See, and reading the blog just tells me how far behind I've been.

House was great, and turned into a two day call. Briefly talked to Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. Wilson) about babies, of all things. Grew a whole new respect for the "hot girls" you see on TV. One of them had a fifteen year old son, and still looked under 30, and, quite frankly, smashing. That's dedication.

I got a job from Virgo for this past Monday and Tuesday on a promo for the new look of the SyFy network (previously Sci Fi). That was $200 a day, and a lot of fun to hang with some new friends that I found.

Yesterday I booked a Verizon commercial for Monday through Virgo (I think I made a good impression with my hyper-punctuality), and today I landed an extra gig on Bones for tomorrow.

That's the bullet point edition, and, honestly, I don't know that I can go back and cull out a horrendous amount of detail without having to a) take three hours to straighten out all the chronology in my head or b) waste tons of text setting up little ironies and punchlines that would probably only wind up funny to me.

The baby is clingy today, and intensely frustrated as his slow progress in the independent locomotion department.

It's spring in California, and despite the insanity, thing seem to be looking up.

Oh yeah, there was the student film in there too. That was good. Man, am I behind!

I've introduced a lot of writing into my life in the last few weeks. It's actually become a little bit difficult to keep track of.

I'm a member of two different forums to which I contribute on a regular and partially regular basis, respectively. I'm writing what amounts to fan ficiton based on a game that I'm playing (SPQR, a modification of Rome: Total War, for those who care). I've got this thing, and I'm more actively culling ideas for short stories, screenplays and novels. Not to mention the novel that's already on hold that my brain keeps chewing on. On top of all of this, I've got the non-writing writing that goes into building websites, fiddling with resumes and responding to emails, etc. for the whole acting career thing.

Oh, and Facebook every once in a while, too.

Leaves one in a bit of a fog. I feel like I've been tapping my fingers off for days, and I come to realize today that I haven't completed a single installment of anything in a week.

So, here a post, there a post, everywhere a post-post.

Old McDonald ain't cut out for the digital age.

I'm working on House tomorrow (extra). That's down at Fox.

There is also an audition that ends at 8pm in Valencia (across town from the house).

Can I do both?

I don't know, but I'm going to be prepared.

This week actually promises to be pretty full. House tomorrow, then Smile like you Mean It on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, possibly that audition tomorrow, plus other auditions that might come in. PLUS other extra work I might pin down.

Now if I can just start feeling like this is my life, and quit waiting for the other shoe to drop, I think I'll have a groove.

And, just in case you missed it the other places: New promotional website!

Linked here and on the sidebar for your surfing convenience.

Oh, it's time for a post.

Often, I run into the dilemma that arises when something that was originally cathartic and fun becomes something akin to a chore. Many things in my life are like this, and it might have something to do with how terrible I am at letting myself settle like sediment to the least common denominator.

That's a long way of saying I don't really want to post, but I'm forcing it for the writing practice.

I had an audition for a student film on Wednesday, at Cal State University Northridge (CSUN). It was nice for several reasons. 1) I was driving against traffic to get there, so the road was open. 2) I've been to CSUN before, so I didn't have to sweat about finding the place. 3) The audition itself was nice.

The audition wound up being in a hallway. I did a monologue for two guys and a girl. It was nice because it was all collegey, and I kind of miss that, but it was especially nice because I'm pretty sure I intimidated the hell out of them.

Not that I'm all giddy about scaring people. It was more like this: I'm 25, I'm a kind of a big guy, and they're all in their first couple of years of University. I think the intimidation factor kicked in because I was a little early, and they were making things up on the fly (which I totally understood, and made sure they knew I understood). I don't think they really knew what to expect when they posted their project on Casting Networks. Turns out, their first prospect of the night was a trained, professional actor. Yes, I can call myself a professional actor, I've been paid to do it...once.

They asked if I had a monologue, and I was like, "Yes, I do," which seemed to blow their minds a little bit. They asked me to do it, but I needed to pause because the director almost forgot to roll their video recorder. I think it was just one of those random situations where the auditioner has done more auditions than the auditors.

So I did the monologue. It went well.

