Audition: Yesterday Was a Lie (ultra-low budget indie)

What a full day. I got up at 6:30am to take a friend to pick up his car which had been towed last night. After accomplishing that, I spent over 2 hours waiting for my tires to be installed at Costco. From there, I was late to an hour-long rehearsal for a scene I'm doing in a showcase. I took off from the Los Feliz area to go to Glendale for a 2pm, 2 line audition. The film is billed on their website as sort of a "sci-fi noir". Interesting, but the teaser trailer had some nicely composed shots. So, maybe it'll look good on a reel if it works out. The audition/meeting took all of 2 minutes, after which I went back to Los Feliz for continued rehearsal. I finally got back home around 5pm, and we had some people over for dinner at 7pm. I am officially done for the day.

Yesterday, the one that was NOT a lie, we saw a performance of the California Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The performance was great, and included a special performance by an amazing Russian violinist playing one of the world's rarest violins on loan from some collector or other. Before the concert, we took a tour of the facility. We intended to take the self-guided audio tour led by John Lithgow, but were informed that the audio tour was not being offered that day. Why? Isn't it recorded? At the start of the tour, we were told that there were no "donor walls" as Frank Gehry believed they would interrupt the experience of the architecture. Maybe "no" means "three" in our tour guide's native language, in which case there were definitely no donor walls, the third of which was so massive that it took up virtually the entire wall of the second floor.

Irritation: No cable for 5 days

Adelphia, I say this loud and proud, STINKS. Their customer service is terrible. Our cable went down last Saturday night -- no TV no internet. I called 4 times over the next 2 days before finally getting someone who said they'd put in a work order for a tech. The other people kept telling me "they're working on it", which was BS. We live in a 10 unit building. If someone was here working on it, they'd be outside my window or on my street. Anyway, Tuesday, the guy finally comes out and after 20 minutes says he can't fix it and will send someone else. By Wednesday, Day 5 with no connection was halfway over when another dude shows up and gets the thing fixed. Then he tells me that the amplifier was screwed up outside because of the heat and it's been happening elsewhere. Wait. You guys knew this sort of thing was happening already and yet I still have to listen to some service rep ask me if I've unplugged and replugged my cable box? And wait another second, don't they have cable in the freakin' desert? We pay ridiculous prices for this stuff counting on it to work. Anyway, it's fixed now, but we're shopping for satellite service and possibly DSL. I also found out that some people in Hollywood were without POWER for 5 days, which should make me feel like a whiny little ingrate.

Audition: Dunkin' Donuts @ Cathi Carlton Casting

I went down to Castaway Studios this morning for the audition. Once again, no sides. All I knew was that it was for Dunkin' Donuts, which doesn't really exist out here, and that I was to wear a suit. After I finally found a parking space, I jumped out to feed the meter. It took my dime, but then flipped out over my quarter flashing its "Out of Order" sign. I thought maybe the quarter got jammed up, so I put in a nickel. No problem...wait...problem...it only gave me credit for the dime and the nickel. Since there wasn't another space around and my appointment time was at hand, I just jammed 4 or 5 dimes down its throat with it registering every other one. When I finally got it up to 30 minutes, I took off.

The audition sides were by the sign in sheet, and I couldn't make any sense out of it. Repeating lines? Are these all for one person or do we just pick one line? The session runner told me to go into the other room to listen to the song. The what? There was a silly little 7 or 8 line jingle playing on endless repeat in the room. Basically, we were to learn the song so that we could sing a small portion of it in the audition itself while doing some other activity. Weird, but not a real problem. The session runner kept looking at us like we weren't getting it, and making comments about how everyone else was screwing it up. I don't think I screwed it up so we'll see.

Booked: The Beginning of December

I just got off the phone with CD Michelle Metzner who let me know that I had booked the role of "Kevin" in The Beginning of December (original audition 6/13/06). It's a fairly dark, but ultimately hopeful dramatic short. My character is the lead's husband. So, a full month after the original audition, with no callback, we see again that you just never know. My shoot date is currently scheduled for August 31.

Audition: Buffalo Wild Wing @ Kari Peyton

3rd time in this office in the last couple of weeks...good sign. It was strange to get the call for this. I haven't had a Saturday audition for anything other than indie films. Wait...that's not true. The Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius audition was on a Saturday in Atlanta.

The audition was your typical restauranty type spot - lots of people having a good time. The patrons, staff, etc. do "the wave" while watching a game on tv. So, that's what the audition was. Go in, do the wave, thanks. There were a ton of people in the casting call. I honestly have no idea how they narrow this kind of thing down.

Everything old is...still old but now posted here

I recently rediscovered what are essentially my first ever "blog" posts, although at the time, I considered it my "online journal". Thank goodness we came up with a short, one-word name for that. Otherwise, I would've exhausted myself in the last few years saying, "Online journal". Anyway, I copied those old posts from various places and transplanted them to this blog. A lot of the stuff has to do with the earlier days of JaCKPie - shows, classes and thoughts. So, if you're interested in reading that history, thumb through the archives of 2002, 2003 and some stuff scattered in 2004.