public places (or my backyard. whatever.) just in case a Broadway producer was standing within earshot and was hit by a bolt of triple-threat-shaped lightning at the sound of my voice. ("Never have I heard a belt like that since Ethel! Wowie!") That's one of the reasons I loathe these children. Here are some other reasons:

1. They never shut up.
2. If you want to be a star so bad, shut up and help me block your stupid scene for your stupid play.
3. They ad-lib.
4. They touch everything.
5. They immediately break the No-Touching-This Rule I just made up five seconds before.
6. They leave their trash everywhere.
7. They scatter like cockroaches.
8. They never shut up.

My only consolation is that in a few short years, they'll be the camp counselors and babysitters that have to deal with little shits like them. Karma, small devil spawn!

But then, that magic of theater hits you. The way they refer to stage directions while they skip across stage is adorable. The way everything about their play is fantastic and magical is inspiring. The intricate details they labor over as they craft their characters excites me. They are each one unique and interesting, and when that moment comes when you can actually hear their stupid lines past the end of the stage...well, it's very fulfilling.

But above it all, it reminds me of my beginning in theater. My first show was Cinderella, and I wore a page boy costume made out of carpet squares and duct tape. I was six. My first theater camp, I was ten years old, and I sweat over every song and dance like it was my job. I dreamed it would be. I told everyone I would be an actress. I kept singing in malls and restaurants and parking lots, when no one was listening. I kept going to camps, and classes, and auditions, and I went to drama school, and I still wanted it to be my job.

Oh man. These kids are writing a show about a poison pizza stolen from a pizza shop. There's a chase sequence. And a random knight. And a toddler who is a rich & famous celebrity. And they love it.

Indie film shoot #1

2008-07-13T05:19:00.001-07:00

Ah. Back on the Bolt Bus. It's like the past three days never even happened.

I don't know where to start here. I've gotten two hours of sleep (on the couch of the kid who stars in this indie film and who I've known since Thursday night) and my eyes are unimaginably dry. It's like blinking two sweaters made of dust. It's taken me ten minutes to write four sentences. I'm going to barf out of exhaustion.

Rehearsal for said film commenced Thursday night, in the apartment I would eventually pass out in two nights later, and it started off normally enough running lines and making awkward first introductions. As this film is about a bunch of college guys getting wasted, the rehearsal segued easily into everyone getting wasted. Rock band was played. Cast member's histories of threesomes were discussed. I commented favorably upon an animated X-men DVD box set, and others agreed (revelation of group dorkiness is always a good sign). Common friendships were discovered, and I was really excited to find that I was having a good time with these people. We raised our summer ales and coronas to cast bonding with a joyous hurrah. After getting tanked on 4 beers and no dinner, I returned with my rolly suitcase to my old apartment in east midtown, where I was welcomed by my old roommate Beth and her boyfriend Randy, and my replacement, Steve. We chatted til 2, and I crashed in my roommie's bed til 11 am.

We drove up to Stamford, CT on Friday afternoon for a 5 pm call, and proceeded to shoot in the backyard of a fancy-shmancy house till 5 am the next morning. As soon as we got there, shit started hitting all sorts of Stamford fans. A cop was wandering around with a neighbor, getting riled up about trucks and generators and noise problems, and the owner of aforementioned fancy house got equally furious about 30 crew members trampling his roses and trucking around his pretty house. We, the talent, shut up and hung out at craft services. (FYI, it's always a bad sign when you are served breakfast at 5 pm.) It's always daunting being an actor on a bustling set, because everyone has a job that is really important and busying except for you. You're the idiot standing around at craft services. No one tells you anything. You're not the important part, strangely enough. It's humbling.

And this set was certainly bustling. It's without a doubt the biggest film set I've been on (outside of the sag background work and one life to live stuff I've worked on) and it was fantastic. The quality of the film was fantastic, crisp and full and gorgeous. One of my costars (I sound so pretentious) told me that the camera they were using was so new and strong that it was much more powerful than the high-definition of blu-ray, and that's why the picture is so perfectly beautiful. Okay.

The first night was long and complicated, and there's nothing worse than fucking around at 3 am, killing time and shivering, wishing you could be in bed but knowing you're going to have to be alive and perky any minute now...It's a challenge, no doubt. I chugged two cups of coffee at 3:30 and did some dances in the grass while I waited, which turned out to be not the thing my stomach likes. I didn't have so much to do the first night on-camera anyway, so it was a little anti-climactic, but fun nonetheless. 6:30 am was when my head hit my Holiday Inn pillow, and then it was on to Saturday.

