Archive for July, 2009
July 30th, 2009
We had a talk-back session after tonight’s Tupperware for the League of Chicago Theaters.
They have a “Theater Thursday” and we put out sandwiches in turn for them coming to see our show and stay to ask us questions at the end. Our company can talk about ourselves for hours.
One of the final conversations revolved around “Yes, we all have day jobs,” and it was phrased as this–the production and acting in general–is “play time.” It was thought of as what we do for fun. And I just find this so interesting, this concept of this being just a hobby rather than such a hard career to make a living at that it’s just thought of as “fun.” (Click on Lacy’s blog for great insights on this. She’s doing what I strive to do. She makes a living being an actor and is constantly either involved in a production, or going out on auditions, studying lines, etc. It’s terribly difficult to do, and she fucking works her ass off to be where she is and… Oh, sorry… I have a little professional actor crush on Lacy, so I get a little carried away… Lacy’s cool. Go read her shit and see her shows and some junk.)
ANYWAY. I had to hold myself back from weeping at this audience member since I constantly (and delightfully bitterly) obsess over this in my head day in and day out. A doctor gets to be a doctor. A cop gets to be a cop. An accountant gets to be an accountant. This is their career and passion. They get to do this as their job. These people are not going to do surgery after they get home from another job. They don’t work 40 hours a week waiting tables and then go off to arrest people because it’s “FUN.”
I guess if it’s easy then everyone would do it, but I shake my fist in the air a lot at the fact that I have to waste 40 hours a week rather than working on THE ART. ”Can you imagine how good this show would be if we
got to do this for 40 hours a week?” Danny said back to the audience member after I went on a 20 minute rant about starving artistry. Yes. Can you imagine.
Same rant as always. We’re all pursuing what we love in the nooks and crannies of our other lives. And it will hopefully be our full-time lives in the future with the hard work we put in now. This is particularly tough
as of late because I didn’t get the position I interviewed for at my current job (after my position was “renamed”) and I will now have to go back to the sales floor. My goal, if it is in Day Job World, is to avoid being unhappy for 40 hours a week. I will see how I can alter my emotions in order to come to terms with
this predicament.
Man, where’d all my funny posts go? I was funny when I had no job and had time to focus on my ar–HEY, WAIT A SECOND…
I’ll write the next thing off the soapbox:
I have a callback tomorrow where I get to smear pudding on my face. That’s just how good the product is. Smear it on your face good. Take that, Yogurt-Ad-Girls. If there’s one thing I do well, it’s heightening something messy.
Take this photo from circa 2003 that I sent to Amy Sedaris in a fan letter, for example.
July 27th, 2009
My family came to visit this weekend to see my show. We timed it so that The Boyfriend’s family could do the same and do the meet and greet and agree that everyone is awesome. No blood was slewn or drawn or spilled or spewed, even though we set aside the living room as the designated Thunder Dome. My sister stayed with us and me being the model hostess, I opened a window for her so that she would not perish.
Today, when I was cleaning up the room I realized there was no screen on the window that I opened. Three jumbo jet-sized flies decided my party pad was more appealing than the outside and were laboring through the air. The fatsos weren’t exactly buzzing as much as they were huffing.
The cat was not helpful. She enjoys a late night moth chase against a window pane or stare down with a bug on the rug. She absently stared at the flies hitting the glass and she did nothing but re-situate on the ledge. The death-kill-launch stance I taught her apparently was a waste of time.
The Boyfriend tried out the latest tool in fly catching technology: A plexi-glass clipboard. Watch death occur right under your nose. And with a grossed-out cackle, he successfully smooshed two out of three. The third we left for the cat. Later: The cat did nothing.
When photographed, I realized that giant aliens were attacking and we should all take cover.
July 22nd, 2009
Thought that just went through my head:
Oh no. Where did the wine bottle cork go? Oh man, I don’t know if I have it in me to drink the whole bottle by myself, but I guess I can try.
Goals. It’s important to have them.
PS to add: I will not attempt to finish this bottle of wine. But ingesting a half bottle sure makes the Jimmy Fallon show more tolerable.
July 20th, 2009
I got a buzz a while back about a song I recorded, and was asked to be a part of a compilation where all of the featured artists covered the song “Tonight You Belong to Me.” I love this song. And it appears that my version of it is the first on the disc. So I’m off to hear “Tonight You Belong to Me” seventeen times in a row. I think I like the song enough to withstand the redundancy.
The compilation is available on Reformer Records.
July 20th, 2009
If I can implore you to support live theater this weekend or next, or next, or next, I would like to invite you to Tupperware. Because the theater’s really far the fuck out there and it’s a shame that we forget it’s summertime and distances are easily bikeable. I, for instance, spend my days protesting storefront theaters with poo-poo thumbs down thumbs and throw eggs at Steppenwolf. I am wrong. Don’t be like me.
Ignore the can’t-capture-live-theater-in-a-posed-press-photo:
Time Out Chicago
We got a real bright future:
TalkinBroadway.com
And hear our piece on Chicago Public Radio.
July 15th, 2009
I took the day off today since I was dangerously close to turning into a potato. Spent the day going through old demos, finishing new ones and remembering that I am not my day job.
Tomorrow I go back to work like the rest of America’s potatoes. I’ll soon be interviewing for the position I currently hold because they’re… um, renaming my position and adding some whistles and bells to it in order to survive the economy’s wrath. So that affects one’s morale a bit when your entire department is… renamed.
But today has been a solid 10 hours of creativity with only a few breaks to refill a coffee mug or eat some farmer’s market strawberry-rhubarb pie. A good day.
July 14th, 2009
If you find yourself at Pitchfork, or a few other rock festivals on the east coast, please take a moment to hunt down the Numero Group booth. Not only will you find tasty retro soul music, but my painting hanging over their heads.
