This is what happy looks like.

I put on my blue Best Buy shirt today and waltzed into an audition for yet another industrial.  The script was mildly funny in a self-deprecating kind of way.  Just the kind of thing that gets the attention of these youngsters now-a-days.

My buddy, Eric, is next.  He’s been waiting since 2:15.  I was just showing up for my 2:35 slot.

hmm.

After reminding my agents that they had promised to have me out of there by 2:45 so I can get to my 3:00 meeting, another buddy of mine, Damon, let me go in ahead of him.  If you work in this market long enough, you start to see the same people at auditions. 

We had been warned that the role they were casting for was a “Best Buy Blueshirt” (aka employee) and that most of the script called for reaction shots, which basically means that you don’t have anything to say but you’re reacting to what someone else is saying.

Ok..?

So when I finally get in there (at 2:45), we do the introductions and the awkward “should I shake your hand?” moment, and we leap right in.

“I’ll just have you put your script down for a sec…” Says one of the women.

The following can only be described as, what we call in the business, MUGGING.

“Can you give me your most pleasant, helpful face?  Right into the camera, please.”

I smile.

“Ok, let’s do that again, but with more energy.”

I smile again.

“Great.  Now pretend that you’re about to walk up to a customer in the store.  Just show me what that looks like.”

“I’m about to walk up to them?”

Silence.

“I mean, before I say something or do you want me to do it the way I would if I were approaching them?”

“Oh, no, you’re approaching them.” She says.

I do the whole, “I’m completely and totally average in every way” bit.  That’s usually the thing that gets me cast in these things.  They seem to like it.

And now… to the script.  This is a page worth of the other person in the scene talking.  I’m supposed to react to that.  There’s a moment when the other character introduces me then keeps talking before I can get a word in…

We do that 3 times.

At this point I already know I’m not getting the part.  Maybe the clients felt bad that they knew it, too, the second I stepped into the room.  No biggie.

One of the agents slips into the room and interrupts the audition to let the clients know that they’re about 45 minutes behind at this point and more actors are showing up.  They’re running out of places for people to sit.  The clients had apparently asked to schedule actors 5 minutes apart, but I had probably been in the audition for almost 10.  It was time for me to go.

They do one more bit from the script and send me packing. 

It always makes my heart hurt that the people who work very closely with actors, often on a regular basis, have absolutely no idea about what it is, exactly, that we do.  We don’t just go into a room and show you what “happy and friendly” looks like.  That’s what models are for.

File this under “Not Like Other Guys”

Switch it up a little.  That’s all I’m askin’.  Seriously, ladies, if you thought guys had really played-out moves, take a quick look in a mirror.  Apparently, you have all read the same book.  Here’s a basic outline:

Step One: Tell him that his hat/shirt/jeans look good on him.  Throw the word “Cute” in there someplace.

Step Two: Touch him on the leg or forearm.  A LOT.

Step Three: If he’s wearing a necklace, use that to break the personal space bubble and the touch barrier and comment about it while moving in for “a closer look.”

The thing is, the lull in the conversation is what kills the vibe.  Whatever happened to just being able to talk to someone?  I’d be much more interested in you if you left a good impression by being a really cool chick who had something substantial to say that piqued my interest.  Your impatience, over-eagerness, and transparent attempts at letting me know you’re available does not serve your cause.  I get that you’re interested.  I get it.  Seriously, I get it.  I’m not an idiot.  AND, you shouldn’t have to work this hard to get a guy to notice you.  Trust me, we notice you.  I know that I could have probably volunteered to drive you home, probably been asked up to your place, probably done something I’d regret, etc. etc.

I’m sure that your “moves” have worked for you at some point, but this is me you’re talking to.  You’re gonna have to bring something new to the party to get this guy to notice, cuz otherwise, you just end up looking like so many girls in so many bars that I’ve already hung out with.  I didn’t show up at the bar to flirt with you anyway.  I’m here to hang with my friends and now you’re just bugging me while I try to figure out a way to gracefully leave the premises.

By the way, my necklace is from an AIDS awareness campaign that Aldo was running for, like, a year.  I can’t believe that you wouldn’t already know that being that Aldo is a shoe store and you ladies are, supposedly, all into shoes n’ shit.  For Realz, they were running it for a year.  Maybe more.

“Hello, My name is Art. I’m a family value.”

While I was enjoying a particularly delicious steak fajita burrito at the Chipotle down the street, I was inspired by the people cruising around Uptown in their spare time.

So without further ado, here’s my idea for a modern art installation to be presented throughout the Uptown/Mpls Lakes area:

Hang bags of douche from all the streetlights, stoplights, and other various signs up and down Hennepin Avenue.  The bags could have the name of a nearby suburb written on them, or absurdly large sunglasses (the kind you can find at any eyewear shop these days) attached to them, or striped button-down shirts draped over them.