As soon as we got to set on Saturday, we were rehearsing and getting prepped to film. I was really nervous, because it was my little turn to shine. The scene starts with me telling a story, which I was totally improv-ing. (To be clear, I'm not good at that shit. I've never thought so. Everybody thought all my stories were funny at rehearsal, but that could have been a fluke. The insecurities are strong with this one...) It started out a little rough, and I really took 15 minutes to warm up into it, which sucks, especially since it was my coverage first we were taping. As soon as I realized I was choking, I kind of freaked out and didn't know what to do. So, without getting any real guidance as to what to do, I just kind of...let it go. I just started rambling. The things that poured out of my mouth were not mine. They just came out. I parted my lips and din't know what would be belched out. And it worked.

The second half of the night was a hot tub scene, which started off absolutely frigid. It then turned dizzyingly hot and then finally cooled off to a tepid temp, and we settled in. My brain is at the end of its capabilities at this point, so I can't even recall the last twelve hours so well, except to say that it went well. I felt good about it. I feel good that I'm making an effort to make film more of a priority. This was difficult, and I wasn't sure what I was doing, but I figured it out.

The only thing is...I'm sad I'm not in more of this movie. Everyone was so cool, so sweet, and so fun, and I had a fantastic time. I know I've fo sho got one more drunken party scene to film, which will be fun.

PS I'm working. I'm working!

Working

2008-07-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Never a dull moment! I'm updating from the singularly fantastic BoltBus, a secret that I'm afraid I'm too excited not to unleash upon the Northeast. Not only do tickets from Philly to New York start at $7, it goes from Penn Station to 30th St, it's never crowded, and the bus drivers are the happiest people I've met since that woman selling weedballs at a Phish concert 6 years ago. AND...they have free wifi. AND! Outlets in the seats. Never has there been a more thrilling mode of transportation since the Magic Schoolbus.

Anyway. You may be asking yourselves, "As truly magical as the BoltBus does sound, why the hell are you going to New York when you just moved out, you crackhead? What's the dealio???" Here unfolds the last 25 hours' of events:

JULY 9
5:45 PM: I drive myself over to the opening of my sister's theater company's opening night of "Working. (Check it out: www.theatrehorizon.org. My sister is a genius of an actress, director, producer, and artistic director. If you're anywhere near Philadelphia, I highly recommend them. And not just because I'm their house manager. And founding member. And ex-director of fundraising & special events) On the way over, I hit a bird and kill it dead.
7 PM: Show starts. Applause applause applause.
8:25 PM: I screen a phone call from a mystery number, and hurriedly listen to the message. It's the zombie play director. He loved my read and wants me to play either Maggie or Lauren. It's up to me. That's the nail in the coffin. I decide ix-nay on the ombie-zay play.
9:30: Show ends. Everyone cheers. Reception in the lobby.
10 PM: Donna the Janitor (did I mention this theater is in the theater of the new school in King of Prussia?) hugs me and reminds me she still has the picture of me as Maria in Sound of Music from my sophomore year of high school hanging over her bed and she tells everyone I have the voice of an angel. (Using my high school math skills...9 years. It's been up there 9 YEARS.)
10:30PM: The company celebrates by going to the place to be in KOP, Bahama Breeze AKA place of a thousand margaritas AKA where I spent my 21st birthday AKA land of tiki torches and aruba reds. I drink one gin & tonic.
11:55 PM: I forget to pay for my drink, peace out, and I drive myself home. i'm tired, and I want to talk to my honey. I can't get my windshield to stay un-foggy, and I'm a littly tipsy. No birds are harmed.
12:09 PM: Say hello to my bf Josh just as my email opens and I see the email from the film director saying "See you tomorrow! Filming this weekend!"

Well, shit motherfucker. I'm fucked. I thought there was only a slight chance we'd be filming this weekend, and since I hadn't heard anything from him in 5 days, I assumed that chance had been downgraded to zero. And there was nothing about rehearsing on Thursday night, the night I'm house managing two hours away in Pennsylvania.

So let's review. It's midnight. I'm still jet-laggy since I haven't really been sleeping this week, and a little buzzed, my baby wants to chat, and I'm FREAKING OUT because suddenly all of my plans are screwed up. I don't want to go to New York this weekend! I don't want to re-pack ALL my stuff in a suitcase again. I made other commitments, I got an audition time for Simpatico's production of "This is Our Youth" on Saturday, I have no clean clothes, I feel fat and a little crazed, my life is spread out in a mess all over my childhood bedroom like vomit at a sorority party, and suddenly I'm on film. What if I suck? What if the magic I had at my audition dies? What if I'm not worth all this trouble?

