Ron from iFanboy and James from Isotope Friday evening...

I just wanted to write a little bit about my fantastic weekend in San Francisco. I went up to see Oliver before goes and retrieves his family from China and though I expected a good time, I really did have a fantastically good time! Other than finally getting to hang out with Oliver and literally do nothing for most of the day on Saturday (a skill we spent many years honing in high school and college)--something we haven't been able to do in a very long time--we ended up having a typically random evening with James, Kirsten, Ash, Allie and special guest star and friend Ron Richards from the iFanboy comic podcast, who was in town for a variety of very cool reasons. Saturday night was dinner at Tom's then hanging out at Paul's party. Very fun, meeting up with new friends and old (got to see Giamma, Al and Allison, etc...!).

Ollie at his Mac station doing important stuff:

Oliver, Mike Gibson and I joined this motley crew for dinner, then we met up with Tom and his friend Chris at this really fun burlesque show at the DNALounge that James knew about. See? I told you--random. James actually knows of all the very cool places to go, and actually has a rapidly becoming world famous San Francisco Tiki Bar Tour that I actually have yet to embark on.

(later)
Funny, I just returned to this after typing from the other day, and I was apparently in the middle of a sentence that reads, "So, it was cool, I was able to check out..."--and I have no idea what I was referring to. Sigh. Maybe I will remember.

LA doesn't have these.

As is often the case, my return home to San Francisco was both calming and energizing at the same time (oh, I think I remember! dope, I will write about it in a few sentences). The weather was really nice, and it was just nice to roam the streets a bit and hang out without having too much of an agenda. I was bummed to see that they have completely demolished The Coronet movie theatre, which was one of the best houses on the West Coast. So bummed.

The Coronet would play all the BIG movies. It's now just an empty lot.

I did end up (and this is what I was talking about before) checking out a yoga class at Yoga Tree near Castro. The studio looked like it was an old dance school or something--massive room that was kept really warm (again, what is with that?). Great teacher, though, and really fun class. We did this crazy "OM tapestry" where everyone had to say "Om" 12 times so it was just this crazy long "ohhhmmm" that went on for a minute or two. It was totally cool, I had never done something like that--and yes, if you had told me a year ago I would talking about chanting Om a bunch of times with a bunch of folks after a 90 minute yoga session, I would say, "Really? That sounds really trippy but I guess I can see it." Funny how life changes (and doesn't, of course). Still, it's nice to go to a city and find a new class, it's just fun to jump into a class and have an idea of what to do while still learning new poses, etc.

Cafe Abir has been totally redone--it's much nicer than when I lived nearby. The best part...

$4 Hoegaarden's!



Flash mobbers at the Muni bus shelter on lower Haight on Friday night...

A good visit, all in all; I found it difficult to want to get back into my car and drive back, which I guess explains the hour and a half I spent at Starbucks with my parents just talking about everything that's going on, etc. I would have to say that one of the good things about growing older is watching my relationship with my parents change. I relate to them now much more as good friends, and have a much better idea of how they must have been like when they first met, in a way. It is a great gift to have a good relationship with my folks, and I am much happier now that we are on the same coast.

And now it's Wednesday and, whew! I am tired, yo! I blame myself. I was up until 1am playing Halo 3 with Nick. Yes, I caved in like everyone else, and I am happy to report that it was worth it...great game, a lot of fun. I felt like I was in high school again. Or college. Or even just a few years ago when Halo 2 came out. Or perhaps earlier this year when I played Gears with Tom until late at night.

Acting wise, it has been busy with some auditions and a callback, but nothing to write home about yet. I've been dutifully recording the pilots of a few shows in case I get a chance to audition for 'em but haven't seen anything yet. Whit's gone for the Dawn launch (tomorrow morning); I guess she got to see the Space Shuttle and traverse around the catwalks in the hangar...so cool. It's not good to be jealous of your spouse, but I think it is warranted in this case.

All right, time to post this. I have a funny little widget that shows who is looking at the site from where, but I doubt more than one person is looking at this at any given time. Who knows? More soon...

Tags: san francisco, comics, isotope

It's been a bit of time since I have updated this and I apologize for the delay. As usual, the delay is a mix of a lot going on and most of what was going on not all that interesting. There have been a few bewildering "almost-got" callbacks and auditions, which I hate writing about, so I will resist, but every so often...grr.

It's one of those weeks where I'm just tired. It's quite possible that I have Whit's cold, which was mostly more "tired" than "sick and ____". No matter.

