Overheard Conversations

This one comes from my friend the Reverend. He was working as an extra on a show and met this young blonde girl from Southern California. Here are their conversations.

Rev: Hi, I’m (Reverend)

Girl: Wow, I’ve never met a (Reverend) before

Rev: There aren’t that many of us, our union is pretty small.

Girl: Ha, ha, ha. Wait, what’s a union?

Later on they were in line for lunch and this conversation took place.

Girl: What’s this?

Rev: Asian noodles. Japanese actually.

Girl: How can they be both?

Rev: Japan is a part of Asia.

Girl: What is China?

Rev: Asia.

Girl: What is Korea?

Rev: Asia. It is all the continent.

Girl: No, Korea is something else.

Then a guy who was listening in through his two cents in.

Guy: It’s Eur-Asian.

Girl: I’m not Asian.

Guy: No. EUR-Asian.

Girl: I’M. NOT. ASIAN.

Rev: Check please!

Girl: Ha, ha, ha. Wait, what check?

I know, I know.....

I have not written in a long time, but in my defense I have been working a lot lately doing catering and my hours are screwy. Most of the time when I get home I just want to watch a movie and then go to bed. But Rockstar is always on me to blog so here is quick rundown of what went on the last couple of weeks. It is going to be long.

I have been working for the catering company that Rockstar got me a job with. Most of the time I am in the field, but since I have an office background, they asked me to work a couple of days a week in the office for them during the next couple of months. I really don't have much responsibility except to call people and let them know they have work. Everyone is pretty nice and it is good because I can mess around with my schedule and get one that fits with my improv.

I worked a charity event for the Los Angeles Lakers. Rockstar was there along with our friend Mr. Smith. It was in Santa Monica and it was really, really nice. They had a hangar decked out with a casino, DJ, food, bars and pics with members of the crappy L.A. Lakers. Celebrities seen include, Mimi Rogers, Jimmy Kimmel, Jeremy Piven, Farah Fawcett, Elisha Cuthbert and a guy from Star Trek Enterprise. I pretty much just bussed tables in a certain area but I got to walk around and rub elbows with the rich and famous. One note, the ladies of L.A. LOVE their breasts. They were on full display that night. Even older ladies had shirts that barely covered their "enhanced" mammary glands. And I saw a lot of really hot woman with older, ugly men. I will give you two guesses why they were with them, but you will only need one. I guess I better hurry up and get rich so I can get one of those girls and then dump them. Just kidding. Am I?

I also worked at the press premiere for "House of Wax". The celebrities were Paris Hilton, Jared Padlecki, Chad Michael Murray and Elisha Cuthbert. They all seemed pretty cool, but Paris was exactly what I thought she would be. She showed up almost an hour late, looking like she just rolled out of bed. Before she would come to her dressing room, she had her entourage come in and make sure everything was ready. They had to move chairs, mirrors and then whole dressing room before she came in. I was a "talent attendant". Basically I was there in case anyone needed anything. It sucked! I just stood around for 3 hours doing nothing because all of the stars had "people" there that did stuff for them. Finally Rockstar came to work and we got to pal around for a little while until lunch. When lunch time arrived, the shit really hit the fan. The studio people had put the lunch order in over an hour before but it was not ready. So the PR people for the stars were all over the place "Where is the salad, where is the chicken sandwich, THESE PEOPLE NEED THEIR FOOD". They were holding up the line to order food and everyone behind them began to get pissed. There were some crew guys that were laughing about it and now I know why the crew people don't really like actors. I was given a salad and told that it was from the order for Chad Michael Murray. I ran to the dressing room and was met by one of his people.

"What is that" she asked.
"It is a salad for Chad" I answered.
"What kind is it"
"I don't know, they just told me to bring it to him"
"Well, I guess we will have to open it up then huh?" (real snotty)

She opened it up and said "This is Chad's salad" and then stormed off into the dressing room. I silently gave her the finger, but she was cute so I will probably date her when I am rich and famous and then dump her right after we sleep together and the only thing I will tell her is "That is for Chad's salad". She won't get it, but deep down inside I think she will understand.

During this ordeal, Paris had managed to lock her dressing room and needed someone to open it. Her PR person came to my boss, who was waiting for food with us, and demanded that she get someone to open it. My boss, very nice woman, told her that they had to call security because they are the only ones that have keys to the dressing rooms. The mean PR person, replied

"The only reason I am asking like this is because I asked 20 minutes ago and nothing has happened" then she stormed away on her cell phone.

We all looked at each other and I said "that's a fucking lie" and my boss said "I can't believe that she just lied to us". The reason being was that not 5 minutes ago we had been running food in there and Paris's dressing room was open for business. Stupid people.

I left after that but it made me realize what NOT to be like when I get some sort of fame or power.