See, there it is again. At the root of all my worrying, my whining and my freakouts, it all comes down to my low self-esteem. I want to push it off me because when it comes down to actually doing the job, I don't think I'm good enough. And the thing is...I like this script. I like this director, and I am honestly really excited to shoot this film. I just want to do a good job. It scares me when I'm actually part of something that I want to do well in, because it's easy to do a thousand Zombie Plays and be like, "You better treat me like a princess, because I'm overqualified and awesome" but when you're part of something you want to really and truly succeed at...well, you want to succeed.

So. I'm on the BoltBus. Going to New York. Rehearsal in 2 hours, and filming all night Friday and Saturday. And then somehow...back to house-manage on Sunday at 12:30. Overbooked. But, like, Theatre Horizon's musical, I'm working. I'm doing it. Maybe for just this weekend, but I'm acting. Get over it, and get it done.

Eagles the Football Team, NOT the band

2008-07-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

Today's my audition for the Eagles live industrial. I think I get the gist of what they're looking for, but I'm wondering what the audition could possibly be like. Cold-reading and improv-ing a script? Selling a pitch? No idea.

I'm nervous, and it's odd because I only get really nervous because artistically I want so bad to be part of a production. I'm nervous today because A) I really need this paycheck B) I really really need this paycheck and C) if I get this, I'm going to have to be that horrible flaky actor who fucks up her commitments to everyone else.

Why am I so scared of doing that? Every actor has to at some point, it's the nature of the business. Because my nature is to get everyone to like me, and keep it that way. Argh. It's frustrating, but it's true. The thought of someone being upset with me, or saying "Oh Teresa, what a bitch, she totally dropped out last minute and fucked up my entire project" or just "Oh Teresa. Ugh." Or whatever! Oh god, it's such a lame worry, because clearly you can't make everyone happy. I have a hard enough time just making myself happy.

So I need to just concentrate on that. What would make me happy....Booking this job, calling up my little indie film director and him having no problem with me flaking out on three days of shooting, effortlessly rearranging my teaching schedule for August, and somehow being able to do the Shakespeare performance on the 26th. I want to do it all. I can't. (I don't even know if I can. I signed contracts!)

Tom Logan is probably snorting at me right now. There's so little chance I'll be hired, and here I am, obsessing at 9:30 am in my bathrobe. I've just spent the last 30 minutes on the eagles website and I've learned...that Jessica the Eagles Cheerleader would pick Taco Bell as her last meal. Oh my god.

Busy busy philly bee

2008-07-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

It struck me at the lawyering retreat that what all the resort guests had in common (besides blue-clad waiter/lifeguards serving them ice water and sunblock) was that they all had a ton of money. And, undoubtedly, most of them are working really hard to earn a large amount of it. So what happens when you accumulate a pile of moolah? Go gold-swimming, a la Uncle Scrooge circa Duck Tales? Probably not, you probably just go to a resort. And while it is nice relaxing in sunshine, I like being busy, I need to be, and I hope always to be. The goal, I guess, is to have enough money that gold-diving is a very real possibility, but hopefully you'd have better things to do.

Speaking of moolah, I went in today to set up my profile with a temp agency. I've already set up a profile three times with this particular agency; however, I've never actually gotten a job through them. So maybe that was a waste of time. However! I had to watch an office safety video and then (haha!) take a quiz on what I'd learned (ha! HA!) and it was possibly the greatest video ever made. (Definitely a video. My guess: 1988.) The title: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Perilous Office. Haha! Sherlock Holmes has traveled in time with Watson (who is the POV) to this 1988 office to show what you should do in a perilous office under your temp agency contract. He used the term "Indja" at one point. As in, "I deduce that Tilly the office dunce pulled out two drawers and the filing cabinet fell over and killed her. You should never pull out more than one filing drawer at a time, Watson, or you'll end up head over tail just like that time in Indja!" What?!

I wonder how that actor felt about that shoot. Was it fun? Did he rush home to see his kids? Did he think it was a pile of shit? Are temp agency safety videos exactly what he wanted to do? What was his audition like?! And even though it was a laughable video...I'd totally do that. It looked like good fun, right-o, indeed it did. Tally-ho.

