One Gaping MAW

Hey buckos, much apologies for the long delay in postage, but I've...well. I've been afflicted by the plague.

Stupid villainous flu.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn Yoooooooooou!

Granted, I'm getting over it.  But after dragging my hungover carcass (admittedly, drinking a bottle of wine and two beers when my throat was already starting to feel a bit scratchy MAY not have been the best idea) home on Saturday morning (all the while focusing on getting home in one piece while trying not to stare at the snow-covered mountain tops to my east side window), I didn't leave my apartment til Tuesday morning when two auditions and a need to pay my rent necessitated such.

will be back to form soon. promise!

In the meantime, didja see the LOST finale from last season? Didja see the Sawyer promo set to 'Bad to the Bone"?

mmmm....pure Sawyerporn...

Holy tragedy, Batman! Heath Ledger's dead????

First off, Happy MLK Day!

Not working at The Agency today, although we are still officially open.  The Boss emailed the schedule out for the coming week, and there was a curious anomaly: SideDesk wasn't anywhere to be found.  Assuming perhaps that she had a trip out of town I had forgotten about, I didn't think too much of it til I got messaged by MiddleDesk today:

I'm wondering how this is going to affect my trip to New Orleans later in February, and the fact that now I can't take MiddleDesk snowboarding for the Snow Day planned for this Friday. I'm glad that SideDesk can get benefits like health and dental insurance from her place of business, and now officially confirm that not all Agencies use Post-it's to keep track of their clients' auditions.  

Listening to: Kevin Devine - Longer Than I'm Out Here 

If you were suddenly granted the day off today, how would you go spend your free time?

Voxy! How did you KNOW I had the day off today? And how DARE you ask a hypothetical question that I can truthfully answer, because really? Want to know how I'm spending my day off?

• Laundry
• Gym
• Cleaning the apartment
• Confirming a reservation at The Courtyard for tomorrow for dinner.
• Watching Hairspray: The Shake and Shimmy Version!
• Picking up Ogre at the airport
• Playing Apples to Apples and Cranium WOW at Ryan's house.

Jeebus.

Of course, you could believe that that's what I'm doing, or you could just picture me doing this:

Rock it like Mrs Claus ain't nevah SEEN

Wait, shit, it's January??

Superrad.

Huh. anyone else want to tell me why a search for "pilot" came up with THIS photo?

Fly away into the light of Jesus's love

Audio: Share the most embarrassing song on your mp3 player.

Oooh.

Could it be....this?

Jesse McCartney - She's No You

Or...This? (I blame YOU, Napoleon Dynamite!)

Alphaville - Forever Young

Wait, this?

Babyface & Des'ree - Fire

No, no. That song is AWESOME.

I'm gonna have to go with ..... this:

Nick Lachey - What's Left Of Me

DAMN you, Veronica Mars! I would never have HEARD of this song if that 11 year old hadn't called the radio station 200 times to request this to get LoVe back together! Argh.

I'm currently obsessed with the Veronica Mars Station on Pandora. 

To give you a taste of the music, here's a sampling:

Depeche Mode - Precious (Live)
Air - Run
Mandalay - Beautiful (7" Canny Mix)
Pooka - Yellow Fever
Blue Stone - Falling
The Push Stars - Claire
Mike Doughty - I Hear The Bells (of course)
The Dandy Warhols - We Used To Be Friends (again, of course)
Lali Puna - 40 Days
DJ Krush - Alepheuo (truthspeaking)
Motorcycle - As The Rush Comes Out (Gabriel and Dresden Chill Out Mix)
Mount Sims - Ashes
Hungry Lucy - Could It Be?
The Foxymorons - Harvard Hands
Counting Crows - Miami (Live)

And so on and so forth.  LOVE.

The Patriots won! Woo!

The CHARGERS won!? What the HELL?!

I mean....YAY! But....what the HELL!?

All I know is, Paul owes me some damn pizza!  Serves him right, betting on the Colts.

