Bored to tears

Maybe it's the Charlie Parker jazz coming through my speakers, but I am finding it hard to get moving today. Trouble is there's not much to move towards, work-wise in any case. The clock slowly ticks until I can go home, and Facebook, email and tepid research just isn't cutting it today.


I was politely rejected by a production company yesterday, which is all right. But I am daunted by what it's going to take to get my work out there and sell it.

I'm entering a few contest soon and submitting a spec script to Nickelodeon for their Writing Program, but I have to get real and produce more work instead of hinging my pipe-dreams onto these few and far between "clothespins of hopeful happiness". Just saying. I know I need to continue to work and work and work at it.

Mantra: "It's never too late".

-or-

"What do they know?"

I got the sick

I went home after working an hour and a half today. I've had an upset stomach since Friday, and the usual side effects took place. Today was pretty bad as well, and every half hour until about 1:00 pm resulted in an excruciating stomach ache. A flu symptom perhaps, but I made the right call in leaving work- the first time in my nearly 6 months there. At least I'm not vomiting; I'll take a stomach ache any day over puking.

I did get to catch up on a lot of On Demand, though. Some paranormal fun like alien abductions and vampires. Oh, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) was in the mix. A CLASSIC.

Writing is going well too. Everyday so far without fail. Lately, I've been plodding through a first draft of Wendigo! for a potential half-hour puppet theatre piece. It's coming along well enough and shaping into something tangible. Bunraku and shadow puppets will tell the story. It's a simple telling of the legend so far, but I'm having fun putting it together.

Which continues the question for me: "What the hell am I doing with theatre?" Ugh. I hate it. So challenging, but it's that whole purging thing. If I don't do it, it'll bother me that I didn't. Argh. My stigma, of course, is that if I complete the purge, it'll cost me $500.

Better to ache than to purge...?

New stuff

I'm starting a new "temp" gig. My friend John forwarded me an email from a friend who works at MinnesotaCare. The Imaging Unit there is looking for help for about a 9 month period. I applied, had a phone interview and then was offered the job the next day. Very cool, as it means more pay and no more train (with 1 hour commute to and fro). I'll be starting earlier in the day, but getting out at 4:00. Sounds good to me. All I'm doing is running, lately.

Yes, well, I don't know anymore. I think I'm losing my grip on stage acting. I have no perspective on when or what my next stage project will be. I'm not sure that I even care. My options are limited, and I don't really feel like persuing it. I'm more interested in making a few more dollars an hour, and daydreaming about a time when I take the old wooden phone booth in my folks garage, cleaning it out, hauling it to Minnesota and using it for my lucraive voice over career. Day dreams, mind you...

I'm not sure that my agent wants to use my demo that I paid hundreds of dollars for already. The first attempt yielded mediocre results, in her opinion. So I made the adjustments that she suggested, and emailed her the MP3 version last week. I haven't heard anything from her besides an audition notice that I couldn't do. I plan to submit it to other agencies, as I feel that she doesn't care for the voiceover person I worked with to make my demo (at least that's what he says). I fear that I've been caught in between a weird ego struggle, and it makes me very uncomfortable. I want no part of it, and am waiting to hear if this is indeed the case. I like my agency, but I feel very green when it comes to something new like voiceovers. I also feel pretty stupid.

Maybe this whole thing is just not my cup of tea anymore. The trouble is that if I give it up, who and what am I? Have I wasted my last 20 years?

I really need to stop thinking that my salvation lies in pipe-dreams and start thinking about what I really want to do.

As if I didn't have enough personal B.S. to worry about...

a little slide and bump into the cement median due to icy roads will cost me about $750 in tire repair. Such balance when a tax refund is around the corner.

"How to make an Oatwheel!" or "Things I learned while high on fumes!"

What you'll need:

-2 4 x 8 sheets of hardboard
-4 1/2 cans of 3M spray adhesive
-2 gallons of DAP contact cement
-7 canisters of Cub brand rolled oats (they're on sale!)
-one plastic 9 x12 drop cloth

1. Come up with a "great" alternative plan to having oats on stage for your play. The Fringe techs would frown, otherwise.

2. Ding, ding! Oatwheel!

3. Decide that the material will be oats adhered to thin hardboard. Keep forgetting that hardboard, while sturdy, likes to wobble when carried. Alot.

4. Have your friend who has a garage volunteer an afternoon to constuct and adhere oats. Whee!

5. Have same friend redesign (over the phone) the particular way to cut the aforementioned oatwheel so it fits in your sedan. Put it all together and make an 8 foot diameter oatwheel! Huzzah!

6. Arrive at friend's house. Unload oatwheel parts to be cut with a jig saw. Success! An evenly cut circle.

7. Adhere oats with spray. Wear protective mask, even though you have no sense of smell. The fumes; they'll getcha!

8. Hm. You need more 3M spray. The oats really aren't sticking as well as you hoped. Make 2 trips back to Home Depot.

9. Oats still are not adhering the way you envisioned they would. Buy your friend and his wife pizza, because you've overstayed your welcome.

10. Your friend tries a bit of contact cement, which seems to work pretty well. He only has a small can of it, so you decide to load up the Oatwheel into your car and try again next week.

11. Make the mistake of hauling the shedding oatwheel from your parking stall, up the back stairs and onto your apartment porch. Fire up the vacuum!

12. Apply newly bought gallon of contact cement to larger oatwheel sections. Despite the apparent success at adhering oats, you make a fucking mess on the porch. The wife is going to kill you. And it apparently smells really awful (or so you are told). Call wife on the phone while she's out to prematurely apologize for the mess. Somehow, you're forgiven (hint: get emotional from the fumes- or even if it's not the fumes, get emotional!).

13. Let dry. Buy a DROP CLOTH (something that you should have done in the first place (Hm). Wrap plastic sheet around 4 stacked Oatwheel pieces. Maneuver down stairs. Despite ramming the 8 foot long unwieldy pieces repeatedly on the staircase, they survive.

14. Purchase yet one more gallon of contact cement (that makes 2!). Haul Oatwheel sections to nearby park pavilion. Repeat steps 12 and 13, without as much mess. Ask park garbage collector if the Oatwheel smells. At first he says no, then a minute later he says "Oh, I smell it now"!

15. Let dry. Most of Oatwheel is covered, although the yellowish color from the previously dried oats looks like someone peed on it. It'll do. You are so done with it.

16. Bring still smelly Oatwheel to your tech rehearsal. The smell of the adhesive is still evident, but hopefully masked by the graffiti spray project outside Intermedia Arts. Fortunately, the technicians do not detect the smell, and your fellow actors don't really complain.

Congratulations! Promise yourself that you'll never do anything like that ever again!

I, ah, just fuck it...

Menial tasks at work tend to bring out the despair in me.

Then I think of Mexican food and I tend to give that up.

And now for something completely... well, uh...

What I really hate is that I started my day looking like a guy I have nothing in common with. The very gray polo shirt, blue jeans and brown tennis shoes. I've been temping for over a week now and I still don't have my computer login. The place where I've been rehearsing closed early "due to the storms" last night, preventing me from using the meeting room with no warning call. I feel like I am slating myself as "second-class". Boo hoo.

I dunno. I feel like I am either not giving myself a break or I'm not living the life I want.