Aaaannd...tonight was my Zombie Play audition, which will not lead to any kind of vat of gold. (I was the possibly tacky auditionee who asked, if cast, would gas money be reimbursed? Let's get real here homies, I can't even afford $5 a gallon on getting to my temp job.) And the audition was...more of an experience than an audition. I realized midway over, after getting off 76, that this audition was most likely in a house. (Sure, I've auditioned in apartments before, most of us have, but only those with doormen. And only when the company had, like, a website not made on a mac.) I started envisioning bloody hypotheses about cute girls being lured into dilapidated row houses, given porn sides and then mutilated and turned into jersey prostitutes. I know, I'm ridiculous. I'm a worrier, I can't help it! But it turned out it was just a funny little audition on the wraparound porch of a peeling mansion in St. Joe's suburbia. Wynnewood. It was a group thing. They were really nice. It like being in camp. I slapped a mosquito dead on my arm during a monologue. The "zombies" in question were kids on aderol, half of them lesbians. There was some face-eating involved in the script. And the kids who were running the audition chain-smoked the entire time. And a kitten hung out for a little while. An experience, indeed.

And, you know, I enjoyed it. They asked the three of us auditioning on the porch together what we thought of the play, if we wanted to do it. Uuuuuhhhhh...I evaded and said, "I really like how collaborative this has been." I don't know if I'd do it, but I had a goshdarn good time. Honestly, I really did! They were nice people, I respect that they've put together a group and are in the Philly FringeFest and that they care about what they're doing. I mean, that's what you want right? To work with people who make something, and love it, and try to share it. So...I might not get gas money. I might get paid in beer. I'd get to say I was in a fringe show. I'd be doing something. I just want to work on something. I'm STARVED. Oh God. I'm an artistic zombie. I'm going to eat someone's face off if I don't do some freaking acting sometime soon!!!!!

It's the Uncle Scrooge V. Sherlock Holmes quandry. For money or fun? Sure, I'm a professional actor, but I want to have a good time doing this sometimes, or is that not allowed anymore? This summer's schedule is rapidly filling up, which is great, but I guess this is more of a question for life. How to schedule your world. Should you pick projects you think will be enjoyable over projects you know will pay? I guess it depends on if you're lucky enough to have a choice of picks. Now that I think of it...I'm not sure I am.

And then there's my industrial audition tomorrow. I've never done an audition for a live industrial. The email my agent sent me had zero practical advice. So, I'm just going to try to cram in as much information about the Eagles as I can find. Apparently, Terrell Owens used to be an Eagle. Who knew? I thought he played basketball.

Oh jesus, this is going to suck.

Or...it might be really fun. Maybe it could pay well AND be fun. Maybe that could happen.

The End of the See

2008-07-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Since wi-fi in LAX costs $9.99 per day (WTF?!!! What good is having a mac with Airport if the actual airport sucks big fat ass?!) I started writing this waiting for my delayed red-eye in Los Angeles and am posting it the next day in Philadelphia. Yeesh.

So. The end of Operation Los Angeles Go-See has come to an end. (After 14 hours of travel spanning the nation, via changeovers in Newark, Trenton, and ending in King of Prussia, PA. Heeeelllllll.)

But it’s okay, because the rest of the Operation was a hearty success! Hurrah! I got to spend some quality time sitting with my fellow Angelenos on the 101 (sans air conditioning, thank you very much), dined at the #1 restaurant in LA, Lucques, swam with musicians and red seaweed in Malibu, had some lengthy discussions with some awesome actors about how great/horrible/exciting/terrifying it is living in the entertainment capital of the world, took a look at a SWEET apartment I can’t afford unless I start selling my eggs, drove around a hybrid and pretended it was mine, and vomited in a plastic bag in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn the morning after my big birthday bash in a resort paid for by my boyfriend’s law firm. Awesome all around!

Puke aside, my goals for this trip were two-fold: explore LA both as an actor and as a potential citizen. I felt the need to really push myself to do so, or else I’d rock back into that happy little nook of laziness I’ve wickedly gotten too comfortable with in Manhattan; however, I feel entirely satisfied with what I’ve discovered. Not only is Los Angeles chock full of sunshine and blue skies, it’s also crowding with hills and mountains, hazy cerulean ocean, and opportunites to explore nature in every corner. Not to say it’s not as urban of an environment as you’ll find, but the beauty of this town is that you wander down the busiest of intersections and suddenly find yourself surrounded by houses in a picture perfect example of suburbia. You can hide yourself away in a secret neighborhood and forget you’re in LA at all.

