Into the Traffic

One year on

2011-01-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

In answer to all of my questions from my last post (last year):

Fear.

Beginning the process of professional writing would force me to do something that I've been wholly unwilling to do for many years: draw my future into the present.

You see, I'm satisfied with my future. It's sealed away in a tidy little package, perpetually idyllic, eternally complete. It's a beacon of hope that shines a distant light into a messy, murky present smeared with self-doubt and cluttered with failures and weakness. I can borrow from this future to finance my present, and the line of credit is never exhausted. I can be content with the "is" by virtue of the "is to come".

Except, of course, "is to come" relies on one simple point: I must move from now to then. Somehow. It won't suddenly manifest itself on my 45th birthday. And this is where my emotions have fought my mind to a stalemate. In the unconscious parts of me, I don't want to have my idyllic future, because I know that to have it is to understand and live in its flaws.

To borrow from the beacon-of-light metaphor further: If a man is out at sea in rough surf and sees the lighthouse safety, warmth, and success fill his heart...he doesn't take the time to think consciously about what it would be like to actually stand at the base of the lighthouse. To stand there is to be on the solid foundation, but it is still at the sea's edge, vulnerable to the spray of the surf and the wind and the rain. At the helm, seeing the beacon, the man at sea thinks only of the security of bedrock under his feet, and it's comforting.

To stretch a little further, suppose the man at sea is me. I grip the helm and sailor on, riding each successive swell, content in the knowledge that the lighthouse exists...but I hesitate to navigate into the harbor. I sense the rocks, I sense the darkness of the distance between here and the light...and most importantly, I don't want to find out that to be on the land is to still stand in the rain.

And I'll die at sea for it.

Or I would, if I never came about landward.

Dispensing with word painting for a moment: I've realized finally that in order to have any fulfilling future at all, I have to reach for it, mess and all, and let my imaginary success rot on the vine so that I can enjoy whatsoever real success there is to be harvested.

Apparently I can't explain this thing without symbolism and metaphor. Oh well.

A sub-point of this discovery relates directly to why I'm posting here after such a long hiatus.

I have to stop blogging. Totally. Not necessarily forever, but in order to get down to business of taking a hack at living on my ideas, I'm going to have to spend a lot of energy figuring out what those ideas are. To blog (for me) is to write to an imaginary audience whose predilections and politics I'm catering to, even as I purport to disagree. I have to learn first what I'm really trying to say, say it, and then (and only then) grapple with the response of readers. I don't doubt that if I am ever published, the things that please and displease people will surprise the pants off me.

I've got enough real struggle to do now, I don't need to make more trouble for myself by leading myself to believe that there are people waiting on me to put up something new.

So.

Thanks to all that encouraged me. You're very welcome to any that have been encouraged. I'll see you on the flip side.

Things to say and no way to say them

2010-02-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

True writers, it seems to me, are the kind of people that observe the world, contemplate the reasons and motives behind the way it works, and then comment on all of it in direct, thought provoking ways.

My problem of late has been that I've realized that, while I may observe and contemplate the world at large, I'm a little at a loss when it comes to reportage. I don't really have a clue how to turn my thoughts into any productive output.

Oh sure, I have ideas. Concepts for works of varying natures flit around my mind, but nothing seems to land. Even when I get a really good idea that seems to have a lot of mileage to it, I can't seem to bend the thing into any real product. Even on those rare occasions where I sit down and pound away at the keyboard for a few hours, I almost invariably stop because I realize how daunting the task is that I've taken on, or how little I actually know about the subject at hand.

So what is this? Laziness? Lack of focus? Lack of purpose? or just plain technical inability? I kind of ride a carousel around these points. Sometimes I feel like I don't get anything written because I'm a slacker. Sometimes I feel woefully ignorant. Sometimes I feel like I just don't know how to write...like a weekend warrior determined to change the spark plugs who pops the hood only to discover that he can't even make sense of the difference between the radiator and the engine block.

The sad, frustrating reality is that it's likely to be a blend of all of these problems. When I work up the courage to try, I find my knowledge lacking, then lose focus because I'm off researching, and when I come back to the germ of the idea, I realize I don't have the first clue how to make it work as a piece of literature.

I wish there was an uplifting end to this post, but there isn't. It's just a big *le sigh*, and another tweak on the "I'm good but I'm stymied" tail.

If I can't do it, I must not be that good.

Way to go, New Jersey

2010-01-15T16:08:00.000-08:00

...He says as he rolls his eyes.

New Jersey is allowing an exception to their anti-idle law to expire May 1.

That exception allowed drivers to idle their engines when in the sleeper berth.

So now, in New Jersey, you won't be able to idle your truck for more than 3 minutes while parked. Period. No exceptions.

Good for the environment! some cheer.

Ignorant of reality and kind to the atmosphere at the expense of human safety.

If you can't afford an APU to run your air conditioning, or if yours breaks (I'd venture to guess that a majority of trucks don't have APUs yet) you'll no longer be able to legally idle your truck in order to keep the cab cool.

WE HAVE TO SLEEP, NEW JERSEY.

If we can't sleep, we don't drive safely. If we don't drive safely, you non-trucking types will start screaming about tightening the Hours of Service rules.

If this post seems incoherent, it's only because this anti-idle crap makes me so livid I can't find adequate words to express myself.

How are drivers supposed to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer without an APU or the ability to idle their engines?

Are you going to subsidize the purchase and installation of APUs, New Jersey?

No, you're not. You're just going to pass laws that effectively treat truck drivers worse than livestock.

Laws like this are born in ignorance. It's ignorance that's hard to dispel, because we who drive are out doing our jobs, and that means we can't be at home, pestering our representatives about keeping the law remotely fair for truck drivers.

If it keeps going this way, you might as well just teach me how to yoke up a team of oxen....

But then I suppose they wouldn't be allowed to defecate.

:angryfistshake:

2010-01-13T14:17:00.000-08:00

On January 1st, 2010, the state of Illinois repealed the split speed limit for cars and trucks of 65mph/55mph respectively, and moved everybody to 65 mph. This change excepts the six county Chicago area, which is wise.

The result is that you now have hundreds of truckers (myself included) quite gleefully doing 65 throughout the state. To say gleefully is not to say unsafely, for those of you wringing your hands about the evils of fast moving trucks. I will continue to quote to anyone interested in hearing that two thirds of car/truck accidents are the fault of the car.

Anyway. This change in speed laws has produced an interesting effect...or, rather, a lack of such effect. I had been curious to see how traffic would pace itself and how things would space out and bunch up as the local population adjusted to parity with we of the freighter persuasion. As it turns out, it appears that many (if not most) cars are still champing at the bit to get around me.

This leads me to wonder if the incidence of passenger cars cited for speeding will increase this year. In order to pass me so swiftly as you are, Oh Illinoian, you need to violate your speed limit pretty flagrantly.

The law, up until now, has granted you the de facto right to pass me at 10mph of difference...but now that the law is changed, do you continue to believe it's your right?

Is your sense of progress based not on your speedometer, but on your tally of passed trucks?

I wonder.

Having driven in states with and without split speeds, I'm beginning to form a theory, and Illinois will be a fantastic testing bed for the theory.

The theory is: Passenger car drivers in states where the speed limits are split tend to see themselves as more important than trucks. Restated: When the law discriminates between truck and car speed limits, car drivers look on the trucks as "less than".

I know that it's disappointing and sometimes nerve wracking to have a semi-truck blocking your view of the road; I drive a car, too. But there is a certain aggression to the movements of cars in splitter states that belies their contempt of the truck's existence. I exaggerate slightly to make my point, but the bumper crowding and lane diving and accelerator stomping I've witnessed in California, Illinois, Michigan, and a few other notables is pretty pronounced.

So Illinois is the control. It'll be interesting to see if this trend continues. Cars very well may speed where they hadn't sped before, just to maintain their "rightful" edge on trucks.

Maybe not.

2009-12-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

Curious.

I've just woken up from a sleep cycle after a full 26 hours of work/waiting for work with no sleep.

I don't feel sick, crappy, nauseated, or any of the other things that usually go with fatigue in me.

How is it that some days I can be up for 16 hours and feel like I'm going to die, and then turn around and hammer a ridiculous 26 hour marathon and not feel it?

Weird.

Going back to sleep now.

2009-11-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

Seen recently, scrawled on a toilet paper dispenser in a Texas bathroom:

First, in black sharpie:

STOP BIG GOVERNMENT

Immediately beneath, in another's writing:

help each other then

I normally pass over toilet graffiti unmoved, but this one hit me so square on the nose I had to write it down. This seven word argument that smashingly undercuts a traditional conservative battle cry pretty perfectly sums up much of what I feel.

I'd love it if government institutions could be lean and un-invasive, and let us go about our lives unencumbered. But as the respondent on that toilet paper wheel so succinctly points out, we are not doing a good enough job of helping each other through difficulties and trials, sickness and disasters.

Some churches do good things, but as often as not, it seems, help comes with a hook. Those helped have to endure a proselytizing in the process. Free food on the condition of open ears is not charity, it's a sales pitch.

Individuals conversely seem to be accidentally or consciously swallowing Ayn Rand whole, looking out for number 1 and to hell everybody else. I can't tell you how many "stop big government" truckers I meet who, in the same breath, decry government intervention and panhandlers on the side of the road. The government's not supposed to step in, and damned if they'll spare a dime. Who's supposed to help keep these people from starving to death? I assume that the disease and death of these unfortunates while no help is offered them is not acceptable to you. If it is, I really don't care to discuss the social contract with you until you can pull your head out of your ass.

How can we have a society that protects its citizens from byzantine privation without either a government or a populace willing to make the investment?

A bleak scene from the Katrina aftermath is emblazoned on my mind. A string of people very vocally protested the fate of a poor elderly woman whose corpse was sitting in a wheelchair outside the superdome. The corpse was covered in a dirty bedsheet. "Look at the indignity of this" was the refrain. "How can people be treated this way?"

How indeed, when so many of those voices belonged to able bodied young people just as capable as the government of stepping in and taking a old woman's corpse somewhere decent to be laid to wait for its final rest. In that moment, I first understood the impossibility.

The government can't do it right, and the people won't.

This world is not a nice place to live.

2009-11-28T19:47:00.000-08:00

Another, briefer gripe about misplaced American Christian zeal.

I have a little FM transmitter that I can plug into my iPod. It transmits a disappointingly wimpy signal on any of the four frequencies between 88.1 and 88.7, so that I can listen to the iPod over the radio in the truck.

An interesting pattern I've noticed in recent months is that often I'll run into radio stations whose signals will overpower the weak transmission coming from inside the cab. This is to be expected from Wimpy McTransmitter...however, what is not expected is the number of times I run across stations that absolutely blow out 88.5 or 88.3 (usually) and subsequently bleed signal onto the surrounding frequencies. These are strong towers, folks. A station booming on 88.5 will produce shadow signals on both 88.3 and 88.7, knocking down three of four of my choices to hear my own stuff. I'll hear the station on 88.5 as if my transmitter was not even on, and on .3 and .7, the buzz and rumble of the voices and music on .5 will overpower the clarity of what my iPod is quietly trying to play.

The common thread? All Christian stations, of one stripe or another. Since I started actively noticing this, it's been unfailingly consistent that if I lose three freqs, it's a Christian tower booming me out.

It's irritating, frankly.

And here's why. To me, this over-powered broadcast strength is a direct result of the misconception that people don't believe in Christ because they can't hear the message. Solution? Buy a tower that, like a blast cannon, launches the message a hundred miles in every direction. Then more people will hear it. Then end result is an extension of the functional stalemate between Evangelical Christianity and the Rest of Everybody.

Let me try to sum it up from the "Rest of Everybody" perspective: We've heard all of this. If we were interested, we'd listen. It just so happens we're not interested, and saying the same things you've already said, but saying them louder, and more invasively, does not increase the attractiveness of your message.

Let me also take a minute to point out that, in my opinion, Christian radio is dangerous. It goes out and honest, well meaning spiritual people listen to it, and because it got on the air, they take it for doctrinal truth. I've heard more things on Christian stations that are shaky, misleading, or just flat wrong than I can count.

So, if you happen to be thinking about buying a titanic broadcast tower in order to improve your evangelism, Mr. Christian Station Manager (and you happen to be reading this) let me make a couple of points.

1) The message of Christ is a message intended to be communicated from individual to individual, based on the way God uses the disciple to show the un-disciple how transformative redemption can be. Mass media will never replace this. Indeed it might be that mass media has made the individual completely oblivious to the need for personal relationship.

2) You overestimate your own role in God's purposes for redemption if you think that people are saved because they can't hear your programming. Very poignantly, I just heard today Magaret Atwood give one of the most concise (and deadly accurate) descriptions of Christ as the propitiation for sin I've ever hear anybody give, churchman or not, and she doesn't believe it personally for a minute. She understands the principle, but does not believe. It's not an issue of not having heard for her.

3) And I reiterate here, bits and blurbs of your programming, heard far and wide, taking out of context or in, can do damage the health of those on your own "team".

4) Always and always, a message delivered when the receiver does not desire to listen falls on deaf ears.

2009-11-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

In the search for truth and ordered, responsible living, Christianity has a tendency to act like it has a leg up on the rest of the world.

Ostensibly, it does. Biblical texts speak unambiguously of God's Truth, and the veracity of scripture as the revelation of God. If you're starting from a place where a personal God can be relied upon to exposit the important points of His interactions with humanity, and what He considers critical to healthy, successful living, as well as lay down His very detailed description of the plan for your redemption...well, then that's quite the head start.

But there's a problem. It's a problem I see repeating itself (without exaggeration) daily. For some reason, perhaps just in America, Christian Churches have stalled on the idea that the Bible is Truth. The potential fact that the Bible is Truth is implicitly useless if you and your cohorts are totally incapable of or unwilling to keep to said Truth with integrity, and to spend time and thought on discerning its appropriate application in day-to-day life.

We're very classically spotting the trees and missing the forest.

On one side, there's politically active Christian task forces campaigning against gay marriage, on the other, massive mainstream denominations are giving the nod to professing homosexuals in leadership and ministry. What the hell? Have we gone completely insane?

On the one hand, anti-gay marriage is energetically co-opting what is a personal, relational religious ideal into a belligerent, populist moralism, that seeks to dictate behavior on the same grand scale as DARE did with "just say no". Don't-do-it-because-it's-wrong-because-I-say-so has always been a shitty reason to do (or not do) anything. It's a cop out. It's an easy exit for those in authority (or trying to exercise authority) to avoid justifying their mandates.

On the other hand, we have established, long-lived embodiments of Christian doctrine farcically ignoring the biblical exposition (in both testaments) that unequivocally outlines the fact that homosexual lusts (and in fact all extra-marital sexual lust, I might point out) are the end product of the corruption of the human spirit. These things are on the long list that includes greed, pride, deceit, malice and a whole host of other human behavior that often feels GREAT in the moment but does us damage in time. And these churches are very casually dropping this from their consideration of the qualifications for church leadership.

It's two sides of the same coin, really. Coming back to the original points about integrity and thoughtful application, you've got the political crusaders applying their beliefs in an unthoughtful and disintegrated fashion, trying to enforce behavior on people who have never felt any call nor made any commitment to follow God's instruction on how to live and Who to look to for salvation. On the other hand you have people opening their hearts and understanding that American Christianity has been, for decades, stuck in a morass of unsympathetic, dogmatic monasticism and in the alarm of waking up to this tragedy, throwing out basic Christian doctrine with the ugly, ungodly censoriousness.

So I suppose I can make sense of it. The point of writing this? Well, perhaps I hope some folks can get something useful from it. For those on the outside looking in, if you're thinking that Christianity is, by and large, a bamboozling maze of contradictions, you're certainly not far off the mark, given the external behavior of a whole myriad of different groups. It's not supposed to be like this, but then, when humans are involved, how often does anything turn out the way it's supposed to?

I have faith that God will preserve His Truth on through this spate of abject silliness, if maybe only underground and out of sight. He can see the end, I trust, so I'm not really worried...but I do feel very moved to point some of this stupid shit out.

As a brief PS, hypocrisy is built into any Christian's life. By the nature of the faith, we aspire to and exposit values and behaviors that we inevitably fail to observe and act out. Take, for instance, my nearly lifelong disrespect for the principle of the mouth reflecting the heart. Even this post is littered with a brand of coarseness most folks find incongruous with pursuit of God. Individual hypocrisy, especially the endemic type, should be pointed out, but also forgiven. For my part, I'm rotten and busted, and I know it. Group hypocrisy, however, of the kind I decry in this post, is a different animal altogether. I am a man with poor self-discipline and some terrible habits. Denominations have no such cover of individual failing...avoidance of this kind of group departure is the whole point of the body of believers.

2009-11-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

I often go through days feeling on the edge of something. On the cusp. On the brink. On the verge.

In keeping with the spirit of my last post, I think a good visual came to me today. So run with me on this for a minute.

I feel as though there is a great bottomless abyss of Truth. Unlike most abysses that you might think of, this deep, endless drop is not a descent into hopeless blackness, waiting for thermal currents to push you into an unforgiving wall and crush you. It is, rather, well lit and beautiful, and best experienced in free fall, at terminal velocity, allowing the totality of it to sweep by you, confident that stepping off the ledge was the best decision you've ever made.

I see this freefall, and I stand at the edge, pacing around it endlessly, trying to make the decision to dive in.

But there's a wrinkle.

You see, around this abyss there's a fence, and the perimeter is a long walk around. So as I pace the long distances around the lip of this epic fall, I encounter high fence walls, edged with razor wire, keeping me from jumping in even when I most desperately want to. These are the days when my angst or my selfishness or my self-destructive behavior are such that to really sally forth into a routine of creativity is impossible.

Then there are places where the fence is low, easy to vault, or even gated for easy entry, and inevitably I'm so absorbed in the path right under my feet I traipse right past these free opportunities, and when I look up, I'm back at the razor wire again...so only by looking forward or backward do I see the places where it would be best to jump in. These low spots in the fence come when my life is ordered and consistent, uncomplicated and relatively untaxing. These moments would be a perfect time to add a new discipline and start writing a little each day. But I don't because I'm happy; I'm looking at the end of my nose and appreciating the fact that life is going smoothly.

I need to take this leap when I'm not getting in my own way. This post is a part of that razor wire fence. This post and anything else dated today. This is all necessity writing. This is just to keep me sane. It's precisely when I don't need to that I am best suited to leap into a lifelong spelunk of truth.

2009-11-28T19:43:00.000-08:00

I go in cycles. I've known this for quite awhile. I suppose cyclical behavior is inherent in the human condition. Like seasons, we come around to similar places for similar reasons again and again, based on the influences and outlets of our day to day lives. But as the 4^th anniversary of beginning to write a novel (that I planned to hammer out in a year) approaches, I can retrospectively see the bubbles and busts of my behavior almost as clearly as if they were neat DOW Jones tracking charts.

The metaphor that came to me for this life cycle (which is mostly creative in nature) came to me today in quite stunning clarity as I negotiated the high country between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming. I suffer from a sort of creative bulimia.

I understand that it's a graphic comparison, but it's pretty functional. I intake, and intake, and intake (a long binge process) watching the world and listening to it breathe and groan, an organism of humanity trying to sort itself out. It's fascinating to me. Sometimes enlightening, sometimes depressing, this intake angers me, excites me, stimulates me, shocks me, tears me apart...but always encourages the constant state of analysis, of critical thought, that I see as crucial to an open mind.

But there's a balance issue here. The intake is often unregulated, and the outlet is dangerous overkill. Like a bulimic, I will often go long stretches (days or sometimes a week or two) completely avoidant of sustenance. I go dark to the human world. I go about my business, do my job, and generally "veg out". This is because I've been through a recent binge. It's not uncommon for me to go through 4 to 6 hours of podcast material in a working day, often for 3 or 4 days in a row. When I say podcast material, I mean shows like "This American Life", "To the Best of our Knowledge", "Left, Right & Center" and other thought oriented NPR stuff, and Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History". I also blast through hours of lighter shows like "Wait, Wait, Don't tell Me", or "Car Talk" (probably the lightest of the fare).

