So, this is going to be one of the quickest trips to San Francisco ever--I am in town for Wondercon this year and it promises to be a manic trip. I found a flight on United for $145 roundtrip ($112 before taxes and whatever fees they decide people pay these days) so I am typing this in LAX a bit before my plane start boarding. I would try to upload this before I left, but, of course, LAX does not have free Internet--it's fee Internet here--and I am not going to pay $8 or whatever for 30 minutes. Ugh, when will the madness end? Free Internet makes people happy, it keeps them occupied, it keeps people in a reasonable state of mind. Flying is already so frustrating, why not do what the coffee shop down the block has done before years?

Pretty much every week, there's a burrito in my life. I usually pick it up on the way home after yoga and, without exception, I always leave smiling. Seriously, everyone who works there is just damn pleasant, and always remembers me and just seems to enjoy working there, that I always leave going, "Man, I love LA." This morning I had the same experience--I went to The Griddle for breakfast--and, again, everyone there was just so nice and relaxed and just...cool that it really just made me stoked. I have talked about this with a few folks who have leave LA recently, and they have made similar remarks--when you are in LA, people are just more pleasant. I know this is awful generalization, but if I compare my experiences, say, in the grocery stores in New York, where most of the time everyone was just sullen and irritated to be there, and to the grocery stores in LA, where, time and time again, the people working there are honestly helpful and pleasant--the vast majority of the time, the comparison holds. I was in a Ralph's the other day trying to find rice milk for Whit, and when the guy didn't know, he tracked down another person, who told me exactly where it was (Aisle 8, but the rice milk is right behind a post, so make sure to look carefully) and then, later, when I bumped into the guy again, he asked to make sure if I had found it or not. Like, this is just some dude who works at a Ralph's, you know?

These are small things, totally, but when there is nothing but doom and gloom on the news and when you are falling asleep doing math to see how much money you have left in your account for the weekend, they make a huge difference. I know for a fact that there are nice places in New York--I don't mean to pick on that great and fantastic city, I have had my time with superb lame asses in San Francisco--but day to day, my life in LA is just more pleasant and I don't know anyone else who has moved here from another city who will disagree with me.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there because I keep wanting to post that when I leave the burrito place but I never remember (and I admit, it's a Chipotle, which is a chain, I realize, but these guys are so close to my place and they really do it for for me (I am a simple burrito person--chicken, black beans, rice, hot salsa)).

The other night a good friend of mine, a classmate in my acting class, admitted to us that she was taking a hiatus of indeterminate length from acting. She was not going to class anymore and she had told her agents that she was done for now, possibly forever. The news hit everyone pretty hard and I have been thinking about it a lot. The thing is, she's a terrific actor. She's got great comic chops, can do drama no problem, and has a great look.

It's a big deal when someone quits, especially when it's someone you see a lot, because you feel like you are losing a team member, in a way. This whole endeavor is frustrating, as you know, but it is a lot easier when you can share your experiences and frustrations with others, it's a lot easier to not get an audition when you know it's not just you. We all want her to come back to acting, but we all recognize that this is not something she took lightly, that this was a fundamental decision, a big shift in her life and she knew it.

I am sure some of us are thinking, deep down, "Is this what I should be doing? Is she getting out a sign that I should be getting out? I'm not getting any younger, should I just quit while I am ahead/behind? Maybe this is not right for me--sure I have fun doing it, but I haven't booked a spot in a year, maybe I should just be responsible and get out of LA and live the rest of my life without this crap." It's all there, you know? When you hang out with other actors who are slogging, you get the sense, "Hey, this is worth doing, if they are not giving up, I'm certainly not going to!" When one of your crew bows out, it rattles you, it really does.

I'm not quitting. I don't want to and I don't have to. I am extraordinarily lucky that I have a job that appreciates my acting life and actually leverages my experience whenever possible. It's taken years to get that balance to happen and I am not going throw it away because acting is hard. It's all hard, you know?

I was watching In Bruges the other night (I recommend it, it's a great movie) and one of the things I liked most about it was just the scenes of every day life in this quaint Belgium city. You know the kind, with the really old, thin houses and big plazas with requisite open air cafes? And I thought about the life of those people who run those little cafes and restaurants, providing that quintessential European experience to countless travelers, all these people on their way to somewhere else, stopping in, hanging out at your place, then leaving, never to be seen again. I wonder what it would be like to own, or at least work in place where the world flows by past you as you wash the dishes. I can see the allure of it and part of me wishes that that's what I wanted, but I don't. Who knows.

I started this at the airport and now I am in a BART train, heading to San Francisco. I'll post this tonight...