And then came the incessant interviews. In asking my college friends, all of whom have lived here for 3 years or less, the general consensus is that the quality of living is better than in New York. All of my friends have settled into sweet homes in good neighborhoods they like and can afford, a rampant problem in New York. But some things never change: muggings, identity theft, perverts, and bad drivers. Urban living is urban living.

In reference to the questions pertaining to the actual business, an actress/writer/director/producer I met through the Tisch Alumni East told me that despite the extreme susceptibility to slide into deep loneliness here (no one gets out of their cars) she was wholly grateful to Los Angeles. She was pushed to discover herself, what she wanted out of herself and her career, what she felt passionate about (theater) and how to bring it into her life (produce her own work and start her own theater company.) Another actress, a friend of a friend, told us over lunch in Los Feliz how creative and how extraordinarily involved the community is. She reassured me that there is work out here, strike or not, there are projects going on, and that creating a life for yourself through acting is feasible. That was the word of the lunch: feasible. What is doable? What can I accomplish?

I am more encouraged than ever by this trip the answer to that is a positive one. I can accomplish whatever I want, whether it is acting or writing, dancing or lawyering.

The positivity is already working! I got called in for more work for One Life to Live, which I can't do anyway, aaaand my agent called me in for a live industrial for the Eagles (whaaat) which will pay me so much money for 2 1/2 weeks that I won't have to worry about my move at all. The bad news is, it literally screws up every other plan I have for this summer. Whatevs, I'm getting carried away.

Anyway. In conclusion. To quote the Decemberists: Los Angeles, I’m Yours. I’ll see you in October? Yes.

Next up: Operation Make a Whole Shitload of Money.

this is another one about zombies

2008-07-03T09:29:00.001-07:00

Okay, here's the much anticipated news about the Zombie Play. It's actually not about literal zombies themselves. It's actually about college students who use prescription drugs that give them the appearance and mental capacity of the walking dead. More "Junk" than "28 Days Later." And, in a too-familiar red flag scenario, there are multiple spelling mistakes in the audition notice. And no periods. Usually, I would have deleted "Zomby Playe" from my mind 2.5 seconds after I saw it, but...what have I got to lose? Time? Yes. Possibly too much of it? Yes, probably. But, I've realized that I say no to things in a way to protect myself from failing, and if I don't just force myself to go, and be the best Zombie I can be, I'll be wasting this time before I go out to LA. I want to work. No time like the present to do some lo-budget crazy theater, when I'm not paying rent, right?

In other news, the beautiful California sun has etched a bathing suit "V" on my chest. Attractive. Need to get rid of that before shooting starts in two weeks for the little indie movie in CT.

And, I'm sending out my follow-up postcards for the Philly Alliance general auditions three weeks ago. It was my first time doing it, and, after doing so many auditions and projects in small spaces and tiny offices, I was really shocked how vocally out-of-shape I was on the huge and gorgeous Suzanne Roberts Theater stage. All the auditors were spread out in the dark little nooks and crannies of the new plush auditorium, and while I felt confident in my choices, I could feel my vocal chords straining a little. I used to really pride myself on feeling awesome about my strong voice, and now it's a lump of oral fuzz. Fuzz I tell you!

Aaaaaannnnd...no word from People's Light, who I love so much and called me in for their mainstage show next June. I've worked hard over three years to develop a relationship with them, and they do call me in every year for something (huzzah! hurrah!) and I worry about that relationship failing when I move to LA. That was the benefit about coming from Philadelphia, I always had contacts 2 hours outside of New York I could always draw on, and now I'm moving west and I know, oh well, let me see here, um well, one time I auditioned for OSF, so that leaves, oh well, I mean, oh that's right, yeah no one.

And now there's only three days til I leave. I always get nervous at the end of a trip. What have I gotten out of this? How will life be when I get back? Is it true that if you shine a flashlight under your knees you can prevent jet lag? What will Monday be like? I try to plan, and pre-plan, and over-plan, and plan planned plans, but really, this is the most unprepared I've ever felt about anything. I'm going back to Philadelphia for three months, and I bet work to fill it with something, or else I'm going to go insane and end up an actual zombie, of the actor variety.

RARRRGH! Whew. I'm okay.

2008-07-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Since this is a research quest (and because I've been spending too much time lollygagging beside the pool/Pacific) summer reading is requisite. And besides the guilty pleasure (I Was Told There'd Be Cake, by Sloane Crosley, about- what else?-New York) it's all been about the business.