Even the light stuff keeps my critical thought going, though. The jokes, the solutions to problems, the human interactions and ideas that are inevitably laced into any kind of talk show reach into my mind, and my mind digests them, picking out bits and pieces that I reject, accept, or ruminate on at length. The first four shows in the list are heavy artillery, though. LR&C is blatant political debate, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. TAL and TTBOOK are both news magazines, objectively offering stories of human nature on thematic strings, telling stories, and more often than not, vaguely suggesting and editorial position on what underlying truth might be. So I'm doing multiple things simultaneously during these shows. I'm not checking my criticism at the door, because even as much as I might love these shows, carelessness could easily leave me open to thoughtlessly swallowing a social or theological premise with which I don't agree, merely because it's subtle (and probably unconsciously) woven into the text of the presentation. I'm also imbibing stories of human nature, often in first-person interview, that shed light on the internal machinery of individual people, and give me very precious windows into the assumptions, beliefs and objectives of my fellow humans. Thirdly, I'm learning critical information about the way the world actually works...things that runs our day to day lives that generally get missed, misinterpreted, or ignored in most discussion and debate about "the way things are". TAL is especially good at this. Their shows on health care reform and the financial kaboom have taught me ten thousand little things that news blurbs haven't got the chronological budget to spend explaining.

And I'm not done imbibing. On top of the vast swath of Public Radio, there's "Hardcore History" that I've just torn through. Dan Carlin tries to make a point of manipulating what often becomes compressed recitation of critical events (history, that is) and unpacking it into human experience. He follows little seams of precious human reality that often get glossed over or forgotten in the grand sweep of thousands of years. To that end, I'm germinating and nourishing seeds of belief about human nature that have been (perhaps blissfully) undeveloped until now. The horrible brutality of human existence has seldom been so vividly unfolded in my mind's eye...and this even from me, a person who can humbly and honestly claim a broader and deeper understanding of military history than most.

And then...then I step back and set our bestiality against the beauty of our art, and the joy of our festivity...and I start to get a little dizzy trying to digest it all.

And I'm overfull. I've ingested too much, too quickly, and I've not even saved space these last weeks for Alistair Begg and the brilliant Biblical exposition he does on "Truth for Life". Add to the mix my fundamental belief that Jesus stepped in to pay human debt so that we can meet God judgment free, and you have an unlit Molotov waiting for a flame and a strong arm.

And now, not only am I mixing metaphors, I understand I'm in a dangerous place. I'm got too much in me. It's making me swell uncomfortably...

And the imbalance still reigns supreme. I purge. I either spend long hours at the keyboard, hammering away at something or other, this book or that essay, none of which ever survives the night, or I check out...listening to the best classic rock station I can find on the radio, or gaming obsessively, or just surfing the internet.

But even then, the cycle has begun again, because the games and music and websites all have messages too. Nothing that man creates is message free. It's a bold statement, but I believe it's true. Even the most practical of things transmits some information that the maker or harvester or gatherer values.

It's an issue of discipline, and I know it. If I were slowing my intake and regulating my output, I could feed and bleed my creative mind on a sort of predictable schedule that it could tolerate. Instead of puking out all of this half formed philosophy, I could actually digest ideas in turn, and spend unhurried days formulating a response that I could believe in.

It would make the blog more interesting, I'm sure (not mentioning that the whole point of the blog is to do exactly the kind of short form writing that keeps these disciplinary skills sharpened), and it would certainly enrich the longer term projects, not least that massive, hairy, Yeti of a book that keeps outgrowing my abilities. I might actually start new projects and feel equipped to come back to them again the next day, confident that they were begun on a critical and valuable premise, not on a vomitous blurb of pressure release.

And last of all, it would make me less dark of a person. Most of my adolescence and early adulthood is characterized by grim weariness, brought about almost solely by this very kind of unexorcized emotional response to my instinctive and constant contemplation of the human condition.

I'm a grump because people get to me, and I'd be less grumpy if I did something deliberate about it.

2009-10-21T15:55:00.001-07:00

Now that I'm driving for a different company, and am sporting a slightly different attitude, I am able to realize that I like--really like-- doing this.

It's a bit of a heavy moment when it dawns on you that the all the reasons you shouldn't like your job are just somebody else's reasons. I shouldn't like this job, but I do. If I try to convince myself I don't, I'm just playing somebody else's game.

I came in thinking I would extrapolate on this for a few paragraphs. I don't think I need to.

2009-10-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

It's 2241 Central Daylight Time. It's 2041 Pacific Daylight Time. It's 2141 Mountain Daylight Time.

I work on the first time, currently am parked in the second, and deliver in the third tomorrow. This is a long haul driver's life. Constant time zone math.

This was not such an issue just a few weeks ago. I had a different phone then. Now I have a new phone. It does not let me turn off the auto time adjustment. The best I can do is set the clock on the main display to read two times: the current time and the time in a large city of my choosing. Since Minneapolis wasn't an option, I went for Chicago.

So now, since I logged off for the day at 2145, I can start tomorrow at 745, which means I need to get up around 645. This used to mean I would set the alarm clock on my phone to 645. Now it means I have to do the same math for my alarm clock as I have to do for pickups and deliveries. 645 CDT backs up to 445 PDT. Which also, incidentally, gives my brain a chance to see an "early morning" time and try to convince me to fall back asleep.

Thursday morning, if I want to wake up at 645 CDT, I'll need to set my alarm for 545, because I'll be in MDT then.

At least I'm not in Arizona. They're on MST year round. So when everybody else changes, they don't. Half the year they're with Nevada and California, the other half they're with the rest of the mountain states.

I recommend every state take a page from AZ. Ditch DST, it's stupid.

In other news, if you've ever seen the box of 20 Mule Team Borax in the cleaning aisle at the grocery, and perchance wondered where it came from, probably it came from here:

View Larger Map

I was there today, and I go to Utah with what they gave me. What is it really? I don't know. It does not need HazMat Placards, and that's about as far as I care.

Big, Fat, Political Post of DOOM!

2009-10-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

It's high time for this.

Instead of screaming and ranting and protesting with grammatically unfortunate, hand-sharpied signs, I'm going to try and work through all of this without getting too frustrated and with a healthy dose of self-criticism and devil's advocacy.

Frustrated is great place to start. I've been listening to the running debate about health care (and, by extension welfare, medicare, and all the other "socialisty" programs) and all it does is frustrate me. It seemed that all parties involved were incapable of slowing down long enough to give a reasoned explanation of their views. Then it occurred to me: it's not that most people are incapable of slowing down, but it is the case that most people are incapable of giving a reasoned explanation of their views. It's such a cataclysm of human problems that I barely know how to start sorting it out.

Fear.

Arrogance.

Ignorance.

Selfishness.

Lack of Empathy.

Lack of Perspective.

Censoriousness.

Pride.

Snobbery.

Elitism.

Exclusivity.

Condescension.

Stupidity.

I'm honestly to the point where I don't believe we're a nation of people smart enough to have this discussion. (Refer to the above list of negative traits and check off how many I'm guilty of as I go.) I do understand the conservative government-theory position. Involving government in anything means they will never become uninvolved. Government needs to intervene only where absolutely necessary. Writing laws is a good way to bullocks up the efficiency of any organizational structure. Better to let private companies build structures that are the most efficient because they are the most profitable. Don't interfere with the individual's freedom of choice.

This is all valuable stuff, to an extent...but I seriously doubt that more than 5% of the anti-reform movement has any of this in mind when they go off half-cocked anywhere and everywhere they feel like it.

It's become clear to me that the outspoken protesters are of an ilk that, for the most part, has led comfortable, middle class lives and have barely ever, if ever, traveled outside their social neighborhood. By social neighborhood, I mean their socio-economic environment. They've not lived with or gotten to know anybody that makes significantly less than them, and they've long dreamed of and idealized the lives of those that make significantly more.

I understand, loud, angry people, that you don't want good coverage taken away from you. What you fail to understand, loud, angry people, is that the changes being proposed have nothing to do with your coverage! Have you ever dealt with being uninsured? No. Have you ever dealt with health insurance being prohibitively expensive? No. Have you ever been unable to get health insurance at any price because you happen to have a disease that insurance companies don't want to cover? No again. Have you ever gotten acutely or terminally ill only to have your insurance summarily yanked because the insurance company sics their agents on your life, finds and error on your application, and says you defrauded them? Absolutely not. And you would be horrified if any of this happened to you. But it hasn't happened to you, so anybody that can't get insurance is just a freeloader, or a slug, or a cheat, or illegal, right?

Dear God, it provokes me to violence.

I've actually faced all of the above, except, thankfully, facing the trauma of having my coverage rescinded in the face of horrendously expensive coverage. I'm a middle class, college-educated white male with a wife, a kid, and a "good, mid-western work ethic". I look like you, screamers. I talk like you. I identify with your cultural heritage. The status quo you want to preserve would gleefully hang me out to dry for the sake of some cranky shareholders.

This is the issue. Your coverage is fine, and You, Middle America, are so trained to covet your material prosperity that you foam at the mouth if anything might even hint at threatening it. And the conservative talk radio gasbags know this. And they have beaten you into a mindless froth about it. And we're off the rails on the crazy train. The reality is that there's a whole other America out there that doesn't live your life, and they're getting raped by a colossus of an industry that is so amorally and unethically seeking profit that it makes me physically ill.

Drug companies chase patents for the sake of marketing exclusivity and profit. Most "new" drugs are simply retools of existing drugs that warrant a fresh patent.

The fee-for-service model of medicine encourages doctors to do as many tests and procedures as possible in order to get paid more. The only thing stopping them from proceduring your bank account to death? Ethical responsibility. Have we not yet witnessed enough shameless amorality to convince us that personal ethics are dead?

The very fact that health care is non-negotiable and urgent discourages the usual free-market control of prices. You're sick, you don't want to get more sick, or die, for that matter, and so you don't often have the luxury of comparison shopping. Nor can you say to the surgeon, "That scalpel costs how much?? Jimminy Christmas! Can you use the number 3 instead of the number 6?" It sounds silly, but the insurance company gets billed for the number 6, at $1200, and you, consumer, the end user, are not participating in the selection of what you're paying for. You're not in control. Does this sound a little like what everybody is screaming about avoiding?

Here's a personal anecdote: I have Crohn's disease. It's chronic, non-lethal, and a nuisance. I can lead a perfectly normal life and am basically healthy, especially if I take the prescribed dose of medication on a regular basis. Easy, yes? Right.

When I was in a situation where I didn't have the benefit of group insurance through an employer (which has been a lot of my adult life, so far) I tried to buy insurance as an individual. No soap. At first, I was quoted outrageous prices, on the order of $800-1000 a month. Then, when the agent did some research, he realized that I was a reject. So even if I'd had the grand per month to spend, nobody would cover me. Why? I was too expensive. Crohn's isn't even big, fat and hairy like cancer or diabetes and the like, but there's a moderate risk that I'll have to have my small intestine "trimmed" at some point. Nobody that's trying to protect their profit margins wants to take on obvious risk. It's just business sense. The problem is that business and medicine don't blend well. Almost to the point of oil/water comparison.

So I couldn't get insurance, but I wanted to keep myself healthy, so that if ever I could get insurance, I wouldn't be maxing out my coverage because of all of the issues I'd developed trying not to go bankrupt while I had none. Well, good luck, son. The medication I take, Pentasa, is a brand name with no generic equivalent. 30 days' supply? In excess of $500 dollars.

Why is this? Because the vicious cycle of insurance payouts and greed have caused everybody to realize that there's no real free-market dynamics in this game. The insured never see the actual cost of the goods and services, so the prices go up and the payouts go up, and the insurance companies get hammered, and start (perfectly legally) cutting people off and literally leaving them to die to keep their overhead down.

Let me hear about these horrible death panels again, Mildred.

You see, angry conservative, the horrible underbelly of your glorious free market is treading out human beings like grapes in a vineyard...All so we can drink the draft of immaculate capitalism.

Now I wax melodramatic. But I think you might begin to see what makes me so angry. There are thousands of people fighting to keep us from having our health care taken away, and those very warriors are keeping thousands of others from having health care at all.

Don't talk to me about death panels. That's horse shit. Don't talk to me about NHS in Britain and socialized medicine in Canada. That's not what we're looking at here. Prove to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why the dreaded single-payer system (which is a long way off, even if proposed legislation "opens the door") is so rotten and terrible and destructive of our American Awesome.

Here's how I see it. Somebody is finally pushing this hard. It happens to be liberals. It so happens that it's expensive, and it so happens that legislation is often fraught with bloat and pork. But by God it's about time something was done about the injustice of the system.

What's that you say? Social help should come from charities and non-profits and religious organizations and not the government?

Yes. Yes they should.

But I'm sorry, American Christianity, you've missed your chance. You want to legislate homosexuality and abortion out of existence because you think that living a virtuous life reaps the benefits of God's blessing. Read your Bibles, you hypocrites. Meanwhile, your precious Republican party, with Jim Dobson riding shot-gun, has whipped you into a frenzy of fear about losing your freedoms and your independence and your Christianity. Dr. Dobson, read your Bible. I happened to catch part of one of your shows that happened to discuss a political theory book of some kind, and I was horrified to hear you speak of how the thought of losing your freedoms kept you up at night. You have millions of Americans in your hip pocket! What god do you worship? Certainly not the God of the Bible, if you believe that you and the church are responsible for preserving a secular nation for God. What a heresy you've committed! Tacitly, you've approved of and encouraged the fear and the feelings of insecurity that millions of Americans are struggling with, even though they purportedly believe in the Sovereign, Providential God that works all things to His ends. He sets up the government and brings it down. The Church is His possession, not the Flag, not the Country, not Capitalism. Wake up! You and all of your followers. We live in a nation of man, not a nation of God. It is not ours to possess and manipulate and manage!

And the straying church has been so busy trying to pass laws that make the nation a theocracy that it's neglected the poor and the needy and all of the empathy and outreach and compassion to which it's called. Righteousness without compassion is failure, and the institution of Christianity in America gets a big, fat "F". For the very first time in my life, I saw a church do an act of charity to help someone in need. I happened to be the person in need. And I was provided for without judgement. How many churches would do this? Maybe most, but how many would do it without foisting a sense of shame on the recipient? Without clucking their tongues at what apparent irresponsibility has led the beneficiary to this deplorable place of financial failure? Not many. Not many at all. The glaring example of functional faith in my life just served to destroy the last illusions I had about the health of the American church.

The deception and misdirection runs deep. How easy is it for devoted, practicing Christians to spout theories demanding that beneficiaries of social programs prove their worth and their value to society before receiving or continuing to receive help? This isn't in the Bible. This kind of performance orientation is a deceit that steers us away from the propitiation of Christ. We're not acceptable to God because of how successful we are, nor is it evidence of our failure and sin if we find ourselves destitute. "Who sinned, rabbi, this man or his father?" No one, silly disciple. The world is broken and it is cruel to its inhabitants.

I wish I could mandate that people get some real life diversity experience before they're allowed to participate in national domestic policy debates, but I know that this flies in the face of the principles on which the government is built. It's exclusivity. But goodness gracious, the kind of exclusivity that says "You don't get a damned thing unless you work for it to my standards" doesn't do us any good either, and Christians have really been duped into buying this kind of philosophy. We, as Christians, have sacrificed and marginalized both our own dynamism and maturity as well as our message and beliefs out of a subtle misdirection toward self-preservation. We fail our lost friends and neighbors as we simultaneously fail to trust God as He intends us to trust Him.

I've digressed a bit. The broader point is that those who argue that it isn't the government's job to preserve people in times of difficulty are currently hard pressed to point out somebody else that's actually interested in doing the job. Private industry won't regulate itself. It hasn't the ethics to do so. Charities are falling flat, partially because of internal politics and tribalism, partly because those most inclined to donate to charities are clutching their Jeffersons and Benjamins as tightly as ever.

Something needs to give now, and the status quo has long ceased to be an effective answer. We're the richest nation in the world, maybe we got that way by capitalism, but we also got to this point through a carefully nurtured sense of Manifest Destiny, and that's not exactly a charitable, decent, upright heritage. The United States is not God's gift to nation-states any more than Britain was or Rome long before. His purposes are far subtler and far more eternal than the wealth of nations. It's high time we adjust our mentality. People are suffering and dying to preserve our twisted sense that unfettered individualism is healthy for a society.

And what's so wrong with Socialism anyway? I won't be easily dissuaded from believing that most anti-socialists think that Socialism is evil is because, to them, it correlates 1:1 with Stalinist Communism...and then we're right back to my assertion that, collectively, we're too dumb to think this through.

That's hyperbole, and I know it, but I've heard people my age say, "I don't want to be forced to pay premiums on insurance. I'm healthy. If something happens, I'll work it out and pay off the hospital on an individual basis." Naive. Naive. Naive. If these people continue to have their way, nothing changes, and we keep the bloat we have. If you've never seen uncovered bills, you can't know that an appendectomy costs $14,000 to start and just goes north from there. Major car wreck injuries? Cancer? Hello bankruptcy. These people need to be mandated to protect themselves. This is not in the spirit of the American Way, but the American Way coldly allows people to run themselves into the ground. That's not justice; it's uncaring at best, and malicious neglect at worst.

I know I'm wandering about, but this kind of stream-of-consciousness thinking has a certain value.

A final thought aimed at half-Christian philosophy. I know of people that are afraid that if the government socializes everything, people will never understand that they need God, and the Christian message will fall on deaf ears. Well, intentionally keeping people in poverty and hunger to prove that they need God isn't going to help them come to know a loving, omnipotent creator, either. The only problem with Marx's Socialism (as I understand it) is that it believes that if all of the material needs of men are met, they will be satisfied, content and functional. Well, if we did meet all of the people's material needs, they'd still need God. Even as it is, with have and have-not capitalism, people still think they'll be fine if they can get money. They're poor and hungry and troubled, and they're not looking to God.

Really, this is several separate essays about politics and religion and Christian doctrine all blended into one...so I'll end without really concluding:

There are far fewer freeloaders than you think, and there is far more injustice done in the name of our precious capitalism than most in the middle class can even conceive of. And, to make it all more fun, expediency on the part of a secular political party and misguided activism on the part of a cloister of religious leaders have conspired to railroad Christianity in America into a place that pretty heinously flouts well-defined doctrine about God and country and the balance between the two.

I have been an angry conservative. Then I actually spent time in the world with my eyes open. It doesn't work. Left wing idealism falls short as well. It's a complicated world, my friends, and there is more to America than you think. Let's stop pretending that there was once a good, Christian America. It's a lie.

2009-08-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

I go to orientation for Marten tomorrow, and thenceforce I shall be "off the grid" for a few weeks.

We fully intend to set my laptop up with a mobile internet plan from one of the wireless providers, but until we do that, I return to my 'net-less ways. If I run across free internet access, I'll use it, but that kind of access is far between...and often unreliable (at best).

It shouldn't be too terribly long before I can rejoin the ranks of ether-centric humanity, and I'm glad of it, because with a wife and an ever-exploring 10 month old, it'll be really good to stay in touch via more than just a phone line.

The best to everybody until I "see" you again.

And Bye-bye car

2009-08-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

I sold my first car today.

As in, it was the first time I sold a car and the car I sold was the first car I ever owned.

Not gonna lie, it felt a little like selling a family member.

But, we don't need it anymore.

So I posted it on craigslist and got a couple of offers, and one came through. So they drove away in my car (their car, I suppose) and I came back to the house with a wad of cash in my pocket.

I think the oddest part of the whole thing is that I didn't get "closure" with the car. That's a little misty, I'm sure, but it would have been nice to take a real, defined last drive with it. Knowing that I won't ever see the car again that I drove for basically all of its 100,000 miles is a bit strange.

That's all. I'll stop crying now. I sold a car and can save some money on my car insurance. I can also pay bills.

And...

I think....

Yes.

I'm over it.

Employment Ho!

2009-08-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

I've been hired.

Conditional upon the usual pre-employment drug test, agility (read: not a broken down old horse) physical, and road test, I'm a new employee of Marten Transport out of Mondovi, WI.

Ironic somehow that the way I get back in to the business of driving is through a company headquartered 30 miles south of the college town I left to come pursue an acting career.

Still with me?

I'm quite [preliminarily] happy with them. I'll be an employee, not a contractor, so even if I have a low mileage week, I'll still be getting paid something (as opposed to owing for payments and fuel). They run a blend of make and model of '06-'09 tractors. And pretty much every tractor they've got has an APU.

An APU, or Auxiliary Power Unit, runs off of the primary fuel tanks and allows the A/C compressor, heater, and power accessories to run without idling the primary engine. This a) saves fuel and b) protects the average driver from an idling citation in the ridiculous states in this union (home sweet California home included) that think it possible for a grown man to get good rest (and not die, while we're at it) in 100+ degree heat without an air conditioner. Wildly proactive law makers have decided that not allowing trucks to idle their engines is a really good way to clean up the atmosphere. Turns out they wrote the laws and either forgot or ignored that truckers both sleep during the heat of the day sometimes and live in their trucks. This is not conducive to being disallowed climate control.

