Tag Archives: House

Acting Agency Opportunity

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I am staring at a coaster right now.  This living room is in a house which serves as the head office of an agency that represents actors and actresses.  The painted picture on the coaster is a scene in Paris where the bridge crosses the Seine.  Everything is stone and lights, and the people are crowded amongst the buildings and the art that artists have put up for sale.  It is evening and dusk, a pinkish rouge color is in the sky, and only a few leaves straggle on the tall trees, thin and yet like a Japanese Jade tree.  I, of course, do not have a drink, and am waiting in this room in this house, because a friend of a friend of a friend was asked if she knew anyone who wanted a chance to act.  And, so, through the grape vine, this search for acting stars has got to me.

I was told by this friend of a friend, of a friend, that I needed to have professional headshots done–but I also had the choice to just provide all the photos in a contact sheet.  Agents and agencies are familiar with these methods.  So, I am in this room.

The house is quiet, and there is a portress who answers the door when the doorbell rings.  She shows us to this living room, just off the hall foyer to the left.  So, within minutes of my arrival, an older man is also shown in.  He is large, and quite muscular.  When he sits, he hunches, massively, on the couch, his legs and knees up, easily supporting his elbows and shoulders.

We greet each other quietly, and smile in a pleasant manner.  Then, we continue to sit in silence, waiting in the silence of the house.

After about five minutes, a middle-aged woman, thin and somewhat of a dried-out-hair blonde comes into the room.  She introduces herself, shaking hands with each of us.  Then she starts to interview us.  It is not like other job interviews, the questions are sometimes surprising.  I answer as best as I can.  And even though the interview is a dual interview, involving both me and the man, soon, the focus is only on me, and I produce the contact sheet.  The woman takes out an eye-viewer, so, looking through it, the miniaturized contact sheet pictures look larger and the details can be seen.  The funny thing is that, after she looks at the pictures, she asks me to choose the one I like best.  Unfortunately, because I did not look in detail at the pictures beforehand, I look through the eye-viewer for the first time and am overwhelmed by all the choices.  They all look similar to me, and I think, that is why she asks me to choose.

At this point, it is obvious, I am not presenting myself in a very acceptable way.  I don’t think I’ve  proven myself to be an actress.  I am more nervous than anything else, and would not know how to show someone I know how to act, let alone, have a discussion on the merits of acting.  As it dawns on me that nothing much will come from this interview, the result begins to make me slow down and be more calm.  I am already beginning to feel let down, and sad, and like I don’t have any talent.  I end up leaving the house without nervousness, but also, without hope and feeling like the world has rejected me.

By the time I am able to get back on to transit, and find my way home, I have vowed never to listen to the rumors and the too-good-to-be-true opportunities that apparently lurk everywhere, and that sometimes come right at you and seem to be tailored for you, in a specific manner of asking you directly.

I have learned, that opportunities are everywhere, but you have to be prepared to accept them in order to have them become the opportunity of a lifetime, that will change your life for having been prepared to go and take it.

So, now, the most valuable item that I have from that encounter, is a very clear memory of the painting on the coaster.  Paris is very clear to me, and the colors of evening and dusk make the memory beautiful, and I often strive, to recreate the feeling on that coaster.  I am forever in this space, of anticipation, and desire, and preparedness.  That moment of suspension, while waiting, for a big moment.

Popcorn, Chocolate, and Candy

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Popcorn, chocolate, and candy.  Hansel and Gretel were attracted to a house in the forest made of all these treats, and made it inside where they found a witch who pounced on them and locked them in cages with the intention of turning them into slaves, and then, when she got bored of them, she would make them into sweets.

This story is about temptation and the result of subcumbing  to it.  The characters are children, who perhaps, if they existed in the real world, would not necessarily know what temptation is.  They are attracted to things that are sweet, and think that everything that looks like a candy color or the colors of the playset at the playground, are the most fun and the best colors in the world.  They would not know that there are “fifty shades of grey.”  Or, coming from an artist’s point of view, that there are as many ways to create grey as there are tubes of colors being sold at the store.

So, are the children themselves to blame, when they go towards the things that make them happy?  Would they be able to see the candy house in the forest and know that, inside, lurks evil of the type that changes lives forever?  Children only see as much as is shown to them.  And I do not doubt the reality of Hansel and Gretel’s story.  Candy is sweet, nice, and it seems, always available.  These are not character traits of something that can kill you.

It is the witch, who only wants to keep building her house, that is the criminal.  She has spent time creating the situation.  She has lured children, her prime victim, to a desolate place in the forest.  She enslaves them, possibly making them do the house work (in the house she is building), and then when they are exhausted, she makes them into sweets to hang on the walls of the house, to decorate it, and to declare achievements and claim.