Last night, I went to my first big time musical in quite a long while. We saw Wicked last night at the Pantages and it was pretty terrific, all in all. As a show, it was a pretty typical modern musical, with several different song types with nice, if not necessarily spectacular, dancing. The story was great, really clever and I can see why the show is such a big hit. The leads had played (and in one case, originated) the roles on Broadway and in the tour versions, so there was an easy strength to their performances. Eden Espinosa, in particular, had an incredible vocal presence and brought the house down three or four times. The other lead, Megan Hilty, had excellent comic chops and her voice was so fluid and effortless that it was easy to forget she was actually singing and not lip syncing, if that makes any sense at all.

It has been awhile, I admit sadly, since I have seen a "big" show. Sure, I have seen a few plays here and there (including a terrific all male Shakespeare presentation of Twelfth Night from the Old Globe at UCLA), but for some reason, I have not forced myself to get into any of the shows playing at The Geffen or the other major Los Angeles theaters. There are several reasons for this that I will delve into below, but I guess what I am really writing about is this series of edgy realizations regarding my relationship with acting on stage (made edgier by the fact that my last show, a mildly chaotic Lear with a traveling group in New York, was not one of my better performances).

First off, I prefer and relish the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience. That's my baseline talent--live performance. Everything I do comes from that enjoyment, whether it's doing a speech for a wedding, presenting ideas in a work meeting or just talking with friends at a party. Once a week in acting class I get to perform in front of a small audience, so I do have an outlet, but obviously it's different than being in a "real" play. If I love it so much, if I am supposedly designed for this kind of thing, one might ask, why don't I go out on more auditions? Well, as I have discussed many times before, I am unable or reluctant to spend the amount of time it takes to rehearse day in and day out for 8-12 performances stretched out over a month or so, especially if I am not getting paid for the work. So, that means I have to audition for stuff that's more professional, which means I have to have my days free for rehearsal. Which means I can't have a normal full time job, which means I could not support myself, really. Oh, I am sure I could find some paid tours that would help with expenses, but then I would be away from LA, making it harder to get opportunities in film and television, which would make it easier to make acting my full time job, complete with time off, during which I could be rehearsing plays during the day.

A lot of chickens and lot of eggs. The key, for me, is to make a living acting in film and TV so I can audition for stage work when I have time off. That's my mantra, it's what I tell everyone my strategy is. But that strategy seems very...far away when sitting in an audience watching people my age and younger doing it, right in front of me, having a great old time. Which is fine, that life...that life is particularly focused and exclusive to other experiences. When you are doing a show of that scale, a Broadway show, it is your life, your days are designed in such a way that you are at peak energy from 8-11pm. You never see anyone. You are never around. You live for the show. I've done that, not at that scale, but I have dealt with that time commitment before, and it was great, but I missed a lot. And while that's fine for awhile, eventually it just stops making sense or became unsustainable.

Lots of excuses, okay. One makes one's choices and moves forward, and I don't regret the moves I have made for my career at all, but watching that cast last night engage the audience got me to reflecting a lot on what I enjoy about this whole effort. The other day I bumped into a friend who was at the LiveEarth concert in London. He said my PSA for LiveEarth played a few times in the stadium, indeed, it played several times in all the stadiums and venues where LiveEarth happened. In London alone, there were something like 53,000 people at the show. So, even in half of the people were paying attention and got a chuckle out of that PSA, that's 25,000 people entertained--wham! More people in 22 seconds than I have been able to entertain in my shows so far. My goal, it would seem, to entertain as many people as I can, would seem to be active and healthy and working. But I wasn't there, you know? My work was, one of the 22 second takes that I did in Pacific Palisades a few months ago, that was there and succeeded in what it was supposed to do, but I wasn't there, and I think that that distinction was really driven home last night, that I enjoy actively entertaining people and being able to feel it happening. Which, what does that say about me? That I like the attention? No, that's not it, that really isn't it -- I have written before how one of my fondest acting memories was when I was doing a summer stock theater in Pullman, Washington, and just be able to leave and be anonymous after the show was over, knowing that I had helped make an entertaining evening for the people who came to the show. It's not about me, it's about sharing that moment with the audience, that's what I love.

Which is not possible, most of the time, when working in film and television! Oh, the irony! That the only way to make a living acting would seem to remove the primary element of enjoyment I getout of it! It's kind of like the roses that are bred with no thorns--they have no scent.

Of course, it's not all that dire. I love working with a director and I loved hearing the crew's laughter after a scene is done. I love that, it's totally gratifying and it's the essence of what I am talking about, but it's not the same. But it will have to do for the time being.

