So it's been a while since my last post, and the reason, again, is because nothing really has happened.
Or, I should say, nothing happened until a few weeks ago.
It's no secret that I've been thinking about chasing fame and whatnot - with the possibility of a trip to New York City to see how that'd go. I started thinking about that around Thanksgiving but never really got around to it for various reasons.
However, my good friend Lou was moving to the city in the first week of January, so I jumped at the opportunity to go to New York and try my hand at spur-of-the-moment auditions/casting calls.
Here's the shortened story of my eight days in NYC...in some order, for part of the time. I'll digress into rambling.
We got in on Friday night and carried Lou's things up five flights of stairs while the car was double-parked. This was exhausting.
We went out Saturday night to a few bars in the lower west side of Manhattan; it was ridiculously cold outside and ridiculously crowded inside...too crowded to dance, which is a travesty. This was also when I learned that it doesn't matter what time it is, there will be people outside in NYC.
Sunday was the first time I'd experienced the Metropolitan Museum of art. It blew my mind. Questions, no answers, and a disorienting building (Bear Grylls would call it "disorientating," and I love him for that) spelled a near mental breakdown for me.
Monday I got up and took a ridiculously expensive cab to meet with a casting director who blew major smoke at me and told me what he thought I wanted to hear. He was full of crap, but a fairly nice guy. I walked 3.5 miles back from his place, stopping in Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza, and a few other places. The sights are still freaking awesome.
Central Park is enormous. I spent a grand total of something like 12 hours in the park over the week. I wandered all over it, taking pictures, seeing sights, and just being impressed at how serene it is in the middle of the loudest/busiest city I've ever been in.
The official highlight of the week was that on Wednesday I ventured to the Bronx to be a part of a Columbia grad student's MFA project. It was my first experience doing anything film-related, even though that's something I'd love to get into. It was definitely interesting to see the work that goes into it, even if it was a relatively small project.
Originally, I was supposed to just be a nameless extra sitting at a table while they shot this inside a restaurant. However - I'm going to blame my dashing good looks for this - they decided that I would be the waiter and thus appear in several scenes, and even have a line of dialogue (I asked the main characters what they wanted to eat...very tricky). In short, it was fun, even though it was the coldest restaurant I've ever been inside. Each time we turned on the heater, it provided sound interference and really threw things off for the crew.
Another nice thing about this was that the other extras had done lots of extra-work in their time and would chat me up with good suggestions and/or industry stories. That's right..."industry."
Toward the end of the week I started striking out; there wasn't much going on MLK weekend. This was a drag because there was lots of stuff going on the next weekend - this coming weekend - of the 23rd. The problem, of course, is that I won't be there the 23rd, so that doesn't really work for me.
One of the days I went back to the Met, and it was about as insane as before, except that my camera didn't die as early in this trip. It was equally as cool the second time I went, except that I rushed out of the place because I wore my broken watch and forgot that the time was off by an hour.
(Side note; the Met's gift shop DOES NOT sell batteries. How much money are they missing out on here? I can't be the only person who has ever gone in there with a digital camera that uses batteries and had those batteries die. They could charge as much as they want because people won't leave to go get batteries and then come back. This baffles me.)
Anyway, I spent the final night of the trip visiting a friend from college. On my way there I got slightly lost in a really 'hood area of Queens, so I've now got that notch in my belt.
We hit up a night club that can best be described as a little skeevy. Needless to say, this was right up my alley. We danced the night away to all kinds of tasty tunes, from Madonna to Snoop Dogg to Naughty by Nature, etc.
Yada yada yada, I drove home Saturday afternoon/evening/night through a really stupid fog. I can't explain how aggravating it is to be making really good time on a really lonely drive, only to be bogged down by a fog thicker than Harry Caray's glasses.
Overall, the trip was a success. I met with some people, did some things, didn't spend an insane amount of money, and feel like I sort of accomplished something, so that's a nice bonus.
Even better, I didn't get duped by any sexual predators. Hooray!
Also, the only celebrity sighting we had was that Lou was positive that he saw Peter Greene, aka Dorian, from The Mask.
