Turning Old

 
So I just turned old three days ago. Yeah, yeah, I'm still young and in my 20's but gat diggity do the years go by fast. Too fast. I was sixteen yesterday, today I'm shopping for girdles. I feel like I just got to LA but yet I feel like a weathered veteran too. I've definitely reached the point of being a "middle-aged young person" in this business as I'd like to say, because most of young Hollywood started in the biz as kids or teens and break big by their early 20's. I started a little later than that...

I never want to sound like one of those neurotic actresses obsessed with age and weight (which I am) but I certainly would like to hide this psychosis like a bottle of Jack in the back of a linen closet. I'm well aware that in the real world (everywhere except for Los Angeles) I am still a budding young person, fully immersed in the best time of my life. I still look younger than my age. I am not yet 30. That apocalypse is still a few years off, thank Christ.

Two people called me on my birthday. Two. My best girlfriend from childhood and my ex-boyfriend. Mind you, I have hundreds of people ("friends") saved in my phone, two roommates, a brother, a sister, seven aunts, three uncles, a grandmother, nieces and nephews, dozens of cousins....you get the picture. Nothing makes you feel more like an old loser than only two people calling to wish you Happy Birthday while having to get your next shift covered at the restaurant you work at so you can spend more time with your aging parents in the middle of nowhere. But refreshingly, it still felt like the best place to be on earth.

I spent the last week in Bloomington, IL (home of State Farm Insurance headquarters, Illinois State University, and birthplace of white trash), where my parents live. It's two hours outside of Chicago so being there is kind of like being trapped in that little steel closet with Jodie Foster in "Panic Room." I love spending time with my parents, they're hilarious, but there's just simply nothing to do down there except get fat or pregnant. I decided I wanted to finally go shooting at a shooting range, since I knew for sure there had to be plenty of shooting ranges in a place where there are more roosters than people.

So my dad took my mom and I shooting. We went out to KKK land to some remote farm with a painted sign nailed to a tree which read "Darnell's Shootin' Range." I was a little afraid for my life but splashed a smile on my face to wash the fear off. We were greeted by two sturdy English bulldogs and several expected wide-eyed, confused gapes, but the staff was quite friendly. We shot my dad's revolver and it was so much fun! I'm a horrible shot, but I've made a new New Year's resolution (yeah, I know) to become an absolute marksman by Dec. 21, 2012 (the end of the world...as we know it). Since you know, every old lady needs to know how to shoot.

Happy Birthday to me.

I Hate People With Gluten Allergies

Don't get your wheatgrass in a twist, I don't actually hate anyone. I am actually full of Christ-like love for all mankind but goodness do they make it hard. Hate is just a perfect word for blogs and the blazing sensation I get for people when I'm at work.

This is a continuation of my blog "I Don't Care About Your Stupid Diet."

Gluten. Everybody and their dog is allergic to gluten. Where did this come from? Did gluten not exist before 2008? I respect that scientists and doctors learn new information everyday but you would think that the gluten epidemic would have been discovered ages ago. "Does this have any gluten in it? If I have gluten I just might die." I'm sorry, but if gluten is something that could kill you not only would you already be dead (since I know you just found out you have a "gluten allergy" last year), I would also put the burden on you to know what foods have gluten in them before you put them in your mouth. I have no idea.

Ok, fine, I have an idea. Now. I had a general idea what gluten was before the massive, never-ending stampede of sensitive digestive tracts started plowing into my restaurant, but I certainly wasn’t aware of every single food product that has gluten in it. IT'S JUST NOT MY JOB. I get paid minimum wage (in some states below minimum wage) to generally know the recipes of menu items and serve them to people. I should not be required to study nutritional therapy for celiac and Crohn’s disease patients. I'm sorry. Maybe I would care more if people cared more about tipping…

I really just hate people with gluten allergies. And I’m not just being mean, I have viable reasons. They are always attitudinal (because everything worth eating has gluten in it) and they not only expect you to know all about their health condition i.e. personal problem, they also demand you worship them for it as if they were a bald, prescient 7-year-old with leukemia. You have weak intestines, that’s all. Your body is not being ravaged by a malevolent, debilitating cancer or disfiguring virus…you just can’t eat bread and other goodies. You get a little sympathy but certainly no martyrdom. Chill out, be nice and don’t bite my head off when I’m not sure if something has gluten in it. I’m also not sure if my head has gluten in it either so beware.

