7:10 am - Weds 5/5/04
Contacts and Opportunities

(Not going to have time to write a genuine entry today--unless I sneak in something at lunch--so I'm copying the email I just wrote Jane, which contains most of the pertinent information I'd be writing about in here anyway.)

Well, it was an interesting day yesterday...

Started out my first day of jury duty looking forward to the "possibilities"; the juror who parked right next to me in the lot was attractive and personable, and when we struck up a quick conversation on the way to court, I thought "this jury stuff might not be so bad...".

Then the bubble burst, as we compared summonses, and I saw she was going to another building.

Then when my name was called, mid-morning, during the third round of names, I ended up on a potential jury panel with someone who made me forgot all about "Ms. Attractractive and Personable"; sitting next to me on the panal was Marti Noxon, who'd been a writer/producer on Buffy The Vampire Slayer!

We chatted during the breaks, and a little bit at lunch, and it was really, really cool.

Of course, I managed to "slip in" the fact that I was an actor, but stopped short of "slipping" her my resume (I'm not prepared to be that guy...at least not yet!). But it was nice to think that if I happen to have a professional contact with her in the future, she might remember me (And as a "Buffy" fan, it was just cool to get to chat with someone from the show. And she was very nice).

When we got back from lunch, she quickly managed to get herself excused by the defendant's lawyer during the "challenge" phase of things, so my fantasy of spending the week endearing myself to her wasn't going to pan out (Afterwards, another juror said of Ms Noxon's exit, "She knew what she was doing..."; She'd clearly communcated that she was going to be biased towards the plaintiff).

Right before she left, I got paged by JS.

When I got home, around 4:00, I called, and was told by one of his assistants that I had a callback for Time Warner.

Having been told in court that the trial was going to probably last through this Friday, I said, "I hope you're going to tell me the callback's next week", but of course, that was not the case (It's today). So she conferred with JS, and said they'd get back to me about trying to move the time.

So they paged me again a short time later, but it was no dice--They couldn't move the time. I was talking to JS at this point, and he apologized, but said there wasn't anything to do about it.

As you might imagine, I was pretty bummed, and kind of pissed (I shouldn't have gone on the audition in the first place, but to have it dangled in front of me, get a callback, and not be able to do it was really painful!).

I was fuming afterwards--If I screwed up, JS could and would drop me in a heartbeat, but he screws up, and life goes merrily on--and I almost sent him an email communicating my displeasure, then thought better of it ("Who knows?", I thought to myself. "Maybe something will work out, and if so, I'd feel pretty stupid about that email". Not to mention that he totally does have all the power in this relationship, and my being pissed off might piss him off).

And sure enough, a short time later, JS paged again; the client really wanted to see me. And they've dealt with this sort of situation before, and said court doesn't typically go past 4:00, so gave me an appointment for 4:30 (I would have been more comfortable if it'd been for 5:00, but what can you do?).

So I was back on again. And the person from JS said they weren't doing that many callbacks, so I should be pretty excited.

Well, there's more to say, really, but I've gotta get back to bed (I feel like I should be at least half-awake for court later this morning!)

Talk to you later...

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