1. How to Sell Yourself as an Actor by K Callan: This is the actress who played superman's mom on "Lois & Clark," wouldn't you listen to the woman who sewed clark kent his zesty man o' steel outfit? No, seriously, I love her books. She says things like, "Don't panic. Plan!" I love alliteration.

2. An Actor's Guide: Your First Year in Hollywood by Michael Nicholas: My sister bought me this book when we were at that giant bookstore in Portland last August. It has a big star on the front. I bend the cover back when I'm reading it. (I hate that I do that. I think it's part of this ashamed thing we all do, like when people ask your profession of choice, and you apologetically say in a little voice, "I'm...an actor?" I pride myself on being a Gryffindor, but I act like a real squib sometimes. Goal #1: Stop apologizing.)

And the one that pulled me out of my two-day freakout funk:
3. How to Act & Eat at the Same Time by Tom Logan: I saw it at Samuel French the other day, and then I saw it again at B & N, and felt like...I need more books. I'm going to drive across country in October with an entire Toyota Matrix full of self-help literature.

He says stuff like, "Don't apologize" and "Don't beg" and "There's no logic to the casting process." He also says stuff like, "Just realize that an audition is a special time you've set aside to humiliate yourself," as well as "It's your attitude that could be the most important factor in your success." Huh. Novel idea. (Goal #2: Confidence! ) No, but really, what I liked about the book is that it reminded me this business is difficult for everyone, actors, directors, writers, producers. We all just want to work. Unfortunately, sometimes the desire to search out why the hell that other girl who looks exactly like me except with an overbite got cast in that crappy webisode when they LOVED me and told me they'd definitely be calling me and I saw her last spring in a festival of one-acts written by convicts and she sucked!!?@! makes you go a little crazy and you end up eating a bag of Whole Foods yogurt raisins in bed while reading that scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (you know which one, it involved a muggle-utilization of a shovel) for the twelfth time and crying a little.

Hrm.

I just had a whole long discussion with the tech guy today about computers and web design and actors and musicians and Los Angeles and marketing, and he came up with this brilliant assessment of the success of any business:

1. Acquisition (Of clients, a roster of casting directors who know your work, directors who love you, regional theaters that love hiring you every spring season, etc.)
2. Maintenance (Keeping them. Continuing the circle of love. Making them happy.)

Easy enough, right? The freakout is over. It's like candy binges. In the moment, it's like you're never going to stop eating candy, you are a sugar monster raaawwr moooreeee sugaaaar! And then it's over. And you feel like crap. And then you eat a carrot, and life goes on.

In other news, I now have an audition on Tuesday for something which I swore never to involve myself in: a zombie play. I've even previously scuttled past zombie movies, but you know...a girl's gotta start somewhere.

Crazy? Yes, possibly. A Moron? Let's hope not!

2008-07-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

Today marks the second day of Teresa's Freakout during Operation Los Angeles Go-See. Why the 48-hour meltdown, tdawg? Because I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. I'll be blogging in list form today, because my brain is like a puddle of ooze in a parking spot outside the Kardashian's store.

WHY I WANT TO MOVE TO LA:
1. I'm burnt-out, lazy, and unmotivated in New York.
2. I hate being next door to NYU. It makes me feel like I'm still 18, naive, and stupid.
3. I want to work in film & television. Apparently, that stuff grows like cactus out here.
4. My bff's live out here and say everything's better.
5. My man is out here. Most of the time. While he's not in law school in Northern California.
6. My career needs a boost.

WHY I HATE LA:
1. Constant sunshine is making me feel nauseous.
2. Smog.
3. Traffic.
4. Driving everywhere.
5. My man's 1981 white volvo has no air conditioning. This brings me to:
6. Heat. It's a DESERT.

WHY I LOVE LA:
1. The mountains.
2. The Pacific.
3. The fact that it's different than any other place I've ever lived before and it makes me feel invigorated and excited about acting again.
4. There's more work for my type.
5. I haven't been getting hired for theater work. I look like I'm 12, and in the past year I've accomplished most of my goals commercially, and none of my theatrical ones.

WHY I MISS NYC:
What do I miss? I've been out of there for 2 weeks, and what do I miss? My east midtown comfy cozy apartment. Riding on buses. Crossing Avenues. Ess-a bagel. Getting drunk and getting a cab home at 3 am for $9. Seeing the whole city on one subway map, and knowing I could get from Hoboken to Astoria in less than 45 minutes. Walking down 2nd avenue as the sun sets and ending up in the east village. Feeling like I know what I'm doing.

