9 posts from August 2008

A breakdown I saw today asking for submissions for a commercial:

Wanted:

NINJA WITH MARTIAL ARTS
EXPERIENCE
/ Male / All Ethnicities / 18-40
Male with Martial Arts experience, who owns and has a Ninja outfit, to
portray a Ninja for a one-day (7 hour) shoot with P. Diddy tomorrow from
3:00 to 10:00 pm in L.A.

Talent will be booked from their submission (photo & resume).

NINJA'S SUBMIT YOURSELF!!!

Pls do not submit anyone without experience and costume. Thank you!

Yes, ninjas....submit. SUBMIT TO MY WILL!

I <3 my city.

Things heard at the office today:

- "My goodness a lot of porn comes up when you type in 'Dominican Men'!"

- I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry has played no less than three times
in the last 3 hours. Still, I don't hate the song NEARLY as much as I did
before seeing this.
Friends of Middledesk's. Bless.

I'm still a tad bitter at How I Met Your Mother for not recognizing my
french brilliance in my audition for Claudette, especially as I would've
been making out with NPH dressed up in 80 year old man-drag. How AWESOME
would that have been? If that wasn't on my top ten list of Things To Do
Before I Die, it should've been. And now it appears it will never come to
pass. I may as well commit hare kare right now.

The audition for Lost seems to have been more of the same, but I'm not
complaining. I shot my episode of Sons of Anarchy on Monday, and that's one
more episodic credit on my resume than I had last week. Hooray!

.....the employees have MARGARITAS!!!!!

Overheard coming from the room where Sidedesk and Middledesk are merrily
painting away:

"Ok, this could just be me turning crazy...but I swear this [yellow] paint
smells like lemons!"
"It does NOT smell like....Wait. It kinda DOES smell like lemons!!"
"[MAW], come smell this paint!"

I walk into the room shaking my head and take the paintbrush that Sidedesk
hands me. Muttering something about purposefully inhaling paint being the
leading cause of stupid, I took a small whiff.

Not a hint of lemony freshness, although the pretty pretty pink elephants were lovely company for the next ten minutes or so. 

Boss has gone on the first of four vacations he plans on taking this month
(God bless airplane tickets with an expiration date), so he has charged us
with several tasks not generally in our job description. Sidedesk left for
about an hour and a half to show an apartment which Boss manages, and
currently Sidedesk and Middledesk are moving the office furniture around in
happy disregard for Boss's orders to the contrary.

Why, you may ask? Because we are supposed to repaint a wall of the office,
but not supposed to unplug or move anything around to do so.

Boss sometimes has a slight lack of regard for practicality.

So, naturally, we do what we usually try to do. That is, nod our heads until
he leaves and then figure out how to best carry out his instructions while
still operating under the general laws of physics.

Still, as much as painting falls outside the job description, I'm happy to
do anything to make my place of employment look less like a converted
apartment. Even though Boss has accepted tiny steps towards this goal, his
natural resistance to change makes the entire project more or less useless.
The whole place needs an overhaul, otherwise we're left with what it is; an
unorganized clutter-filled mess.

I was fully ashamed of myself for doing nothing other than clean the house yesterday.

Don't get me wrong, I did a FANTASTIC job of cleaning, and it did need to be done. But this was AFTER turning down Gillespie's invitation to an afterparty at his house the previous night (defense: He invited me at 11:30 at night!  The hell? I'm a busy girl! I have plans! I mean....I didn't. Wasn't doing a single thing. But he didn't know that, and honestly? Not gonna drive the half hour to his place to sit around and drink.   ...Ok, these reasons aren't sounding as righteous as they seemed Friday night, but I'm sure it has something to do with me not seeming like a doormat.)

Then Saturday night I turned down GenArt's invitation to some launch party (ok, the defense there? ....I'm not a huge fan of the guy. He talks over me and he's kind of a sophomoric jerk.  The reason I still hang out with him at all? Well, the man did get me into the X-Games. A girl has her priorities.)

In any case, I determined that I was GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE TODAY, so finally went and saw a friend's play that I'd been far overdue in watching.  It was an outdoor theater with absolutely gorgeous weather. Afterward we ate mexican food, watched a couple sing numerous musical selections (including such songs as "Watermelon Moonshine", "Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR)", and last but not least, "Hope, Justice and Love"), caught a frog no larger than my thumbnail, went hiking in the dark and saw three meteors streak across the sky.  All that was with a group. After we partedways, I had an irresistable urge to keep with the 'do as ye wilt' theme of the day, so I drove out to the beach and walked next to the waves. It seemed a fitting counterpoint to the hiking in the woods already done that day.  Then, on the way home, I pulled a U-turn into a 7-11 for the single reason of getting an Almond Joy.