This past weekend I worked a private party in Beverly Hills. It was for a Jewish family and they were having a Seder Saturday and Sunday night to celebrate Passover. It was really interesting to me because I had never experienced something that intimate from a religion other than my own. Everyone was really nice to me and the family seemed really close. It made me miss my own family a lot. I basically washed dishes and did some light serving and dish clearing. The 3 kids really seemed to like me because they were always coming into the kitchen to say hi, and ask how I was doing. I left Sunday night feeling good and having an extra $30 bucks in my pocket as a tip. Very nice people.

This week my plan is to get an agent, or at least get stuff together to send to one. One of the people that works in the office with me used to work with casting people and he offered to look at my stuff and give me some advice. I am going to take full advantage of it. He is really nice and I will probably sleep with him and then dump him and just say "That is for Chad's salad".

Whatever works.

P.S. My apologies to any celebrity whose name I misspelled. I just don't care enough to check.

Lean Mean Machine

A week and a half ago I finally got fed up with my computer. I don’t know what I did to it, or what kind of virus I got, but it was really making me frustrated. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a real pain in the ass. So after consulting with some of my computer friends, I decided to take it to Best Buy and have their “Geek Squad” take a look at it. It cost a lot more than I would have wanted but they returned it to me in tiptop shape. I had my hard drive erased and re-formatted. I was lucky enough to have my friend Gill set up my computer for me before I left Chicago. He went above and beyond the call of duty setting it up. He installed Windows 2000, Final Draft 6, iTunes with a ton of songs on it, and Office 2000. He did all of this in the wee hours of the night right before I left. He was also kind enough to back everything up on disc so when I got it back I could install everything myself and save me some money. So hats off to you Gill! I owe you big time!

I am lucky to have a lot of good friends in my life and they have saved me time and money over the years. I hope that I have been a good friend to them when they needed it.

Since I haven’t written in a while I will re-cap the last week and a half to bring everyone up to date.

Last week was a tough week of catering. I received a call from my company on Monday afternoon that they had some shifts for me. I was really desperate for work so I took them. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all working in Palm Desert, which is about 2 hours East of where I live in Los Angeles. They were paying $50 for travel time so that was the good part. The bad part was that Tuesday and Wednesday started at 4:30 in the morning, which meant that I had to leave my apartment at 2 am just to be safe.

Since I didn’t get the call until Monday afternoon and I had class Monday night, I knew I was not going to get any sleep. When I got back from taking my computer to get fixed, I took about a two-hour nap. I got up, went to class and then came home and relaxed for a couple of hours. I didn’t go to sleep because I knew that I wouldn’t wake up on time, and I didn’t want to mess this job up. My friend Rockstar put a good word in with the company, he works for them too, and it would reflect badly on him if I didn’t show up. I left my apartment at 2am and after getting a cup of coffee at a doughnut shop, I hit the open road.

I love driving at night. No one is around and you can just drive and think. I listened to the Garden State soundtrack, which is fantastic. My advice for anyone that is driving at night for a long distance, listen to this soundtrack, it really made the trip a good one. I got to the hotel with about 20 minutes to spare. However, the parking directions that my company gave me were completely wrong, so I drove around looking for this employee parking lot that does not exist. I finally had to go to the front desk and ask them where to park. They told me just to park in the garage attached to the hotel. I did and made it to work just in time. The job was really easy. There was a convention of lawyers that were there going to conferences and talking to businesses that support different companies, basically really boring stuff to me. My job was to prepare a breakfast and lunch buffet and then clean up dishes when people were done eating. The breakfast buffet was easy because not many people showed up, but lunchtime was crazy. They asked me to stay a couple of extra hours and I agreed to it. I drove home exhausted. I became delirious on the road the last 30 minutes and I kept myself awake by singing really loudly to Guns n’ Roses and slapping my face. I probably looked really stupid to the other drivers. I got home at 5pm and went directly to bed.

I woke up around midnight, talked with Rockstar for a little while, made some food, got ready and left again at 2 am. The next day went a lot smoother because I knew what I was doing. There was also this extremely cute girl working at one of the booths at the convention. I really wish I was one of those guys who had no problem walking up to girls and talking to them, but I am not. So I just admired her from afar. I got home from work at 3 and took a 2-hour nap. I went to improv class, came home and fell into a deep sleep. Thursday I didn’t have to work until 4pm, and I was lucky because some other people were driving from L.A. and wanted to car pool. So I met them and slept all of the way to the hotel. They were all really nice people and I was glad that I had some friends to work with.

Thursday we were serving appetizers at a function by the pool for Met Life Insurance Company. Let me tell you, if you think lawyers were a bunch of boring people, you should have seen these insurance folk. Real pieces of work. We served people by the pool for an hour and then we went inside to get ready for dinner. I was in charge of cleaning up two tables in a section. Not that much work. For the most part people were very nice to me and didn’t give me any attitude about walking around and clearing dishes. But there was this one guy who had the last two bites of a piece of pie sitting on his plate for a long time. I waited and waited until I was sure that he was not going to eat any more. He was listening to another man at the table talk when I approached him.