Tokyo Taxi

I had a funny audition experience yesterday that I thought I would write down. I got this in my email box the night before (this is how I learn about auditions, I get an email the night before):

The following contains meeting information for: <<Spot Name>>


-----
Client:           Mike Romo
Date:             Thursday, February 19, 2009
Time:             3:00 PM
Status:           E-Mail Client
Role:             Basketball Players
                 Comedy. Comedy. Comedy. Should not look athletically
inclined. These are buddies hanging out on the weekend. Rate: 3 x scale

Wardrobe:         Lame workout clothes: if possible sweat shorts, t-shirts,
socks pulled up to their shins, sweatbands on wrists and head.

...
-----
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Basically look like the guy from Juno and nail the audition, right? So, I got my wardrobe together (I had to pilfer Whit’s sock drawer to get her knee highs that she uses for rollerskating), went to work, ran out of work at lunch, go to the audition, changed in my car, and ran up to the audition hall.

It was hilarious. Waiting to go in were a bunch of guys in workout clothes. About half of the guys looked a little like me (and assorted variants)--white nerdy looking guys who just looked like pathetic nerds. The other half were 7’ tall actual basketball players, who were looking totally buff and super sporty, and who were basically real life jocks. So, all of a sudden, we were back in grammar school--all the nerds were kind of hanging out with each other--even though we were not really nerds, at least not all of us, we were just guys dressed up as nerds, but it didn’t matter, the social construct just kicked right in. It was hilarious. I mean, I honestly haven’t felt that kind of vibe since high school. Oh, there was no bullying or anything like that, everyone was very nice to each other, but we were all cracking up, like obviously some guys got one breakdown, but there was apparently an “in shape, good looking, athletic build” breakdown that a bunch of us certainly did not get.

I went in with four guys who were all about my height plus one African American guy who was at least 7’ tall, totally amazingly good looking, played pro basketball for three years, like, total amazing athlete guy. Huge arms, the whole thing. Really nice, super nice and just laughing at how mismatched we all were. When we did our photos, it was him first (Sheldon), and then the camera person had to bring the camera down a full foot to focus on me, with my polka dot headband and “Oscar the Grouch” t-shirt and she literally just laughed outloud. It was classic.

The audition was fun, though--I mean, who knows what’s going to happen with it, given the two totally different categories they called in--and that, in the end, is what matters, really. That’s all you can do, really, is just enjoy the process, because wanting a job from it is just going to set you up for disappointment in the first place. I had four auditions (one straight to callback) last week, and I didn’t get a single callback--for parts that I was perfect for, on auditions that were no different than the ones I have booked from--and I must admit, it was a little disruptive, emotionally. Like, I had no idea why I didn’t get called back, and even though I keep telling myself not to think about it...I still think about it, of course I do, you know? That Thursday after yoga class, when I didn’t have any messages in my voicemail...ugh, that stung. Mildly freaked me out all Friday.

This Wednesday we had class, it was on camera “bad guy/bad girl” night, and I played what was basically the action cop breaking up a hostage situation, 24 style. I did as best as I could, and technically, I succeeded in establishing the right angle (I had to look towards my left but be looking straight ahead and to the right, so it all looked very dynamic), but when I came on, every one just laughed. Now, it makes sense--it’s a ridiculous situation and I don’t usually play this stuff, and, from certain angles, I tend to remind people of Paul Giamatti, since my eyes were kind of bugging out a bit and I had this kind of grimace going--but it was, I admit, just a little frustrating...you want to be able to do this stuff, you want to have a look that can be used for any kind of job, and it’s possible, you just have to keep yourself up. For instance, right now I need a haircut and I need to drink less coffee and get more sleep so I can fend of the dark circles under my eyes. Like, I can see that being a problem, especially with bad lighting, so I just have to do it.

It’s an interesting time now. There is not a lot of work for anyone, and the work that is out there is often going to much more established names (I saw an ad with from Alan Tudyk from Firefly and from Dulé Hill from The West Wing and almost did a spit-take--why do those guys need to be doing DirecTV commericals?!) and it can be irritating, but so what? A lot less irritating than losing your job and having two kids to feed.

Onward!

Tags: acting, auditions, commercials

I’m back from Tokyo. I have some shots on flickr here and will have a rundown later, but I just wanted to update the site; I noticed that a bunch of pages were missing...

anyway, more soon!

Lobby floor at the Encore in Las Vegas

I am sitting here in a Caribou Coffee near Plain City, Ohio, watching with no small amount of dread all of my work email downloading to my machine. I am supposed to be on vacation, but I can't connect to my work email from my sister in law's place, so I thought I would check it out...oy, what a mistake--I have over 130 emails so far, and it's still sucking them in. Totally frustrating.