The gluten-free movement has forged way too much space for any idiot, hypochondriac, or Manchausen suspect to get a tummy ache and diagnose themselves with gluten intolerance. Now my tables are being clogged with every Tom, Dick, and Mary that has a little gas insisting it is my ordained duty to be their gluten police.

Another reason I don’t like gluten free allergics is because 90% of them are faking it. Yep, that’s right. I live in Los Angeles where everyone’s number one goal is be thinner. Therefore a diet that consists of not eating bread, cookies, cakes, pasta, fried food, chips, beer, etc., is perfect for the general LA population of rabid skinny jeans aspirants. These flagrant counterfeiters pretend like they’re suffering victims of a relatively painful disorder and bark demands for their own gluten-free menus only to fit into their whorish club attire better. Some of these cons fake it to treat their low self esteems and low intelligence quotients in effort to feel important and clever. "I have a gluten allergy. Name every single thing on your menu with gluten in it and then I'm going to debate you so I can feel superior and prove just how stupid you are."

I served one of these people the other day, a woman; we'll call her "Bitch," who yelled at me because I wasn't sure whether there were "traces" of barley in what she wanted to order. The manager had no idea either. How should we know if there are "traces" of barley? We know barley is not in the recipe but cannot guarantee there are no traces. She wouldn't take "cannot guarantee" for an answer and instead of simply ordering something else, proceeded to have a temper tantrum, vehemently expecting us to call the food distributors or someone, anyone to find the answer at eight o'clock at night. Called us stupid and unqualified. Verbatim. Bitch was HEINOUS.

There was a man who desperately wanted to order an item that had wheat in it. It was pre-prepared so it could not be made gluten free. Horns literally grew out of this man's forehead. I saw the Anti-Christ in the flesh. He growled,  

"What the hell do you mean you can't make it gluten-free? What kind of place is this? You don't cater to all the millions of people that are gluten-free?!" 

"Beside the fact that we don't actually serve millions of people, sir, we actually do cater to gluten-free guests. We care deeply about the dietary needs of all of our guests; it is just that this particular item cannot be made gluten-free; it is pre-made."

"I got it gluten-free last time."

"No, I'm so sorry, but you didn't, sir. Unfortunately, you are mistaken since that item cannot be made gluten-free. I am very sorry for any confusion," 

I hate it when people tell a bold-faced lie and claim they got something last time when there is no possibility that could ever happen. He asked for the manager who repeated the same information, cursed him out, and then ordered the item anyway. He slopped the meal down like it was his last meal before mounting the monumental task of destroying the world. Gluten allergy my foot. 

I can tell an honest person with a real gluten allergy because they know what the heck they're doing. They don't act hoity-toity and don't ask stupid questions. They don't wear their allergy like one of those sad backless hospital gowns. It's not an artifice for sympathy, individualism, or a ploy for self-gratification; it's merely a personal circumstance they live with. No pretense, attitude or assumptions. I am happy to help people with genuine questions and concerns that don't treat me like an incompetent when I can't alleviate their private struggle by knowing the ins and outs of their condition or don't have any options for them to eat. Those are the people I can't stand and who deserve a nice gorging at The Olive Garden...

I Don't Care about Your Stupid Diet

Alright, maybe it sounds harsh, but it's true. Unless someone has a truly life-threatening allergy, I could care less about the intricacies of puerile hypochondriacs' latest fad diets that make them feel like individuals instead of the hackneyed sheep they really are. It is not my job to know and understand your new special Hollywood-inspired diet. That is your job. My job is to serve you food.