Anyhoo. APU. Cool beans.

Also, good fit as a company because I have HAZMAT, which they require. I have a TWIC, which they recommend. I have a passport, which simplifies the into-Canada deliveries that they do. They prefer fueling at Pilots, my favorite. Aaaand their health insurance kicks in after 30 days. Faboo.

I go to orientation in Ontario next week, and that's only 2 and a half days long...which is a huge step up from the 3 weeks of unpaid school the last time.

It's a pretty big company, and I've done my research, so I've necessarily run across a handful of negative complaints about this, that and the other thing. But compared to the flurry of cautionary tales I've seen for other companies, I'm not too concerned. I suppose they seem like a "value match" to me.

Of course, we'll see how things go, but I'm really prepared to take this driving thing seriously, and develop habits for the long haul...No pun intended.

It's a massive blessing to be within two weeks of paying work when I only applied a week and a half ago.

Background Endgame

2009-08-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

In the process of transitioning back into trucking, I'm conscious that each background gig I do could very well be my last ever.

I've had one more since Friday, but Friday wouldn't have been a bad way to go out.

It was just down the road. And by "just", I mean, just. I drove exactly five miles to get there. We were filming a promo for the Las Vegas chamber of commerce or tourism council or something...but you could never have guessed because we were just a bunch of guys smeared with filth makeup and decked out in kilts and animal skins. There was running, there was grunting, there were war cries, and there were broadswords. There were also, I believe, tastefully clad male strippers. I worked with a stunt guy, I swung a styrofoam mace. I "played" a bagpipe.

So the next time you see a friendly invite to Las Vegas that looks like an excerpt from Braveheart, look for the scrawny white boy with the tousled scuzzy red hair. I'm in there.

2009-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

If you're prone to noticing things, you'll have seen that the subtitle of my blog has changed.

The reason for this is because I've found what it was that ran me down.

It's hard to write about...not because it's painful, but rather because my perspective has so dramatically shifted.

If you're looking south and looking south, and suddenly you're looking north, chances are you can describe the old view from memory and you can describe the new view by virtue of looking at it...but how do you go about recalling the view as you swiftly turned from south to north?

Let's start with the old view.

Way back in the post college days (all of three years ago, my how long ago it seems) I believed that I had talent, and that it was a waste to not use that talent. To that end I was laser focused on getting my acting career underway. To that end, when I was presented with a small business opportunity, I didn't take the time to understand myself and determine whether or not I was the type cut out for small business, but instead focused exclusively on the potential returns. This was unwise, to say the least.

In all frankness, it was straight-up stupid. But, believing as I did then, believing that the only way I could get ahead in life was through the film industry, I charged ahead, totally unrealistic in my expectations of myself and my actual desires in life, and so filled with "momentum" that I either couldn't or wouldn't stop long enough to examine these things.

But it needed to happen.

We moved to California (on borrowed dimes) so that I could be right here when the time came to start acting. Again, unwise...but necessary. God was giving me rein so that I would be ready to understand the truth about myself, and what I really needed from life.

So we moved to California and I went to drive a truck. Another money move, because, by this time, I at least realized that the small business was never going to be something I could commit to.

So I went through the school and signed on to a lease--with the aim of making more money. Silly rabbit, leases are dangerous! I spent a ton of time and money keeping a truck up and running for no permanent benefit, including, as it turned out, no money bonus.

And all this time I was champing at the bit, convinced that if I could just get in there and start acting life would open up...things would be fine.

The grass was greener, I was sure, on the other side of the fence. Cut to January, when I came home...to the top of this blog. God was still giving me space to discover my limits.

So I hit it as hard as I could...believing that a miracle would come. And a few did. Money came in when it didn't have to, and I kept at it. But the doubt crept in. I discovered what a set was actually like. I discovered how many projects were just flat repulsive to me. The more I worked, the more I discovered just the size of the miracle that God would have to do to keep us funded and protect me from a bunch of work that I would regret doing. It was not impossible for Him to do, of course, but the logic of it happening dwindled.

May sucked for work, and I really started looking at alternatives. I "decided" to seek out a regular job to pay bills and write...but God knew my mind...He threw me bait and I took it. My manager emailed their interest in me, and I jumped on it. I wasn't ready to let go of the film career on the "right now" schedule--to the point where I abandoned the principle I'd learned from the business debacle. I used the last of our credit to fund the materials for the manager.

June got me Iron Man II, and I spent two and a half weeks understanding just how little I identified with most the people there, and how little interest I had in doing anything and everything to make a career.

All that work in June--13 twelve-hour days with O/T and bumps and everything--paid July's rent, and not much else.

The needed miracle got bigger. But the manager hadn't had time to kick in, and I got on Joey's list...maybe something could happen, right?

Then I read two books, back to back. One was spiritual and relational, and the other was financial.

This is the swift turn to the new perspective.

I realized several things of critical importance to the rest of my life.

To this point in my life I'd been working on unconditional commitments but making decisions on the fly based on a lot of conditions. I realized the danger of this when I viewed it from a parenting perspective. The example was this: if dad promises to go to Six Flags on Saturday, you go to Six Flags. Dad doesn't change his mind if the kids' rooms are messy Friday night. Even if the condition arises, you didn't set it beforehand, it's just inconsistent to add it later.

This does apply to my parenting, but more importantly to my immediate future, it applies to how I follow God. Once upon a time (and repeatedly since then) I made an unconditional commitment to acting...and then stuck to it or abandoned it as different conditions arose. This is no way to make a life decision. I've been pushed away and drawn back by every slight discouragement or encouragement (the manager's email is a perfect example). I couldn't make final decisions because I refused to apply boundaries to what would change my mind. I thought this was the best way to follow God. Not so. It just opened me to temptations.

So I realized that I needed to reevaluate my course based on pre-defined conditions so that I might actually be able to make wise choices instead of wondering perpetually what my responsibilities were.

Then came the financial book.

I think I finally understand just what, exactly, my role in my finances is. God provides, but I'm responsible to manage. I know it might seem blisteringly obvious when put that way, but I'd never considered it with that kind of blunt clarity. I realized how easily a small income can translate to great wealth over time. It was shocking, and invigorating. All this time I'd been either trying to control how much income I had or completely letting go to let God provide everything. But now I see the balance. Think of a farmer. He must plant and cultivate and harvest, but he cannot make it rain. I was either trying to make it rain or abandoning the planting and cultivating expecting that God would grant me the harvest if I hung on long enough. Those miracles I was waiting for I had no justifiable reason to expect. Why should God work a miracle when no miracle is necessary? Why should God give me my "dream" simply because I refuse to understand the peril of my situation?

I've been wondering why God has been making the path so hard...and now I realize He's made it quite easy. He led me to a place where I could see what a dead end my impatience and assumptions were leading me to. He has protected us from the bankruptcy and other things that could have derailed us for a long time.

The clarity has slammed home with all of the force and precision of a shell loaded into the breech of a howitzer.

So here is my new course, and my new perspective.

I have debts to pay and I have skills that give me access to work that will help pay them. I'm going back to the road, and this time I will not be looking longingly at Hollywood as the source of my salvation from debt and discontentment. This country provides a unique opportunity to have income and prepare for the future. I have control over whether or not I participate. So I'll drive, and by God's providence (on which we still have to rely) we will have the income to pay our way. I will work toward self-discipline to stay healthy and fit, and to write in my spare time. In five years, or ten years, if I've completed a book or a screen play I'm happy with, I will try to sell it for publication or production. Then I can be involved in art that I care about, and that I can believe in. By that time I should have enough to keep me from the peril of needing money so badly that I must take work that sells a message I don't believe.

Contrary to what you might thing, contrary to what I thought, this is not a disappointing change. I'm relieved. I'm happy. I'm looking forward to the future without frustration, anxiety or desperation for the first time.

Also a novelty: I don't feel as though changing careers diminishes or disqualifies my artistry. I'm still a gifted, skilled actor, I still care deeply about film, I'm still a writer and lover of music...but I am a trucker, too.

I am a Child of God, a Husband, Father, Trucker, and Artist, and none of those things will ever cancel out the others, nor will any of them cease to be a part of me.

So this blog goes on the road with me as I turn a new page in my life...As I, I hope, being to live life as it's meant to be lived, and enjoyed.

I think my wife and my son will thank me for it. I think I will be happy...at long last. I think my life will be my life and no longer anybody else's.

So I'm into the traffic, and off the curb.

Unemployment

2009-07-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

Ten days ago, as you may have already surmised from previous posts, I filed for unemployment insurance from the state.

It was a detailed application, and took some serious organization of resources to complete. I didn't mind; I was doing this in an effort to take advantage of programs in place to defray the difficulty of unemployment and underemployment.

So yesterday I got my packet.

May I quote?

Claim Beginning Date: 6/28/2009

Claim Ending Date: 6/26/2010

Maximum Benefit Amount: $0

Weekly Benefit Amount: $0

Please note lines 3 and 4.

Do we notice a problem here?

California has granted me unemployment benefits in the amount of nothing. For a year. They even sent me a handbook entitled "A Guide to Benefits and Unemployment Services". Because apparently I need guidance and direction on how to collect zero dollars.

I'm seriously considering submitting a continuing claim every week for the next fifty-two weeks claiming my $0, and demanding a check be dispatched to my home for the sum of $0.00...but then I'd be wasting a stamp.

I'm not bitter. I just find it eye-rollingly bureaucratic that the state sent an entire benefit package to an applicant that was rejected.

But...even then...was I rejected? Or was I approved for nothing?

Maybe it's in the handbook.

Done Got Told!

2009-07-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

Entourage shot its last day of this newest season last week Wednesday. I was there. It was filming in an airplane cabin. It was a fake airplane cabin...which, remarkably enough, was stuffier and hotter than a real airplane cabin.

I was seated between a friend and a random twelve year old girl, who turned out to be pretty cool (and who has two more years in the industry than I do).

We talked about random stuff, and I tried to keep the conversation orbiting around a twelve year old's universe. But one random exchange did catch me off guard.

"Did you watch the Michael Jackson Memorial?" she asked, as a prelude to a cool story.

"No," I said, being quite honest.

She was already prepared to launch into her story, and when I uttered the impossible response to her rhetorical question (namely, "no, I did not watch the thing") I was suddenly on the receiving end of an incredulous, wide-eyed double-take.

"Are you serious??" she stared at me for a moment, until, I think, I shrugged.

I think it's possible I was the offender in the Great Faux Pas of '09 for young Ashley. Never in my life have I heard such a simple question freighted with such disbelief, disdain, and judgement. Apparently, I am a Philistine.

The funny part is, she wasn't even around when MJ was making decent music.

My friend got a laugh out of it, and so did I.

2009-07-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's posting, and some time spent sitting back reviewing my life as a whole, it's really really hit me how much Problem Focus is crippling me.

I'll have a problem the size of a dime and shoot for solutions the size of a dinner plate...only because I'm zoomed in too closely on the dime.

2009-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

I am not the world's best storyteller.

I also tend to post only when I feel as though I have something "complete" to say.

The combination of those two elements tends to make this blog philosophy oriented, vague, and generally disinteresting, because the whole through-line of blogitude is lacking.

It's like, "Hey, Mark, great to see what you think about purpose and meaning, but what the hell is going on with you?"

It's been a rough couple of weeks. To say the very least.

I will give y'all the skinny, and try to avoid justifying my behavior or pontificating on the meaning of things.

So what is it? The 12th today? I feel like it should be August.

The month started on a high note. I got accepted to Joey's and my manager finally had me on his radar screen. The downside was that we had just paid rent and really didn't have any money to put toward anything else. But the best we could do was hold out and hope for improvement.

Things did not really improve...at least from a money stand-point. Boy, how do I describe the roller-coaster?

I got a part in a student film, then decided that it was best to tell the director of that film that I couldn't guarantee anymore that I'd be available to shoot it, because I was "at risk" of going back to driving full time. Of course he found another actor to take my place. I would have, too.

I got a single day of work on Entourage this last week. Hiatus is still heavily in place.

I got a call from another of the directors from the audition that got me the first part that I got kicked off of (still with me?) about being in her film, and I turned it down. I was pretty convinced I was going to go back driving.

I actually applied to drive for Interstate Distibutor out of Tacoma, WA. I did this because I decided (five or six times in as many days) that I was tired of the uncertainty and the debt and the heinous broke-ness...and feeling sure that God was pulling out the rug on acting. I was also feeling terribly sick of all of the grossness of Hollywood. The vapid people, the...disappointing...city, the heat, the dirt, and the money chase. LA is a pretty soul-sucking place if you haven't got a really, really good reason to be here. I applied to drive under the auspices of getting on with my life. Paying debts and focusing on family and being near family and friends seemed to take precedence (a move to Minnesota was also ultimately planned into the career shift).

But then came yesterday, and then came today.

Yesterday, I posted a remarkably vague status update on Facebook about how "changing course isn't quitting: quitting is quitting." Or something like that. While that's true in itself, and when I posted it, I was 98% sure I'd be back OTR by the middle of next month, it drew a simple question from a guy (a friend, really) that I've met in my months in the industry.

"What are you doing?"

Now, since inflection is lost in the ether via text, that question can be read several ways. In my state of mind (or perhaps because I needed to read it that way) it was delivered with a tone of failure-to-understand, and perhaps warning to think whatever-it-is through before you do something stupid.

And so the wheels came off. All the certainty I'd had about my decision (which wasn't ever 100%, because I'm a doubter like that) unravelled. What was I doing? I was planning on totally changing my life. Why again? I went back over it all again, in my head and out loud, with Alicia.

Now, in talking to our parents in the depths of our confusion about what to do at this critical point in our lives, they've both been generous enough to help us out with some money. Without the collection monkeys strangling us with stress (their computers auto-dial you every three days, *eye-roll*) the immediacy of "needing" money diminished slightly. That, combined with the long, long declension of reasoning that led me to understand that, mostly, I just want to stop doubting and find some joy and contentment in my life, left my in a place where, even though I don't know whether or not Interstate will hire me, the best course is to not take the job.

That long, long declension of reasoning was this morning...I think...it's all been bleeding together so much. If I'm chasing contentment and joy and I think making another career change is going to find me what I seek, I'm taking awful risks. As Alicia so astutely pointed out, there's contentment to be had in anything, and in any circumstances, and lacking it tends to be a problem that originates inside me as opposed to in my circumstances. So really, the most efficient (but hardest) way to find the contentment I'm after is to change myself.

This I realized on top of a few basic points about the physical situation we're in:

>Hiatus is ending soon. More work.

>The SAG contract is in effect. More work.

>My manager has new head shots of me to use in his submissions. More work.

>We've received generous gifts from our parents. Bills paid, and possibly rent paid for August.

>The state of California has programs to offset the hardships we're facing. We've applied to these, and haven't even given them time to "kick in".

Really, those last two words are key words. There's a lot of stuff that just hasn't had time to "kick in".

So we're at this just a little longer, then, and trying to keep our focus on God instead of on the problems. I don't know what the future holds. I really, really want to know what the future holds, but I'm not allowed that luxury.

All in all, this is hard. It's very hard. And it's so easy to see the driving and feel like it would be freedom because what I really want right now is relief. Read: I want a vacation. I want to get away and see the sights and have some time where everything is taken care of.

So this month, a driving job is a sore temptation. Come September or January, it might be what I really need to do. But not July. Not just yet. God is silent in this...and silent, I think, so that I could jump through these hoops and learn a few things (not least how to ask for help from the many different places it's available). I'll keep going until He speaks otherwise.

Case in point (as a reminder mostly to myself) when Alicia and I agreed to team up, get her a CDL, leave an apartment behind and make some money...we wound up pregnant. How's that for a change of plans? I can't see anything but God in that.

I'll admit, I don't like it that sticking with acting is the right thing to do. It's not fun. It's not easy, it doesn't make me "happy" right this second...but it is the right thing to do. Leaving now is trying to get God to work on my schedule instead of His...and turning a desire for a vacation into a desire for a different life.

See you next week, hopefully without another hurricane.

2009-07-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a forehead slapper:

I got my first audition call from the Manager today. I was pretty excited. Good pay rate, would shoot Thursday, etc.

Then I got there. Because I signed a non-disclosure agreement, I need to be very vague. It's a dating show. As of this writing, the blogger in question (namely me) has been married for 4 years, 1.5 months.

Oy.

2009-07-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

The irony of blogging is that the most interesting content is the stuff that rises out of the flames of adversity. The irony being that when life is hardest, I (and most folks, I think) want to blog the least.

In my case it has more to do with not wanting to "cry" in public than to do with my life being too busy or too complicated to sit down and write. And to say I'm embarrassed to cry in public is kind of wrong, too. I'm more afraid of detailing the difficulties and the doubt I have because of the difficulties. To do so would be to (in my mind) contradict the clear-headed confidence I've detailed in other posts and in talking to people.

But this is life, no?

[Edited out a mediocre first pass. Trying again later.]

[Second pass]

I've realized since I posted this at first, then went and excised a chunk, then let some time pass, that my posts need to be longer, more deliberate, more explicit, and less summary.

In my last blog I spent a lot of time philosophising, moralizing, pontificating and just plain bitching, and I notice that I border on that here. The problem is that to take the time to write thoughtful, honest posts (of the nature that would be really productive) requires more work and emotional risk than I'm immediately willing to give.

I've also remembered how effective a teaching tool simple exposition can be. Sometimes I fall prey to exactly what I dislike in others, the tendency to learn from my own life and immediately issue imperatives to others about theirs. I'm learning what I'm learning because I am who I am. If I tell you what I'm learning and why and you find application for yourself in it, isn't the learning more organic and dynamic that way?

So what am I learning? Where am I at?

I am at broke. Beyond broke, in fact. I'm very tired because of it. I'm tired of the stress and the wondering and the collections calls, as polite as the poor people on the other end of the line manage to be. I haven't even had that many calls and I'm tired of it. I'm weary of the confusion that comes from feeling and seeing God lead me to this place, and then apparently let us free fall. Does the free fall indicate that this path is ended and another is supposed to begin? Or is it indicative of God's method of teaching patience and discipline?

I'm still a licensed trucker, I could go back...even if, at this point, going back would mean needing to call up a relative or good friend for bus fare to Tulsa. It could very well be that God sent me on this adventure in order to teach me to let go of my own schedule and rely on His. I certainly am at that place where I've laid aside my desires. I don't care what it is that God wants me to do, I just want to know that He wants me to do it.

And there's a new, strange freedom in that. Not being so hellbent on any one thing that I refuse to give it up in spite of clear direction elsewhere...

But I have no clear direction elsewhere.

It could be that, in fact, God is saving a flush of success for just the right moment, so that in this dark hour, when there is no hope, He can rightly take credit for providing.

These things I do not know.

So what do I learn from this?

The best I can do is take the opportunities available to me to relieve my [our] current distress. They are few. In the meantime, I can research my options...and weigh the benefits of one against the other.

In the end, I could chose to follow one path over the other, because it seems to be the right thing...and God could again do what he has done so many times already...He could close that door right in my face.

I am not in control of my life. This is not surrender, apathy, fatalism, or laziness. It is simply true. I can lay plans and put out feelers and all the rest, but if God does not will it, it won't be.

So why am I so scared of making the wrong choice?

2009-06-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

As much as there are a bunch of fun details about the Iron Man II shoot, out of respect for production's request, I won't divulge them.

I will divulge that a couple of people I got to know on set, who are on Joey's List (the highly reputable calling service), told me to resubmit with their recommendation. I did so.

Aaaand now I've got an invite to the List. This does not instantly solve my money issues, however, in May, when I only worked 4 days all month, a new friend on Joey's said he'd gone from 4 or 5 days a week to "just" 2 or 3.

So that's cool.
^Understated for effect.

2009-06-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

I just finished working on Iron Man 2 for two and half weeks.

Long days, good to be working consistently.

However, we are very, very, very broke.

Something's gotta give!

(That was a song of some kind)

Man is born, man lives, man dies, and it's all vanity.

My Son

2009-06-02T22:13:00.000-07:00

My son is teething. His top incisors seem to be trying to make an entry into the world. This makes life hard for him, but it has exposed one of his most shining qualities.

I've had a little bit of trouble adjusting to life as Dad. I didn't expect a pregnancy, nor, frankly, did I welcome it. I developed into the idea, though, understanding that it was God's will. Functioning as a parent has brought out all kinds of curious insecurities and frustration triggers long dormant or until now hidden, and I've had ample opportunity to be disappointed in my own immaturity or frightful streaks of frustration or anger.