When I was at Razorfish, I went on this rather awesome leadership training program (I know how it sounds, but hey, I got to to Sweden!) during which we took a ton of courses, one of which was effective communications. I'll spare you the details, but the most effective was face to face...the least was email. I get over 1400 emails a month from work.

Anyway, I'm having a pretty good trip so far if I choose to ignore how long it took to get here (17 hours). We had two cancelled flights, so I ended up going from LA to Phoenix to Las Vegas to Charlotte to Columbus. We got to spend 6 hours in Vegas, so we went to a few hotels (Whit wanted to check out the Encore, which was pretty nice) and ate and walked around.


and time passes.

Well, now I am in the air heading to Tokyo. It's been frustrating, I have to say---I just have had zero time to update this particular blog. I need to figure out how to channel my myspace updates to this page--I was uploading a lot of photos throughout my visit to Ohio and it was, honestly, just easier to share what was going on that way (damn you, Facebook! You and your convenience.) And then, with the weekly iFanboy article, ongoing Norton blogs, and more work for murmur.com...I'm just writing everywhere but here.

So far, the Tokyo trip is smooth, but sadly I am on United. While they didn't charge me for checking a bag, the food is awful--no surprise there, just disappointment--and now they charge for drinks! Not to sound like an alcoholic, but, I mean, wasn't that one of the fun things about flying international? So weak. Flying a US airline just sucks now and it will probably never get better.

I was in Tokyo two years ago to talk to various Mac press and, like I promised, I am back to talk about our latest offering. Unlike last last time, however, Whit's not coming, which makes it not as fun--- we travel really well together and she has a knack for finding fun activities and neighborhoods. We went through the guidebooks last night so I have a good idea of where I am going to be (this super, super hip hotel in Shibuya, the Cerulean Tower, a few blocks away from my office). I get in Tuesday afternoon, so, I hope to get some sleep here so I can out at night around the hood.

Pete, Whitney, Kim, Cindy...and Walter

Our visit to Ohio was a lot of fun, if shorter than we wanted thanks to US Airways canceling our flights--we were about 17 hours late. It was crazy--every other carrier was flying into Columbus, so we think they cancelled the flights so there would be no chance of their planes being snowed in the day after. So, instead of flying to Phoenix and then continuing on the same plane to Columbus, we waited four hours to fly to Vegas, where we found that they cancelled our second flight, so we were in Vegas for 7 hours and then went to Charlotte, then to Columbus that next morning. We made a night of it, though; I put our bags in a locker and we took a trip to the Encore hotel and proceeded to make our way to the Mirage. It was actually a lot of fun, so it wasn't a total waste of time. Still, though--I can't see myself paying for another US Airways flight in this lifetime.

Seeing Whit's family was a blast, though. I am very much myself with them and everyone gets along quite well. I met my nephew Walter (almost two years old), which was fun. Where we were in Ohio (outside of Columbus much of the time) could not be more different than LA, which was refreshing, for the most part (though I think we drove more there than I do in LA, since everything is spaced so far apart). We had our "second Xmas," complete with tree and turkey dinner, and as I looked outside at the snow, I felt very fortunate.

The rundown:

- My brother Chris leaves Wednesday morning to start bootcamp for the US Navy. He will be gone for two months, basically unreachable, as, as he puts it, "has every shred of individuality stripped away" and turned into a sailor. He was pretty nervous about it, but he's more excited now. It should be crazy interesting to hear his stories--we are not a military family by any stretch so it's all new to us.

- Acting has been slow, thanks in part to my having to be away from LA for two weeks. Basically, if I am gone for two weeks I am out of commission for three or even four (doesn't do me any good to audition for a part that I am not going to be around to film). I had a really solid audition for a great part on a Nickelodeon show, but I have not heard back yet, so I assume I did not get a callback.

- Work is good, but I am still overwhelmed with emails, as I mentioned above. It's super frustrating,and since I can't connect to anything while I am in the air (a good thing, for the most part), I am sure I will be flooded when I get back. Still, going to Tokyo is a huge perk and I am not complaining, just whining.

- Writing has been capsized by the traveling and online writing commitments, but I added two characters to a show that I am writing that really round the whole thing out. I have this idea that I honestly think could really be successful on commercial television. I am excited about it because the set up itself is a platform on which one can just write story after story. I just need to get the pilot written and sketch out the first part of the season. Then...well, I am not sure; I guess I send it to my agent and shop it around. But now that I have the cast rounded out, I feel like all I gotta do is lock myself away for a week and bang out the script. (And yes, I realized that I am actively not doing that now.)

Okay--let's get this posted. I’ll try to do daily Tokyo updates.

Tags: ohio, tokyo, travel, life