Art is all around you.

Sometimes you just gotta shake a kid

The thing I like about working with kids is that it’s hard to take life so seriously when kids are around.  Of course, there are the moments when, as a teacher, you just want to grab a kid and shake them until the change falls out of their pockets, but at the end of the day kids are all about the fun.

The last couple of residencies I had were pretty fun all in all.  The victories I remember are the ones where certain kids are just way too cool to play, but by the end of the week they’re asking their camp counselors if they can do theater twice in one day.

When do we, as adults, lose our sense of play?  When I talk to most of my friends, it’s either about work or how wasted they got over the weekend.  I know as well as the next guy that we all have bills, responsibilities, blah blah blah, but when did we stop having good, clean fun?  A kid has an idea they think is cool, and they get excited and want to tell you about it.  An adult gets an idea they think is cool, and they immediately question its validity.  They ask their friends, co-workers, partners, if they think the idea is cool.  Then they get feedback, people put in their two cents, all the naysayers shoot it down, and by the end of the day they’ve talked themselves out of how cool their idea was in the first place.  When do we lose the confidence to just try something knowing full well that you might go down in a blaze of glory?

I guess what I’m saying is that it takes courage to be a kid.  And after spending a couple weeks at Day Camps, I already feel a little bit braver.  Then I leave the camp for the outside world and I start to feel the insecurity of adulthood creep back into my brain.  I know that that will keep me safe, and I’ll go on to live a regular, responsible life, but what if that’s not good enough?  Sometimes life feels more like spinning around until you get dizzy and fall down than anything else.

Revenge is sweet

Found a couple trash bags full of the X’s old clothes in my parent’s garage today.  Moving my stuff into my new place has brought me to the realization that I was REALLY desperate to get out of my last apartment.

I thought about having a bonfire, but there’s plenty of kindling for that already.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, as they say, and by “cold,” I mean cold, hard cash.  That’s right.  I’m making lemonade by dropping off these bags at this joint called Plato’s Closet, which is one of those “Sell Us Your Trendy Clothes” kinds of joints.  The remainder will be brought to the new Buffalo Exchange in uptown, and if there is anything left, it’s going to Goodwill.

Clean out the cobwebs, man.  Then take the proceeds and put them toward the New York Trip fund or the Woo Some Sweet Lady charitable cause.  Ironic.

If you can’t beat ‘em, sell their clothes and at least get some Chipotle out of the deal.

The Iceberg

The cloud of boredom and bad tips looming over The Gump lately has got me thinking.  Today, after waiting on a particularly crotchety family who seemed to be refusing to make eye contact with me, I started wondering about my station in life.  Obviously, I’m part of an industry where we are choosing to put ourselves in a subservient position.

My roommate, who also works at The Gump, got into a conversation about college with one of his tables.

“I’m gonna put you in charge of the Run Forrest Run sign cuz it’s a pretty big responsibility…”

“Sure.  I have a college degree.” Remarked the business casually dressed guest.

“Well, so do I…” said my roommate, getting ready to move on with his table greet.

“You have a college degree?”

Oh, SNAP, son!

While running food and getting refills, I’ve been thinking about icebergs.  The idea that close to 90% of who I am is beneath the surface.  They probably don’t care that I have 2 bachelors degrees and a relatively successful acting career as long as I get their orders right.  They might have no idea that I believe in chivalry and being a gentleman as long as I make sure to refill their glass with diet instead of regular.  They would be surprised to learn that behind the “You guys have a good rest of your night…” is a guy who has studied 4 different martial arts and knitted a few hats in his day.  They tell me what they want to eat and I bring it to them.  That’s the deal.  So what if I’m more interesting than most of their friends, classmates, family members?  We’ll just go on to live the lives we’ve been headed towards, and we’ll do just fine.

The important thing is that I remember all that stuff and don’t lose myself in the tornado of cheap-ass tippers and being in the weeds.  Come to think of it, this is a challenge that presents itself on a pretty regular basis in my life.  I’ve lost sight of myself on a few occasions in the last couple years and every time I tell myself, “never again.”

I’m not gonna let all the hillbillies on their summer vacations to see the Mall of America get me down.  If you don’t see that there’s more to me than just a guy bringing you food, well, let’s just move on, shall we?

Oh, sweet sweet nectar of the gods

Still haven’t had a drink since the beginning of Lent.  I’m proud of it, and I haven’t been tempted since.  No big deal.  Lemonades and Orange Juice.  I’m down.  Think about the money I’m saving.  Money I’m putting toward getting you something nice.  That’s right.  Just for you baby.

However.

