Don't Ask Me Why

Don’t ask me why Billy sent me on my journey to Staten Island, because Joel knows that it wasn’t exactly a spiritual journey.

A few weeks ago I read about an audition for a “book trailer.” Look em' up on youtube.

A job’s a job.

And it paid.

Anyway, it was for a young adult sci-fi series that is part wanna-be Lord of the Flies and part Steven King. Anyway, they needed a blond for a character between 15 and 17 years old. I’m not particularly old looking. In fact, there isn’t a person who has met me who assumes I could be out of college already.

I sent them my cover letter, resume and head shot. Sure enough, they agreed that I looked the right age and set up the audition. The great thing was they're holding the audition at a college campus on Staten Island! Oh, and if I wanted a head start on knowing the character there are already two 400 paged books out in the series. Hurrah!

The next three days I attempted to live my normal life going to babysitting jobs, eating dinner with friends, running errands ect., while also trying to conceal the fact that I had two huge books with cover pictures that scream, “ I am a very strange book meant for very strange 12 year olds.” Sometime’s you can judge a book by its cover…

I digress; the day of the audition came.

I walked to the subway and, right away, the train comes. HUZZAH! Except not, “huzzah,” because this means I wasn’t standing around reading the signs posted by the MTA telling me that all the trains running from my station until a few stops into Brooklyn were closed for renovations. Once in Brooklyn, I learned that I had to transfer to two different trains and then walk a bit to get to the ferry.

I eventually got on the ferry, got off the ferry, and successfully found the bus that took me into the middle of the Island. I rode the bus for a very long half hour and, finally, got to the campus, but not before having this lovely conversation:

Woman: You look lost
Me: Oh, this is my first time on Staten Island.
Woman: Where are you heading to?
Me: (College name)
Woman: You came all this way just for a booty call?!
Me: Um, no.

She then went on to tell me how the boys at said college were going to eat me up, so I had better be careful on my way to my audition. Thanks bus lady.

Once on the campus, and it’s the ugliest campus I’ve ever seen, it’s a twenty minute walk to the actual building that the audition is in. There is no campus map around, or at least none with anything more helpful with a bunch of buildings with random letter assignments, so I had to depend on the kindness of the random boys that passed by. This was awkward, considering that while they were giving me directions, the woman’s advice was still playing in my ears.

I get there though. I look around and I realize that all the other girls are ACTUALLY 15 to 17. How did I know this? Well, for one, they were all either wearing sneakers or tacky wedges, but, also, they all had their parents with them.

It would seem I was the only person at the audition who wasn’t a minor and also who wasn’t either from Staten Island or New Jersey.

To be fair, I don’t actually know that ALL of the girls were from Staten Island or New Jersey, but it’s the only reasonable explanation I could give for their parent’s accents, obviously Italian 15 year old girls with badly highlighted hair, interesting clothes, and the fact that they all had cars that their parents used to get to the audition.

My name finally got called and I went in for the audition. I did a baller job. Then the producer asks if he could talk to my parent. I informed him, quite pleasantly, that I’m out of high school. The entire panel of people in the room’s face's fell. They then asked me how old I am. I had just handed them a resume telling them how I was in college last year, so I knew I couldn't get away with saying I’m 18. I said “19.”

I don’t think I’ll be getting a phone call from them any time soon.

I then had to travel through the campus, wait 30 minutes for a but that doesn’t stop at the campus on weekend afternoons, find another bus that I had to pay extra money for, take said special bus around Staten Island, through Brooklyn, and into Manhattan where the bus dropped me off at a subway stop that I already knew was closed for the weekend.

That’s 6 ½ hours of a Saturday that I want back. The lesson learned from this experience? There’s a reason why Billy never sang about this dreadful borough; it’s just not worth going to Staten Island.

The ferry is cool though.

Oh, and now I'm actually invested in that stupid young adult series, so when the next book does come out in May I'll be hounding the library for it.

I wish I was joking.

Christie Lee

It’s been a bit hectic over here. It seems that I’ve done something to please that great piano man in the sky.