That is the preface.

Here is the body:

I understand my son, for the first time, these last days as the Person he is, instead of as the crazy little animal (yes I said it) I'm responsible for. In his intense discomfort during the teething last night, he was in Mama's arms, gnawing on his Nubby Ring (a little gel-plastic ring with water inside that can be frozen). I hovered close to him to give him a little TLC and attention, and he looked at me, removed the ring from his mouth, and held it up to my mouth. He was sharing.

Now I understand where ye skeptics might tell me I'm reading too much into this moment. I assure you, I am not. He did this several times. He chewed, took it out, held it up to me, and would not take it back to his mouth until I had had the opportunity to bite it myself.

I realize he started doing this first with his Elephant Blanket, the trunk of which he sucks on to soothe himself to sleep. I sing him a song or two at night, and give him the blanket to start sucking on. A few days ago, he took the blanket and pressed it against my face. I had an inkling then that he was trying to share, but I couldn't be sure. Seeing the ice ring sharing convinces me.

It's cliche to say this, but those moments of connection make worthwhile all of the good work, and intensify the regret for (and the resolve to never repeat) the foolish lapses that have caused me to misdirect my frustration at him.

He's not an angel. He will prove to be a willful, trying little boy...if only because of his curiosity. But he is tender. He wants to give of things he loves to those he loves.

The Unions

2009-06-02T21:50:00.001-07:00

Growing up (and growing into my adult opinions) I've done the tango with the concept of labor unions and whether or not they're a good thing in the contemporary market or not.

The short answer is that they are and they aren't. Because people are both good and bad.

They're bad because they encourage and reward tunnel vision and self-service when any union racks up a record of strong negotiations. It becomes more about getting every dime that can be got than securing decent, fair wages and benefits.

That said, they are still indispensable...especially in my line of work.

I've been out of work (if you except the 4 days of work I had in May) for almost 5 full weeks. To that end, I've been actively cruising for work anywhere I can find it...to a point.

I consistently find productions that want to pay $10, or $30, or $50 for 8-12 hours of work. I know, I know, y'all that do labor intensive jobs or remarkable tedious things like office tasks would like to contend with my labelling of movies and TV shows "work". Take it from the ex-trucker: it beats digging a hole for a living, but it's not like getting paid to go to the day spa. Anyway, I find myself needing to reject these laughable rates purely on principle.

What's that you say? "Work is work"? Well, maybe, but let me explain. Minimum wage in California is $8 per hour. At the cost of living in this state, even $8 per hour is woefully inadequate to make a living. So apply that to $50. That's 6.25 hours of work. And these folks might hang on to you for 12 or 15 hours (especially if they're newbies and don't know what they're doing...which is often especially the case with the projects that offer to pay these rates). I just can't justify to myself the rightness of taking a $40 or $50 flat rate job (read: no overtime) because I'm desperate for cash. It'll only perpetuate the mindset that says, "Movies are so cool, you should be thankful you get to be in one!"

This is where AFTRA and SAG come in. They've negotiated these things out, so that people who aren't starstruck, and realize that people make a lot of money off of actors and extras, and would like a fair slice of the profit, can have a chance at that.

So I got paid for the fitting today, because a long time ago, the negotiating power of SAG got the studios to acknowledge that a fitting takes time that an actor could be using for some other kind of gainful employment.

Again, this can be carried too far. But let me point out that the multi-million dollar figures that big-name actors haul down on their movies are not SAG contract issues, they're negotiated individually by agents. SAG has a thing called scale, whereby you're paid a certain amount for the thing you're doing...to the extent that even the non-union members (like me) are granted some protection by SAG contract rules on a SAG show. I can only imagine what sets would be like for actors working on making a career.

All of this said, one more thing on this post:

SAG Membership, ratify the contract! Now is not the time for penny grabbing. Let's go to work!

Thank you, that is all.

The Fitting

2009-06-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

I got a call last night from my calling service.

I have work.

It's 9 [probable] days on Iron Man 2 next week and the week after.

There was also a fitting. I went to that today. Only in Los Angeles can one drive 80 miles round trip for routine business. And you know what? It didn't feel like a pilgrimage. Either I'm getting used to it, or the massive sprawl that is the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area makes the whole thing seem like a shorter trip than it is. This is the route to and from:

View Larger Map

By comparison, here is a similar distance trip in the Minneapolis Metro zone.

View Larger Map

Now, maybe it's just me, but driving from Lakeville to Lino Lakes and back for a half-hour wardrobe fitting would seem a little excessive.

But Santa Clarita to Hawthorne? Sure! And I'm really not bitter about it. Some very nice people attacked me with a tape measure and then gave me some clothes. And I got two hours of base pay for it. So I grossed $16 on the trip. What I'll net, I don't know.

Another curious thing about today. Iron Man 2 will be my first major movie. To this end, it was a first to witness the size of the crew and the racks of wardrobe for the fitting. It makes a difference when the production has an 8 or 9 digit budget.

I took Sepulveda back for half of the trip (another iconic southern California street name) because 405 was a joke...but that's one of the little triumphs of being comfortable with driving and direction finding. It might not be any faster in the long run, but at least I don't have to clutch through four gears for forty straight miles.

Lessons learned today:
Big movies are big movies. Their quality is not so important to those of us actually working them. They provide many days of work. I am in no way impugning the potential quality of Iron Man 2.
I must find an alternate route in order to avoid the 405 north/5 north connector. Awful. Just awful.
Unions serve a purpose. This will be another post.
God is awesome. This will also be another post.

2009-05-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm just gonna go ahead and do this, and see how it turns out.
(Also, I'm kinda curious how many canned Christian Vocabulary Words I can collect in my comments from people don't know (and people I do).)

Here goes:

In an effort to actually know the book that I claim as a foundational element of my spiritual existence and my understanding of the world (and also in response to a new found respect for and interest in God as a high priority in my life) I've taken to [mostly] daily bible reading. It's a touch ad hoc, the bible such as it is, and because I'm not doing the "powerhouse" thing I usually try to do (which would be reading the silly thing from cover to cover). So I've ricocheted around the smaller epistles [letters] in the new testament, and kicked around a few chapters in Isaiah and elsewhere in the old.

Today, I think I started to land on study that draws more than a cursory portion of my attention. I opened the letter of James (right after Hebrews and before Peter's letters).

Let me just work through the personal poignancy of this stuff piece by piece. [NASB, for those who care]

1:2-3 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

I have heard this passage before. It always struck me as curious, but there's much of Christianity that is curious and counter-intuitive to our natural human instincts. But reading this entire sentence shed a whole new light on it. Who doesn't like endurance? And, assuming that you're interested in having faith, who wouldn't like faith with endurance? Eh?

I'm certainly in trial land right now. The long, lonely days of truck-driving, followed by the frenetic, uncertain months of Hollywood have been nothing if not trying...spiritually, financially, and relationally. I knew that it was to my benefit (somehow, somewhere, deep in my subconscious) but I could never invoke any actual biblical truth to back up that nagging suspicion. But now, there it is. "The testing of your faith produces endurance."

It gets better.

1:4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now, I'm not going to pull out the concordance here. I'm not a Greek scholar. I'm not going to belabor this dual occurrence of "perfect". Suffice it to say this: whether or not James means "perfect" in the literal sense, it dawned on my that the point he's making is totally clear. Endurance of faith, like endurance of the body, evens out one's experience, so that it's consistent. Imagine a marathon. If your endurance is trained into you, you don't deviate from your pace, and subsequently avoid deviating from your path, not needing to stop. You can complete the course (a predetermined amount of time and distance) without stopping or quitting. In the sense of a temporal, finite thing, your endurance has afforded you a perfect and complete experience, and you haven't found yourself short on energy or capacity. I know it's not a flawless analogy, but it illustrates the point, no? My life is a bit longer and a bit more metaphysical than a marathon, but it is a certain, finite period. 1:1 is the ratio of death. So in that finite period, enduring faith affords me a more consistent (more perfect, if you will) spiritual and relational experience. There's less wandering around, wondering if I've got things figured clearly.

Speaking of wandering, the biography continues:

1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

Pretty categorical, right? Such confidence is definitely not contemporary or popular. There's more.

1:6 But he must ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

If "driven and tossed by the wind" doesn't describe my life for the last half-decade, I don't know what has. I've doubted every decision I've made, to one degree or another, at various times, pretty universally to my pain and detriment (not to mention to the pain and detriment of others). Put 5 and 6 together, and you get a pretty amazing concept. It's a concept I hereby resolve to put into practice, with God's help. Driven and tossed is for the birds.

Also, as a closer to the concept:

1:7-8 For that man [who doubts] ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

This elicited a burst of laughter as I read it. It might, at first, sound a little chilly. But it's simply true. It's not a judgement that James is casting on doubters, it's an observation of what happens in the doubter's mind. "Unstable", or its Greek equivalent, penned two millenia past, hits me square between the eyes. When I doubt that God will provide for me wisdom, clarity, guidance, and material sustenance, I am the epitome of unstable. Literally: when I, the writer, doubt, I, the writer, am horrendously unstable. Also, "double-minded" is a paint of my particular shade. Let me review (I could go back to previous posts and actually quote myself, but I'll spare you that): "I want to act. Do I really? Yes I do. God built me to do this. Really? Yes. No. Maybe. Maybe writing is better. Should I quit the acting and go for writing? Maybe. No. Yes. No. Maybe. Maybe I should chuck it all and go for something stable and responsible. No. Maybe. No. Maybe. Yes--no--maybe. A day job in S.California with writing on the side! Yes. Yes. Yes...."

No. Is it any wonder that God has to drop bombs on my life to get my attention? A random email arrives from an agency and the whole shootin' match is turned on its head.

Says God:
Act, dummy, it's what I put you there for. Do it, following My Word and My guidance and My example. Look at Me, and learn about Me, and remember that My glory is the reason you exist. Quit looking for the answers for why I sent you this way. The answer is always apparent in retrospect. The more you search for The Answer, the less you're trusting me, and becoming the beacon you're supposed to be.

So the money is tight, and I don't know what's coming in the future. I do know that our church, the leadership of which barely knows me from Adam (if you'll excuse the phrase) has seen fit to give us gift cards for groceries and gas. I also know that yesterday somebody happened to cancel their photo shoot on the 27th, and I got the bump up to that date (a full week earlier than before)...and only because I happened to call earlier that day to work out final payment on the shoot.

The reassurance that this is our path, wherever it eventually leads, is so strong that, for the very first time, I ask for the wisdom and strength to endure, and for the resources to pay my debts with no doubts or double-mindedness...perhaps it is somewhat because of my confidence in God that these blessings keep raining down. It's a pretty glorious chicken-egg scenario.

There's a final bonus. I've always doubted whether I could give God glory for any accolades that I might receive in my life. Not any more. If soever I'm blessed enough to be honored for my work, God is the first One to get props for it. I cannot now nor ever in the future deny that whatever comes in my life, it's Him that made it possible.

To close, a quote:

He that does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir...blind. - General T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson

The man fought and died for a losing cause, indeed, we understand a flawed cause...but he knew something that most miss. God directs the purposes and actions of all mankind, whether right or wrong, to the fulfillment of His plan.

2009-05-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

I write these posts, like most things shorter than a few pages, in a completely linear fashion. There's no preparatory outlining. I sense that, perhaps, if I modified my writing "style" to actually include some kind of disciplinary formatting and forethought, I might just write a bang-up blog. That said, I don't yet. So, let this paragraph serve as the awkward, totally disconnected cold-open for the event related paragraphs that follow.

My Facebook status says "Mark Saienga is represented." That is, that is what my Facebook status would read if Facebook still had status updates instead of the stream-of-consciousness twitter-rivaling blurbs they've got now. If I want to do stream-of-consciousness, I blog (see above). The "is represented" part is the interesting part.

I went to the meeting at MMi on Monday. It went well.

It went well.

I had to stare at that sentence long enough that I needed to re-write it. It feels like one of those sentences that needs so much unpacking, the contents seem impossible to repack after they've been examined.

Alicia always says, "I want a play-by-play!"

Perhaps that's best.

I had to take the 405 to Santa Monica Boulevard in order to get to their office. It struck me on the way down there, again, that I find myself on these iconic roads and at these iconic places as a part of my daily existence. It's good that there's a certain acclimatization that happens. If I didn't get somewhat used to it, I'd spend too much time geeking out to get anything done.

I found a parking spot, covered a short walk, and hopped on the elevator to MMi's 6th floor offices. I hung out in the lobby for awhile, reading the LA Times. I was early, as I chronically am, and was thankful for the entertainment section. When I'm anticipating something, I have a tendency to start to wonder if I've been overlooked or forgotten. That was hellish in the trucking days. Seven hour waits at the dock often reinforced that paranoia. I digress.

It was a businesslike place. That was intimidating at first, but then it made me more comfortable. If I'm looking for someone to find me auditions for well-paid work, I'd much prefer somebody businesslike than somebody trendy. Another intimidation factor that I ran into, both last Thursday and Monday, was my response to the presence of "pretty" people. Being an agency (technically, it's a management company, but for simplicity, I'll use agency) with "Model" in the name, MMi nets its fair share of models. Well, those people you see in magazines are only airbrushed so much. When you see somebody that could have just walked off the set of a Cologne spread, it's a little surreal. My personal response to that experience is to snap out a quick mental, "What the hell am I doing here?" One does not have to be a serious student of psychology to notice said response indicates a number of things about my confidence in my own physical appearance.

So I'm sitting in the lobby, reading the newspaper in order to allay my sense of insecurity. Nicolas comes into the lobby to give me the dime tour. He walks me around the halls of the floor, where each office houses two people, busily going about their work. They find print ads, commercials, TV and Film work for their clients. I understand that this walk-around is designed to impress me with the inherent diligence of the whole place. Such is only expected. They stand to make 20% of whatever I gross. They're already interested in me, and they want to let me know they're serious about what they're doing. They'd like me to sign on.

I take the presentation for a presentation, but I'm also listening to the little speech that Nicolas is giving me. First, he's speaking to me with an earnest and connected honesty. It's not a sales pitch. Second, he's hitting me with numbers that I've heard before. He's quoting typical compensation for different kinds of projects. He's not overselling those numbers, they're impressive by themselves. Then I get why we're doing this. They take shots on people with a look. Experience not required. Hollywood will take a look and teach it to perform. I'm sure they see people every day that haven't got the first idea what they're doing in Hollywood. It's their business model. Net the looks, and those that can function will function. It doesn't cost them a dime to take chances.

Now, some people might find this a bit off-putting. I actually like it. They weren't trying to conceal their system, or selling me a shovelful of manure about how special I was. I'm exactly as special as they think I am. I'm worth the offer. That's all I need sometimes. I know what my skill set is like, both for auditions and for performance. I'm digressing again. I'm digressing on the border of justification...and I haven't even finished the story.

Anyway. This is a company that takes in a larger number of unproven candidates in order to offset the number of unprovens that wind up basically flaking out. Nicolas looked at my ten best headshots. He talked to me, and paid attention to me. He erred on the side of caution in explaining things to me. Obviously, he deals with a lot of unrealistic and star-struck folks in his working day. Essentially he went out of his way to explain that MMi is exactly what I hoped it would be. They find the opportunities. I show up and capitalize. They get a cut. Perfect. I can't tell you how many people claim to do this, and then throw a little lime twist in there to make an extra buck.

Speaking of making an extra buck, here comes the part that all of you scam alarmists will scrutinize.

There's a package. It's a full-day photo shoot with a photographer (I've seen and like his work), a make-up artist, hair-stylist, and wardrobe consultant. It's $900. Those are the facts, ma'am. I chose to go for it, without a clue where that money will come from. Here's why:

My headshots, while good, are not as diverse as is necessary to really be viable in a broader market of print and commercial, plus theatrical TV and film. I know this. I knew this coming out of that first shoot in January. What those headshots did do was get me the interest from MMi. In the industry sense of things (if not in real cash, yet) those shots have just paid for themselves. To be offered a luxury shoot of the nature offered, for the price offered...it's hard to pass up. This is obviously an at-cost arrangement. MMi is brokering all of the elements, and not taking a dime of it for revenue. They also didn't require that I opt in to the shoot. That would have been a deal breaker. They simply offered it as a way to get me in as marketable a position as I can be, so that they can sell me to CDs, and make their 20% when I'm actually working. This makes sense to me.

So I signed on the dotted line. It's a non-exclusive, at-will agreement. They agree to find me auditions, and I agree to give them 20% of what I get paid. Have I written 20% enough yet? Sorry about that. The nature of the contract is also a cool thing. It's not a term contract, I'm not obligated to a year or two years. I'm also not obligated to give them a commission if I happen to find work through other contacts. This they do not have to do.

So I'm represented. I have a photo shoot date set for June 3. We have bills to pay. And the extra work has been dismal these last weeks. The combination of emotions invoked by the facts covered in the preceding four sentences would be the reason for any lack of jubilance you may sense in this post.

I can look forward to a serious broadening of my professional possibilities. I can look at the present and notice that I'm facing one of the harshest challenges of faith I've ever been through. I need to avoid freaking out and trying to make the money come. I need also to avoid second-guessing all of this. I need also to remember that God knew the fabric of my life before the foundation of the earth...and that He means well for me, in spite of me.

Case-in-point: We decided to opt out of the new apartment. In fact, we'd be moving in there tomorrow if we'd followed through...or, rather, not moving in, because there's no money for it. We decided to stay here, and reorganize (really reorganize) our lives around the three-person arrangement. With a new lease, we get $1000 to apply to discounting rent. We hadn't signed the new lease yet, mostly as a matter of oversight (and we'd not really been told it was ready). After Thursday, and the new understanding of a coming expense, we were in a perfect position to apply that discount money to June's rent. So, instead of owing $1200 tomorrow and $1450 on June 1st, we owe about $200 on June 1st. What a pass!

I have less doubt than I've ever had in an eventual positive outcome (incredible outcome, if I want to pick a really representative adjective), but I still fight with doubt that can grow monstrous.

If I'm really going to be honest with myself, I think the reason it's so hard to post here (especially these days) is because I'd rather ignore all this uncertainty until the storm is past. If I sit down here and hash it all out--go back and recall it, surmise what it means, and what it might mean--I have to cope with the associated emotion. And I have to cope with the emotion in a totally eletric, immediate way. Because it's all right here. Right now. This is my life.

I'm so on the cusp. It's clear to the point of pain. The future is so near, and my grasp of my God and myself is almost in line. The mechanisms are almost in place. I might just be able to start living my life without paralyzing doubt, without looking over my shoulder, and without mistrusting my every perception. But it hasn't happened yet. The puzzle is incomplete.

But the picture on the box is starting to show up in the placed pieces.

2009-05-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

Summary posts are always the hardest to write. Invariably, I miss something, so it's not even a complete summary. It also reminds me of how long it's been since I have posted, which brings me down a little. Ideally, I'd be posting twice or thrice a week.

According to my lovely other half, however, reading event driven commentary is far more enjoyable than sifting through my more existential, meaning driven stuff.

So the calling service has been getting me a little work, but not much. However, talking to everybody, there seems to be not terribly much work to go around. This means what work there is goes to people with good history, good reputation, or good connections. This applies background-universe wide, not just to my particular corner of the earth. I can't hold it against the service, or the casting companies. Many people do. To me, it's just a natural function of any business. You work with who you know. Getting known and trusted is always the uphill battle.

The most critical element of this little drought is the financial tension it has created. I know it's been a running theme of my blog thus far, but money (or, more accurately, lack thereof) is a constant attention grabber for me. It's a bit of a weakness. For the purposes of this post though, it just served to get me reflecting on my career path and choices.

I really examined all of the energy I'm expending trying to be an actor. I work as an extra to provide me the kind of flexibility I've discovered is critical to being available to audition. I'm not blessed with an agent, so any audition that I land is gotten by the arduous process of sifting through dozens of breakdowns every day. (Breakdowns are basically abstracts of a role, a plot, a pay rate (usually paltry or zero), and a working date range). Most of those breakdowns are either unfit for me, physically, or completely uninteresting to me, artistically.

Now, it may seem snobbish of me to say that I'm disinterested in some projects because of their content or their characters—beggars can't be choosers, right? But I urge you to remember the number of crap movie trailers you've seen in the last six months. Now, take that number, which represents well-funded films that have gotten distribution, and multiply it by all of the students, aspiring film-makers, and talentless green-grabbers you care to imagine. That is the world I inhabit: The Bottom Rung. It's not a complaint, it's a reality.