Audition - Verizon @ Dowd/Roman Casting

Hah! Not a day after mutual bitching sessions with Playboy that we hadn't had any auditions yet in the new year, I get one for a National SAG commercial! It's featuring a girl being "interviewed" by one of those sports reporters who interview the players after a big game, talking about how she toughed it out through her sister's baby shower by watching college hoops highlights on her Verizon phone.  The CD came out and gave us notes before we went in, basic stuff about how the professional athletes acted during those interviews.  This was one of the rare times where I wish LESS information was given to us, because that's how I'd been planning on it anyway! I guess the ad agency's complaint was that they could tell that a lot of the girls going in had no idea how to play it. 

Wish they'd kept it that way! Give sporty girls like me more of a shot.  I went in with a lot of energy but keeping it toned down, breathing a little hard like I'd just finished a game, slapped the "reporter's" ass (ok, that I did steal from the CD's talk), and did a little point-at-the-ceiling bit.  I got only good feedback from the ad agency rep (who was in the room, which is rare for a first audition), and I'm hopeful! Starting out with a SAG National, that'd be a great way to kick off 2008!

Passed on a SAG event to go over to Playboy's and watch Gandhi, one of those films I'd always meant to watch and never got around to it. 

What an amazing fucking film.  It's over three hours (even has a five minute long "INTERMISSION" message smack dab in the middle of the movie; hee!), but just doesn't seem that long.  Ben Kingsley.....wow.  Just...wow.  The movie's message seems applicable no matter what, but in relation to how things are going in the middle east, it seems especially hard-hitting. The idea that this man actually existed, that these events actually transpired, that it wasn't just some fanciful 'wow-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-this-happened' idea in someone's idealistic head.....wow.

So. Yeah. See This Movie.

So instead of taking my usual forced-day off (Thanks AMPTP! You still retain the full rights of suckage) on Friday, in light of the recent all-weekend-snow-storm that's been happening up at Bear, I requested yesterday off instead and headed up at 7-bloody-30 in the morning with Boy-Next-Door's Bro, happily scrolling through my [red] iPod Nano. 

After getting stuck behind more than a few morons who felt stopping in the middle of the road to put chains on their already-equipped Ford 250's was a SMART idea for over 45 minutes, we finally arrived a little before midday and proceeded to ride all over the mountain in search of the best snow.  Ended up staying on Westridge 90% of the day, although I'd been feeling sick that morning already and it being my first day up all season, I was about ready to head back down around 3:30.  Thankfully that coincided with the majority of the lifts being closed which shuttled the 60% of people who'd been going down the parks all day over to OUR run.  That helped Boy-Next-Door's Bro decide he was ready to take off as well.

Where're the rest of my Summit buddies, you ask? Didn't see a single one except for Jiles, who, strangely, seemed excited to see me until I introduced him to my friend. My guy friend. We even stopped by his place on the way down where he was setting up a mini park in his front yard.  After failing to get more than a few clipped sentences from him, we headed on our merry little way back down.

Was Jiles actually pissed that I had another guy with me? More than likely there was something else going on, but it was difficult to ask with BND'sB along with me, so I kind of let it go.

I felt the earlier sickness catching back up with me and after stopping for a veggie burger, it felt like a wall had walked up and slapped me like a ho.  I passed the rest of the drive in a semi-daze, and after dropping off BND'sB at his place and somehow making it home to mine, I fell on my bed and passed the hell out.

This morning I've felt like I'm going to pass out every time I stand up, which doesn't exactly help the work environment. I've warned the office staff of my probably-contagious feelings and  I've been sucking down Airborne every four hours and drinking a helluva lot of water, so that can only help.  

Well, things at The Agency have just started to speed back up.  Not quite so much with film or TV, naturally (despite Actorsite's emailed mission statement this morning that "Films and TV Movies are CASTING like CRAZY"....um, really? what breakdowns are YOU reading?), but commercials have been damn busy.  Despite that, I haven't had My First Audition of 2008 yet.  Naturally I'm hoping it's because the gods know to turn that into My First Booking of 2008, and they want just the right job.