The problem is that there is a prey and there is a hunter.  Both these parties have very little possibility to live out their lives, unless they work on it.  The hunter, like the witch, wants the things he or she has seen in dreams and in places where he or she cannot go.  So, living in the forest, the easiest thing is to create that surprise in the forest–a place of rest, interest, and seemingly endless happiness.

What are these things?  Are they items of greed?  Or are they birthstones, yet to be made into something that life can appreciate?  Why have the hunt inside a forest?  There is no reason for any of it….  Do the witch, or the children, deserve to live the lives they live?

Are these reasons enough?  Or do we have to keep trying until we get the issue, the reasons, and the methods right?  How much time, how much money, and what will be required to justify all of this?  Who on earth would want to risk their lives, or even risk dying, just to achieve a questionable future, as there is no absolute promise of a wonderful future.

The World of Paul Frank and Hamsters

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My mom likes my Paul Frank PJ’s.

My hamster is awake all night.  It bit me at the pet store before I decided to buy it–then I bought it.  Even though the teeth are sharp, the size of the tooth cause more pain than a needle at the doctor’s office.  The blood quickly beaded and I had to hold the bit incision, covering myself in blood.

My mom claims there were no cute things when she was a child, and she always say how lucky we are that there is so much softness and fun, as if childhood never ends.

Paul Frank is a monkey–mostly he is all head and mouth.  He is always laughing, sometimes eyes closed, sometimes eyes open.  His image is printed always or embroidered on something soft–Pajamas, backpacks, sweatshirts.  I always see Paul Frank on the adults who never grow up.

I am fully, tragically, in love with Paul Frank–I have no picture for you, but if you see him, by yourself–you’ll know it is him.  Mostly, I think  I laugh at the people who wear Paul Frank.  It is daring–and if you are a grandmother, then I think only your grandkids take you seriously.

Now, in our house, I am surrounded by monkeys and hamsters.  Even if I didn’t want Nibbles and Paul Frank here, my kids would’ve found some way to bring it all into the house.  I sometimes think my kids and their friends hanging out at our house, love the things they trade and share more than their parents.  They clean up after themselves very well when it is they are having a good day trading secrets and just looking cool in each other’s eyes.

I worry about situations like these.  I lose track what it is they are doing, and what it is that they own.  They have some money to spend now, and if my son doesn’t come and show me his convenience store purchases, I worry.  I still dress him….  He will be in the “perfect” store, and we will try on sizes until we get it right.

Surprisingly, I overheard my daughter talking with her friends in the backyard.  I just happened to walk by the open back door and heard her say that she thought I was cool.  It was one of the most gratifying days of my life.  She is still young, but she is very well-versed in things cool.  I will always think that she is cool.

Even when I begin to imagine all the things that could be made in my children’s lives, filling it all with fun, learning, and life, I sometimes scare myself.  What if they contract an incurable disease?  What if an accident were to happen, and they end up paralyzed for life?  They look so perfect now…  the things that they grow through are nothing like the disasters I have foreseen in others….  I’d be overjoyed if they could make it to adulthood without the most frightening failures of life happening to them.

So, now, back to the issues of monkeys and hamsters.  We share everything.  Everything in the house belongs to “our family.”  We try not to be strict and draconian.  They will grow into the stage where they will try to hide things….  and I do not encourage that age.  I want them to feel free enough to bring up those things that kids will sometimes hide.  So, yes, “our pet hamster,” named “Nibbles” in a communal naming spree, is shared.  We all take care of Nibbles, which allows me, my daughter, and their father into my son’s room to take care of Nibbles.  We ask permission, to “take Nibbles for a walk” and we will take turns cleaning the cage and refilling the food.

I get to look cool on my weekends with the kids.  My t-shirt with Paul Frank’s happy face recognizable instantly by my children, my mother, and, of course, my husband, who thinks it is just juvenile of me to keep Paul Frank around the house.

Right now, my daughter just finished planning a birthday party for Nibbles.  She drew a picture of it and showed it to me. It immediately went up on the fridge.  She has asked me, since then, when a good day is to have the party?  I don’t really know, but I do keep telling her, tomorrow.  She thinks I delay too long, and I think that the days pass by so quickly, that I’m afraid that I will forget them.

I don’t think there will ever be a day when we will take Paul Frank, or, hamsters, out of the house.  They have come in, and I think that they are staying for life.  For now, if the Dollar Store is not selling hamster-sized tea cups and balloons, we will have to keep delaying the birthday party.