12:53 am - Fri 5/19/06
What's The Deal With Me And Wheels

Weds 5/17/06 (4:53 p.m.)

On the way to send off my submission to The Shield earlier today, I got hit by a car.

Or more accurately, a car got hit by me; I was riding down the sidewalk, not even a block away from my house, when a car came very fast out of a parking garage, threatening grievous bodily harm to me and, more importantly, to my new bike.

I hit the brakes, so instead of ending up on the guy�s hood, I hit the side of his car with my front wheel.

In any case, after a round or two of �Are you okay?� and �Yeah, I�m fine�, we each went our separate ways...which is when I noticed my front wheel was no longer rolling straight and true.

To understand how I felt about this, you have to remember that the week before the Schwinn was stolen, I�d spent $100 on it. And I just finished spending about the same amount on this bike...day before yesterday (Though happily, birthday checks from Kevin K. and Margaret Z. went a long way towards defraying the latter expense). But beyond the money, I just get bummed out when I have something I really like, and it immediately gets broken or dinged-up in some way. That seems to happen to me a lot.

(And my old bike? The one I borrowed back last week from the apartment manager? One day on the way to work, I ran over a nail, and had to get a new wheel and inner-tube. Long story short, I don�t seem to be having much luck with wheels these days...)

Anyway, I rode to the print shop that has the Mailbox Plus drop-off, dropped off my Shield submission, then on the way back home, stopped at the bike shop (As I told them when I went in, �I was hoping I wouldn�t be seeing you guys for awhile...�).

The front fork was a little bent, but since that would have been something like $50 to fix, I settled for having them straighten the rim, and now we�re back in business (I also bought a couple of velcro straps, for my hand pump and my bike lock

Back from a workshop (with Jennifer Lurey, from Pemrick/Fronk Casting).

That�s my 5th workshop this month, and I have another tomorrow night, and one more on Saturday.

I�d do every single one that�s offered, if I could. But as things stand, I have to try and figure out which ones in a given month might do me the most good (I actually wasn�t signed up for tonight, but Brett called me today, and�this has never happened before�asked if I wanted to come in to basically �paper the house�, since they only had eight people signed up, and that would make for such a short night it would hardly be worth the casting director�s effort to come out).

I�ve felt like the last couple of workshops have gone very well (I was particularly happy to finally get in front of the casting person who does The Shield, and have her comment on my �great face�; according to Ms. Horn, they�re big on �character faces� on The Shield. And let�s get real here�Who�s more of a �character� than Yours Truly?).

But that said, I�m way-past-ready for another payday to result from one of these things. I�m happy I�ve been called in twice as a result of these workshops, but at the same time, I get frustrated that I�ve now been seen by something like 50 casting people, at $25 a pop, have done very well (For the most part), and at this point, have very little to show for it.

I need a booking.

And I need it yesterday.

previous - next