Today made up for any lameness prizes I have incurred during previous days. So sayeth I.

I'm shamelessly stealing this from another actor's blog both because he says it far better than my sleep-deprivated brain can at this moment, and because with the cancellation of my last film (after TWO DAYS into production, people! This happens ALL the time!), MAW needs a little reaffirmation, ya dig?

So here it is, cats and kittens, the reminder that this is a CAREER, this takes WORK, and ultimately, I'm going to be happier developing success later on in life because I have a far better chance of lasting in this industry as a leading lady, not as the hottest 18-to-look-younger 90210 girl.

Not that the free surfboard from Teen Choice Awards wouldn't be fun...I've always wanted to learn how to DO that!

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Hurry Up and Relax

All you young performers out there--i'm talking to all you guys finishing up college or grad school and thinking about/moving to New York/LA to begin your careers...GET TO IT!

There's about a 10 year curve to "master" any profession you may choose (somebody famous said that righ?), and that doesn't exclude the arts. So pick NY or LA, pick theater or film or television but start working at it. Start auditioning, start studying in NY/LA, start meeting casting directors, start building the foundation of your career in your cells.

Because it takes time. It takes time and luck and hard work and change and money and a whole lot of joy, pain, fear, and love for a casting director to BELIEVE in you. To know that you are capalbe and experienced enough to carry a $15million musical or a $20 million dollar pilot or $30 million dollar film. It takes years.

You will audition thousands of time for hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. You will model, you will do voice overs, you will do commercials, you will do readings, workshops, favors, concerts, benefits, plays, musicals, soaps, tv, student films, films, industrials...you will write, you will direct, you will produce, you will style, you will coach...

You will cry, laugh, celebrate, whine, seek guidance, ...this is life no matter what profession you're in. But for some reason people think in showbiz, you just show up and overnight you're famous. Well Katherine Heigl's been acting since she was a kid and Morgan Freeman didn't have a regular film career until he was 50 (after 20 years in the business). So sure, there's a chance you could be the next Tom Cruise. But what if you're the next Morgan Freeman?

From Sidedesk to the Boss after refilling the printer twice:

"[Boss], a representative from the National Forestry department called.
You've used up your quota of killing trees. For for the rest of your life.
Forever."

Hey lower west siders,

Yeah, a major factor in the lack of posts has been that I refuse to access
my beloved Voxy from my work computer. Not out of any sense of
professionalism, you understand, but because of abject FEAR of it
circulating via flyer form after being discovered in some random History
file. Anyway, since a computer is where I spend a VAST majority of my time,
it's been difficult to sit down at yet another computer when I get to my
abode.

Well, ok, that's totally wrong. I spend far too much time at my computer at
home as well, but that's primarily spent at StumbleAudio or similar music-geek themed
things.

Thanks to moblogging (which probably was introduced at the Dawn of Time and
I am only now discovering it), apparently I can send whatever little
snippets pop into my head at work straight into web-based posterity via email!

Neat.

Song I CANNOT listen to:

-- This probably was a very lovely song. I'm sure it's featured heavily in Youtube montages dedicated solely to Kate and Sawyer's undying lust. Unfortunately, as our office has satellite radio and the particular station we listen to decided it would play this song EVERY TEN GODDAMN MINUTES, it was a bit of overkill. I still do not know how the sadistic son of a bitch running the station knew exactly when I was coming into the office (because our schedule changes every day), but damned if that song didn't play the moment my well-fed ass touched my chair every day for two bloody weeks.

Things that happened in my office today in rapid succession:

• Boss and Sidedesk left to run errands (Boss: "*sigh*...I  *guess* I'll take the Porsche..")
• Middledesk ran across the street to get her eyebrows waxed
• I get a call from Sidedesk asking what flavor Slurpee I want
  
• Boss and Sidedesk come back and hand me my half wild-cherry/half pina colada frosty yumminess

Occasionally I like where I work.

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Side note: since this is the first time trying this dealio, there may be weird formatting and such. I apologize for this, will try and check on it at home since I will, as previously mentioned, experience panic attacks if I check it out at work.

You know you love me.