When I finished, the director said, with this rhythm, "Thanks, that was...good!" The pause before the good almost made me laugh aloud, because I could totally tell that he'd prepared a canned response for everybody's monologue along the lines of, "Thanks, that was nice," or just "Thank you," and I got a genuine response out of him. It wasn't so much that he was surprised it was good...more like he was thankful that it was good.

There was more apologizing that followed for the location, and the drive relative to the brevity of the audition, and such, which I tried to gracefully deflect. They didn't need to apologize at all. I've driven farther for less. Plus, a 20 mile drive for a 3 minute read is standard fare 'round here.

Leaving the place, I couldn't help but giggle. Michael Shurtleff's book Audition goes to some small length to describe how auditors feel in auditions...the pressure of the decision making, the details, the distractions, the vague sense that (sometimes) they're wasting these poor actors' time...I believed it when I read it, but I'd just witnessed it first hand, and uncensored.

I've posted about how I like auditions before, but now I don't think I'll ever be intimidated by an auditor again.

Bonus to that is that they called me back.

Bonus to that is that the callback was great (though I might have used some profanity in the improv that the DP's younger brother had never heard before and will google as soon as he gets home).

Bonus to that is that they gave me the role. So I'm in a student film.

Hoo.Rah.

I tend toward laziness. Hard work is a road block to me. Many of the things I've done in life have been easy. Overcoming adversity is not well established in my skill set.

So here I am.

I need to look for an agent, and there are a lot of them. Some are terrible, some are a scam, some are fantastic, some are spam (couldn't resist the rhyme...too much Goodnight Moon, I think). Somehow I have to submit to a selection of them. It's not so much that I doubt God's involvement in hooking me up with the right one. I'm not even to that step yet.

I have to submit first. And I don't want to be a foolish bastard and submit to a bunch of terrible agents.

I'm getting a little off track.

This is a simple post.

Agencies confuse me, therefore are hard.

Hard is a turn off, not a challenge, therefore I shy away.

Shying away causes me to see all of the frowning faces of every German ancestor I ever had.

"Giving up?" they sneer, "Pathetic!"

So I spend more time denying I'm a wimp than dealing with the problem.

Yes I need therapy.

No I won't get it.

So, I just realized that I begin most of my posts with "So, blah blah blah..."

Yeah, that's probably not going to change anytime soon.

Anyway-

I thought, at one point, that I had learned how to be a relatively uninhibited improviser when it came to acting exercises and/or auditions.

I learned different today.

Today I did an audition down in North Hollywood that consisted completely of improv, for three auditors.

Those three auditors were black women about my age.

The sense of Political Correctness horsewhipped into me by life in the late 20th/early 21st centuries made me seize up and second guess every choice I made on the fly.

I'm sure it just looked like a mediocre audition to them, but I could have done better.

What is most comedy, anyway, but words that should offend and instead invoke laughter, merely because of the delivery?

I'm good at the offensive part, not so good at the laughter part.

Well, c'est la vie.





On a broader, more ambiguous level, I spent most of the day more depressed, angry and confused than I've been in a long time.

Why? you ask.

Search me.

I've come to realized that $8 per hour, as of 1.1.08, is minimum wage in the state of California.

This means that I've been making minimum wage working as an extra.

This highlights the differences between a "Minimum Wage Job" and a Job that Pays minimum wage.

Beats diggin' a hole for a living.

Here are the various ways that my fingers like to spell minimum: mwinm; wiminum; nimiwum; mwinim; mwinin; mininim. Don't ask me how the "w" got in any of those.

I worked today on a thing (I never did figure out quite what is was (yay, background!)). And I'm working on Cold Case tomorrow. Their reputation precedes them. Apparently, they're cool people. In the interim: I feel like doo-doo. Maybe I caught a bug from somebody, maybe I'm just run down.

Federal Government owes us a wad of cash. This is good. The "Actor" thing remains sustainable, at least for a few more months. There might be AFTRA membership in the offing.

Matt is tremendously cute, and learning and growing like the proverbial weed. I know I don't mention wife or child much here...and that's mostly because this was intended to be career process oriented. However, as a point of career processing, it's fantastic to have a little barrel of 2' 1'' tall curiosity to perspectivize everything.