Blond over Blue

This is a story of a bargain that made me happy and a rip-off that made me ecstatic.

The Bargain

On Friday morning, while appreciating the amazing whether outside, I walked to a small out door market place here in Soho. There I spotted a necklace that I fell in love with. It had gold and amber beads and a price tag that said $25. I made sure to use my acting skills to make it look like I was uncertain of the necklace and burrowed my eyebrows.

“Oh, so, eh, dat one is a twenty fieve”

At this point I looked up so he could feel the full force of my hesitate face. I even puckered my lips to the side so that I would appear extra trouble by my decision.

“For a pretty face a like yours, twenty”

At this point I sighed, gave the man a quick smile and put the necklace down, “It’s a great necklace but I only want to spend $15.”

Sold!

The Rip Off

Later that day it occurred to me that I needed a lamp for my desk. I went to the K-mart on the Astor Place stop. There were two aisles dedicated to lamps in said store.

To say that the options were dismal would be an understatement.

The entire selection of lamps was made up of fake antique, ugly, or completely devoid of any taste lamps.

I chose a lamp that was all three.

From a distance it appears to be a perfectly fine lamp:

Up close however:

Allow me explain my attraction. The television masterpiece “Wonder Falls” (may it rest in peace) was about a girl who talked to toy animals. This included a very wise monkey that helped her to get the man of both her dreams and mine. The way I see it, Rafiki is going to start talking to me any day now in kyptic messages that will somehow lead me to meeting Billy and our marriage ensuing.

If he can’t get me Billy at least he could get me the guy from Wonder Falls.

On another note, the lamp also cost be $15 (including the shade!). This was probably $10 more than it is actually worth, so after spending $30 in the day, I’m pretty sure I came out even. The lady in the check out was trying to get me to buy a $3 one year warranty, but the thing is so clunky and sturdy I think that its 10x more likely to fall and break my floor than the other way around…

You're Only Human (Second Wind)

Today I had an audition for a pilot for HBO.

It didn’t go exactly as planned.

I walk in to the audition feeling very confident. I had read over all of my notes that were in my acting for film and television class.

None of this could have prepared me for how clumsy I am in real life.

Right off the bat I was caught of guard. I had entered the studio and nobody was there to sign me in and no directions were left for me. There were also no other girls auditioning. All I could see was a contact sheet and a bunch of waters. I signed myself in and grabbed a water bottle.

As soon as I had gotten comfortable, a very soft spoken woman came out asking for me. It comes as no surprise to anybody who has ever talked to me while intoxicated that I don’t trust soft spoken people, especially those that are in charge.

I went into the room and introduced myself. As I put down my bag and water on a slanted chair however, the water proceeded to roll off the chair, onto the ground and spill.

I saved it from spilling more than a few drops, but as I was saving it my bag decided to fall over and out came my keys, sunglasses and wallet. I spent the first three minutes (and boy was it a long 3 minutes) in the room putting things like they should be and feeling like an idiot while soft-spoken lady just looked at me. I could feel my traitor face getting red with embarrassment; thank god for make up.

Finally I got in front of the camera and I did a good reading. Soft Spoken lady didn’t seem that put off by my former clumsiness, but, then again, when you’re voice is barely a whisper I doubt you ever seem all that annoyed.

While the audition didn’t end up going all that badly, even if their first impression of me was that I had the grace of an ogre, I was still slightly beating myself up about it as I waited for the subway.

That was precisely when Billy Joel appeared to me in the form of a creepy middle aged foreign dude.

The man walked up to me and said, in an accent I only wish I could imitate, “Oh miss! You should not worry so much; I know it’ll work out well for you!” To which I relplied, “oh, Thanks.” I would have liked to have reassured the guy with smile, but I watched enough after school specials to know you don’t smile at a stranger or else he might become your stalker.

I tried to avoid the guy by getting on the car ahead of us on the platform. He still followed me though and didn’t say anything until the next stop. Right before he got off, without bothering to tell me his name or his number like so many creeps have before him, or worse, asking me for those deets, he simply said, “No crying anymore!”

Before I could point out to him that I hadn’t been crying, he handed me a still wrapped single Halls cough drop and flashed me a smile.

I laughed with the girl sitting next to me on the train, who seemed to think the whole exchange quite amusing. At the time I chalked it up to yet another character met through New York City’s public transportation, but later that night when a sudden cough came on me, I couldn’t help but to be thankful that I had my halls cough drop. I realized that since the run in with the man I had thought less about my clumsiness and more about how well the reading went, and, truth be told, mostly about what a strange person I had met in the subway.

I may not have been on the brink of suicide about to jump from one of New York’s bridges, but I like to think that Billy had decided to appear to me as he did to that dude in the “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)” music video. Just as Billy appeared to the man as a harmonica playing homeless dude/angel and put things in perspective, maybe he appeared to me as a foreign dude/angel with some Halls.

Or maybe creepers are just getting friendlier and worse at stalking.

Either way, I’m holding on for that second wind to come along.

Shamless

This is a story of how being a space cadet with confidence can pay off.

About a month ago I went on my first open casting call.

An open casting call audition, for those of you living under a rock, is one where the producers list a casting notice on several websites and who ever shows up auditions. Usually hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands will show up to such an event.

(Picture from the New Moon Casting Call in Vancouver)

Recently, in addition to the old fashion open call that I went to, there have been online ones. Example: the one currently going on for "Glee" over on Myspace. Here’s the best audition:

Glee monologue

Glee | MySpace Video

Vote for Bridget, her monologue and her song. While I may be Billy’s favorite worshiper, Bridget’s an easy second. If she doesn’t get on Glee, Joel will smite all who read this and did nothing. Or worse, he’ll make you listen to this classic of his on repeat for the rest of your life..

