5:13 PM - Tues 11.19.19
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(Doing this on the IPad Mini Jane gave me - and the Bluetooth keyboard I bought to go with it - just for fun...)

Well, yesterday was supposed to be a really good day - I had a callback for a commercial audition in the morning, and a TV audition in the afternoon.

I was happy to get the callback (Be really nice to book a commercial right now), but was much more excited about the TV audition: I’d had what I thought was a good audition for the show a couple weeks ago, and it felt great to have that “good feeling” be validated by a return visit.

The auditions were on my day off, so there was no having to fuck around finding a fill for WW. And they were spaced far enough apart that I wasn’t rushing from one to the other, afraid of being late.

Pretty much perfect.

So how did it all go wrong?

For reasons I don’t completely understand, I didn’t execute, in either case, the way I wanted to.

I’m not quite sure what happened with the commercial audition, except that I wasn’t in the room as long as anyone who’d gone before, I don’t think - I did the first take, they gave me a redirect...and that was it.

I was more nervous than I wanted to be, and my take afterward was that I must not have nailed the redirect to their satisfaction - I think if I had they would have “played with me” more (As I told Jane R later, if they were “taking the other actors out for a test drive”, they basically drove me around the block and called it good).

(And while I often bitch about “avails”, it stings that I didn’t even get on the fucking “short list”.)

But the bigger deal for me was the TV audition - I’d gone over the scene a ton, having had the entire weekend to work on it.

While the primary work was just getting the lines solidly down, I’d also given a lot of thought to the “beats” in the scene - While trying not to “set the scene in stone”, I understood what the scene was about and what I wanted to do.

So I went in loaded for bear.

And it was a clusterfuck.

I went up on the lines - more than once - and (horror of horrors!) my fucking phone went off in the middle of a take (I had my cues on my voice recorder, so while the reader was reading my cues, I also had them coming out fo my phone).

It basically ended up being the same as the commercial audition - I eventually got out a take, and a redirect, and that was it.

I was just mortified, and heartsick over how badly it had gone (Though in fairness, their redirect was only to go faster, because otherwise, my take on the scene was spot-on).

Since I really did do the work, my takeaway as of now is that I am getting too nervous, for some reason (The phone thing was just stupidity - My phone has a propensity to go off apropos of nothing, so I should have turned that shit off before I went in. That’s just amateur-hour bullshit).

Something is fucking me up, I know that much (After a string of auditions I felt quite good about, things have mostly gone sour since) and I’ve gotta figure out what my deal is - When I get as few auditions as I do these days, I can’t afford to screw the pooch on any of them.

(For the record, there’s really never been a time where it was okay to “screw the pooch” on auditions - It just feels particularly not-okay when auditions are increasingly rare-and-precious things.)

I’m just bummed that, for reasons I don’t completely understand, I took that “return invitation” I was so pleased about, walked in ready to impress (again)...and promptly shit the bed.

Not that way I’d hoped the day would go, to say the very least.

And to complete the trifecta of failure, I didn’t even feel good about Zumba in the evening (Though at least with Zumba, there aren't thousands of dollars riding on whether I execute well or not).

There was a small “grace note” in the evening - After Zumba, as I was walking home, I saw that I was booked for a “Cameo” video, which they wanted me to do it as Kermit.

But I have to backtrack...

Some time back, my friend Josh told me about Cameo, this website where C-list “celebs” make themselves available to do little videos for a fee (And Jane R showed me how she had hired Ice-T to do a thing for Dick...was it Jane who first told me about it? Or had Josh already mentioned it by that point? Damn man, it’s hell getting old...!).

Anyway, I checked out the website. And while there were bigger fish on the website than Yours Truly, there were also a lot of has-beens and never-was’es, and I thought, “Well, at least I’m currently on TV...”.

So I applied to the website.

And heard nothing back.

But recently Mike M applied and got in. And when he mentioned it on Twitter, I congratulated him on “making the cut” (because I hadn’t), and the website’s owner chimed in that she’d be happy to have me.

So I set it up, and since then, I have done three videos; two were from people who know me IRL (Jane R being one of them), but the one yesterday was from a stranger, which was particularly exciting - Nice that people who know me want to throw me a little business, and I hope that continues, but more encouraging that someone picked me out on the website, because that means other people might pick me out on the website.

I can’t kid myself that this is going to be some major money-making “thing” - After all, I’m no Ice-T - but it’s still pretty cool that I can get paid just for making an occasional happy little video for the odd Shameless fan on their birthday or what-have-you.

As I said, it was a nice little “grace note” at the end of a surprisingly shitty day.

I’ve had kind of a rough day today - found myself getting a little teary on the way in to work, and spent a good chunk of the day fighting the urge to punch myself in the face, as I awaited the text/call I knew almost to a certainty would not be coming.

To better days, and

Till next time...

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