So I only have access to a handful of really worthwhile projects that I must 1) Submit to, 2) Be invited to audition for, 3) Audition for, 4) Maybe be called back for, and 5) Be cast in before I can actually work on them.

This is a tremendous expenditure of energy for very little product, and most of said product is uncompensated, in the paper-with-pictures-of-presidents sense.

So, after reviewing all of this factual information, I sat back and wondered about what I really care for in a professional and passionate sense.

I know that I love acting, and I know that I love good, interesting projects and characters. I know that I don't love poor writing, commercial cash-cows with little-to-no artistic value, or artistically viable work with messages I can't get behind.

It seemed that I had reached a point where I would have to expand my standards of acceptable work (read: lower the bar) in order to keep acting and only acting. I don't want to do that. I'm already tired enough, just chasing the projects I can get behind. To add to the existing fatigue moral and artistic stress over projects that, even in the moment, I understand are bad would be the equivalent of emotional suicide by tectonic plate. The pressure would build until something gave way, and I would be smashed in the ensuing tremor.

How to love the projects and pay the bills, then?

Writing was the obvious answer. I have screenplays bouncing around in my head, and a book that's been loitering, unfinished, for a year. I've also roosted enough in my faith and in my person to have finally shed some of the wrenching impatience that has haunted this Hollywood dream from day one. It was the kind of impatience that came from insecurity, and a need to have control where control was impossible. In short, I felt I'd reached the place where I knew what I wanted and was willing to wait until I could get it, no matter how long it took. I would get a "regular" job for the bills, learn the discipline to write in the down-time, learn more about myself, my wife, and my son, and sell a screenplay of my own with the condition that I play one of the roles. This kind of conditional sale is pretty common in the business. At that point, if the film was a success, I would have people asking me to be in their movies, instead of the other way around, and I could have complete freedom to take and reject roles based on my preferences and interests in story and character.

By deciding this, I was really taking the long view for the first time in my life. I wasn't just fixing a "now" problem by taking drastic, long-lasting action. I was going for the ultimate goal and finding the best way to have it, eventually. Pretty adult, right?

So I started trolling around for jobs...with the necessary emotional upheaval of still having the extra work to find to try to pay the bills until the regular job could be found. I woke up every morning for a week, up until Thursday, praying over my coffee mug that a job offer (or, failing that, a really well paying principle job) would be in my inbox...something that would relieve the tightening noose on our checkbook.

Wednesday night, for some reason, I just stopped freaking out. I figured God would give me the regular job He wanted me to have at the time He meant me to have it. I was, of course, working under the assumption that the conclusion to which I had come was in line with His will.

So Thursday, I just got up and went to the computer, no fervent praying done en route. In the inbox was an email from a Management company (a manager is a bit different than an agent) to which I had not submitted myself, and that appeared to have specifically looked at me...not just gone to LA casting and gotten a contact list of every member of the website. They looked legit.

So I went down there today. And guess what? I'm going back in on Monday, because they're interested in me for one of their departments. This is exactly the kind of opportunity I need to get access to "better" (higher level) auditions and projects.

Now, I don't know how this will play out, but it certainly has all of the typical markers of something that God throws into my life in order to clarify my direction and close a few doors.

Landing a manager or an agent was off my radar screen. To get an offer from somebody I hadn't submitted to is even more of a blind side than getting an offer from somebody I had contacted. Frankly, the more I digest it, getting this offer is second only to learning my wife was pregnant in terms of drawing my focus from one path to another. Just as then, I had reasoned out a good, solid, morally sound path to walk, and God said, "No, not that. This first."

So who knows? It's entirely possible that they'll want me to do a bunch of stuff to improve my marketability, stuff that'll cost money...money I don't have...but it's entirely possible they won't, too. They could be just the right team for me, right now. For whatever reason, this is happening to me now. I'll take it.

God's been completely reliable about keeping us supplied with the income we need so far, anyway...like, to the point where money just shows up in the mail.

I think maybe, just maybe, I'm finally at the point where I really trust Him. It's fun in a way that I never imagined possible. The minute I let go, good things start happening.

I'm excited, so I'm starting to bounce around, mentally. I'm done with the story...you're up to date.

If you want to see me on camera with a principle character, and sporting a really awful hairdo, watch this last Friday's Prison Break. That's finally up.

See y'all around the next random corner.

2009-05-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

I realize in retrospect that using the word "placeholder" in my previous post was misleading. It indicated that I intended to return and edit a body of text into that post. That was not my intention. It should have gone like this:

"This is where a post would go if I felt like posting. I don't want to post."

Sorry.

That said, after I put the wee one to bed, I'll be coming back and posting another post to follow this post which updates you on the recent and twisty eventure of my life.

I believe I've just invented the word eventure, but I can't be sure.

2009-05-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

This post is the placeholder for the more in-depth, interesting, and informational post about the recent events in my life.

I do not want to post.

2009-04-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

This is later.

Crisis past.

In fact, #s 414, 415, and 417 have passed also. #416 never arrived, for some inexplicable reason.

Most of these things come on because I'm just very, very, very, very tired of, month after month, having the checking account look like it won't be as big as the bills.

Without a reason beyond a potentially non-starting career to keep us installed in this obscenely expensive place (which I'm beginning to like), I have a tendency to try to find more lucrative avenues of employment that generate more reliable income, and to look for homey type places with lower rents.

Basically it's the trade-off between passion and predictability.

At the very least, a trip to church on Sunday night confirmed that there's a community of people we're here to get to know. That was a huge relief. Yes, it's expensive down here. No, I don't know if we'll have the cash to move into the new apartment. No, I don't know whether I can keep acting. But yes, there is a reason to stay in Southern California regardless of the vicissitudes of career.

I do have two auditions coming up. There's some other stuff coming up that could be good, too. I'm going back to Knott's Berry Farm tomorrow for a thing. I was there on Tuesday, and I have to say one thing: Riding the same roller coaster twelve times in six hours damages the shoulders.

I'm bringing shoulder pads tomorrow.

Exsistential Crisis #413

2009-04-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Blarg.

More later.

2009-04-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going to borrow from my latest Facebook status update to kick this off:

We're into the rabbit hole.

On Facebook, it was a reference to how I'm finding myself beginning to love Southern California. We'll see if the infatuation can survive location shoots in July.

In general, we're at a strange crossroads. We got the apartment that we applied for, and we don't have any obvious answers about where the moving money is coming from.

I signed up for a calling service (for the background work) which means I don't have to sit on the phone all afternoon dialing Central Casting anymore. The jury's still out on how much work I'll get with the service, but I've heard good things. I'm already booked on Entourage for next week.

It's not unusual stuff in terms of the little (and big) crises that we're generally surfing through in any given month...but the strangeness of now comes from an odd peace I have about everything. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm clearly and obviously out of control of most of the variables in my life, I'm chasing my dreams and desires in spite of the massive unpredictability involved, nothing is guaranteed even through next week...and somehow, I'm not nursing an ulcer.

When did this happen? Will it last? I hope so. I've done years' worth of wear and tear on my body worrying lesser things than what faces us today.

Is this just what it feels like to be where one is supposed to be?

I can't quite believe it.

Not yet.

2009-04-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

Gotta break the seal on April, right? Right??

One Verizon commercial turned into four.

The first one was a longish day down in Whittier on a golf course. We extras (that massive network you see roaming around behind the guy in the glasses) got stacked up on the green, giving the putter aiming advice. Then we ate lunch. Then we got stacked up on another green, waiting for just the right moment to leap in [almost] unison to bump the poor man's ball from the lip of the cup to the bottom of the cup. Pretty clever application of a classic golf joke, if you ask me.

Tuesday was a day off.

Wednesday I got on a pilot called The Eastmans which, apparently, Donald Sutherland is in. He was not on location. The location, as it turned out, was a massive cemetery in Pasadena. It was just a little strange to be dressed as earthmoving/greens crew for a fictitious funeral...standing around in the midst of real graves. It's not that I'm particularly creeped out by cemeteries, I think shooting in a cemetery is just one of those things that draws a specifically sharp distinction between the make-believe and the real.
The distinction was drawn even more crisply when, toward the end of the brief shoot, a real funeral procession came in for an interment on the other end of the grounds. It was all peppered in surreal.

While at the cemetery on Wednesday, I got a call about more Verizon. A lot more. Three days of shooting, Thursday, Friday, and Monday. Well how's your father? That was a nice way to seal up the week with work.

On top of that, Thursday and Friday were both really short days. Like, 1330 call, 1830 done days. Monday promises to be similar.

I had a surprise audition waiting in my inbox on Thursday evening, which I was able to squeeze in before Friday's Verizon call. The writing was great, the premise is interesting, the writer/director was fun, and I got to go to USC for the first time. They have a ridiculous cinema arts building.

Saturday was a little more on the interesting side. We wound up applying for a new apartment at a different complex...a really nice 2 bedroom place. There's a slight hitch, though...it's a teensy bit out of our current price range. Like, we should probably be aiming for something about $200/month cheaper than this...but everything seemed to make sense. It had all the things we were looking for in a bigger place, it kept us in the city we want to stay in, there was a unit coming available in the middle of next month, etc., etc. All this on the day I happened to stop by. That has all the markings of the proverbial "God Thing". However, moving into a place that we can't guarantee the ability to pay for also has all the markings of the traditional "Brings Out all of the Latent Stress, Insecurity, and Doubt about the Career Thing" too. Oh the fun that that engenders. Made me feel like an idiot, anyway. It's a classic human story. It seems like the right thing to do, until you do it, realize you've done it, and begin to digest the practical implications of what you have to believe God will do for you.

Granted, the complex hasn't let us in yet. That's the final litmus. If they approve us, I'll take it as and indication that God intends to provide the necessary means to pay the rent. It's not impossible to expect, especially in the entertainment industry...it just can't be guaranteed...and if that's not a fight starter in this house (because of yours truly, of course) nothing is.

PS - Upon further reflection (read: proofing by the wife) it's not so much the higher rent that's the issue at the May rent here, 2/3 May rent there, and then June rent there...So, like triple rent in the space of a month. My bad.

2009-03-26T16:59:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-03-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-02T19:19:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Fresh on the heels of the preceeding philosophical bent, I'm back from another spiffy audition.

Paint me daft and run me down, but I love 'em.

If I get it, hooray. If I don't, hooray. I had fun.

It really helps to come home from that with a new sense of what I'm really after. It makes sense now that I can love a non-paying audition and not love a paying extra gig.

2009-02-25T09:21:00.000-08:00

I don't exactly know where I'm going with this one, so if it peters out after a paragraph, forgive me.

I got another audition for today. It's for a student film and it comes with a shiny toy inside. The CD also casts for shows on some major cable networks and one of the Big Three (the broadcast networks are the new applicable trifecta for that moniker, but really, I suppose there are four). I bring my headshot, do a one-minute, silent physical comedy routine that I worked up (on the list for today), and she keeps my headshot for other stuff.

I've been cleaning up a massive mental train wreck the last few days, and this audition kind of helps me focus my attention on something. The unstoppable force finally met the immovable object, so to speak.

The Unstoppable Force: my inexplicable, nagging, grinding, perpetual need to pursue an acting career. This noodling little worm of an idea has grown and grown and grown into a behemoth of epic proportions (Think: the massive worm that lives in the subway in the opening sequence of MIIB). I can't not do it. I can't decide to do anything else. I always come back to it. It never leaves me alone. "There's a lifetime of exploration here!" it says to me, "A biannual community theatre production isn't going to satisfy you!" I haven't got the theatre bug. It's the gat-danged theatre Spanish Influenza. It turns me back toward performing every time I look away. Every time.

The Immovable Object: the inevitable reduction of every career into cheerless drudge work. First, let me be clear: I have no evidence to support this massive fallacy, but it is my immovable object. I have forever assumed (by whatever incomplete anecdotal experience) that a career is a lever-pulling exercise. No matter what your path, ultimately where you go in the morning and from whence you come in the evening is a sap, a shunt, a leech on your joy. It is an incontrovertible fact that this is. A man who works is a man who trudges.

Welcome to the scene of the accident.

I am trying to make a career of the thing that gives me the most productive joy I've ever experienced.

See the problem?

And further evidence is heaped on this terrible conundrum when you consider these facts: We're basically broke, and the money is trickling in just fast enough to keep us from dying of financial thirst. I'm fighting tooth and nail for every chance I can get to stand in the background and watch other people do what I'm really interested in doing. Drill those two things into my subconscious, and throw on some icing that reads, "You're living your dream, stupid, what's the problem?" and we've laid the penny on the rails.

You see, I'm a study in contradictions this way. I believe I'm living my dream, but really, by loose analogy, I'm on the bench and I'm not even wearing my pads. I'm on the field, yes, but not in the game. But I'm living my dream! I automatically compromise. Somehow being on the field, not playing, is supposed to be equivalent to running every down. Are we still on the same page?

So here I am, facing the two irreconcilable truths that I have held, in unsynthesized dissonance, and facing them with no intervening confusion. There is no physical distance between me and my dream. There is no other job, there is no moral ambiguity, no insurmountable road block. There is merely this single collision:

I am deathly afraid that even my most passionate drive in life will be reduced to cold, gray, lifeless slavery.

Since the unstoppable force is dependent on my ability to allow it to drive me (contradictory, I know, but go with it), it is far easier to believe that the immovable object will win this battle...that I will persevere, receive great blessings, find my name in proverbial lights, and hate every second of it.

Now, mind you, this cataclysm has been playing out in the backrooms of my mind, not on the tabletop in front of me, where I can observe the obvious contradictions.

So I've paused, balked, reconsidered (driving my poor wife quite mad in the process) making both me and her wonder how much I really do care. The half-moon logic is this: If everything will eventually suck, why not withdraw, adjust, preserve what goodness there is, and let my dream live on unsullied, forever a fiction, but at least unproven to be drudgery.

Less poetically: why not move away, get a clock job, and let acting be the happy "what if" for the rest of my days, so that the imaginary Something can remaining fictionally joyful?

But what's the reality?

I'm scraping out a living on the almost. I'm so close to my aspirations that I can literally touch them (some days, be touched by them--my back still hurts, Mr. Radnor (still my fault, I know)). Every time I'm on set, or on location, I'm watching the ones that have succeeded do the job that I want. I'm not living the dream, I'm three feet from the water, it's 115 degrees, and I've got a rock on my legs. Of course that's going to be a trying emotional experience. This is why the magic of going to the studios has worn off. This is why the posts here have been so meatless and brief. Talking about it is wrenching in its own, special way.

If you'd always dreamt of teaching and you showed up on campus to be the janitor, how would you feel? If you dreamt of being an architect and you clocked in as the pencil sharpener, would you not itch with unfulfilled longing? If you thirsted to write good fiction and wrote tag lines for movie posters forty hours a week, would you not pull out your hair?

I'm not justifying my dissatisfaction, I'm making the necessary comparisons to understand my situation in corollary. I need to do this, because I can be so blind and stupid, always looking to be the grown-up, slogging through the [inevitable] schleppy career and putting on a brave face. You see how it goes?

I have assumed, for my entire life, that I could not overcome the black hole of career depression, so when my "career" is depressing, I don't ask why, I just go, "Naturally," and try to convince myself that it's awesome in order to lift myself out of it...fully aware of the impossibility of this task.

Well, no more. I say, "No, damn it! This will not continue!" I will be an actor, God willing, and it will be fabulous. I will no longer waste countless hours rationalizing how a mediocre industrial picture or a day as an extra should be fulfilling to an actor. I will give my best to those days, certainly, as only is right to do, but at the end of the day, no more, "That's what I've wanted to do all my life, why am I not beaming?" It's not what I want to do, anymore than I want to be a secretary for a casting director. It's a part of Hollywood, and it gives me flexibility and income. That's all it is. It's not acting. It's not craft. It's not what I'm hurtling toward. It is not an immovable object. My life is not Revolutionary Road. I'm on the bench, and I need to remember I'm on the bench. The adrenaline of being so close to the field is wonderful, but I'm not on the field. I have to keep hold of some perspective. I do extra work, I ride the bench. I do auditions I suit up to play. I get cast, that's when my name gets called and the crowd looks to see who this new guy is, loping onto the turf.

I haven't been cast yet. I've been paid to talk in front of the camera, and once upon a time I convinced myself that this was the same thing. No. I was only kidding myself, dumbing down my ambition because I thought I needed to be realistic. When I play characters is when I thrive. Characters do not inhabit industrial films. Those folks are avatars, just the expressive representation of a broader, already definite entity. The mouthpiece. The person on screen has no freedom to deviate in their arc. A character can, does, should deviate, and has the freedom to do so.

I want the characters and nothing less.

I know what I want, and I know, for dead certain, that I don't have it yet.

And that, boys and girls, is satisfaction in itself.

And it only took me 25 years.

I guess that didn't peter out, huh?

I'm sorry, Mr. Radnor....

2009-02-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

Fun day yesterday.

Got in on an episode of Lie to Me (technically ep. 102...which will air out of sequence) and it started at 1400. I was a camera operator, so I was expecting to be given a prop.

Not, however, a 30 pound prop that would act as a meat mallet to my paltry little shoulder. Not terrible, it's a bruise, I'm not gonna cry, but I'm stiff this morning.

In the process of humping around with that camera (during a particularly chaotic POV shot with a real steadicam in the middle) I managed to cut in front of the camera, as I was supposed to, and had a split second of, "This ain't gonna work..." CRAAACK! That was the sound of my whale of a prop smacking the real camera...probably punching the poor camera op right in the face. Nobody yelled at me, and I didn't get fired, but good gravy. Who hits a camera that's worth more than my life net earnings...at a dead run?

ALSO

as if that one massive goof wasn't enough, I pulled another bone-head play ealier in the day. We were on the Fox lot, and shooting on stage 21...except we weren't on stage 21. We were shooting in the alley outside stage 21. Apparently the back alley spaces on the lot are fair game. Well, they were hosing down the pavement, because it was supposed to be wet, and so I moved off to the side...directly in front of a door. I thought it was (or, more accurately, didn't stop to think that it might not be) a door to stage 21. It wasn't.

No, it wasn't.

Just as a smallish Phillipino security was going to politely suggest that I not stand in front of the door, BAMMO! A hood installed to block the big red light on the door caught me right in the back. I stepped away and peeked in the door (along with the security guy) and saw a slightly confused face obviously done with shooting makeup (not, like, I've been shot, but the heavy cake of make-up you need for sound stage lighting) and I hear, "Yeah, my trailer's that way."

It was Josh Radnor, aka Ted from How I met your Mother. I imagine he wasn't expecting the door to bounce back in his face.

So, yes, I fiddled with TWO shows in one day.

Woooooooo-oooooow.

I'm a professional.

2009-02-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Two basically unrelated observations from two different working days:

I noticed how long I've been "off the market". I struck up a rather pleasant conversation with a girl who happened to be a Missionary Kid who'd spent time in South Africa, Sweden and Scotland, and was on a scholarship to the little seminary down the road from where we live. We talked about a bunch of random stuff, and it was fun. It did not even begin to cross my mind to try and impress her.

It did cross my mind that it hadn't crossed my mind when, about a half hour later, another guy started to talk to her and was so obviously flirting with her that is was almost physically painful to watch. She's an attractive woman, and it's not like I didn't notice that, but the idea of taking a "relationship" somewhere (whatever the variety) was non-existant. Probably not a shocker for an "old married guy"...but just weird.

Observation two:

On an add shoot for Rascal Flatts' new clothing line "American Living" most of the younger extras almost had a competition to see who knew the least about this "Rascal whatever band". While not necessarily surprising, it confirmed this sneaking suspicion I have about country music. There is something about it that is powerful enough to drive people to ravenous sectarianism. Like, if it was a religious conviction, there'd be wars fought over it. These pretty people (I'm always the runt, pretty-wise, at these commercial shoots) seemed like they would shamelessly admit to a career in porn (vanilla, kinky, bestial, or otherwise) before they would admit to even knowing the band's entire name.

It's as if cosmopolitanism has some kind of messianic redemptive benefit in itself, and any hint of the taint of rusticity risks the loss of one's urban sanctification.

Never mind the fact that the number of people in America who would have gladly paid three times as money money as we received to be in similar physical proximity to this band is probably greater than the population of Los Angeles proper.

Musical factionalism is the new ethnicity.

These guys have won Grammys, for God's sake. Somebody thinks they're worthwhile.

P.S. Apparently "rusticity" is a real word, and "there'd" is not. Thanks blogger.

