2:07 pm - Monday, Oct. 31, 2005
Happy Halloween

Reading Kristin V.�s tv column on E Online recently, I learned her current three favorite shows are Lost, Grey�s Anatomy, and Veronica Mars.

Why is that of any significance, you ask? Because those are currently my three favorite shows as well (I�m not counting the shows Jane and Carolyn send me on tape, just the things I�m able to watch on a weekly basis). And for a second, I thought �You know, I could really just watch those three shows...� �maybe with the addition of My Name Is Earl--before I went into a panic over the idea of watching so little tv.

In fact, talking about the three �faves�, I like Veronica Mars so much that when the first season recently came out on dvd, I thought it would be cool if I had enough money to buy a bunch of the box sets, to give to people I know who haven�t seen the show.

It�s that good.

(And that first season�s finale was the best hour of tv I saw all last year. Maybe one of the best hours of tv I�ve seen, period.)

If you don�t already know, A Million Little Pieces is by James Frey, an account of his time in rehab at age 24 (In a compelling opening, Frey comes out of a blackout on a plane, with a broken nose and his teeth knocked out, with no idea where that he�s headed).

Early on, when he talks about how fucked up his life is, how many people he�s hurt, how much destruction he�s left in his wake, and so on and so forth, the book �spoke to me� (I�ve been wondering lately about the people left in my �wake�). But after leaving that stuff behind, the book became a lot less compelling.

I know it�s part of the story--Frey the alcoholic/crack addict has to figure out who he is, and what his life could be like, without his all-consuming addiction--but for me, 200 and some pages in, I was bored with �Addicted Guy�, and felt like I didn�t know who he was either, except that he�s really into drinking and smoking crack, and it�s killing him, so now he doesn�t like it so much, but he can�t stop.

(Interestingly enough, shortly before starting A Million Little Pieces, I�d grabbed a free promo from the store called Smashed--subtitled �story of a drunken girlhood��and read the first 25 pages or so; obviously something is drawing me to this material, even if I then find it somewhat tedious.)

I need another job, because the one I have isn�t paying the bills (And as much as I would like David�the GM-- to walk in front of a semi, I have to presume that�s not gonna happen. So my situation at the bookstore isn�t going to be changing in the foreseeable future).

That said, I still don�t want another job. I just don�t--I don�t know what I could do that would pay any better (or be any more flexible about the acting stuff), and I�m deathly afraid of jumping from an unhappy frying pan of a job into an even unhappier fire�but I�ve gotta do something; I can�t just wait till the money runs out again, which it will at this rate, then hit my friends up for another loan (I�ve worn people out in the past with my emotional neediness; I don�t want to wear people out now by my physical neediness).

(You know what this would be a good time for? This would be a good time to book a long-running national commercial. I mean, any time would be a good time to book a long-running national commercial, but this would be a particularly good time.)

I�m thinking about asking JS if he could use someone at the agency (I don�t know if he actually has people working for him, or if they�re all �interns�). For some reason, I�m uncomfortable about asking, but really, what could it hurt? He�ll either be interested, which would be good, or he won�t, and I won�t be any worse off than before.

Beyond that, and following up on the ArcLight application, I don�t really know what to do next, if the point is to try to actually improve my situation with a new job.

What constitutes �improvement�, you ask? A job that pays enough for me to live on, that allows me to continue to audition for commercials�that�s very important to me, since the potential payoff from the right commercial (In money and exposure) could be life-changing�and allows me to do theater at night (Obviously, I�d like the Signing Agent stuff to be exactly what the doctor ordered in that regard, but I can�t count on that happening for some time to come, so that�s �not on the table� as an immediate solution to my problem).

�Doing theater at night� has risen again as an important, perhaps critical, component of my success out here.

My Lansing experience is close to meaningless out here, and I�m a middle-aged, white character actor, which is not exactly hard to come by (Had another �Agent Night� where I was told I was specifically not what they were looking for. Which was depressing, to say the least). And I�m competing with actors who have a lifetime of experience and training that does mean something.

And the casting workshops, which I�ve enjoyed doing and seem like the closest thing I�ve had to a decent �shot� out here, are starting to frustrate me a little bit.

And sometimes more than �a little bit�.

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