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6:30 AM - Thurs 11.05.20
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Once I Thought I Was Wrong...But Turned Out I Was Mistaken

I went to bed too late and am up too early.

It's not good.

But since I am up, I've decided to do this. Because if I don't write about things now, they're going to get by me (And there's some news that definitely has an "expiration date").

Well, the election was Tuesday.

As of this writing, we don't know who the next POTUS is going to be...but looks like it's Joe Biden - The "flow of things" seems to be going as many people predicted, with it initially looking good for Trump in the election-day balloting, then Biden picking up as the mail-in ballots started getting counted (And with Trump being Trump - casting doubt on the process, prematurely claiming victory, wanting the counting to stop while it's still in his favor, crying fraud where none exists, etc).

It looks like the Republicans are going to retain control of the Senate, and the Democrats the House - Democrats (Like Yours Truly) were hoping for a "Blue Wave", a "reckoning" for all the Trump ass-kissers, which definitely didn't happen.

And while it looks like Trump's going to lose, he got more votes this time out than he did last time.

Even if/when Biden wins, it's a pretty huge blow to realize that nearly half the country, after four years of arguably the worst human being who's ever held the office - a hateful, divisive, know-nothing, compulsive liar and con-man, who actually caused the death of thousands of people through his inaction and ineptitude - just smiled and said: "Yeah, give me more of that...!".

That's not the repudiation of hatred and division and general ugliness that good people had hoped for, by any stretch of the imagination.

Personally, my biggest reaction on Election NIght was to get increasingly frustrated, as the night went on, by the weeping and wailing of my fellow Liberals - I just wanted to scream, "This is nowhere near over - Can you at least wait until we actually lose before losing your shit?" (The second biggest frustration was listening to Republican flacks telling me throughout the night why Trump was going to win).

During the day I was actually on-set, shooting on my first day for episode #1105.

Between working, worrying if I would be able to do a commercial callback (That was, of course, happening on a day I was working. But more on that in a few), and my phone/cell service being wonky as fuck, I was only intermittently following election news during the day, which was fine, since there wasn't going to be anything meaningful to report till the polls closed anyway.

And even in the evening - in part, because of the aforementioned crybaby Liberals and Trump ass-kissers - I didn't find myself glued to the TV the way I thought I'd be.

Instead, I was "checking in" for a time, then "cleansing my palette" with "West Wing" clips and YouTube action-figure unboxing videos (FTR, now I really want a Mafex Spiderman figure - and maybe a Marvel Legends box-set of Hulk and Wolverine...and Juggernaut and Colossus. But I really need to book something decent first).

So now I wait, like we're all waiting (And now I'm closer to obsessing the way I thought I would on Election Night - I've checked the news at least two dozen times since starting this entry).

But back to my commercial callback...

I was thrilled to get this callback, my first in The Pandemic Era, because it meant my self-tape was not just "competent", but had "popped" enough to get me into the second round (It's only been the last few self-taped things where I didn't feel so stressed over the "technical" shit that getting anything recorded felt like an achievement).

When I saw it was going to be on Wednesday, the second day of my Shameless shoot, it was hard not to be a little...frustrated - I'd just finished having nothing going on for the better part of two months - but I convinced myself it could still happen, that I could get home from the shoot in time to do it.

Which was totally unrealistic (It's amazing how long I've been on the show, and I still don't seem to have much sense of how long it'll take to shoot a given scene). When I got to the set and asked for a sense of when we'd be done, it was hours after my scheduled callback time.

So instead of making my callback on time and doing it in the comfort of my own little home recording environment, my agent had to call to see if I could go later (During my lunch hour on-set), I had to get a WIFI hot-spot thing from production, figure out how to shoot in my dressing room, get a corduroy jacket from Wardrobe, so I could at least sort-of look like I did during my initial audition (When I asked if I could buy it from them, they gave it to me), and download the app that would allow me to do the callback...then do the callback.

But happily, it all happened.

I enjoyed the novelty of it, but honestly, the callback itself didn't feel like much of a thing.

I was upbeat and everyone was pleasant (I actually only saw Casting and the Director, unlike a real commercial callback, where there can be six or eight people or more in the room), but the callback was even more basic than the initial audition - In the first audition, I played out a little "scenario", but the callback just consisted of me saying a single word a bunch of different ways (Once with a mask on and once without).

Then they thanked me - the Director saying he was "a big fan" - they sent me on my way, and I had lunch.

After lunch, worked for maybe another hour-and-a-half, then wrapped, and as I walked to my car, I started thinking about the next audition I had to do, a self-tape thing where I had to play a famous monster thoughtfully doing a couple of mundane tasks.

And I suddenly panicked, thinking I'd gotten my days turned around and had missed the deadline for it.

So I got home, emailed my agent a cutesy, apologetic half-page (Not feeling "cutesy" about my failure at all). And he responded back with an (understandably) terse "Just do it anyway".

So I just did it anyway, feeling like I had a creative "slate", a fun thing at the end, and a whole lot of nothing in the middle. Which kind of didn't matter, because I'd missed the deadline anyway.

(And speaking of "the middle", I wanted to edit in the middle of the video and didn't know how - all I can do is trim the beginnings and ends of things - so I drew Jane into it, and she sent me the finished thing, which I forwarded to my guy.)

And that's when he emailed back saying he'd submitted it to the place, and it actually wasn't due until 1:00 pm today - happily, I'd been wrong about being wrong.

Then in even happier news a little later in the evening, he emailed to tell me I was on "avail" from the callback I'd done on my lunch hour (If I actually get it, it shoots on Tuesday, the day Jane R is rolling into town for a week).

While of course, I want to actually book the thing (An "avail" just means you're being seriously considered), this feels like a victory all by itself; I've had a real "crisis of confidence" over the whole self-taping thing, primarily because they've never lead to an actual booking (I know I can book things in general, because I've booked things...but not from self-tapes).

But now, even if this doesn't officially end up in the "Win" column, I now know I can do an audition that will get me to the callback, then get me seriously considered.

And that's quite a ways from where I started with this shit.

And on that note, my weekly 2:30 call with Mark and Jane has become a Zoom call at Noon with Mark & Jane and Tom & Mary, so I'm gonna wrap this up and take a nap before the big event.

Till next time...


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