2009-02-15T15:16:00.001-08:00

The last post gives birth to this one.

There's a lot of discussion in professional articles (Hollywood profession, that is) about "branding". Like any commercial endeavor, the brand you're marketing is critical. I had been accepting of this precept up till now, however a bit dubious of it as well.

I didn't want to limit myself, which has been what branding seemed to me to be. I want to do whatever comes my way.

I think yesterday and today (especially that spiffy audition) turned that skittishness on its head.

Everybody loves to play characters with levels, complexities and conflicts. It's what good drama is all about...I like, I've discovered, going a little farther than that. The criminal minds attract me. The aberrant, the twisted, the dark and labyrinthine people that might seem normal enough at first, but wind up soulless or downright creepy underneath. It's the people that do heinous things that interest me. I want to understand. I want to build the logical (or fatally illogical) bridge that takes them where they go. I love the challenge of getting into these people...the kind of people that everybody loves to hate...and giving them life without judging them. Hitler didn't wake up in the morning thinking, "How can I be a little more evil today?" And while we can certainly understand that he was a dark stain on history, I don't mind (read: I love) going there and messing around with the kind of personality that can advocate the death of millions.

There's a safety in it, playing pretend. With terrible, believable antagonists on film, we can learn from our mistakes before we make them.

Also...as an addendum, I believe I'd like to stay up in this area, even if (hopefully when) I'm working more and more. I find I like the half-hour to and from Hollywood. It uses a little gas, certainly, but that's nothing fuel efficient driving doesn't soften, and it gives me a fabulous chance to focus going into a job and reflect coming out.

The Santa Clarita Valley is probably home for a good, long time.

2009-02-15T15:09:00.001-08:00

Well, that was fun.

Really.

No sarcasm intended.

Not, "Well, that was fun..."

Rather, "Well, that was fun."

I got the notification yesterday to come down to Hollywood today (North Hollywood, really...or, as it's labeled by the locals, absurdly enough, NoHo) for an audition on a student film. Good times.

I didn't really know much about the project, but I did know I was auditioning for a sadistic infantry captain.

The audition itself consisted of a prepared monologue, and an improv. There were sides to be had (sides=the part of the script that's pertinent to you) but when I got in the room, they went out the window. It was, "Here's this guy, you're about to kill him, but you want to ring some sadistic pleasure out of it first. Go!"

Awesome.

This exercise followed the first use of my new favorite monologue, from Squirrels by David Mamet. It plays as well to real auditors as it does in my head. That was also awesome.

When an audition is fun like that, it's compensation in itself. I got to play around. If I get the part, it's even better.

So thank you, Mr. Mamet for a great monologue, and thank you Dr. Allen, for all of those twisted improvs we did in advanced acting.

Learning Curve

2009-02-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

I got that paying gig I mentioned in my last post.

It paid $200 for the half day. That was awesome. What is not awesome, but rather intensely thought provoking, is what follows.

Let's get the basics out of the way first. This was an internal instructional video for the Church of Scientology. I didn't know that when I submitted for the role. By the time I was called back, I'd discovered this fact. I knew this when I was cast.

Instead of following Internet tradition at this point and launching into a raving tirade about the evils of Scientology, I'm going to go through the ups and downs and ins and outs of the moral debate that I went through in the process of doing this job.

At first, I didn't reject the project out of hand. My logic went something like this: This is a video aimed at willing participants of this religious/science of the mind system. I'm not actively participating in the propagation of a religion other than my own, but rather simply facilitating the creation of material that people who've already chosen this belief system will use to do their thing. Analogously: I might not like potato salad, but it doesn't hurt to play on a script on how to make potato salad.

I was sent a lot of material the day before going into this project. I mean a lot. Five attachments explaining the basic concept of Dianetics (the Scientologists understanding of the mind) the "correct" procedures for actors according to L. Ron Hubbard, the "correct" focus on diction and delivery for the actor according to L. Ron Hubbard, a summary sheet of the procedures of a Dianetic auditing session (which, in Scientology, is supposed to subplant all other forms of psychological treatment, and elevate the human to a higher level), and the simple sheet containing directions.

I read this material. Aside from being slightly bamboozled that this religion has accepted, standardized procedures for everything, I was troubled by the summary of Dianetics. Before I read this, it had seemed as though Scientology was just a different approach to psychology. It's a bit more than that. I won't go into gory details, but here are the important points in terms of this post.

1) According to the religion, it's a scientific fact that man is good. It's not a belief. It's a fact.

"The Clear [the elevated human], the goal of Dianetic therapy, can be created from psychotic, neurotic, deranged, criminal, or normal people if they have organically sound nervous systems. He demonstrates the basic nature of Mankind and that basic nature has been found uniformly and invariably to be good. That is now established scientific fact, not an opinion."

2) According to the religion, a person can reduce their problems and graduate themselves toward the "Clear" status by effort, commitment and participation in Dianetics (which is represented as a discovery of an ancient and universal truth about the mechanics of the mind and body).

My issues with these...

Not only is it irritating and academically irresponsible to toss around ideas as scientific facts without appropriate references, on a broader level, this assertion of proven innate goodness flies in the face of what I strongly believe about the nature of man. My assertion (the Biblical assertion) was created good, but rebelled against God, spiritually dying in the process. Something that is dead cannot make itself alive. So in a bit of a nutshell response, not only is it a fallacy to instill false hope in people that we're good, it's a deeper fallacy to insist that we're good and then insist that all we need to do to achieve more good is to try harder. On top of that, not only is it, "we can be good if we try harder," it's, "we can be good if we try harder at this thing that we just discovered in the last hundred years...and there's no other way to really do it."

Okay, I hear the alarm bells ringing for everybody out there, saying, "Christianity says there's no other way, too, hypocrite!"

Let me [briefly] draw the distinction and move on. If we can save ourselves from ourselves, it's patently ridiculous to insist that any one person or group could have a monopoly on the procedure. This is Scientology. If we cannot save ourselves from ourselves, and need to be made alive by God, it's perfectly reasonable that said God could engineer only one way for it to work. If that doesn't make sense or pisses you off, email or comment, I'm moving on.

These fundamental conflicts between my beliefs and Scientology's canon were disturbing, but I didn't back out of the job. I was still on the, "I'm not telling people to do it, I'm helping them understand how to do it, because they've already decided they want to," track.

Then, sometime in the middle of waiting to go on set after wardrobe and make-up, it occurred to me. If I was in Germany in the 1930s, I could say, "I'm not telling people to believe in the doctrines of the NSDAP (Nazi Party), I'm just taking their money and helping explain the minutiae to those who are already in."

Let me be very clear: I AM NOT comparing Scientology to National Socialism. The analogy applies insofar as it speaks to the fundamental conflict between my beliefs and theirs. I find the tenets of Scientology false, and whether I'm encouraging new converts, or instructing the "faithful" in how to perpetuate their religion, I'm still solidifying a religious belief I find false and contradictory to the discovery of the only True God. I can't do that in good conscience.

I did the job, and I'll take the money, and I'll tell you why: I went into this project ignorant. I learned as I went, and I know what I need to know in order to make an informed decision in the future. If I did one of their projects again, it would be dirty money (for me).

I titled the post "Learning Curve" because it applies in more ways than just the one I've described. Not only did I learn enough about basic Scientology to hold a conversation with a Scientologist and not get lost (a good thing), I learned the limits of what I'm willing to ideologically sacrifice (or endanger, perhaps) for the sake of acting. It was nice to realize that I wasn't so happy about getting a paying job that it didn't matter that what I was doing flew in the face of my spirituality.

I'm pretty sure this whole experience was a part of The Plan so that I could wrangle up all of this self-understanding before I got deeper into the culture. There's a lot of Scientologists out here, and, while I'm sure I risk making enemies of a few just with this post, I'm comfortable with their presence, far more than I was when I had no idea what they believed.

At the last: It's funny to me that some Christian churches can be just as demanding and legalistic about procedures for every little thing as Scientology is. It's even funnier that this kind of Christianity (the kind that insists learning about other belief systems is somehow "giving up") is exactly the Christianity that paralyzes the individual's ability to evangelize.

2009-02-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

$1.37

$3,188.97

The former was the teaser.

The latter was my final paycheck.

It will be in the bank account tomorrow. This amount covers February rent, March rent, and all of the bills left in February. With the buck thirty-seven, after all those payments are made, our bank account will have 78 more cents in it than it does at this moment. (AKA enough for the basic necessities for the next couple of weeks).

Sense. Of. Humor.

Here are the extended ironies that make all of this more entertaining.

This money is only enough to cover rent and expenses. It is not enough to cover a cut-and-run bail-out move back home. (I've been contemplating that the last few days.)

This check was by no means guaranteed. I knew I'd receive a final settlement around this time, but there was the real possibility that I would OWE the company money for repairs on the truck (I've heard enough stories of that happening).

This settlement was not expected until next week. If it had not come this week, the bills due by Friday would not have been paid.

In my mind, I'd been hoping against hope that, at the outside, the check might amount to $3k.

And, finally, LITERALLY just now, as I finished the last sentence, my inbox showed a message for a call-back TODAY before 5pm...wait for it...for a PAYING JOB!

Woot.

2009-02-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

All right.

At this point, the money issue has gotten so ridiculous and abstract that it no longer seems real.

I want to work and I want to work desperately. The reason? Not the money. I'm just bleeding bored.

Bored.

Bored.

Bored!

2009-02-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

God has a sense of humor.

In all this hurricane of money-less-ness, we've been holding out and holding out...bumping back our rent payment, shuffling bills, all the usual suspects, hoping and praying for some relief from the pressure.

Yesterday an envelope came in the mail: once opened it revealed that there had been a discrepancy on the payments we made on a storage unit we rented waaaay back when Alicia was going to come drive with me (before the advent of babies). The storage place, in good faith, refunded our overpayment.

The total:

$1.37

Of all the cosmic jokes that could be played...this was perfect. If it'd been $20, it would have just felt like a little help. But a buck thirty-seven? Cute.

Hopefully (hopefully), this will be followed up with a big, friendly, "Naw, I was just teasing; here's the real help."

2009-02-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

I had an audition for a student film last night.

It was funny. The project is like a half hour long, the sides were three lines, and the whole process took about five minutes.

But the other guys in there were all nervous as hell. You know how it goes. The foot tapping, the pacing, the trumpeter's lip warm-up (never understood that one), the staring into space. On that last one, no actor ever has to work at the thousand mile stare for war movies...all they need to do is act like it's an audition.

I have no idea if I was what they wanted, but I do know two things: I don't need to question whether I did it "right". I made my choices and delivered. Also, I followed direction. He asked me to do it again, a little differently, and I did.

Beyond that, doing audition autopsy is just an enormous waste of time and energy.

Dear Lord, why am I so broke? All this show-biz stuff seems soooo natural.

2009-02-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

I have an analogy to draw.

Bear with me.

Matthew is breastfed, and one of the technical aspects of breastfeeding is something called the "let down". The milk has to let down into the nipple in order for the baby to eat.

Sometimes when Matt's hungry, he gets impatient and flails and fusses...even when he's on the breast. It's because he's not getting any milk yet, because mom hasn't let down.

The only way he can get the milk is to keep sucking until the let down happens and he gets a supply. If he's too frantic to eat now he risks not eating at all because he won't suck enough to get the milk flowing.

This is exactly what I'm doing in my life. Assuming that things will happen eventually, and that keeping at it is the key, I'm doing all kinds of worrying and flailing and getting frantic, and whipping myself into a frenzy about how I'm not getting anywhere (after a month)...and all it's doing it making it harder to focus on the eventual reality of pay off.

Okay, so maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but it works for me.

Staying calm sucks.

More accurately: I suck at staying calm.

2009-02-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

Since California is so short on things called "seasons", I hereby annex the seasons and rename them...or at least this one.

This one shall be called "Doubt".

I've bounced back and forth a lot in the last...almost 10 years (ever since I started high school)...trying to figure out what I cared about.

No. Really that's not true. The stuff I cared about landed on me with both feet. Music and Theatre dropped on me like a bomb. I didn't have to go searching them out. The choice between a music and a theatre degree in college was a pretty simple review of who I felt I identified with more. Thus theatre.

Then writing dropped on me, and I like that too.

Then the confusion hit. The fear sprouted. The doubts about the future. The approaching apocalypse of real life, responsibility and finance. I started vacillating.

Write? Act? Day job? Be "Responsible"?

As retarded as it sounds, I never anticipated the difficulty. I'd lived in a world where ability and diligence were requisites to achievement, and nothing else was really needed. Big Fish: Small Pond.

I had no experience trusting Providence for the outcome, it was never necessary.

I've been convinced, sometimes on alternating days, that I wanted to write for a living or act for a living. What I cared about was running headlong into what I wanted out of life. I found myself smack in the middle of the biggest blind spot I never knew I had.

I know what I care about, but I don't have a good sense of what I want to make out of that care.

So I don't have a good read on the best course of action, because all I've ever been good at is getting into the arena and aiming as high as I can.

I'm sure this is all wonderfully vague to anyone having a read. It's the same when I try to communicate anything like this to Alicia. It all makes sense up in the coconut, but when I send it flying through the air, it winds up soured somehow.

I care about acting. I never really sat down and thought about how to make that work for me. The best I could come up with was an either/or decision about which major conventional market to enter, and make up the rest as I went along.

Is it really gigantic ambition? Or is it just tremendous lack of imagination?

I've always thought of ambition as the drive to succeed or overcome despite any and all obstacles. If that is the measure of ambition, then I've got none. I've got some of the most basic obstacles facing me just now, and I don't even want to try to hurdle them. I'm short on cash, and having trouble getting in the door on auditions...any audition. This is pretty standard fare. Do I want to persevere? No. I want to act. I don't want to work for it. I just want it to happen. And why is that?

Because I've never had to work for a damn thing in my whole life. School was easy, the jobs I've had before now have been relatively simple (I suppose I did earn the CDL, but that doesn't really measure up to this), it's all been kinda like dominoes, falling in sequence. Now I've got to hang on by my toenails and really hustle, and I don't want to...even for one of the few things I really, really care about.

Am I really so hyper-obsessed with things being straight-forward and unambiguous that not even a chance at my wildest dream excites me to action?

Do I have such a faulty grasp of my spiritual convictions that every time I try to involve God I just give myself another reason to quit?

My life has never been open-ended like this, and, frankly, it's terrifying that I've come to this place now, married and be-childed...long, long after I should have caught an inkling of this shortcoming.

I thought it would motivate me to burned the ships on the beach, coming out here like this. Turns out, I'm pretty fucking hard to motivate.

That's a disappointing hole to blow in one's self-perception.

Or, perhaps, this is another crappy excuse, and my real problem is that I'm just a tool.

Current Status: So confused.

It's all supposed to mean something, but why did no one tell me that it would be written in a different language?

2009-02-03T19:28:00.000-08:00

Still here, still ticking.

Dealing with the whole "patience" thing.

Lack of patience manifests itself in a number of curious ways...I'll not ennumerate them here.

Suffice it to say, parenting is harder when shit that has nothing to do with your kid is on your nerves.

What a Day this has Been

2009-01-30T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today embodied everything that I love about this business.

I got a call at 1830 last night to do a Boost Mobile commercial today. Brilliant. We broke the slump!

I get to call, and it's a pretty typical experience: moderately to very attractive people dressed in pretty classy stuff, because it's a restaurant scene. We're all checked in and wardrobe approved, and the 2nd 2nd and the PAs start funneling us in to this high class little restaurant in downtown LA (location shoot). It's gonna be a pretty standard day.

Enter the Animatronic Pig.

Yes, that's right, a man in a six foot tall hog rig. A fully articulated, completely realistic looking pig, with two guys at the remote controls for the mouth, snout, ears, eyes, et cetera.

We get the pig all situated at the table, and then we get him a forkful...of ham.

The pig's line (in various forms throughout the day), "Are you judging me? Is this so wrong? Let me tell you what's wrong...a mobile phone service that charges blah blah blah."

Pretty standard cell phone sales pitch. But it's a pig. Eating ham.

It was hard not to stare at this beautiful(ly realistic) puppet doing it's thing. Combine the facial puppeteering with the man-in-the-rig moving his arms and manipulating the fork...brilliant.

I'm pretty sure it's a local spot, so it's not something you'll see outside of southern CA...but nonetheless, that was a day brightener.

I got $150 to watch puppeteers make a pig fly...talk. Still pretty cool.

Fight!

2009-01-29T17:45:00.000-08:00

I won't go into the gory details...that would qualify as some kind of breech of contract, I'm sure...but Alicia and I had a bit of a tiff today.

Turns out I equate the inability to pay bills in full and on time with failure as a human being. Regardless of extenuating circumstances.

Funny part of it is, we haven't actually missed any bills yet.

I cannot express with English words the frustration inherent in my emotional spin cycle.

Therefore:

Xrbt manx, tlufoo cnorb shangee too plutz. Mifkinish dengteebe: fanboosh ting leebit yort. Feglannick dik-dik!

Still no work. And it's Friday tomorrow.

The First Slump

2009-01-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

Hey-ho.

If acting comes in cycles of sprees and slumps, we're at the bottom of the first.

Not that this really acting, we're still in the background stage, so we're talking about the minors...if we want to stick with the baseball analogy.

Last time I worked was Friday. Nothing since then.

I did have a pretty good time at a little (delightfully inexpensive) seminar that gave me a boost. It was an industry primer for auditions. The guy running the thing is in the business of teaching new folks how to land the "Under 5 line" roles that most background don't have the wherewithal to do and most SAG actors are either past or can't do...just like the background.
You see, SAG's got 120,000 for a membership, and maybe 4000 of them work on a regular basis. Plenty of folks get their eligibility by luck or persistence as an extra. Then, once these folks are in the Union, nothing happens 'cause they don't know what to do next.

So I didn't work, but I developed a little strategy.

I didn't realize that agencies take non-union talent with no film credits. I also didn't realize what Taft-Hartley status was. Taft-Hartley status applies when you're not in the Union, you go to a Union audition, and they want you, they need you, they can't live without you. At that point, they take you and you're in, supposedly on their dime. Schwanky.

So I audition for Union stuff, and submit to agents, and I can keep working on that.

Just the slumpy issue to deal with. And the agent that needs to sign me. And the rent, and the bills.

This is the part where I ploof my hair with an upward aimed huff.

It's funny how simple it all seems when I go and boil it down for the reading.

It's not funny or simple when I'm passing every day minute by minute and wishing I could just skip to the end and see how it all turns out.

One side bonus to the day: I found the Studio City location of Samuel French. For those of you not familiar with theatre, Samuel French takes care of distribution and royalty supervision for basically every single playscript in circulation. They have an online bookstore...but to walk into a little 1500 square foot place and see it loaded from floor to ceiling with scripts and craft books, the likes of which you'd never imagine at your lowly neighborhood Barnes & Noble...that's priceless.

Loving this town. Hating the suspense.

2009-01-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

The honeymoon is over.

I knew this would happen, and I made myself commit to blogging the good and the bad. I have a tendency, in my life, to not discuss anything unless it's in the past, or planned to the hilt. I avoid the issues that are thorny, ambiguous, and labyrinthine in favor of the issues that are silky, crystal clear, and arrow-straight. If no one knows about my stuff, it doesn't really exist, does it? In short, I hide my problems until I know what to do about them, and everybody (including me) can be fooled into thinking I'm awesome.

That was a pretty intense opener, so I'll start off by cooling it down. No, I am not announcing a heroin addiction.

What I am going to do is discuss the future without having the slightest loving clue of what I'm going to do about it. That's a big step for me.

So here's why the honeymoon is over.

I've been loving every minute of work. However, if y'all will check the timestamp on this post, you'll notice it's very near the end of the month. When the calendar reads February, some very nice people down the street are going to expect a small, rectangular piece of paper to appear in their hands, that's labelled with the name of their business and a four digit number...1147. I wish there was a decimal point in that number somewhere, but no. It's California. Our rent is $1150 a month. Current checking account status is reading less than half that altitude. The worry worm has wriggled into my mouth, oozed past my epiglottis, and slinked down my esophagus to nest in my belly again.

I can love this work like nothing in the world, but if I can't pay the bills, I can't pay the bills.

And this was the deal to start with. For those of you irritated, offended or generally chafed by an exploration of the spiritual / religious &/ theological, change the channel.