Ah. The crux of it! Ah HA! What I really miss is feeling like I'm at home. Sure, I start to daydream about McDougal and getting cupcakes at Magnolia, because I've done that before. I know exactly what the street looks like and how the overly-sugared cupcakes taste because it's all been done. I'm freaking out because I have...7 friends in LA. I have no agent. I am having a difficult time equating the neighborhoods in LA to their dopplegangers in New York ("Okay, so if Los Feliz is Brooklyn, is Inglewood like SoHo?").

Two mornings in a row now, I have woken up, looked out the window at the hugest blue sky I could ever imagine, and said, "This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever done."

But then...I can't go back. I can't go back to New York, because I daydreamed for 10 months (or more) about leaving it. I was miserable pretending to be a faux-musical-theater actress. I was bored going to my crappy rent-job, getting sucked in, and not being able to just quit. I was burning bridges because I was scared. This is a move not only to find more work, but to find out who I am and what I can do with my life as an actor.

Also, there's an inherent problem with Operation Los Angeles Go-See. While I am conducting some interviews of some working professionals here (ie a playwright, a theater director, an actual working actor friend-of-a-friend, a producer I met at a Tisch Alumni networking event ooh, a friend who just directed a movie, a friend who just directed a music video blablablaaaa) I am not A) auditioning for anything or B) finding an apartment. I'm on a weird research/quasi-vacation. There's nothing worse than being artistically constipated, and I feel like while I'm challenging myself to get a feel for this strange western world, I'm not acting. Actors act. Right? I'm just...researching. I don't want to waste anyone's time by auditioning and then being like "Oh yeah, well, don't take me too seriously, because I'm kind of wasting your time because I don't live here, and I'll be leaving in 5 days and I've signed a contract to shoot this other movie next week so I definitely can't commit to anything sooooo....peace out, boy scout!!!" and then running off to Zuma Beach. Same with the apartment-searching. I don't want to waste anyone's time.

So. The goal for the rest of the week is to continue with the research. Continue with the delving into maps and goal-planning, push on in the reading those actor books and subscribing to the trades and budgeting and working on my plan of attack.

Oh pish. This is maybe the dumbest thing I've ever done.

Pilgrims, Partners and Poo

2008-06-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

It seems I’ve somehow orchestrated two weeks in LA as far from reality as possible. After a week of house-sitting in swanky Calabasas (Spanish for “Rich People Live Here.”) (No, just kidding. Spanish for “Pumpkins,” say my sources.) my law-intern boyfriend Josh and I continued on down Route 5 for a weekend retreat with his swanky downtown law firm at the swanky resort, the St. Regis.

Now let me just say, this is the girl that spent her formative years picking sand out of her bathing suit at the Jersey Shore. The coast that defined public beach. Actual excrement has as much chance of washing up beside your sandcastle as the average amount of dead jellyfish. If you’re lucky, they’ll be a hypodermic needle stuck in it. The St. Regis scoffs at the public. They drive their tram car all over it, douse it in noontime mai tai’s, and drop on top a bedtime chocolate wrapped up to look like a butterfly.

Anyway. What matters here is that our heroine, the smell of Jersey and showtunes lingering on her, spent three days with very, very, very, very wealthy people. Most of whom were lawyers. It was like that one black olive that somehow makes it’s unfortunate way to the ranch dressing bin at a salad bar, leaving an inky marinated trail behind it. Fortunately, everyone was warm and welcoming, generous and, on the whole, at least pretended to be interested in an actress amongst their midst.

But then: The Observation. At the culminating sit-down dinner event, when talk stuttered after chatter about equestrian clubs and golf and daughters in law/medical/estrogen-intense private schools, the attention was turned…to me. The black olive. When it was revealed I was the lone actor, The Observation was made by one of the partner’s wives:

“That is a really, really difficult profession. I mean. Really difficult. Good luck with that.”

Aiiiieee! This is about the most obvious thing you could possibly say to me. Even starlets discovered in outlet malls, one hand in the discount panty bin, figure this out. Even Paris Hilton knows this. I KNOW THIS.

While hungover the next day from way too much open bar vodka-love, I lay on our king-size bed and obsessed over The Observation. Why do people feel the need to underline the challenge of my particular profession? They did this in New York too, they probably do it everywhere, but maybe the high concentration of aspiring stars in LA makes People Not in the Business feel they are warranted warning others from joining the fray. But, I mean, I don’t go up to partners in law firms, or neurosurgeons, or janitors or that poor woman who makes ALL the lattes at my Starbucks and offer a sympathetic caution, “You’re doing something really hard. Really. Hard.” Well, YEAH.