Clearly, it is my job to know the primary ingredients of menu items where I work and try my best not to kill people with allergic reactions. And I really do a great job. However, I do not know every single last morsel and trace remnant included in every single item on the entire menu; I'm not a chef nor did I father the menu. No one in the restaurant has those answers; even the managers only know the basic recipes, not the exact ingredients of every recipe item (and you should know all, yes, ALL restaurants use processed products somewhere along the line, usually even when they say they don't.) Therefore, if you are worried about whether or not a miniscule amount of some random food product is in your food, assume that it is and either don't order that item or protect yourself and cook at home.

I'm tired of smug stiff necks getting mad at me because I don't have a good answer when they bring up their medical condition that requires a special diet. "I have IBS. What items on the menu are OK for me to have?" What do I look like? Your nutritionist? You better ask your doctor or spouse because I have no idea, nor do I care to learn.

In no way do I wish to seem bitter or insensitive. I genuinely do want to cater to my guest's needs, as long as they understand reasonable limitations and don't get rude or condescending when I answer as one who has never seen their medical records. I have superb knowledge of my menu, not medical pedagogy. Here's one: "I don't eat nightshades. Are there any nightshades in this or do you prepare this dish in a pan that is shared with nightshades? I avoid them because they are known to cause decreased I.Q." You're joking. About .3% of the population knows what a nightshade is. Why on earth would you assume I'm one of them? (Even though I am...?) Clearly, a nightshade or two has crept into your diet at some point.

This whole thing started with peanuts. Peanut allergies were the gateway drug. "Are there any peanuts or is peanut oil used in this?" Ok, fine. I'll know that. I get that. You're allergic to peanuts and if you eat anything with peanuts in it your throat will swell and collapse. Let's make sure that doesn't happen. Shellfish allergy? I got you. Dairy, fish, eggs, and nuts are all allergies I am familiar with and readily capable of adhering to. We servers are trained to know menu items containing these because they are the most common food allergens. But then began the War Against Carbs. "I'm not eating any carbohydrates, what's on the menu that I can have?" I know what a carb is, they're easily avoidable, and since you obviously also know what a carb is, why can't you answer your own question? Then came the soy problem. "There's so much estrogen in soy, it causes ovarian cancer/makes you fat/turns you into a woman. Is there any soy in this?" Really? Do you know how many products have soy or soy derivatives in them? Then it was corn, sugar, and of course, the colossal pandemic, gluten...

 I don't want this particular blog to be too long so I'm going to write an entirely other blog about the most common offenders of my nerves at work: vegans and gluten antagonists. TBC...

Married Actors are No Fun

So I have the hots for a guy in my acting class. When we do a scene together I quite literally dissolve underneath his gaze. It would be all fine and dandy if he just wasn't MARRIED.

I feel horrible. I feel guilty, dirty, and down right sinful. I've never been attracted to anyone who was married because I find wedding rings to be highly unattractive. When I see a handsome man and get a whiff of a wedding band, he's instantly transformed into asexual brother/father figure. I just don't think of married men that way because A. It's not right B. I have too much respect for marriage (and their wives) C. If I were married I would never want anyone looking at my husband. I might cut a hoe.

But he's dreamy actor dude and he's prompted a moral dilemma in me:

How will I ever be able to have a healthy, happy, highly functional romantic relationship when I'm slobbing on hot actors all day long on set, stage, or in class?? How do people do that?!

It's just not human. Even if you're not particularly attracted to someone initially, after weeks or months immersed in realistically portraying someone's romantic partner, getting intensely intimate, it's only natural to bond. And what if you were attracted to them to begin with? How do you turn off those feelings, then genuinely depict them, then "turn them off" again, then go home to your significant other as if nothing out of the ordinary happened? Just because you're getting paid for it doesn't mean it's not cheating...In my case, the severity of the problem lies in the fact that there is mutual attraction and hence the intimacy exercises in class can be used as a means to act out what is morally corrupt outside of class. Though I would never act on my attraction, nor do I show it or consciously pursue time with him in class, I am aware of our attraction and that tension in itself bothers me.