[religious part]

The only reason I ever got up the cojones to do this Hollywood thing in the first place is because I wrapped my head around the concept that the course of my life is entirely in God's hands. He willed the universe into existence, and thus it continues to exist because he does not will it to cease. He's interested in my welfare because He incarnated himself in order to substitute Himself for my in judgement so that I could have a relationship with Him. I have the free will to make my own decisions, and take action, but there is only so much I can control. This lack of control scared me away from even considering acting for a living for many years. By nature I want something safe and predictable (or at least something that offers the illusion of said qualities). By getting to understand the idea that it's my business to go where I believe I'm being led and allow Him (The Omniscient) to take care of the rest (everything I can't control) in His own way, my fear was assuaged and even extinguished to the point that I could say, "I need to do this acting thing." And I did it, and it's been awesome.

[/religious part]

From the beginning I knew that it would either work out, or it wouldn't work out. There were a few variables to be considered going forward, but they all fell under two basic questions:

1) Do I love this, or does it suck?

2) Is the money there or not?

I knew I could love the stuffing out of this work, but fall flat on my nose financially.
I knew that I could make enough money at it, but find out that I'd been chasing a mythical thing, and I really didn't like Hollywood that much.
I knew that I could be broke and disenfranchised.
And I knew that I could make it, and be the happiest I've ever been.

Since I don't believe in luck, I'll let you run the stats on those possibilities...what I believe is that, whatever the outcome, it would be a clear indicator of my path in life.

I'm meant to be here, or I'm not meant to be here. If I'm not meant to be here, I had to get this place out of my head before I could live a contented life elsewhere, otherwise employed.

Okay, spiritual again...tough cookies: God has a plan for me, and this Hollywood stint is a part of it. I'm clearly supposed to be here right now doing this. Am I supposed to be here to see that it's not for me? Is my path elsewhere, and a love affair with the movies is just an obstacle? Or has it been so hard for me to believe I should do this precisely because it's what the Big Kahuna wants me to do?

Enough wandering, back to the point. I don't want to worry. I've spent enough of my life doing it, and it sucks. I can't control everything, and I've made big steps toward letting God handle the no-control issues in my life.

The problem is I'm worrying. I saw the bank account, I can see the calendar...and I desperately want to have enough money to keep at this. That's where the worry comes from. It feels so right to be working in the industry, but logic and my wife's favorite (read: most hated) word pragmatism says there's no way we'll have money for rent when it's due.

And this is my problem. I'm getting ahead of the game, trying to wrestle with the unknowns and divine them, somehow, so that I can make the right decision now and avoid the potential pain.

How many times in my life has the right help showed up at the right time? How many times has the door of opportunity closed when I was about to take a path that, in retrospect would have been foolish? God has a great track record, but here I am again.

Oh, ye of little faith, right?

It's so irritating to ostensibly believe in a Sovereign God, and then, at the drop of a hat, completely flip out. Whether you buy into a personal God or not, you'd have to agree that if a God that was looking out for you was on your side, it would be borderline retarded to start planting an ulcer over a couple hundred bucks.

And I do this, time after time. I spent most of today spinning probabilities in my head, trying to guess the value of preparing for "the inevitable" (an abandonment of Hollywood), mostly because there's a little voice inside that goes all Revolutionary Road on me in the dark moments and hollers about Responsibility, and Accountability, and Righteousness, and Provision for Your Family...which is a Responsibility, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, blech. While it all sounds great and good in theory, leaving because of the perceived upstanding-ness of getting a "real" job is just as much rejection of God's leading as would be staying here to the detriment of my wife and son (and myself) when I clearly wasn't making any progress at all.

So of course, I'm somewhere in between (like I said, nuanced). I fit in here, I'm fulfilled by this work, it interests me, I'm with my family, and, shock of shocks, I kind of like living here (now that I actually live here). But the money...she's not in the bank.

Written out like that, I guess the argument clears itself up a little bit...but being broke and missing the bills is a big, fat, scary thing for a performance oriented, socially hyper-sensitive Minnesota German. Like, you're a failure as a person if you can't pay your dues.

But it's show business. I could land a job that pays $600 tomorrow and everything would be different.

It's just a bitch and half.

Alicia does the bills, and she goes, "I don't know how this is going to work."
I go, to myself, "Well how is this going to work?"

I should stop right their and ask the God I claim to believe in, but no, I go, "I gotta figure out how it's gonna work! That's my job! Oh, shit, look at the calendar, there's no way I can conceive of that will find us with enough money to get by...there must be no way! God must be telling me to pack it in and leave." Notice, please, that at this point the Creator finally enters the calculus of the created being. Notice also that because I can't immediately find the answer, there must be no answer. Talk about your palm-to-the-forehead moments.

Now that I'm out with all of this exposition, it actually helps me relax a little and take it one day at a time...but the fact remains: I spent the bulk of the day trying to find tomorrow's answer today.

Isn't this what sitcoms do? Make a situation hilarious because the entire audience can see the problem, but the character just can't seem to get it right.

Says the six-year-old me, "But I wanna know NOW!"

I guess it's true...

Adults are really just kids with a hell of a lot more practice.

The honeymoon ended because I checked out of the hotel.

Tired of all the analogies, metaphors, comparisons, and mental chess?

Yeah, so am I...that's what the last blog was for.

G'night.

Lost and Found

2009-01-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Lost and Found is a pilot shooting for next season.

What a day this was.

First, the location was in Venice Beach, about a block from the ocean...so Venice Beach for Minnesota. Interesting.

Backing up a little. When I called in and heard the call for this show, the specific info on what types they were looking for was right up my alley. Minnesota Vikings bar, need to look white and northern (essentially what they said), and need to look blue collar, nothing trendy...so think construction, factory workers, truckers.

Ding, ding.

I called in and got it, and all I had to do was bring Me to the set. I almost had too many choices for wardrobe.

So we hung out in a beach parking lot for most of the morning, waiting to be needed. (In case you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of waiting to be needed.)

I thought that was going to be as cool as it got...wearing my own comfortable clothes, chilling on the beach (on. the. BEACH.) at work. But no, it got epic.

Early in the evening, we set up a shot where the principle (Katie Sackhoff) is telling a story to a bunch of enraptured Vikings fans in this sports bar. Okay, that's cool. I get placed directly in front of the stool where she sits (and her stand-in sits when we're not shooting). Awesome. Screen time, close to moderately famous people...this is exhilarating stuff.

Coup de grace time. Up on the big flat screen tv pop these words:

Skol Vikings, let's win this game
Skol Vikings, honor your name
Go get that first down
Then get a touchdown
Rock 'em! Sock 'em!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

followed immediately by the AD wondering aloud, "How are we going to do this?"

Now, for those who might be unfamiliar, that little poem happens to be the Vikings fight song, which you have (perhaps drunkenly) sung if you've ever attended a Vikings home game as a home team fan.

They wanted a roomful full of Angelinos to sing the Vikings fight song.

I quietly let the AD know that I knew the song (practically by heart). He said, "That's okay, we haven't got the rights to the Vikings, so we'll have to make something up."

I was a little crestfallen, but legal is legal...or so I thought.

Ten or twenty minutes later, with me sardined literally in the middle of a circle of people capped by the principle (still the stand-in). The AD goes, "Okay, we're going to sing this thing...and..."

He pauses, and the rest of the extras in the room kind of give this nervous laugh, like, "What? We're improvising a melody to a song with the word Skol in it? Isn't that a chewing tobacco?"

Awkward pause over, AD goes, "Where's my Minnesota guy? That knows it?"

I raised my hand.

"Right, how does it go?"

So I taught sixty some odd people the Vikings fight song melody.

Not only did I get a chance to preserve the Purple and Gold dignity, when Ms. Sackhoff found out I was a genuine Minnesotan (since she was sitting literally eight inches to my right) she said, "Oh, God! I'm gonna embarrass you with my Fargo accent!"

Frankly, I think I made her a little nervous. She had to pull a "yooper", which, given her own testimony, was the only way she could sound like she was from the Northland. If she scaled it back, it sounded like she was from New York.

So, apparently, subtle Minnesota dialect is difficult to pull off.

It'll pass for Hollywood, and, as usual, there'll be a couple of thousand pissed off Minnesotans when it airs, because they're convinced that because they don't sound like that, nobody sounds like that. Everybody else won't notice.

So if I'm not on Lost and Found this fall, they've cut an entire sequence from the script...after they've shot it.

Short version: I'll be on the Lost and Found pilot.

Desperate Housewives

2009-01-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

A couple of brief, interesting tidbits about this show.

1. They're as efficient a heck. We shot a lot of coverage in a very short day.

2. Eva Longoria is a very small woman. Not just thin...but small. That was surprising.

3. Desperate Housewives has its own branded bottled spring water. With a label.

I managed to catch the [botched] oath of office on the radio between one location and another. It was another moment of, "I'm really, for really, working here." The world is whirling on, and all the news items I was following as a trucker are still spinning themselves out. Crazy.

2009-01-17T16:28:00.000-08:00

So, the recall to Prison Break made up for the first day on Prison Break.

Instead of sitting around for 10 hours to do 3 takes, we sat around for 1 hour to do 30 takes.

Really, it was more than that, but it was a nice flip.

It was the top of a new episode, and the same pack of Miami Police came back for this new day, and we kicked off the day by running. Up stairs. A lot of them. Several times.

Then we ran up more stairs. Less of them, but still...several times. That second set of stair running took several takes because of the smallish confusion about when we were supposed to start up the stairs. On the first take somebody (me) jumped our cue, and the rest followed, with the result that Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller were still standing at the end of the hallway as we passed them. The confusion wasn't really our (my) fault, because nobody had thought to fill us in on what was happening. As we reset to do it again, one or the other of Purcell and Miller said, "So that's it? We get arrested? Series over?" We got it once we actually had a clear understanding of what our cue was supposed to be.

After lunch came the really interesting stuff. The extras were all hovering near the setup of a new shot, waiting to be called in to be placed. Ingrid (a 2nd AD) comes up and says, "Come with me, please."

And not a minute later I find myself on a mark, squared up with Mike and Jesse (didn't get their last names) SAG supporting cast for the episode. Mike was the police captain and Jesse was the hotel manager. Myself and another cop were there to give Mike somebody to talk to...so I had two cameras shooting over my shoulders at the actors with lines.

It gets better.

All this was a setup for a moment where Purcell and Miller take off from a concealed spot and we chase them down the hallway. Four SAG actors, and two extras. Wow. Not to mention that Captain Mike had a live weapon (in the sense that it fired blanks for visual effect) which he fired at Purcell and Miller as the fled down the hall.

We covered it from one direction, then from the other, and then we cover the last bit where the two fugitives bust into a stairwell and we come in after them.

By this time, Captain Mike has started to throw in an ad libbed line as we're just about to entered the stairwell after Miller and Purcell. He looks over his shoulder and goes, "You ready?" to me. So what am I going to do? Stand there like an idiot, and not respond because I'm an extra? Hell no! What did I go to school for 4 years for? We're all huffing and puffing from the sprint down the hall, so I nod briskly and give him a raspy, "Yah."

The significance of this is: It's a SAG show. I don't know the specifics, because I haven't researched it fully yet, but that spoken word has the potential to make me eligible for SAG membership. It might not, too. So I'm not going to cry if it doesn't happen, but I'm sure going to ask.

Penultimate wacky moment of the day...On one of the takes into the stairwell, both Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are standing on the first landing, safely out of the shot, but I've got to act like I'm warily looking up the stairs. Dominic has had a little spritz bottle all day, in order to mist his face to look like he's sweating. As I'm looking up the stairs, and the scene is still going, he starts squirting at me with this bottle, hissing, "Come on! Come on! I'm right here!"
I don't know if I did anything noticeable to the camera, but it was rather difficult to keep from busting out laughing...not so much because what he did was tremendously funny (it was pretty funny) but rather because I was just struck by the absurdity of the whole thing.

I'm in the Long Beach, CA Hyatt hotel, dressed as a cop, holding a fake gun, seven feet from two TV stars, interacting with a 25 year Hollywood vet, very obviously on camera, and this is my 5th day of work. Ri. Di. Cu. Lous.

Last thing of the night. We're shooting something else, and I'm back the background, background, working some background action with Heath (another cop, and a cool guy) and Michael Rapaport is making his entrance in front of us. As the shot is setting up, a tall black man weaves through the hubbub (the hotel is still working, obviously, and we're shooting just inside the main entrance) and there's some interaction between Rapaport and this guy. I hear, "he could throw like a rifle down in Houston," or something to that effect from Rapaport, and I look...

Sure enough. Warren Moon had just walked into the hotel to check in. That definitely added an extra flavor of surreal onto the top of what was already a seven layer dip of surreal.

So who knows if that was just an awesome, hysterically fun day, or an awesome, hysterically fun day that winds up being an awesome help to my career. Either way, I win.

Prison Break, Episodes 19 and 20, sometime in April/May of this year.

2009-01-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

Got work on Prison Break on Wednesday.

Fun times.

It was in Long Beach, so it was about a 60 mile schlep. I suppose, technically, it wasn't a schlep, because I headed out at 445 and got there at 545...which is an average of 60mph. In Los Angeles that's miraculous.

I grabbed some breakfast and hung out, waiting for check in time (630). The cool thing was that the production had rented what are called "Lunchboxes" for the extras. They're maybe 50 foot trailers that pop the sides out like campers they can fit at least 70 or 80 people at tables. It was literally a cool thing, because the little heating/air-conditioning generator (formerly known to me as a reefer unit) wouldn't really make heat...so the temperature was 59 degrees, and it was set to 68. Beside making it uncomfortably chilly in that particular trailer, it's notable because I actually had a decent idea of what the problem was. Other folks tried to adjust the set temperature upward, but I knew, from trucking experience, that if the system won't make heat, nothing helps. Life experience for the win!

So I hung out outside.

630 arrives and Jack, the guy checking in the mob of extras calls for the Miami Cops, which is what I was scheduled to be.

He says, "Hey, I have to apologize, but there was a miscommunication with central, you're not called until ten."

I say, "Hey, thanks for telling us." He could have made us wait in line.

So I got to sit around for three hours or so. There was a small kerfuffle about whether the eight of us would get paid for being there at 630, which I tried to avoid as diplomatically as possible. It wasn't worth getting pissed about, but it was something that was easy to get pissed about. It was the kind of thing I would have gotten hocked off about just a few months ago.

So I just watched the sunrise in a cloudless Long Beach sky.

When 1000 rolled around, Jack had (very awesomely) worked it out so that we got paid from 630.

I got to wardrobe and the girl said, "How tall are you?"

I said, "6-3."

She looked at Jack, "Jack, we asked for no cops over 5-11, we haven't got the shirts bigger than that." Which meant wardrobe had requested of Central that no one over 5' 11" be booked as a cop. Not my fault, not Jack's fault.

"Nothing I can do," Jack said.

Wardrobe got a little miffed and gave me a suit. I'd been converted to a convention goer, and they were in a fluff trying to recruit a shorter cop from the conventioners.

When I came back to the wardrobe trailer to finish up the approval on the suit, there was another guy standing there getting finished up in a cop uniform. He was taller than me. It didn't upset me, but it didn't make sense...especially since it was going to be really hard to figure out how to get a conventioner back from the Hyatt (where shooting was) to the Arena parking lot three blocks down the road.

"Hey, if he fits, I'm pretty sure I can make it work," I said.

They looked at him, looked at me, and looked at the rack, kind of gave a what-the-hell shrug and started digging.

I was a cop again.

The rest of the day went something like this: get bussed to the Hyatt, wait in holding. Talk to three of my fellow cops, get bussed back to "base camp" for lunch, get bussed back to the Hyatt, wait in holding, talk to my fellow cops, have a generally fun time, get called onto the set at about 1730, set up a chaotic group shot post-somebody-getting-shot, run a rehearsal, shoot it three times, and we're done.

Now, if you didn't catch that, let me boil it down a little more. I got paid from 630 to 1915 yesterday to do three takes at the end of the day. How ridiculously awesome is that?

Plus, it was an episode wrap, so I'm recalled for Friday, because the next epi picks up where this one leaves off. Only in the pictures.

On the down side, I've got a pinched nerve or strained muscle or something in my shoulder, which has made today less than productive.

But, really, I can't complain.

2009-01-12T17:08:00.000-08:00

Worked on NCIS today, across town (I know I mentioned it, but it's still cool), and it was a short-ish day, which was cool because I stayed cool...It was winter in DC...but it was really Valencia, so the high was aiming for 80. I was in a suit, scarf, gloves, and a fully built winter overcoat.

It was, however, a well picked location, where the traveling sun never landed any light in the frame. Combine that with the steady breeze coming down from the higher elevations, and the coat, suit, etc. felt fine.

Interesting factoid: If you've ever wondered how they do the dead bodies in crime shows (the freshly dead, not the decayed, gnawed three weeks dead type) it turns out that it's not a well dressed dummy. It's a real person. It might be obvious to you, but I've always wondered if they can get a person to stay comfortable and still for a shoot like that...often in uncomfortable, twisted, just-been-popped-by-a-Glock positions. I'm pretty sure they get a spiffy check out that, though, because today's corpse had his leg in a position that but some serious torque on his left knee...and he was pushing 60.

Another interesting thingy: for those of you that are fans of the show--look for Abby to get out of the lab and onto a crime scene...bearing a nice little black lace parasol.

Currently, I'm striking out on work for tomorrow, watching Season 3 of How I Met You Mother.

Whee. (That's the whee that comes from being in the air about the headshots and really worrying about finding the work for the first time since I came home.)

Whee!

2009-01-11T19:32:00.000-08:00

Did I mention that I got booked as an extra for NCIS on Monday?

And that the shoot is at the mall 8 miles away?

No?

Yeah.

Schweet!

Also, my son is sleeping brilliantly, and it's only 1930. Usually he's seriously upset by an attack of gastric distress. Okay, so since that might be a really bad medical condition that I don't know about, I'll rephrase:

The poor guy has gas problems. He'll be really upset when he should be sleeping because he's just got to fart it out.

Not right now though, so points for that.

To whom? I don't know, but points, nonetheless.

Weirdness over, good night.

2009-01-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

A word about craft services food.

I know I built the breakfast surprise into the description of my first day on the set, but it's worth going back and discussing a little more thoroughly.

The food provided (for free) as a part of a shooting day is mind-blowing beyond the pale of any working environment I've ever imagined in my life.

Breakfast and lunch are available as buffets, and these caterers are putting their backs into it. I put the estimate of the quality of this stuff at somewhere around $20 a plate food. It's not just that it's free, it's that it's good.

Steamed veggies in butter drizzles, barbecued chicken breast, steak cutlets, rice pudding, multiple salad options, multiple dessert options...I could go on.

I eat better at work than I do at home. Crazy.

It should be noted that I don't eat poorly at home. On a limited budget Alicia (and I) succeed in coming up with quite a few tasty options...but we just don't have the banking prowess to match the quality of the ingredients.

I'm not digging holes, breathing fumes, or shoveling shit. I'm getting fed for that twice a day. Never, never, never, ever, never do I want to get desensitized to that. Ever.

2009-01-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

Good day today.

Oh, good day.

Woke up and didn't really need to hustle to get anywhere. Hung out, watched some TV on DVD, left the volume up too high, bugged the hell out of Alicia. All in typical married morning.

It was headshot day today, and the photographer I picked out (who now appears in my Relevant Links section) specifically said to get good rest the day before.

The appointment was at 1300, so I packed up a ton of clothes (read: basically my whole closet, because I haven't got too many clothes), packed it into the car and took off for Burbank.

Oddly enough, the little theatre where he shoots is just down the street from Bob Hope airport, which I had to find in order to turn in the rental car I took home from trucking. So, it was easy to find.

When I got there he was just finishing up a reshoot with another client. It was one of those awkward moments that you can never avoid when meeting somebody new for some kind of project...but that was pretty much the worst part of the day.

The clothes I had offered good options, and he said that my skin looked good and that he was digging my hair. The man's married with two kids, so don't read that the wrong way. What's notable about that is: I've been a trucker for a year and a half. The last time I had reasonably attractive hair and skin that was anything close to clear, I had a Wisconsin zip code.

So I threw on the first set of clothes he wanted to shoot, and we got started.

He explained that we were going to shoot about 700 frames, and that there was no pressure, because it's a digital shoot, which allows tremendous flexibility to take a quick look and lose the ones that missed the focus or the depth of field. He said that the first hundred shots were the ones we'd use to get used to each other, "so they'll all be shit, but that's how it goes."

About seven shots in, he stopped and checked his preview screen and went, "well, that one was great! We got one."

It wasn't idle flattery, it was genuine surprise and satisfaction.

"Look at the way your eyes pop," he showed me, "that's nice."

