Monday, October 28, 2013

Gym

I had a Groupon for a 3 month gym membership to what people who are body builders call "the Mecca." It's a name in body building that has been around for almost 50 years and lots of very famous people worked out there. Arnold for one.

I've had memberships at other gyms in the past, but I never saw that many really big muscle bound people like I see at this gym. They are huge and veiny and all super tan. But I have noticed a couple of the guys limp. They have the big muscles but they can't move simply like other people can. Was it a exercise injury? Torn ACL from some training accident which never healed properly? You get size but at a cost.

I wonder at the sacrifices these people do for the perfect look. Their ideal body. I heard a couple of the large guys talking. One said he was eating 10 times a day starting at 4:30 am. Fucking really? That's nuts. I'm sure it's a lot of lean protein and whatnot, but what reason drives them? If they were actors, they were no one I've ever seen or heard of. So what do they do for work? Or is being big their only job?

My membership ends tomorrow. The guy at the desk said there was one day left on the membership. Oh NO! Yeah, I really don't care to renew my membership there. They seem to think that because this gym is the Mecca of bodybuilding that  there are no other gyms which could provide the same services. It's a gym. There are machines and weights. All gyms have this in various combinations. Just because it's a world famous gym doesn't make me want to spend that kind of money for a service I can get from another gym for 1/4 the cost per year. You just have to shop around.

So I'll miss seeing the behemoths of the gym in their natural habitat. I don't think the new place I found will have their like. Maybe a few, but nothing like the frequency of sightings. The new gym will have machines and weights and cost a lot less.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Taxi Dancers

I was in downtown LA to work at the Orpheum, Theatre on Broadway. I parked at Broadway and Olympic. I walked toward the theatre past an open door. It was  a dance hall. Inside I saw something I thought was gone decades ago. A taxi dance venue. I thought places like that disappeared in the 1950s. I slowed down and looked at the scene inside.

I saw what in some ways reminded me of a dance in 6th grade. The women were on one side of the room dressed in their nice tight dresses, hair and makeup done, clutching small purses. The men were mainly Latinos, dressed in cowboy boots, jeans, and some had cowboy hats, around pool tables playing pool and standing in groups.

No one was dancing.

A DJ played music in a booth and the men looked like they were having a good time. The women were patient. Waiting for a man to get the courage to cross that huge divide that separates groups of men from groups of women.

I remember seeing taxi dancers in a movie or some TV show. I thought it was sad and lonely. To see it in reality... It was sad in reality too.

Where do these men and women come from? Taxi dancing seems so odd. It might get you as meany dances as you pay for but it's rather hollow companionship. What an odd archaic thing to still exist in a world of online dating.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Style

I'm always amazed at style. I don't really have one. Generally I wear Levi 501s and whatever t-shirt is next.

I'm talking about the style that takes a lot of time and preparation and dedication to do day in and day out. If it's celebrities, it's kind of part and parcel of the job. Standing out. So Lady Gaga has weird, crazy style. But it's all part of an act. If you are wearing a meat dress, you will get noticed. By the press if not by wolves.

But if you aren't a celebrity and style is a way of being noticed as different from the rest of the people, what would the cut off be? The point where you are saying, "That is too far. Takes too much time."

Walking around Hollywood you see all sorts of crazy styles. And sometimes I have to wonder is it worth it? The time involved to get hair to do that. Or to strap 54 leather bracelets up your arms. Or tight leather pants in 100 degree heat. Style sacrificed at the altar of comfort.

I don't really care that much about my image that I will take a lot of time to pick out clothes. I have some things that are dressy, and suits for work and auditions, but I basically don't care. About what I'm wearing or what people think about me.

It might be a left over camouflage thing from grade school and high school. If you looked different you were ridiculed. So you didn't deviate from the base line of what most kids wore. I was also not one of the kids in sports so being in the drama department, you were a target for ridicule.