Is it really possible to be truly faithful as an actor? There's a deep, dark crevice in my conscience that's loudly whispering maybe not....

You're Always Someone's Role Model

An actor friend called me asking for advice today. Honored. I was simply honored!

Me? Giving industry advice? I often forget exactly how far I've gotten because I'm too busy being ungrateful and hopelessly unsatisfiable. As an artist, I enjoy being depressed and unsatisfied. I find any excuse to linger in it. I'll be having the best day and when someone asks me how I'm doing I instantly revert to my rote, "Meh, I've had better days..." like some dry old lady. It's pathetic. My acting career has taken me to 35 states and Mexico, bought me my first car, allowed me to have deep spiritual experiences on stage in front of hundreds of admiring eyes, took me to Harvard to study with the faculty of the incredible Moscow Art Theater and put my cute little mug on national television several times a day, every day. And yet I still don't feel like I've done enough. But today I got the best medicine for the aching actor heart; VALIDATION from another human being. You're always further along than someone else in life, and hence, you're kinda always someone's role model.

This friend of mine is battling the graduate school audition circuit right now. Graduate school auditioning is a soul-sucking experience that transforms actors into quivering slabs of meat stuffed with exasperated soliloquies and pedantic personality quirks. When you take it as a no-strings attached dance with destiny, it can be quite fun. When you take it as, 'I'm going to die if I don't get into one of my top five,' you're going to be mortified...and also very likely disappointed. After several auditions with several universities, my friend has received zero callbacks and is feeling angry and weary.

He asked me: At what point do you just stop caring and do good work?

My answer:

You stop caring and do your best work after you release yourself from your expectations and learn to embrace failure.

You gotta have the proper relationship with failure. As an actor, you better have a love affair with failure. I would say that the ability to persevere in the entertainment industry comes from understanding and accepting that 90% of the time you are going to be rejected. You are going to "fail." It is simply how it works. It's cool. That 10% success rate is all you need and everything you hope it will be. You have to LEARN TO LOVE IT. You've really already won: You booked an audition AND you got the chance to do what you love AND every time you do that, you get better.

I never expect to actually book a job. I know that I'm fabulous and should book them all. But I realize that there's hundreds of reasons why I won't book a job that have absolutely nothing to do with my talent. Therefore, when I go into an audition, I see it as just that: an audition; an opportunity to show what I can do and have fun doing it. Hopefully I show them what they need but if not, I always know that I showed them something good because I am confident in my PREPARATION. In the end I don't care whether I will book that job in particular because I know that if it's not that one, it'll just be another one. There's always another audition, another job. No audition is the end all of my career. As long as I went in there and did what I said I was going to do and had fun, I succeeded.


So after a few years of "failing" in Hollywood, I have officially stopped caring. I don't care whether I book this job or that. I don't care whether I was too pale, dark, skinny, fat, short, tall for whatever job. I care whether or not I went into that audition and kicked the teeth out of it; I care whether I truly had fun. Hollywood is a place where you have to find all your strength from within; you have to truly believe in yourself and be loyal to yourself. Be OK with things not going as you planned. Release yourself from the dreams and expectations you have for your life and commit to simply doing what YOU planned to do, not what you planned for other people to do for you. You're not going to get any validation from this industry. You have to learn how to validate yourself. Be your own role model and you'll be someone else's too.

After basically saying all that to my friend, I told him not to give a crap whether or which graduate school he got into; his life would be a success no matter the outcome of the auditions because he'd know how to persist proudly even after "failures."