Sidedesk and Middledesk are back in town and in theory, we'll all be back to work this week.  I'm still trying to convince The Boss that moving to a system more technologically current than sticking Post-it's to a wall is a better way to keep track of all our clients' auditions.  Just a thought.

The Boss, however, being the typical control freak that he is, balks at anything that isn't his idea. This is a typical exchange, that occurred yesterday ( FYI, a "hard copy" is what we refer to when a project comes out that wants actual headshots delivered to them as a submission instead of the far easier electronic submission.  So we group together our clients' headshots in an envelope which is usually picked up twice a day by a messenger service to bring to the various casting offices around LA).

    I was washing out the remains of my homemade fruit smoothie from my thermos at the office sink when The Boss walked up.  "MAW, those hard copy packages were never picked up yesterday because we canceled the messenger service for two weeks," he said, standing at the entrance of the kitchenette. 
    "Two weeks?" I replied, glancing up at him in surprise.  "I only told them to cancel it for the week of Christmas."
    "Well, they obviously thought it carried over into this week, didn't they,"  he said. "Get some stamps on them and bring them to the post office."
    "Ok," I replied, rinsing out the thermos and putting it upside-down on the paper towel next to the sink to dry.  I glanced at my watch which read 2:34pm. "The mail hasn't come yet today, do you want to leave them outside to go out with the rest of the ----"
    "No, I want them going out now. The mail doesn't come until 3 or 4 and I want these out."
    "Ok," I said, walking over to the door where the hard copies had been left since yesterday. I duly stamped them, grabbed the rest of the outgoing mail (may as well take care of it all at once), and walked back to The Boss's office to let him know I was leaving.
    "I'm heading out to drop these off, see ya in a bit," I said, waving and walking back towards the front lobby. His voice called me back.
    "Just go to the post office on Fairfax."
    "Oh, there's one there? I was going to the ---"
    "No, go to the one on Fairfax," he said, gesturing with his pen. "It's on the east side of the street, go up the alleyway, park in the lot behind the post office."
    "Sure," I replied, walking out the door.
    "Just go--" I sighed inaudibly and walked backwards into his office. "--up the street, make a right, it's right next to the Subway."
    "Ok," I walked towards the lobby again.
    "I think ---" I walked back into his office. "--there's a travel agency right next to it also."
    "Ok."
    "Just go to that one. It's only after 5pm that we need to go to the other one. This one is fine."
    "Ok."
    "You won't need to stand in line, those stamps should be fine. You should just be able to drop it off."
    "Ok."

This happens a lot. The usual modus operandi with him is either to order you to do something and then give you FAR too much detail in exactly how to do it, or to order you to do something and leave you with no earthly idea how to accomplish it.

Is this normal?

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Still haven't heard a definitive answer about The Pilot I shot way back in November.  Last I heard the response was extremely favorable, but that we wouldn't know anything until February.  Again, I'll be wicked excited if it gets picked up, despite my still (albeit slight) feelings of trepidation that it is a reality show of sorts.  My passion is *acting*, is getting to be *someone else* for the day, not worrying about how I'm going to look as my li'l ol' self on the small screen.

Still. TV Show. Me. Not complaining. Promise!

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In other not-me-related news, SAG has deemed that No Actors Will Appear At The Golden Globes. Hoo boy. 

This is after the declarations that, in addition, no film clips are being allowed to be shown and no monologues/presentations are allowed to be written.

So....what, exactly is going to happen to the awards show? The networks already said The Show Must Go On, but that was before SAG threw this whammy on them.  Enjoy losing more money over this strike, bitches!  Because I know I'm enjoying apologizing to my landlord that rent is going to be late. Again.

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Despite the doomsday predictions that California was going to be hit by non stop rains, flooding and the utter chaos that follows such an event, there hasn't been too much actual water falling from the sky. Currently? Cloudy. I'm merely perturbed that it doesn't seem to be cold enough to be converting this lovely precipitation into snow in the mountains. Planning on going snowboarding on Tuesday, regardless. If I'm going to have a boss-mandated day off, I'm going to enjoy it, goddammit.