I don't know. So many things about who you are are left over from school. Whether style or self image. The roots are deep.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Random Thoughts

Why is every repair on my car always the most expensive option mechanically for that model?

How do people listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and think they are saying reasonable shit?

My main reason for not online dating would be the fear the eharmony creator would be going on the date with me. Creepy commercials, dude.

Shaving my chest for a picture led to over a month of weird itchiness. And I kept looking at my torso. It was oddly foreign to me.

Sometimes I want to take a backpack and just fucking disappear.

I fear I may have missed the window to move to Amsterdam and be a nightly performer in a live sex show.

I look to find myself in the commercials I worked on as an extra. Usually I can find me.The chin is  a dead give away.

One person until death do you part? That seems... I don't know... A bit unrealistic.

I like the smell of burning steel that comes from welding; the acrid ozone smell. It reminds me of the time I spent working with steel. Welding swords for theatrical combat.

If a supermarket always has a certain loaf of bread on sale for it's card holders, why not just lower the price for everyone? Is that 50 cents really such a windfall?

Does anyone on Facebook ever post the simplest truth? "I could really use a blowjob." "God, I need to get laid."

On the days I don't leave my apartment (never opening the door), I sometimes wonder if I will run out of oxygen.

Having sex after a long dry spell makes one want more sex. I notice women much more than I previously did. Which was a lot.

I should be a talking head pundit on MSNBC. I have strong political  opinions just like them.

Twitter makes me wonder if I have thoughts that should go out to the world on a daily basis.

The evenings are very quiet and I long for the busy time of being in rehearsal. 

Friday, October 4, 2013

Attrition in Los Angeles

I was having lunch with a fellow actor yesterday. We have known each other for 15 years or so, having met while working at a small theatre in a basement in Pasadena. We were doing plays. Why? Because live theatre, live performing, is like sex. You can tell when the audience is with you and there is a cycle of energy given out and sent back to the performer onstage.

I've been having a rough go of it lately. I haven't done a play in a while. I'm woefully under represented. My agent has not called at all this year which is why I'm looking to get a new one.  So I was doing the actor's lament, "I'm not getting out, my agent sucks, yadda yadda yadda." It's venting all actors do.

We started talking about the people who have given up and why. Because in the years I've been in LA I've seen lots of people come and even more go. And the personal reasons for quitting acting are many. She told me of a few people she knew and what the specific reason was for quitting acting. And one of them was a small snub, but it was personal and not meant to be mean, but it was kind of cruel. An off handed comment that a casting director made. Really? That one comment broke the camel's back? Fuck me. It's part of the business. Because the commodity is you. You may not get the part, but there are likely 99 reasons out of 100 for not getting it that probably have nothing to do with you.

Anyway. I was reflecting earlier in the week about this subject. Where did the actors I know go? They got a day job and slowly faded away from acting. They found that a steady income was more attractive then perpetual struggle. A job opened up in another state. A child came along and they can raise it cheaper with better schools in a midwest state. There seemed to be plenty of small reasons to give up a titanic struggle. And big reasons too. But each person has to figure out what that point is. 

It's hard. It's very discouraging. Can you be happy doing something else? Can you see yourself doing that thing? Go. Do it. You may save yourself a lot of frustration and heartache.

But for all the people I know who have left the profession and Los Angeles, I know they are being replaced by actors from all over the country who hop off the bus fresh faced. These are the stars of their high schools and colleges. Their professional training programs. These are the ones who haven't been beaten down by the machine of Hollywood.

I don't know if I have a breaking point. Or if I will be like a terrier playing tug of war with a huge rope tied to a mountain until I have a heart attack and die.

The thing is, I have friends working. I know people in movies and on series and working as guest stars. I know people in commercials and voice over. And those people give me hope that I will succeed. I  don't want to be someone who has given up. Unless I win $400 million. But I'd produce my own movies if I did win that kind of money.