Is that a reason to stop doing it? Isn’t that what boy scouts and marching band and contact sports teaches us as children? If we aspire to something challenging, we should go after it. Get better at it, get great. Isn’t that the whole Puritan spirit? Did the pilgrims at Plymouth land on Massachusetts, look around at all those freaking rocks they’d have to plow out of their fields, realize they’d have to make maize into, like, 400 different kinds of oatmeal for the rest of their lives, and probably watch some of their offspring get cholera and die, and then go, “Eh, you know what? Let’s just go back to religious persecution. It looks like living here is gonna be ye olde difficult.”

Well, here I am on the West Coast, a pilgrim from a strange urban land, and I realize I’m committing myself to a difficult profession. Just like I did when I graduated NYU two years ago and found a rent job to support my Reproductions habit, just like I did when I went to NYU in the first place. I have never not known this was a difficult profession, in all ways, but I liken myself to those transplanted Pilgrims, because, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and his kin, I have no choice. I can’t turn around. This is what I am good at, what I can be better at. This is what I choose to do, even though I know it will A) potentially never give me total financial satisfaction or B) ever stop being hard. I know that.

So, I answered the partner’s wife, before taking a big sip of my company-paid Chardonnay, “I’d rather take a challenge than be bored. I’d rather it be hard.”

My career is like the Jersey Shore, if you will. You might have to dodge some needles and poop, but once you swim out far enough, the water feels so good. As good as the water on a private beach on the Pacific.

This is Not a Real Place (Yet)

2008-06-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

So, boys and girls. Welcome to Calabasas.

I'm house and dogsitting here in North LA (is it north? Is it even technically LA?) for my boyfriend's cousins while they vacation in Hawaii, but this is no ordinary house. No, no, people, this house, and its neighboring mansions are not houses at all, but temples of pleasure.

This house is downright palatial. Britney Spears is moving in across the street. I can see in the windows of her South Wing. (Again, guessing with the directions.) I take my mornings bathing beneath waterfalls and slipping down the waterslide into the tiled blue pool. I retreat to alcoves of pillows to relax in sweet air-conditioned bliss. My shower has a glass wall, and a stone bench, in case I tire of standing. If, heaven be shamed, I get bored...I just stop wherever I am, pick up the nearest remote and watch one of the many flat-screen televisions featuring hundreds of channels.

This is not my life.

The house I grew up in had four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a 1/2 acre of dirt to play in. We had one refrigerator, and until I was old enough to date, you had to get up to change the channel. You took your hand and had to twist a knob on the TV. The effort. We didn't even have stairs. None. We lived in a "ranch house." Made for easy escape if your domicile burns to the ground. This Calabasas house is unusual in the neighborhood because it doesn't have an elevator.

Again, not my life.

Not to say this can't be my life, or that I cannot aspire to owning enough money to warrant desiring and actually affording a home like this one. But being in this line of work, being an actor, really forces me to humble myself to accept I probably will never actually live in this house. I probably will be able to afford cheap rents in skeezy-ish neighborhoods before they're artsy cool, and I'll probably prey on innocent renters on Craigslist for an apartment here in LA when I move in October. I look forward to years more of sharing not just common rooms, but bedrooms with other starvin' artists, sharing not only Netflix rentals, but Ramen noodle bowls as well, highlighting in the newspaper not only job opportunities but obituaries too, to remind myself to check out their sidewalks later to score some dead people's free furniture.

Sigh. The life of an actor. My life.

It's okay though. I don't need to live here. I need to work hard. I want to work hard. I want to move across this honking big country because I want to work. If I could figure out something else to do that would allow me to buy a house at all, I would do that! But I can't. In my lowest times, I've sobbed into my checkbook, "Why can't I just be happy as a bank teller?!" Plenty of banks, plenty of jobs. I look great in blue and red. (Those are the colors of my bank, Commerce. They always seem so happy.) Alas, I'm no teller. Unless you count being a storyteller, haha! Oh God, the smell of maid-cleaned appliances is getting to me. I'm serious. There's a maid lurking behind me right now, 409 in hand.

So, Los Angeles. I don't know what I'm doing yet. I'm enjoying the sunshine today, and hoping in October, when I'm here for reals, acting jobs will abound and money will flow, Commerce Bank will love me, and I'll get the work I want to give me the money I deserve so I can live in a palace like this. With an elevator.