Or, I should say, nothing happened until a few weeks ago.
It's no secret that I've been thinking about chasing fame and whatnot - with the possibility of a trip to New York City to see how that'd go. I started thinking about that around Thanksgiving but never really got around to it for various reasons.
However, my good friend Lou was moving to the city in the first week of January, so I jumped at the opportunity to go to New York and try my hand at spur-of-the-moment auditions/casting calls.
Here's the shortened story of my eight days in NYC...in some order, for part of the time. I'll digress into rambling.
We got in on Friday night and carried Lou's things up five flights of stairs while the car was double-parked. This was exhausting.
We went out Saturday night to a few bars in the lower west side of Manhattan; it was ridiculously cold outside and ridiculously crowded inside...too crowded to dance, which is a travesty. This was also when I learned that it doesn't matter what time it is, there will be people outside in NYC.
Sunday was the first time I'd experienced the Metropolitan Museum of art. It blew my mind. Questions, no answers, and a disorienting building (Bear Grylls would call it "disorientating," and I love him for that) spelled a near mental breakdown for me.
Monday I got up and took a ridiculously expensive cab to meet with a casting director who blew major smoke at me and told me what he thought I wanted to hear. He was full of crap, but a fairly nice guy. I walked 3.5 miles back from his place, stopping in Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza, and a few other places. The sights are still freaking awesome.
Central Park is enormous. I spent a grand total of something like 12 hours in the park over the week. I wandered all over it, taking pictures, seeing sights, and just being impressed at how serene it is in the middle of the loudest/busiest city I've ever been in.
The official highlight of the week was that on Wednesday I ventured to the Bronx to be a part of a Columbia grad student's MFA project. It was my first experience doing anything film-related, even though that's something I'd love to get into. It was definitely interesting to see the work that goes into it, even if it was a relatively small project.
Originally, I was supposed to just be a nameless extra sitting at a table while they shot this inside a restaurant. However - I'm going to blame my dashing good looks for this - they decided that I would be the waiter and thus appear in several scenes, and even have a line of dialogue (I asked the main characters what they wanted to eat...very tricky). In short, it was fun, even though it was the coldest restaurant I've ever been inside. Each time we turned on the heater, it provided sound interference and really threw things off for the crew.
Another nice thing about this was that the other extras had done lots of extra-work in their time and would chat me up with good suggestions and/or industry stories. That's right..."industry."
Toward the end of the week I started striking out; there wasn't much going on MLK weekend. This was a drag because there was lots of stuff going on the next weekend - this coming weekend - of the 23rd. The problem, of course, is that I won't be there the 23rd, so that doesn't really work for me.
One of the days I went back to the Met, and it was about as insane as before, except that my camera didn't die as early in this trip. It was equally as cool the second time I went, except that I rushed out of the place because I wore my broken watch and forgot that the time was off by an hour.
(Side note; the Met's gift shop DOES NOT sell batteries. How much money are they missing out on here? I can't be the only person who has ever gone in there with a digital camera that uses batteries and had those batteries die. They could charge as much as they want because people won't leave to go get batteries and then come back. This baffles me.)
Anyway, I spent the final night of the trip visiting a friend from college. On my way there I got slightly lost in a really 'hood area of Queens, so I've now got that notch in my belt.
We hit up a night club that can best be described as a little skeevy. Needless to say, this was right up my alley. We danced the night away to all kinds of tasty tunes, from Madonna to Snoop Dogg to Naughty by Nature, etc.
Yada yada yada, I drove home Saturday afternoon/evening/night through a really stupid fog. I can't explain how aggravating it is to be making really good time on a really lonely drive, only to be bogged down by a fog thicker than Harry Caray's glasses.
Overall, the trip was a success. I met with some people, did some things, didn't spend an insane amount of money, and feel like I sort of accomplished something, so that's a nice bonus.
Even better, I didn't get duped by any sexual predators. Hooray!
Also, the only celebrity sighting we had was that Lou was positive that he saw Peter Greene, aka Dorian, from The Mask.
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