There’s a facet to my personality that existed after I’d had a couple and before I was bowing to the porcelain god.  This guy was ballsy.  This was the guy that could walk up to strangers and start a conversation about grapefruit if he wanted to.  Fearless.  Possibly Shameless.

Is this something worth striving toward or is this just part of the Mr. Hyde I’m keeping at bay by not drowning my sorrows with a bottle of liquid courage?  Obviously, there are some aspects to it that are appealing.  Being confident, fearless, ballsy.  These qualities are all rolled into my personality somewhere, in a place that was easily accessible after a couple shots of Patron.  Now, that place might be harder to find, but I think it might make for an interesting quest.

One down, 9,999 lakes to go

My new place is a few blocks from Lake of the Isles, just south of Downtown Minneapolis. I figure it was about time for me to take advantage of living by the lake in the summertime and go for a jog. You know, clear my head.

I decided to go without my headphones on. You never know when some yuppie trust fund baby from the area might be lurking behind a bush, after all. And I figured, it’s my first trip around the lake, might as well take it all in. There are some beautiful looking houses around the lake, and I began to wonder whether the people who lived in those houses ever played in their lush, green, well-kept front yards. Set up a volleyball net and have a 2 on 2 tournament… have a family touch football game… or a good ol’ fashioned water fight with balloons and squirtguns. I’d venture to guess that they hadn’t.

Seriously, what’s the point of having a big yard and not playing in it? Cuz if you’re not gonna use it, you might as well give it to someone who will. But I suppose that there’s a point in the hoarding of money and belongings where you stop keeping things for yourself and start keeping things to show other people how you roll. The neighbors, and members of the lower classes, stroll by your house by the lake and think to themselves, “Wow, they must be really rich to have such a big beautiful house with huge yard that they never use.”

Most native peoples around the world are known for living in harmony with nature and therefore being much less wasteful than modern folk. There’s the idea of “using every part of the buffalo” that is derived from Native Americans, who found a use for nearly every part of the animal they hunted. Everything had a purpose. You received with graciousness what you had been given and found a way to utilize as much as you could. So what does it mean when a culture values gratuitous wastefulness over harmonious simplicity?  Since when did what we have trump what we do?

Every once in a while, I’m glad that I have just enough and not too much more.  It’s a “be careful what you wish for… you might get it” kinda situation.  So for now, I’m just gonna learn to be content with who I am and where I am without longing for a different life.

That’s how I roll.

Single Filipino Male ISO Single Female willing to break up with him

Charlie Mayo, a 78-year-old basket weaving extraordinaire, was recently asked what the secret to a lasting marriage is, and he replied by saying, “Peace at all costs. And you really have to like yourself and hope the other person likes themselves too.”

After 53 years of marriage, I’d be inclined to say that he’s as close to an expert as I might find.

My parents, who are still married, are somewhat of a rarity because of that fact.  My mom would say that the secret to a lasting marriage is sacrifice.

Based on the ups and downs of my dating life over the last 15 years or so, I’ve learned that what I’m looking for in a relationship is not necessarily peace or sacrifice, but ultimately to be kind.  The natural tendency is to look out for #1 whenever you feel vulnerable, so I get that.  But sometimes the kindest thing to do is to quit when you’re ahead, and save the possibility of rekindling what you had sometime in the future.  Holding on too tight only drags things down a bad road that leads to no possibility of a future together.  You start taking them for granted; you start wanting your cake… you might even end up cheating.

So what I’m saying is that I’m looking for someone who will care about me enough, and care about what we had enough, to break up with me.  Counterintuitive?  Yes.  It would probably suck in the moment, but in the long run, it would suck less than the long, seemingly endless spiral downward.  And I would hope that one day I’d understand that she ended things because she cared about me and didn’t want to drag me through all that drama just to fulfill her own selfish desires.  Isn’t that what it means to love?

Maybe that’s what peace and sacrifice are in the end.

You can take the Filipino out of the Ghetto…

Yo.  I ain’t stupid, aiiight?  All I’m sayin’ is don’t be tryin’ to play me unless you want this boot up yo ass.  I just want you to know that I’m quicker than you think I am.  Me and my gut do just fine.  I listen to it and it don’t never leave me hangin’.  So you gonna have to get by bouf of us.  For reals.

Straight up, I’m like Mutha Fuckin’ Chuck Wollery ‘n’ shit:  I put two ‘n’ two together.  My deductive reasoning is like Sherlock Holmes’, son.  Sherlock Mutha-Fuckin Holmes.  So unless you want the Filipino Jack Bauer up in yo’ grill, you best step back.  STEP. BACK.   Feel me?

Don’t sleep on this level of mental comprehension fo’ I get all ricey on you, brah.

You heard me.