So, I left Wicked with a mixed sense of inspiration and frustration, mildly queasy as I wondered quietly to myself about the validity of where I was in my career and how things were going. They are going more slowly than I like to admit, but they are moving forward and I am confident, I mean, I know that this is how I am gonna get things done. I've not done any of this the "typical" way, so I don't expect things to happen in a typical time line. The past week has been tough--I left two auditions thinking that I had nailed the part, that I was going to definitely not only get called back but actually book the part and I didn't even get called back! Humbling, to be sure....nothing is certain, that, and the passage of time, those are the only consistencies in this life.

Tomorrow I drive to San Francisco to spend time with Oliver and other friends and family before he goes off to China. It should be a good, head-clearing visit. I'll take pics and write.

Tags: acting, stage

Tags: iphone, acting, tech

Zak and I playing records a while ago, probably 1999 or something.
I wasn't working out back then, I guess.

A varied and harried day today. Work is stacking up and it's all manageable, there are just a lot of things happening and it's tempting to just sit back and let other people drive some of these efforts, but I am not that tempted and, anyway, I have an opinion about it and I want to get in the mix. It's good to be busy, but just once, it would be nice to be busy building a set or painting a very large painting or building a house or something more physical. My eyes are red not because of allergies or anything fun, I am just staring at screens really intensely right now. Stupid.

I got gently freaked out when I read that basically when you turn 30, it's half time, life is basically half over. At 30, your major organs start to decline, etc--it's all here. And, like, okay, I know--what's the point of worrying about growing older? Time, remember, is the absolute variable, uncontrollable and persistent, literally nothing one can do about it. We can improve the moment, sure, but we can't slow the sucker down. Now, I am not really freaking out, but I do admit, I really dislike the idea of growing older and pretty much have been that way all my life. I want to say it's related to not wanting to miss out on things, but...it's more about making sure I do what I want to do, to get what I want out of life. It does remind me of what Ravi said about life being a bottomless pit, where you keep adding experience after experience but are never satisfied, and kind of like what Steph was mentioning, how there is never a plateau in life, where you get to a certain place and it's all clear and easy from that point on. So life is an uphill battle as you slowly slide downhill.

Now, I do feel an artificial stress about this because of the acting career, I will readily admit. I am constantly reminded, several times a day, of someone younger getting some movie or booking some role, etc. Yesterday while I was waiting around for a callback, I listened to the other guys, all clearly older than me (3-5 years), discussing the parts they didn't get, the house they couldn't afford, the short films they were working on, etc, etc, and I gotta admit, it's distressing, you know? This one guy was talking about how it was getting so slow that he was looking for a regular job, that kind of thing. I mean, I have a regular job that I actually like, and I am always talking about how grateful I am to have a life like this, but it really did drive it home. Acting is not a good fit for people who have to responsible to other people. So rough. And it's 10 times harder for women, absolutely, so it's selfish of me to even worry about it, to be honest. My thoughts return to my upcoming visit to Santa Clara, where I have to talk to the students about the business of acting. I mean, I remember when older folks would warn me about how hard it was, how impossible it was to make a living, etc, and thinking, "Yeah, maybe it's hard for you, but [for some reason] I'll do okay." Well, you know what? I am doing okay--it's just been a very different path to this "okay" than I imagined.

Such is life, right? You have expectations of the future, expectations that are not based on any kind of real fact or experience, and then you get let down when things don't go according to this made up plan? You gotta let it go..Stumbling Upon Happiness talks about this in detail, actually, I need to finish it.

The one thing I know I will talk while I am there is the importance of actually taking care of your physical person. Not only because of the obvious benefits of a healthier heart and looking fit and healthy and basically better on camera/on stage, but because taking care of yourself is actually something you can control and be proactive about in the acting business. I may not be able to control whether or not I am going to book any of the last three spots I just got called back for, but I sure as hell know I can make spinning tonight so I don't get all chubby and tired looking for future auditions. The illusion of control, I think, is something that artists of all kinds need. Maybe not full control of everything, but something related to their craft. Painters can control their brushes and pencils so their tools will not fail them when inspiration strikes. Writers can control where and when they write. Musicians needs to make sure their instruments are in tune and ready to go. We can control aspects of our lives so that when opportunity strikes, we are ready. For actors and dancers and singers, we rely, heavily on our mind, our breath and our physicality. So, when I look at that picture above, I can at least appreciate the fact that even though I was younger and my internal organs were supposedly more efficient or whatever, I know for a fact that I am in the best physical and mental shape of my life, because I work out 4-5 times and do yoga 3 hours a week. And, happily, I don't do it because I have to, but because I want to--I actually really enjoy it, it makes me happy and fulfills very important aspects of my life...and that's the best way to approach any task, whether it's writing an article, singing a song, sketching a face, or teaching a class.

