SHshshshshshattered...

I just dropped a wine glass, which since it was on my super cool industrial loft concrete floor, shattered into a zillion pieces. I was washing the dishes and was so distracted that I simply dropped it onto the floor. I have been obsessed with the recent murders that have rocked the OC acting community. A local actor, Dan Wozniack confessed to murdering 2 people, dismembering one, a war vet, and flinging pieces of his body in a local LB park, luring a woman to the apartment of the guy he murdered and shooting her to throw suspicion on the dead guy. And before anyone I love panics, (I'm looking at you Ma...)I didn't know the guy. He had worked for Tom's Gourmet Detective and at the All American Melodrama, I know plenty of people who know him, who counted him as a pal, but I myself didn't know him.
Here is one of the grand Guignol grotesqueries I can't stop thinking about. He murders and dismembers a human being, then continues to his performance of "Nine" that night at Hunger Artist in the OC. THEN the next day he murders the girl... and performs in his closing night. With his fiance, who is in the cast. Jeeeeesssuuusss.
The way I figure it, (and I promise I am obsessing) he decided since the guy he murdered (for a paltry $2000) was an Afghanistan war vet, he would be an immediate suspect for the girls murder because of PTSD, or what have you. So this poor, innocent girl, lured to the apartment of a guy she tutored, died in what to me was the coldest most calculated and horrifying part of the story: The murderer needed a prop. She was set dressing for his own personal Murder Mystery.
I have worked with plenty of weirdos, psychos, pathological liars, and addicts. The theatre can be a dumping ground for the walking wounded, who use it for their personal therapy session. Plenty of people need psychiatric help, not a two year conservatory degree. But what drove this guy to murder? It had to be premeditated. He lured the soldier to a theatre, probably because the prop shop had all the proper tools to dismember and dispose of a body. (I'll never look at load out the same way again.) My god. He needed money, he was about to be evicted. He was arrested at a Hungtington Beach restaurant... something as prosaic as Hooters perhaps? The Mundane Murderer; murder most foul? Even Shakespeare would have found it implausible.

I am sitting here fairly bored, chomping on one-half of a banana. I am on a diet, but my body hasn't seemed to have gotten the news. In spite of working out HARD 5 times a week the scale hasn't budged and neither has the oatmeal that is residing on the formerly flat little plain known as my belly. I feel betrayed by my metabolism. I don't get it... nothing is working... Even the miracle that is Pilates hasn't gotten the job done.
On top of THAT annoyance, is the fact that I am CRAVING to work on something. Adult. Nudity OK. I think I am done with kiddie shows for a while. T's publishing deals are all in the machine, so I have been working on my own scripts and I vacillate between pleasure at their cleverness and sheer unadulterated loathing of my use of the cutesy-poo.
On top of THAT, We NEED to get ourselves into a house somehow. With a nice yard. Otherwise someone is going to murder someone here in the secret annex. (which for the record was 200 sq ft smaller than our little hovel) T, L and I get along splendidly, but in the heat of the summer, with builders drilling and screwing and hammering next door, and one episode of "Thomas" too many.... I'm pretty sure I will be the sacrificial lamb.
We have tons of cash, our only debt is our very small mortgage. We are PARSIMONIOUS to a ridiculous degree. We could go to many states in this country, plop down our suitcase full of $100's and buy a nice house. It's so freaking' tempting. We have looked at Minnesota, Biloxi, Seattle. But NOOOOO.... here we are, in SoCal... It's so BORING! I am done with the traffic, the heat, the traffic, the lack of greenery, the ruination of the land by developers, the bloody TRAFFIC! Why the heck does anybody want to live here anyway? It's not that nice. Look at Newport Coast, ugly look-a-like houses, peopled by Real Housewife types and their spawn. Beaches overrun by tourists,and Frat boys. Bleah. And anyway the last commercial I shot, I shot in my own home on my own computer. So do we REALLY need to live here? Maybe we should move to Arizona... Oh no wait, the cops would assume I was Lilo's nanny, ask for my passport, I would mouth off and get hauled to the pokey...
Sigh.
Seriously universe... gimme something interesting to do!

No matter how often I try to convince myself that, "It's not you, they decided to go a different way..." it feels like a rejection of my soul.
Most auditions I brush off, I really don't care, I've trained myself not to care. But sometimes... you think it's a sure thing, you are told it's a sure thing, you plan around said sure thing... then not a phone call, or an email to let you know, "They've gone a different way." I know I'm not the first actor nor the last to have this happen, but it's shabby.
I almost didn't renew my Equity card this year. But hell, I've been told I suck by very fancy people, so here I am, putting on the big girl panties and shellacking the armor and going out to get the work.
The worst part for me, is I am teaching some really talented kids, and it breaks my heart, but I can't tell them the truth: You are going to be judged first by the way you look, your ethnicity, and THEN by your talent. It never gets any better, or at least I haven't seen it yet. Color blind casting has not happened, tokenism casting has, and that is that.

Boo! Hiss! Aw!

"Join us for an evening of great food and family-friendly entertainment as our teens perform The Paper Bag Bandit, a melodrama. This is a fundraiser night for GO-FAME to support our scholarship program. Please print out a copy of the flyer from our website, www.GO-FAME.org, and give it to your server when you are seated."

These kids absolutely rock, like back at SJCMT. I am so happy to be their director. They have embraced the form and really grown as performers!

Join Us!
Click the image and print.

Step up the steering wheel, CA!

Tami Turner is a long lost, now found, dear friend from my conservatory days. She is a great actress and a cool human being. She is in a wheelchair due to an accident suffered, I believe, as a gymnast when she was very, very young. (The pictures of her recovery in the hospital are heartbreaking and inspiring to see) She needs a van to get around, but now she has lost her only form of transportation and has been frustrated every step of the way by the CA dept of Rehabilitation
In her words:
"a month after stating that I'm not allowed to drive due to being an unsafe driver, and not being able to hold up their decision with any facts, they discovered a sling I put in the van to rest my arm when it fatigued when driving long distances. I used it once, when i drove to LA for a required wheelchair evaluation, that could only be done in LA through DOR. Under DOR regulations, I'm not suppose to modify the van. I modified the van and used the sling once in 2007, so I actually did something wrong. The engineer has not discussed it w/me to know i used it once. Basically I'm doomed! I have to wait for a new wheelchair,a new driving evaluation & new steering. Probably another 6 months or so. I made 1 mistake, once, 3 yrs ago."
It seems draconian to take away her transportation for 6 months. Why not give her a test NOW and have her prove herself? Her record should stand for itself, right?