Back to the story starring me:

The open casting call was for some low budget teen flick. You know, the kind about quirky seniors finally doing the thing they’ve always wanted to do. I didn’t read the whole script but I can only assume at some point virginities are lost, under aged drinking is involved, and some dweeby guy gets a hot chick.

(Insert picture from your personal favorite teen movie from the 90's here)

It was for a legitimate casting director, though so everybody was there, from people like me, to conservatory students, to high school students with over involved parents, to obviously 30 year old union members to people with representation. I even saw three people I’ve met from three different places there.

The auditions were going from 9 a. m. until 6pm. I knew it was going to be busy so I tried to get there before 9. I got there a few minutes after. By just getting there a few minutes after meant that I would have to join the second group of people. They wouldn't get to go in until 11:30 since the first group of 250 people had all gotten there before.

I didn’t know this.

I saw a boy I knew standing outside, I stopped and chatted him up for a few minutes and then I went on ahead indoors. He was about to warn me that I was going to have to give my name to one of the people and come back in 2 hours when I just passed him by and went in doors, completely oblivious to his attempt.

Once inside I spotted another friend and went past all of the people working there. I asked second guy where he signed in and he pointed to a man sitting quietly by a table organizing some papers.

Now if I had stepped back and though clearly I would have realized something was up. The gentleman sitting at the sign in counter was not signing anybody in and there were only 250 people in the huge warehouse space. If I had thought logically I would have realized that if they weren’t controlling the crowd somehow it would look like Macy’s on Christmas, with the sign-in man playing the part of Santa Clause.

This is where the space cadet confidence comes in. I didn’t think, I just walked up to the man gave him a big old “Good morning!” when he just looked up and stared at me with the look of “what the hell are you doing here?! I’m don’t signing people in for at least 3 hours” I just gave him a chipper smile and gave him my head shot and resume.

He was so perplexed by the situation he assumed that he was in the wrong and changed his face to a smile and quickly gave me an audition slot with the first group.

I suppose the man thought I was a friendly diva?

(the resemblance is striking)

I didn’t realize the error of my ways until the second group was marched in at 11 and I hear them all talking about how they had past the time the former two hours. By that point it didn’t matter; sign-in guy hadn’t told anybody about my faux pas. When I left at 11:20 there was another group of a few hundred waiting outside the building waiting to audition around 2.

I got to spend the rest of that beautiful day outdoors.

God Joel really does have a thing for blondes.

Where’s The Orchestra?

It’s been too long since my last update. I know. I’m sorry to have let down my avid readers (a.k.a my mom, sisters, Bridget and Caitlin).

Here’s my excuse: Since you heard from me last, I have been binging on Baltimore. It’s hard learning New York lessons from the piano god if you’re spending all your time eating crab cakes and talking about how National Bohemian really isn’t that bad of a beer…

But I digress.

Here it is, my New York State of Life:

1. The big news: I’m performing with the Grown-up’s Playground on the New York Comedy Club stage this Saturday! The callbacks went well and I’m doing my thing there. However, in infinitely more important news…

2. I’ve bought an orchid and some orchid food. It was expensive. I did this because I really want a pet.

Stick with me here for a second as I attempt to explain away my craziness.

As many people know I had a fish in Chicago who was named Mr. Chubs and he was the light of my life. He died after a couple of months and it was very painful. If I can keep this orchid, whose name is Nero, alive for over a year than I can buy an all black kitten. I bought the orchid on March 17th-let the countdown commence.

(Nero hanging out in my window)

3. I have finally realized why Billy guided me on a life journey that included 5 years of conservatory style acting training; I needed to be prepared for the life of a 3 year old’s favorite playmate.

The main boy I babysit for has entered into a phase of giving me characters and circumstances that fight all logic and extensive dorky knowledge that I posses. I'm hoping that this work will lead to awards. Lately he’s had me use all of my acting techniques to establish a feasible character for these two different story lines:

A) I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi with a beard while he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi without a beard; this is the least of the problems when it comes to this storyline. I aslo have to pretend hat we’re ghosts (but not dead ghosts, because those are scary, just "normal ghosts") and we’re fighting a really big spider.

B) He’s Mr. Freeze (yes, THAT Mr. Freeze) and he’s a super hero (there’s no reasoning with this boy) and I’m girl-Spiderman. We’re fighting the Nazis from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

At least his imagination is working well.

Lessons NOT learned from Billy’s music this week?

1. Billy has yet to sing a song about this, so you’ll hear it from me first: Macarons are the next cupcakes. If you’re unfortunate enough to be living outside Manhattan and your nearest city is just now becoming inundated with cupcake specialty shops and cup cake mobiles, than you are way behind in the times and are therefore not as evolved as us living in the city.

2. Another opportunity missed by Billy while he was singing about the lights going out on Broadway and 52nd St, was not mentioning that if you’re 18 or under you can get into the Whitney Art Museum for free. They also aren’t big on enforcing ID checks. I had to learn this lesson from friends who were visiting from Baltimore. To stop this from happening in the future I insist Billy immediate rewrite 52nd street with these lyrics:

They say it takes a money to keep a life alive:
In every museum an impossible price to meet,
But if we lie about out ages in overdrive,
We could see some things that are neat...

He would then have to go on to change the title to “75th street,” since the Whitney isn’t on 52nd, but minor details.

Sorry again for the delays. I will be in New York and hanging out with fellow New Yorkers a lot more this coming month, so expect more frequent posts. Including a post later this week about the first huge open call audition I went on a couple of weeks ago.

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.