Speaking of which, it's time to get back to that work.

Tags: acting, life

I had a whole entry about the new iPods, but then a bunch of stuff started happening, including the revelation that the 4GB iPhones were being discontinued and going for $299 while they still were in stock, which kind of changed everything, as the screenshot above shows. Yes, after fighting the good fight, I capitulated and got an iPhone. You've probably already read all the good stuff and bad stuff about the device, so I am not going to go into it too much right here, but suffice to say, I have used it much more for web browsing, emailing and messaging than I have actually using it as a phone! The mantra seems to be true--this is more than a phone, it's basically a very nice mobile communications device.

I have a lot of rationalizations (including that damn broken screen on my old, lame, slow Cingular 3125 phone) but in the end, it's become not why I ended up getting the phone, it's about what I can do now that I have it in my now often less greasy mitts. Basically, it's really, really nice too have a solid way of emailing and getting on the web while I am on the road dealing with auditions. Today, for instance--I was at another last minute audition and I had forgotten the address of my last minute call back (everything has been "same day" for the past week, which has been really crazy) that was happening an hour later. So, i was able to email my agent and she was able to email it to me right back and, if I needed to, I could then map out the address and get the directions all on the same screen. That's just sick, you know? And yes, I know, I could this with my old phone but, really? I couldn't.

(3 days later)

I have been starting and stopping this all week, apologies for that. Yes, the iPhone is rad, no, I don't think that everyone needs one, but I can basically say that everything you read is basically true: it's a pretty amazing device, having Internet access wherever you want is fantastic, having a pretty solid camera is great, being able to watch videos, listen to music, show people photos, check your email, deal with calendars, etc, etc--it all works great. Whit used it a lot this past weekend and commented how great the user interface and loved being able to give me driving directions based on actual maps. Yes, there are problems that just seem weird to me:

- how do you add an attachment to an email? There's gotta be a way, but the only attachment process that I have seen is the "take a picture, send it" process. It works, but if you wanna add more than one photo, etc...I'm lost.

- Apple makes a big deal about having a full featured mail program but it's odd there are no font options? Not that you need to italicize everything, but, I mean, what's with that?

- So, there's really no way to send a single text messages to multiple people? really?

- How about switching the "from" account when sending an email? How do you do that?

- The camera desperately needs to have a zoom feature (or at least a cropping feature available in some kind of edit mode) and it's really lame it can't take video (yes, I realize we are talking about a phone, but honestly, phone stopped being phones awhile ago. they all have cameras, and so far, all of the camera phones I have used have had both zoom and video capabilities). There also needs to be some kind of white balance or something--these pictures can get dark when it's not all that dark outside.

Luckily, most of this seems addressable by software updates...so, let's update and fix this stuff, apple.

But hey, I'm happy. I'm really enjoying taking pictures throughout the day, I must admit, like this one I took after going to the Mexico City restaurant on Sunday. Hmm...Sunday margarita...

Here's a shot of the lovely Silverlake area in LA; we were looking at some houses (for fun) and this view was pretty terrific.
The place was trapped in 1979 (complete with glittery white ceilings) but the views were nice.

So what else? I had some good auditions last week (which have resulted in some good callbacks) but no bites, which bites. I guess there is still some time for things to happen but whatever; I actually went in for a pretty funny fast food spot, but I did not get a chance to do the character I had originally done because they had this other guy who was just doing it so deadpan that I am pretty sure he got the part immediately and they were just looking for someone else to play opposite him. I'm okay at deadpan, but, really, I think deadpan stuff only goes so far, humorwise. I think--no, I know, that being earnest in an unusual/odd situation is actually more honestly funny. Anyone can be weird/unnatrual in a weird/unnatrual situation; the key is being normal in that situation and not judging it or commenting on the moment by doing something artificial. Ah, well...I may not get cast, but at least I am going down in dreamy opinionated flames.

Had a really good chat with Ravi about Australia, meditation and parental motivations/agendas which warrant their own post, but these ruminations will have to come later when I am in a more thoughtful frame of mind. Suffice to say, it was more than excellent to talk to him and I am looking forward to more musings later. Right now, I am just trying to tie up some loose work threads before I bust out of here for a callback this evening...where, this time, I am getting called back because of my earnestness.

Tags: apple, tech, iphone