The Fancy Pizza Parlor Part 1

After getting fired from Hollywood Video, my best friend/roommate/boyfriend/psycho ex-boyfriend (never sleep with best friends...) hooked me up with my first real restaurant job. I worked as the phone dispatcher and hostess since I was forbidden to serve tables until I reached my 21st birthday. "Fancy Pizza Parlor" is inherently an oxymoron, but this joint really was quaintly fancy; a cute, dim little Venetian-style alcove tucked in a nook of a casually elegant business hotel/high end office building. I felt like a full-on big shot. Newly nineteen, I took the 45 minute train ride from the North side of Chicago into the heart of downtown, packed next to mid-level lawyers, hungry half-yuppie ad execs, and very often one of the many Red Line celebrities; either the one with the eye-patch and fingerless hand, or my favorite, the blind, raggedy Bible toting black knight complete with gauntlet and chain-mail (but no shoes...sad). The Blind Knight always started with the same announcement through every car in perfect robotic intonation: "Excuse Me. Can. I have your. attention. please. I am blind. And home...less... "

I loved the smell of the train; a dusty, reluctantly human smell, so dry you could peel it like old paint or dead skin; it softly annoyed and comforted me and made me feel at home. Chicago at that time was my utopia. The behemoths of downtown, both flesh and mortar, served as my constant aspirational compass. Battling the indifferent severity of the wind on mornings when the sun stuck frozen under bitter clouds, my goals were cemented for my future: I am going to be magnificently successful. I am going to be filthy rich and one day, I'm going to own this town. I warmed myself with these affirmations as the frostbite crept up my toenails while trying to inconspicuously lose the homeless man following me. "I'm going to own this town," repeated through my brain as I walked into the pizza place, phones ringing off the hook and customers hungrily lining up to be sat at tables and place to-go orders. "Excuse me?! Don't you work here??" a rosacea-faced woman squawked at me. She was shaped like a hamburger. I was still fully adorned in coat, hat, and gloves; very obviously not on the clock. I had fifteen minutes before my shift started so I offered her a barren smile. "I'm so sorry ma'am, but I am not on the clock, someone will be with you shortly," I turned away to take off my winter garb and hang it in the employee closet which inappropriately rested just five feet away from the woman. "I've been waiting here for at least ten minutes and no one has helped me! Can I get some service please? This ridiculous!!" As usual, tumbleweeds littered the dining room and the bar area was a ghost town. Where are my co-workers?? I slowly clocked in (early) and gave her my best high fructose smile. "I am genuinely sorry about this ma'am. I would be happy to take your order and will do everything in my power to not make you wait like this again. What would you like today?" She sighed and unloaded her order on me. I watched her red splotched cheeks jiggle as she spoke and thought over and over, "I'm going to own this town. I'm going to own this town..." 

College is a Dirty Racket

College's are like drug-dealing pimps. Banks own the entire drug cartel and the students/graduates are all the little whores going out studying and working to pay off their bloodsucking pimps and thus the cartels. I hate it. Colleges are always pimpin' their hoes: "If you don't work fo' me baby, you ain't goin' nowhere. You can't do nothin' without me, baby. You need me." And it's true. No matter how worthless your degree actually is (Sorry, University of Phoenix Art History majors) most worthwhile jobs require them, even though students are graduating not knowing a damn thing.

Ok, now pump your brakes. I know college is important. I know it is basically impossible to procure a decent job without it. I know it makes people more analytical, cultured, knowledgeable, blah, blah, blah. I am completely aware of and understand it's inherent value. However, I do not understand its value at $100,000 per Bachelor's degree (the average cost at a private university). No matter how that is explained to me, I will never understand it. It's a racket. The Man* (yeah, he's still around!) is trying to trap us (the bright, promising youth) into demonic amounts of debt before we're old enough to drink away our sorrows and I for one say "No, thank you, sir!"

Unless you're headed for a career in a hospital, law firm, or some other specialized career that requires loads of specific knowledge, why on earth are you taking four years (two of which are high school nostalgia) of crazy expensive courses that often have little to do with your major? Don't give me that 'to make students more well-rounded crap.' Becoming well-rounded is the purpose of high school. It's to make The Man's* wallet more well-rounded. College is to provide one with real skills for the real world, i.e. a real job, making real money, paying real bills. I refuse to pay to be refreshed on all the crap I was forced to learn for free in high school (even though my high school wasn't free, I'm speaking for the peasants,) only to graduate from Idiot State University and work in a cubicle, barely affording my loan payments with my insulting entry level salary. I work at a restaurant and about 80% of my coworkers hold Bachelor's degrees. Out of that, I'd estimate that around 10% of them have Master's. And trust, not all of these degrees are in creative writing. There's a bartender with a Master's in chemical engineering! He makes minimum wage plus tips.