My callback for the improv group went really well! It was a ton of fun and I'll keep ya'll updated on that later.

I got an EXTREMELY small part in a student film.

An update on things I’ve learned that Billy didn’t tell me about New York:

-Never tell an Italian man that you're babysitting for that you’re just going to boil up some pasta and put some butter on it for dinner, unless you want a free cooking class. He’ll refuse to take his wife out to dinner without first leaving you elaborate instructions on how you’re going to make your sauce. This includes: how many handfuls of salt are necessary, the CORRECT way to crush garlic, the exact moment that red peppers should be added, and the merits of going against purists and indulging in some parmesan cheese on top. On that note does anybody want to come over for dinner soon?



- When Billy Sang about Mulberry Street he never once mentioned my favorite barber shop to stare into. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to take a peak at any of the guys or anything, it’s just that the barber shop ALSO sells jewelry. Which is an amazing idea if you thing about it. Now men don’t have an excuse for not buying you a necklace or some earrings, if they can do it while they’re getting their hair cut. The only foreseeable problem? Do I really trust the dude who's cutting your hair a little too short in front with my Valentine's Day gift?



-Speaking of stores close by, I recently found a bar/restaurant that’s one block away from me named Brinkley’s. At first I was angry with Christie Lee for trying to approach on my turf, but then I remembered that she was an uptown girl and there’s no way she’d own a restaurant south of 14h street. At least that’s what I keep telling my self.



-When it rains in New York, entire subways hubs become flooded. Meaning a twenty minute straight shoot from uptown to downtown Manhattan can take over an hour and half. During this hour and half you will undoubtedly be cold, wet, and miserable. On the bright side, it’s the perfect time to eavesdrop on conversations about how the world is definitely going to end in 2012.



-Staten Island, for all intensive purposes, should NEVER be visited by anybody who didn’t grow up there. Any “opportunity” that brings you there should be avoided. But that’s a story I’ll save for my next post.

So there you have it. Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. On the bright side, since I know your lives revolve around my updates, I’ve already written another solid entry to be posted here Wednesday about my journey to New York City’s finest borough.

Pressure

My acting class has recently ended. I’m making enough money babysitting that I can pay the rent and not starve. I have gone on a couple of auditions, including one where I got a call back, that have gone smoothly. So now there are no more excuses:

Bring on the pressure.



Oh shit. I hope the pressure I’m about to put myself under involves a lot less water, creepy black and white videos, and convulsing in chairs.

(See what I mean about Billy not teaching all that relevant of life lessons in his music?)

The pressure I’m looking to put myself under is jumping into the world of doing seminars and workshops with casting directors and industry professionals.

What it is, for people, out of the know, is this system where you pay a certain amount of money to do monologues, scenes, or some other acting stuff in front of professionals who carry marginal amount of weight with different shows, networks, agencies, ect. Some of the time they also give helpful advise and such, but mostly you just do it for the 1 in 50 chance that they might remember you or take a liking to you and call you in for an audition that you have a 1 in 100 chance of booking that may lead to a 1 in 1000 chance to you making it big.

I’m rethinking things; a trippy psychedelic music video sounds like a great life. Especially if at one point I get to win a fake game show.

Of course it doesn’t end with the seminar/workshop/class. If you really want them to remember you, you gotta’ lay on your charm and follow up with inundating them with your resume. They’ll probably convince me, while they’re at it, that I need to invest in new head shots and post cards. Oh joy.

Joel better propose to me fast so I can get in on some of that money.

Well, right now I'm still looking into which group I want to join, and even then I’ll still have to audition and such. Once in that group I can look through their options and start the whole process. I’ll keep ya’ll updated.

On a side note- in the part of the music video where Billy is a game show contest it says "William Joel, age 29". Which is a big fat lie, cause everybody knows that when Nylon Curtain (the album featuring “Pressure”) came out in 1982 he was 33 years old. And to think he was singing the praises of “Honesty” as early as 1978 in 52nd Street.

I forgive you Billy, after all you're only human.