It went on like this. We talked about life and the business and everything in between, and we shot a lot of stuff in a few different places around the block, in several different looks. It felt good to know that I'm easy to work with, and it felt good to have somebody tell me I had a good marketable look and really mean it. It felt good to feel on track.

I know that Hollywood is a place that smells of horse manure from a thousand miles away, so before you raise the doubt that I might have fallen into a pile of it, let me assure you that my BS radar is pretty sensitive, and I didn't catch any red flags. The man asked my permission to use some of my shots on his new website.

In all, today just served to reinforce a few core beliefs I have about this whole Hollywood thing. 1) There are people out there, doing this, that care about it the way I do, and that aren't vapid hairdos. 2) Showing up, and showing up, and showing up makes a difference.

Into traffic, and see what runs me over.

2009-01-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

Two crazy days, and one not so crazy day.

WEDNESDAY

First day ever doing anything related to show-making that involved compensation of the Green Cottony Paper variety.

I rolled out of bed at 400 and worked myself through a poached egg/english muffin sandwich, a glass of juice and a mug of coffee. Then I transferred to the bathroom for a shave and a shower. Funny thing: I've been "shaving" with an electric shaver since last year. It's a nice little Norelco model, but I never had the light or the mirror resource to properly use it. Because of that, I really only shaved when I got in a shower, which was, at best, every three days. By that time, I'd have solid beard seeded, and I had to use the trimmer tool first, and then shave. Since I got home, I've been back to the old Mach 3, and I've noticed that I must shave daily, or razing just hurts. This might have been my running problem for the last six years. Don't shave daily, shave, pain, repeat ad nausiem until you don't ever want to shave again. I might just turn it around with this "habit" thing.

Anyway, got out to the car at 505 and busted out for Warner Bros. It's about 25 miles from my house, and my car and I needed to be there by 600. Because the trips aren't multi-hundreds of miles anymore, I haven't really set up the GPS in the car...so it was a little new not having a quick reference for the remaining distance to destination. By that token, I got a nervous about arriving on time. Generally speaking, I was nervous about everything. First day, find new place, use car on TV show set, use Self on TV show set...all that. I kept my speed under control, and got there in good time.

I pulled up to the Warner Bros. gate at 535 or so. A word about this. Usually, you're not booked with your car. You park the car off site and get shuttled to the shoot. That would have been adventure enough for a first day, but I had to drive myself onto the lot...that I'd never seen...in the dark. And I mean dark. I introduced myself to security rather lamely, saying something affable about how my car and I were here for Trust Me, and he found my name and gave me the little security pass and gave me directions. Here's where the dark part comes in.

I went up three stops and took a left, and then looked for the second left. I was weaving through 5 ton straight trucks jockeying for position to set up for the day, which was cool, I'm used to big vehicles in tight spaces, but that second left was a massive dark hole. Not used to that. I turned and my headlights illuminated a building facade. I realized where I was. They literally gave me driving directions onto Warner's New York/Chicago/large western city street set. Except in a large western city there are usually street lights. Turns out, when the electricians aren't there yet, Warner Brother's street lights aren't on. I pulled off to the side, not really knowing how it worked (and being slightly early, alone and unable to ask). I turned around and got off the set and parked where there was light and went and tried to figure out where to check in. Nobody really knew, because they had other stuff to work on (like, their actual jobs) but they were at least pleasant. I then decided against leaving my car off set, because it was supposed to be on set for the day, so I got back in and parked it behind a bus.

I'll spare you the details on the check in and stand around procedures save a few things. 1) That poached egg sandwich I ate? Yeah, didn't need that. Craft services (what caterers are called in industry parlance) had eggs, french toast, fruit, vegetables, coffee, juice, et cetera laid out neatly in a buffet. Turns out breakfast is included on a show set. Good breakfast. 2) Organized chaos rules the day. If you're uncomfortable in murmuring, semi-confused group settings, please avoid working in Television or Movies.

I volunteered to drive for the day, but just before the driving started, the director decided that he didn't like a yellow cab in the shot, so it left and my car, which somehow was first in line, was asked to move in and park there. Since the car can't drive itself in there, I had to do it. When I got it parked (paralleled in one shot, thank you), I didn't really know what to do, since I was a little unclear on why I'd been bumped up in the first place. (I only figured out the cab-didn't-look-good thing in retrospect.) I thought, at the time, that perhaps they wanted a car to pull out of a space at the top of the shot, and it was me.

Really, no. But we'll get there.

So here's the physical situation: My car is parked against the curb. Two feet from the nose of the car is A Camera, on rails for a short tracking shot that starts shooting basically straight past the whole driver's side of my car (well, Alicia's car, really, but the one I'd brought to the set). In the middle of the street, looking at the action to be shot (looking over the trunk of my car) is B Camera. They still haven't told me to get out of the car, so I'm thinking, "Well, crap! If this is where I'm supposed to be, I'd better come up with something unobtrusive to do so that I don't look like a shmuck just sitting in his car." So I threw my bluetooth in and got ready to have a conversation with somebody and look for something in my bag. They start the first rehearsal, and I realize that Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack run their action up to the light pole that's right off the gas tank door. Dammit, I'd better sell this phone conversation. (And by sell, I do not mean ham it up. I mean make it as absolutely believable and invisible as possible.)

We did two rehearsals this way.

Then they noticed I was in the car. Dave (nice guy, our wrangler for the day...don't know what his official title was) suddenly pops the passenger door open and says, "'Scuse me, why are you still in the car?"

I say, "Sorry, nobody told me to get out."

"Okay, well, get out and join us, won't you?"

"Sure thing!" Out of the car I come, as swiftly as possible. In retrospect, I realize there's no way I should have thought I was supposed to stay in the car. They cannot, will not, and do not expect extras to function that close to the camera for longer than a few seconds. However, it being two hours into my first day, I had no clue.

The rest of the day was much less confusing. I got hang of the framework of what extras are expected to do, and it made easy sense from then on.

I learned so much, it's really impossible to give it a summary description, so I'll have to stick to aphorisms that represent the day.

I learned that I'm way more committed to "showing up" for the entire work day than most people. I watch a number of my fellow extras read books and text and make phone calls between takes...and get visibly irritated when we were rolling (ready to go to action) and then had to cut. It was a, "You made me put down my book for nothing?" kind of thing. More on this at the end.

I learned that people suck at paying attention.

I learned that some extras think good background action is totally unintelligible gesturing that would get most people committed to mental institutions if it were seen anywhere but on set.

I learned that when you're shooting a scene in which a commercial is being shot (as part of the story), some extras just can't quite connect all the dots. "Is that the real cut or the fake cut?"

I learned that many extras are content to sit in holding all day and avoid actually working on the set.

I worked, by contrast, pretty much all day...principally because when they asked me to do something, I did it.

The day was a little tiring. My stamina is still set to "Sit on your ass". It was chilly in the morning and then sunny and warm for the rest of the day (I was wearing a winter jacket). I was wearing my dress shoes for the first time in almost two years.

But: The food was fantastic, and free. I was able to stand where I was supposed to stand, and just shamelessly stare at the process of shooting until I needed to do something, which I then did. I talked to some nice people and got some good information. I drove my car professionally, and had no qualms about volunteering myself when they said, "Okay we need 8 really solid drivers...nobody flaky."

And, apparently, the shots that I'm in (and that the Zoom-zoom is in) will be a part of the series premiere. (TNT, January 26th). I walk right by the two principles just after they try a locked door in a street scene. That's the back of my head in the gray coat and black pants. I know it's all geeky and "Look Ma, I'm on TV!" when I'm just an extra, but I'm not overselling it, you know it's just the back of my head. (The car probably gets more screen time.) You probably ought to watch the show because it looks like it could be a great show.

In short: It was a fantastic work day. Really, it was the best work day I've ever had. I never want to take that for granted. I got home at about 1730, wiped out, but cool.

THURSDAY

Rolled out of bed at 400 again, but saved myself a half hour of sleep, because today I knew that work provided breakfast! Woot. All I had to do was get myself downtown and find the prescribed parking lot (free) and get shuttled to the location. Sooo much easier than Wednesday. This show was Kath & Kim, an NBC adaptation of a popular Australian show. The shooting for the day was at a Roller Derby rink. It was a real roller derby rink, with real roller derby girls playing most of both teams. Needless to say, it promised to be an interesting day.

Trucking will inform my understanding of my new career for awhile, so, get used to it.

The benefit of trucking this morning was the fact that I'm totally comfortable going and searching for a bathroom when I need one, being aware of which bathrooms are okay for me to use, which aren't, and when I find one, not being squeamish about using it, no matter it's condition. So, when they're port-o-johns, I'm cool. Turns out, movie port-os are waaay cooler than port-os that you find at the municipal park. These had electric lights, and running water for the sink and the toilet. Wow.

Back to the shooting. It was a big scene, with plenty of crowd, so there were about 300 extras to contend with. But it was cool, because, apparently, I've learned how to comfortably chat with people I've just met. That's a good skill for working with random people every day of the week.

The first thing we shot was a stunt where the double for Selma Blair gets "railed" and flips over the guard rail, lands on a table and winds up on the floor. So I got paid to watch a TV crew set up and shoot a stunt. It's like the making-of mini-docs on the DVDs, but they're paying me instead of the other way around.

At one point, shooting another part, the AD said, "Ron, glasses off!" to one of the actors. It took me fifteen minutes to realize that "Ron" was comedian Ron White doing a guest star as Kim's father. Am I blowing this stuff for expectant viewers? Suddenly I feel like maybe I shouldn't be giving this info away. Oh, well.

Anyway, I'm still getting used to seeing celebrity types in the flesh. It's a little quirky when you don't have the framed shot telling you who's important. You can be in the same room for like an hour and suddenly go, "Oh, right, hey...it's Ron White!"

The day was an experience in coverage. Coverage is where you shoot stuff from different angles to get different actors saying their lines. In this case it was that, plus getting skating action from a million places. Okay, so, like, twelve places, but still. To make a looong story short, it was a fifteen hour day. We checked in at 645 and checked out at 2300. I found out about two thirds of the way through the day that they had to wrap the episode that day...so it was "get everything or you're screwed" day. Roger dodger.

I found out a lot more about the constitution of a lot of extras. We're back to the "more on that later".

Maybe 40% of extras a attentive, thoughtful, patient and unobtrusive. 60% percent are cranky, entitlement oriented, self-centered, and blank. By blank I mean, empty-headed, unobservant, and under supplied with common sense.

Because of this growing realization, I'm subsequently so glad that I've had a myriad of crappy jobs that provide me with a brilliant appreciation of how freaking awesome it is to get paid to sit, stand, and/or wander around as asked. I mean, holy crap. Easiest job ever. It occurred to me that many of the 60% of wonks to be found there are really interested in doing absolutely nothing with their lives, and this is as close as they can get and still claim to have a job.

Also, with theatre in my training (and blood) I was shocked by the disrespect for props. It was simple prop stuff. a drink per person, and maybe a bag of peanuts. We got a big speech at the top of the day. Grab a prop when you go in, bring it back to the place you got it from when you come back to holding. They even numbered the cups to make it easier. When we wrapped for the night, I brought my energy drink, a cup, two pretzels and a bag of popcorn back simply by policing up the three rows of bleachers around me. Not to mention the number of props that were consumed (edibles) when the little prep speech included the fact that the food props weren't craft service things and they couldn't be replaced.

Final gripe: a fair portion of the 60% don't seem to understand how stupid it is to act as though being asked to do something or wait for something is an imposition. The Entitlement Ethic combined with our social egalitarianism has allowed a lot of people to grow up totally convinced of their own importance. They're not bothered at all that they're huffy about waiting a few minutes to be signed out, or that lunch is ruing behind because the film crew needs to finish shooting a particular segment. The fact that so many people in the world are okay with doing just barely enough to complete the task...sort of...and otherwise do exactly what they want, when they want, with no respect for the real point of the whole day shouldn't be shocking to me, but it is.

It really has to do with the fact that I've been dreaming about being near movies and TV and such for years, and it blows my mind that anybody could be so blind to how unique the opportunity is to work on this stuff.

Only in Hollywood, I guess.

Today was a catch up day, and it was a good one. I got a lot done, felt at ease about living with Alicia and Matt for the first time, and got work for Monday...IN TOWN! It's an NCIS shoot in Valencia, which is a neighborhood of Santa Clarita. I don't even have to get on the freeway to go to work on Monday. Huzzah!

Headshots tomorrow. Hopefully that'll be up tomorrow night.

Happy times! And really, I do mean Happy. I can observe and "complain" a little about silly people...but for the first time in my life, the complaints are there because they're exceptional, not because they're the focus.

Momentous.

The First Moves

2009-01-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

Whirlwind.

It's been a week since I moved back into my apartment. I've only been home to visit two or three days a month since June of '07, so it was really like moving in for the first time. Everything needed to find a home, and then get rearranged for efficiency. That is not a small or simple process, as you might know or imagine, especially when one is folding one's belongings into a house that has been set up and running like a (mostly) well-oiled machine for a year and a half.

I knew I needed to do a few things beside just move in so that we might not be broke at the end of the month. I needed to take a couple of days to recover from the 7 day per week schedule of an over-the-road driver. I needed to get registered for Central Casting (a background talent service). I needed to find a headshot photographer I liked...it's been years since I last had headshots, and while those were awesome, and free (more awesome), they don't look like me anymore. I needed to generally get the ball rolling on finding work and getting paid.

Having spent a year and a half driving...behind the wheel 8 or 9 hours a day (and then some) with most of that time pretty much available for idle thought...I've had plenty of opportunities for self-examination. Extra work or no extra work? Is that limiting? Can we afford all of the start-up costs with three people and no income? What are good places to look for auditions? for headshots? for Other Work? What kinds of Other Work should I even look for? Will there be any auditions? Can I even get cast?

You get the picture.

This is where the "Step into Traffic" mantra comes from. There are a hundred thousand variables in a life in the film industry, and you can control one of them.

Will you show up?

Okay, two of them.

Will you show up? Will you keep showing up?

Will you step into the stream of traffic in order to have a chance at getting clobbered by the opportunities when they go whizzing by?

This idea is especially applicable if I believe in what I supposedly believe: a God that's looking out for my best interests, and that's actively involved in the world. If that's so, what is the loving point of worrying these variables until they're worn through? If it is to happen, it'll happen. If it's not, it won't. If it doesn't work out, I still have a future, it's just somewhere else. When I can embrace that, anxiety fades away.

So I had stuff to do. But I knew I needed to pace myself, because even with a fresh understanding of Who's in control, I know that I get freaky and start to focus on the what-ifs. I've launched enough what-ifs into the air in the last months to give the FAA an ulcer.

I got registered at Central yesterday. It was no sweat to find (trucking skills paid off), no sweat to park (a small car and trucking skills paid off), and really, no skin off my nose to register. To invoke Dr. Allen (my mentor at University), it really helped to be a person. I realized what 18 months on the road has done for me.

This ain't my first rodeo anymore. A short drive down to Burbank in a small car is pocket change compared to a 650 mile day in a 72 foot truck. A new and different place is just a new and different place. It's not scary anymore. I know how to pay attention; how to glean information by keeping my eyes and ears open. I feel comfortable waiting in lines. I've got hours of patience now instead of minutes. I know how to ask questions and be communicative, and how to be at ease in idle conversation with people I don't know.

What I don't have yet, however, is a good way of monitoring my stress levels. While I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm freaking out because I doubt anything will work out, I've got a massive blind spot when it comes to to the stress created by believing that things might actually go well.

I got home from the registration, and I promptly crashed out, taking a three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't all loaded down with fear, I was tapped out from feeling like things were looking up and that I was doing everything I knew how to do. What a flipping concept! It was unexpected moments like this that were part of the calculus for slowing myself down a little bit.

When I emerged from my sleepy fog, the schedule for the day was shot...but it was okay, because I had some wiggle room. Instead of emailing the photographer I had found, I saved it for this morning and just signed up for access to Backstage. I think I can get good use out of the boards in order to find work, but of course, that remains to be seen.

I took a side trip to Babies R Us for a high chair for Matt. It won't be long before he's eating solids, and Alicia wanted to get him up at the table so that he can get used to the family table idea. It's nice to tool around town now and feel like I really live here for the first time. I'm not too familiar with Santa Clarita, given that I only lived here full time for a month before packing up and shipping out for OTR driving. It's a strange feeling to run these errands and not have the reality of a reload hanging over the whole thing. It makes California a little bit more of an attractive place to live. I guess we'll see how I feel about that in July, when I can't just drive away from the triple digit temps.

Today I rolled out of bed at 630 or so, a few minutes after Alicia, who was a few minutes after Matt. I spent the morning poking around online for job possibilities and getting the hang of the Backstage User Interface. I also sent an email to the photographer. I think I'll like him. In less than an hour and a half we'd sent four emails back and forth and I was booked for Saturday. Huzzah.

A note for the theatrically illiterate: headshots are basically the key to auditions. You go in and read for a casting director, and you leave a headshot behind. If the casting director (who sees a lot of people on any given project) can't go, "Aha! That's that guy!" Well, you're never going to get work, cowboy. So headshots are the currency of the industry, and if they don't look good or can't represent you accurately, it's really almost as if you didn't have them at all.

Then came the check-in with Central. You call a number and listen to recorded messages, checking to see if you physically fit the description given for the extras needed. If you do, you call another number for that show (for the purposes of the blog, show=TV show, Film, or Commercial) and the game begins. Said game is the process of having the patience to redial the number for an hour or more trying to get it to ring instead of getting a busy signal. It's really the only way it can work. Remember that line about hours of patience? Yeah, bonus.

While I was battling the "doot-doot-doot" in my ear, I took the time to reorganize our DVD collection, which was significantly fattened by Christmas gifts. We also finally purchased a DVD player (I know, ridiculous) so that we can play DVDs on our really cool, really inexpensive TV. We're gradually knitting together a life from little pieces. It's like a mammoth human quilt.

Somewhere around the letter M in the DVD alphabetizing, the line actually rang through. There's some adrenaline for you. Short version: I got lined up for Kath & Kim on Thursday.

The epicosity of this has not fully sunk in.

I gigged out while I digested the fact that I was within days of being paid (however little) to work on a TV show, and I thought, "Well, call back again, maybe there's something new for tomorrow," fully expecting there to be nothing.

Turns out, in the hour of redialing, there was something new. I called on that one for about twenty minutes and got set up for a shoot tomorrow on Trust Me. Alicia's spiffy little Zoom-Zoom car got me that one.

We have passed epic and gone plaid. I know I'm mixing references here, but an event of such mind-blowing immensity can usually only be encapsulated by mixed fragments of thought.

Without weeks of pain, I'm being paid to work in Hollywood. My dimmest dreams are suddenly an arm's reach away.

Granted, this is two days of work, not a running gig, or a speaking role, or a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Membership...but there's a physical reality to it. I've never been paid to do anything theatre, film, or otherwise art related in my entire life. That ends tomorrow.

For a final note: there's irony in the fact that tomorrow, on my first Hollywood job, I'll spend the whole day driving.

The Opening Salvo

2009-01-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

Back into the blogosphere, a few pounds lighter and a few years older. I quit updating my old blog in December of '06.

Here we are, one recession later and seven states to the left.

My wife (Alicia) and I moved down to the Sunny South(land) in May of 2007. We tucked ourselves nicely into a little one bedroom dealy in the low foothills just a few minutes north of Los Angeles (depending on traffic of course).

I knew I wanted to act, but wasn't ready...for a number of reasons that will probably be enumerated, eviscerated, masticated and generally hashed out in the body of this new blog-tastic experiment.

So, for the last 18 months, I've been Mark the Trucker...Sometimes happily, sometimes very, very unhappily. I drove a semi-truck for a major company all across the map, hauling everything from firewood to recycled plastic pellets.

In February we got a little surprise. We found out a baby was coming! Whoops!

Little Matthew was born a strapping 8 pound 1 ounce lad on the 10th of October. He's trying not to go to sleep as I write.

On the 31st of December I checked my battered old Century Class Freightliner into the headquarters yard in Salt Lake City, Utah, gave back the keys, and was free of my obligations to the company. Though I booked an economy car for the drive home, God showed a sense of humor. They gave me a brand new Sebring Convertible. Seems to follow that a convertible isn't the most attractive vehicle for the 30 degree mean streets of Salt Lake. Better for the sunny climes of Burbank, where I turned it in.

We lumped New Year's and Christmas into one happy ol' day, and now I think we're all caught up.

Thus cometh the days of Mark the Actor.

This will be interesting, if nothing else.