“Excuse me, are you finished with that?” I inquired.

No response for him.

“Can I take that from you, sir?”

He didn’t say anything to me again. So I reached over to take his plate. He immediately karate chopped my arm and looked nervously around as if someone was trying to rob him, but he never looked at me. Then he continued to listen to the man speak from across the table. So I backed off. It took this guy another half an hour to finish the last two bites of pie. But I still made sure I waited until he got up and left before I took his plate.

We finished close to midnight and drove home. I took Friday off because I need to get my body back on track after having all of those crazy work hours.

This weekend I played Halo with the boys on Friday night and had two improv shows Saturday night and one Sunday night. I will have another entry about improv later as well as some other goodies.

Winning, Receiving and Earning Money

I’ve never really understood the obsession that some people have with Texas Hold’em Poker. I know people in Chicago that play it all of the time and make or lose some serious money. I don’t gamble that much and when I do, I don’t lose more than I can afford too. I guess it is because I never have had very much money and it seems stupid to me to risk losing it gambling. That being said, my friend T invited me over to his house Thursday night to play cards with some friends of his. We all put in $10 and would play until there was a winner. I had an appointment Friday morning to have my taxes done, so I didn’t want to stay out all night. But by the time it was around 11pm, I was the one with the most chips, and so I could not leave. I didn’t really have a strategy, I was just trying to make people bet a lot when I had a good hand and I would fold pretty quickly when I didn’t have a good one. Not to advanced, but it worked for me. I ended up walking away at 1:45 in the morning with $30 extra dollars in my pocket. I still don’t have to desire to gamble even though I won. But I had a good time, met some new people and made enough to treat myself to pizza the next night.

Friday morning I went to get my taxes done. This was the first time that I was going to have someone else prepare them for me. I had a TON of deductions from acting, moving and other industry related things. Some of the stuff that I could deduct as an actor were haircuts, classes, union dues, mileage, office and exercise equipment. I was even able to deduct my Netflix subscription because it goes towards my preparation as an actor. The last six months in Chicago I worked as a 1099 employee at an office. No taxes were taken out of my paycheck and I had to file quarterly estimated taxes. I didn’t send in very much because I needed the money for the move. So when I was looking over my taxes at home, I thought I was going to end up owing the government $800, of which I have none. But after I got through talking to the tax guy I will get a return from the Federal government as well as the state of California AND the state of Illinois. I won’t get it for a couple of months because they don’t file it electronically, but just knowing that it will be coming is a big relief to me. I even didn’t mind paying a pretty high price to have them done, just because I will still come out ahead.

Friday was also April Fool’s Day. I told my father and my sister that I just got my taxes done and that I was in a lot of trouble because I owed a lot of money. They felt bad until I said “April Fool’s Day” and laughed and laughed. They didn’t think it was too nice but deep down inside I am sure they thought it was a good joke.

Saturday was my first day working as a caterer. The event was a home party in Pasadena. It was a memorial party for a woman’s mother who had just passed and it was for friends and family to mingle after the funeral. The party was being held in a house and would take place inside and by the pool outside. I was there with 3 other people and I was very nervous because it was my first time and I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily the lead person from my catering company was a very nice young lady who helped me a lot. I was there to lend a hand to anyone that needed it. When the guests first arrived, I was to be with the bartender, who was also the young woman who was the lead. We were pouring drinks and making people laugh when the woman who organized the event came over and asked if the other main guy was around. The lead bartender said that they had to leave for a few minutes but they would be back in a few minutes. She told the lady that if there was a problem she would be happy to take care of it.

“I would like to speak with you in private right away” the lady said.

She took the lead bartender around the back of the house and spoke to her for a few minutes. When the bartender came back she informed me that the lady was mad at me because I was screwing the caps back on the coke bottles after I filled people’s glasses. At first I thought she was joking. But she told me that she was serious and that the lady told her it was totally unacceptable that I was doing that. I thought to myself that I was about to be fired from my first job within 10 minutes of starting it. But the lead bartender told me not to worry and that some people were just psycho about little things like that. She told me that she thought I was doing a good job and said that it was no big deal. So I tried to forget about it, but I was afraid to do anything the rest of the day because if screwing on bottle tops was so bad, what if I did something else that was horrible. I just wandered around and picked up people’s empty plates and glasses until the party ended. While we were packing things up, the main guy came up and gave us all a $20 tip from the client. It was a beautiful day and I drove home in a great mood because I had worked and was still going to be able to watch the NCAA Final Four.

Now if I could get another job, I would be set.