I ask that you take your picture with it and post a link to it. It would make me happy.
July 10th, 2009
I haven’t booked enough of anything to feel quite comfortable popping in my agent’s office, but go out on enough auditions and callbacks to feel like I should stop in and say hello. That’s what actors do, right? They send chocolate or flowers or chocolate-covered flowers and then become rich and famous?
The office itself is set up like a doctor’s office with a waiting area and a window, so if you’re like me, you feel that’s the necessary porthole through which you must speak.
THERE IS NO OTHER WAY THAT SOUND CAN BE TRANSFERRED.
I’m just dropping off my new head shot.
YOU MUST SPEAK THROUGH THE WINDOW.
See? Head. Shot.
I CANNOT HEAR YOU UNLESS YOU SPEAK THROUGH THE WINDOW.
It’s like they’re in prison and they have to pick up the phone to talk to their actors. To the right is a door, a welcoming, open door that anyone can walk through to say hello. There have been numerous times that I’ve stood frozen, directly to the left of the window unsure of how to say, “Hi, friendly people who get paid a cut each time I book something and therefore are automatically pleasant to me, I wanted to just invite you all to my show.” I feel like I need to present them with my insurance card and open with, “Doesn’t this mole look funny?”
Today I had a legitimate pop-in excuse, I was dropping off flyers for Tupperware, and I stood (hid) by the elevator until a brassy-voiced actor with a kettle drum stomach left their office after visiting them like a normal person. I walked in, hovering over the ground and stared at them with my best deer-in-headlight impression, through the window, of course.
“I have a new show. I came to drop off flyers for my new show.”
“Oh, Thee-ah! I walked right past you by the elevator and I didn’t say hi!”
“Hi… I’m just gonna put these…here.”
I don’t know if I finished my sentence, really. I think I just trailed off or threw a smoke bomb to escape or something. The other girls didn’t really seem to take notice of me, or of the fact that my name was mispronounced, or the fact that I kind of left out with no official goodbye or chat session. So… Uh, yeah… Pop-in completed and flyers delivered, even though it probably wasn’t worth anyone’s time.
As long as they don’t notice I vomited on their rug, I’m golden.
July 8th, 2009
The weekends in the magnificant mile don’t do a good job at fostering tolerance in me. I will stereotype. I will blanket judgment. Every single weekend, for two years, I walk through people who apparently have never set foot on a public street geared towards consumers. EVER. For eight city blocks there is a fog of stupidity that just hangs over pedestrians. They mosey down the street like cattle on a moving walkway. At least in New York, which normally I’m all thumbs down around town, people obey the rules of physics and travel forward unless an outside force stops them. Even tourists. I mean, I understand that everyone loves a moving walkway, but also understand that you swing dangerously close to dipping below the top levels of the food chain with each cud-like piece of Trident you open-mouth chew past a Forever 21 window display.
I feel I’m pretty self aware of when I’m at all possibly in someone’s way or wasting someones time. It’s second nature to worry that if I kinda might possibly have the slightest chance of almost nearly being any sort of burden to another human being, I will more than likely apologize before imposing. But those who weekend gawk-shop are plagued by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. They shuffle down the sidewalk hoping the crowd will just carry them down to the next silver street performer. (Or: Every crowded street has a a silver-lined street performer…?)
They have cell phones for sunglasses and children as bracelets. High-decible youth trained to dart under your feet as you try to maneuver down the Mile. Your pace is slowed by these yawning, squirmy obstacles who have their own cellphone sunglasses and an American Girl doll attached to their own wrists. And the cycle continues.
You’d think that these tourists coming from locations that quite possibly have more shopping malls per square mile than a city-proper does, would be less fascinated by a simple retail store. The shiney object ratio remains relatively unchanged no matter how many county lines you cross. A mall is a mall is a mall. Maybe if they decided to get out of their cars and walk from the Chipotle to the Target to the Victoria’s Secret to the Starbucks to the Borders rather than drive four blocks they would understand what the outside of a reatil store looks like. A “caramel macchiato” sounds different when you order from a human rather than through a box that squawks back at you as you lean out of your car window.
In the suburbs, caffiene just manifests itself as road rage rather than false energy because one is always behind the wheel of a car. So it’s understandable that they are swept away by this new sense of entitlement. I paid 6 dollars for this drink. I am walking slowly. And I am going to shop at these stores that I see every day through the window of my car.
God bless Amer’ca.
July 7th, 2009
This week, other than the restructuring of my department at work (also known as the popular catch phrase of 2009 , “In This Economy?”), I have an audition for one of one of those School Universites adults go to when they’re too busy to go to The School University. I’ll play a woman who considers this option after her Elevator Friend mentions the success in balancing her life, job and family, not to mention classes.
I’d have a better chance if there’s an opportunity to judge the person.
ME: How do you mange to fit in classes after work with a family?
ELEVATOR FRIEND: They work with my schedule.
ME: Ah… It still must really suck though.
ELEVATOR FRIEND: …Yup.
ME: You ever wish you didn’t have children?
ELEVATOR FRIEND: What?
ME: I mean, let’s be honest, that would make this a lot easier. School’s not gonna make you get back the life you had before you “made the decision to have children.”
ELEVATOR FRIEND: I don’t like the tone of your air quotes.
Elevator Friend leaves.
ME: (Calling after her) Well, I don’t like that you lost your figure after childbirth! And why would I care? It’s not my butt, so that must be how bad your butt is, right? HEY! Have fun at “class” tonight! Turn around! I said, “Have ‘fun’ in ‘class’ tonight!” See?! AIR QUOTES! I’m being sarcastic!