I am not against education, I am against college and the degree system as it stands. It is inefficient, manipulative, unethical and just about evil. Plus, there are other ways to learn and obtain education outside of college but the system refuses to place real value on anything other than the trap of the racket.

I am one of those debt-free people that proudly checks "some college." I attended colleges for 2 1/2 years total. I came to the conclusion that unless you're going to a truly excellent college (like, top 20) you can learn all the things you would learn at a lackluster school for free reading at home on your couch. (That is, if you are naturally smart and studious).

I chose to forgo college mainly because I am a genius who follows her own lead but also because I am an artist confident in my ability to generate income through the merits of my unique talents that cannot be taught or learned in a classroom setting. Sure, some people deem artistry as worthless and that's fine, I get it. I would just rather study at my computer, read books, and pontificate than use a fancy business degree to kill babies and destroy the world. The business degreed baby killer might make tons of money while I make peanuts (big ones!) waiting tables, but my conscience is clear and I aspire for greater things beyond my current state of being.

So why am I waiting tables? Why am I not starring in my own sitcom, movie or BBC drama? Why don't I have several novels, books of poetry, heady non-fiction books to my credit on best-sellers lists? Don't you dare even think it must be because I'm not good, because I'm effing brilliant. It's just because I am lazy. No, I'm crazy. No, I'm afraid of success...or all of those things. But that's a whole other story...don't get me started. But really:

WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS:

My parents were planted in very humble beginnings but blossomed into successful business people. I grew up under the impression that there was a trust, college savings account, bonds, stocks, a stuffed mattress, or some kind of money somewhere that would fund the beginnings of my adult life, including my higher education. I went to an expensive all-girls high school, thus I just knew that my parents would pay for college as well. Junior year, I told them my college of choice was the University of Southern California, as I was going to study Film (screenwriting). While my classmate's parents were beating them for getting B's and paying etiquette coaches to train them how to interview for Ivy Leagues, my parents panned my USC plan saying they had no idea who was going to pay for a school like that. See, my parents' higher education was paid for by their companies' very generous tuition reimbursement programs, so they could not relate to people, notably me, who did not have fancy jobs that would finance their overpriced education.

So I settled (excitedly) for a private film/art school in Chicago: Columbia College. I went to my classes the first day of the first semester, at the end of which I took a visit to the Financial Aid Department. Why do they even call it the "Financial Aid" Department? Those bastards told me I wasn't eligible for real aid (you know, the free kind) because my parents "made too much money" and I didn't have a bushel of welfare babies while I was in high school. Instead, the aid I was eligible for were loans. In my logical mind, aid is not a loan. Aid is help. Help should not be a game of Russian roulette with your financial future. I was handed a contract that detailed my agreement to borrow $15,000 for one semester of classes, and that in less than six months, I agreed to borrow another $15,000 to finish my first year of college courses. At that, I put down the pen and walked out of the office. 

Columbia College Bachelor's Degree: $120,000
Dropping Out and Seeking My Own Education: $0

Textbooks cost loads of money. LIBRARIES ARE FREE.

College is a dirty racket. If you know what you want to do and it's something you can learn on your own or at a community college or through some other educational outlet, do that and start working for yourself. START YOUR OWN BUSINESS. College is for those that truly need specialized knowledge that can't be obtained elsewhere or for teat-sucking tools that cannot survive unless someone hands them a job. I'm a horrible employee so I ditched college. I may be a self-righteous waitress trying to be a movie/tv star/entertainment mogul but I have a point. Go figure.

*The Man: A nameless, faceless, masculine entity who is at fault for all ills in the world and whose eternal goal is to diabolically take advantage of the vulnerable.