to the chest

my agent doesn't call me to audition all too often, so it's strange to get a call twice in less than a month. (and so soon after my failure at the curves audition. but alas.) i have one this evening - again in nashville.

here's the line i gots to get just right:

One pistol shot to the chest. Large caliber bullet.

jealous?

toddlers for low pay

more passive aggressive, frustrated job hunters who use craigslist as therapy...

RE: CHILDCARE IN OUR HOME MON-THURS, needed ASAP!!!!

Roughly $6.25 an hour to care for two children and clean your house? Are you insane? Pay may increase if you are a super-experienced nanny and can commit long-term slavery? Wow. Some weekends and nights, too? Do you spend any time with your children?

Compensation: Long hours with toddlers for low pay

i was once offered 8 an hour to watch a toddler and if i felt i deserved more money (this was how she worded it), i was to clean her house as well (she has two large cats with a lot of hair). anger still erupts when i think of this conversation, but my situation was with a friend (yep. a friend. someone i've known for years.), so i got to release my anger in the old fashioned way - gossip.

i would pay for each breath

i guess we all wonder if our breath is bad. usually, we find a piece of gum or a mint, maybe drink a bit more water, or, you know, hire someone...to, you know...

Tell Me If My Breath Smells for $600 Per Hour

I’d like to be able to occasionally meet someone and have them tell me if my breath smells. I would pay $5 for each breath that you evaluate. At a given meeting, I might only ask you to evaluate one or two breaths. I would pay for each breath evaluated. For example, if you evaluated my breath twice at one meeting, I’d pay you $10.
If your evaluation of one breath takes 30 seconds, that would mean that your compensation would be at a rate of $600 per hour, since $5 in 30 seconds = $10 in 1 minute = $600 in 60 minutes. Thus, the compensation that you’d be getting in this arrangement would be very high compared to the time you’d be spending to get it.
Here are aspects of the arrangement that I’d like to set up:
- You could discontinue the arrangement at any time.
- You would never have to travel. I could come to you.
- If we met at your home, I wouldn’t need to step inside your home, since we would just have a brief interaction and then exchange money.
Please respond only if you meet the following requirements:
- You must not have any habits or physical conditions that could impair your sense of smell. For example, you must not be a smoker or have any nasal/sinus condition.
- You must be willing to be completely honest in your evaluations of my breath. Please don’t respond to this post unless you’d be truthful in telling me your perception of my breath.
So basically, I’m asking for honesty and a good sense of smell. If you meet those requirements and you’re interested, please email me with a description of your location, so I can estimate how long I would have to travel to meet you. Telling me your neighborhood or major cross streets would suffice.

is this a fetish thing that i'm not getting?

talk the talk

back in july i auditioned for a film being shot in the area. i walked into the air conditioned meeting room with unbrushed hair and no extra copy of my headshot and resume. when i introduced myself, the two producers and director were very nice as they sweetly and passive aggressively asked if i wasn't supposed to have been there the day before...which i found out later that yes, i'd misread the email. but they let me read a couple lines and gave me notes. and that was it.

long story short, i did not get cast.

but someone did. and that someone is a nyc actress and friend of my sister's.

last week she called my sister and wanted her to be her dialect coach because she was just shooting in the dark as far as the dialect went. well, my sister volunteered my name. she sent my bio to the actress to pass along to whoever was in charge of the film and made me sound somewhat professional by writing that i 'specialized in southern dialects.'

apparently it sounded legit because the producer contacted me and i drove an hour and half to the end of a very windy country road and by early evening found myself sitting in front of a film monitor, beside a rusty trailer, next to an electric barbed wire fence that enclosed a very loud bull. they gave me headphones and i listened to the dialogue as the scenes were shot. i felt very important. that first night, i was simply supposed to make sure there was nothing glaringly horrible. (there wasn't.)

between scenes, one of the producers sat beside me and asked how things were going. i said it all sounded okay, and then, very timidly, she asked if i'd auditioned for the film (because i looked familiar). i said yes and that i didn't really know how to bring it up and that i'm not really an actor anymore but if someone is making a film in the area with an actual budget, i love to just be involved, but then i felt like that gave away the fact that i didn't really know what i was doing as a 'dialect coach' and i just kept talking and talking and talking. i seriously couldn't stop. i feared i would be found out. but she just stared at me blankly and said, 'no, i think you were good, but just too young for the role.' hmmmmmmm. anyhoo...

as the evening progressed, i met various people on the crew, and inevitably, during the first words spoken, they would ask me a) if i could tell where they were from (confusing me with henry higgins), and b) how i go about teaching someone a dialect. so i made up my technique as the hours passed and the usual response was, 'that makes sense.' so i guess it made sense.

i went back last night and worked with the actress who first contacted my sister and we talked for a bit. before i'd arrived, the director told her to reign in her dialect because it was too extreme, and while watching the scene one of the producers sat beside me and said she sounded way too strong, but really, it wasn't anything. it sounded like she was from the area, but by no means was it too strong. i tried to explain that 'too strong' would not be understood by the yankee filmmakers. but i talked to the actress during the dinner break and we tried to find a balance of the regional sound without going too strong or slipping back into her northern speech patterns. again, maybe i made everything worse. one cannot say.

i head back on wednesday to work with an actor when he gets in. the producers asked someone to read all his lines so he could copy the dialect precisely. they sent me the voice samples, and this seems like it will be a lot of fun. i like it, but at the same time, kind of feel like i'm making it all up...which i am. but not really. my part in all this is so after-the-fact that there really isn't anything i can do. but it's still interesting and a credit on my resume.

and it is a lot of fun. this is the kind of thing i've done my whole life, but i've just always considered it either mimicry or being an asshole. and actually, i really do have to study regional dialects for the job i'm not legally allowed to talk about, so i suppose i've picked up more than i thought i knew.

maybe there's actually something there.

maybe this is the beginning of a brand new career.

walk the walk

a few days ago i received an email from my agent. he'd submitted my headshot for a national commercial for curves and they wanted to see me at their open call because i fit the bill:

These women should be warm, open, happy, busy, giving people who are beautiful both inside and out. They have a smile and personality that makes us want to grab a coffee with her...

These females will need to have some rhythm, as this spot has dancing. =)

i pictured an audition comparable to 'a chorus line.' or maybe a group of women in a big room doing jazzercise steps and slow-motion high-five's. i pictured tight-assed suits sitting at a card table watching all the "warm, open, happy, busy, giving" women doin their thing.

i woke up early - very early - 5:45. you see, my agent, and every audition he gets me, is in nashville, which is about three hours away. but it's a hub down here, and last january when i got some crazy idea that i wanted to be an actor again, i went and auditioned and got an agent - so now, every once in a while, i get to drive hours for a chance at the big time (big time not included).

i headed out, tired as all hell, drinking coffee and not at all feeling like the "warm, open, happy, busy, giving" person i was supposed to be.

when i arrived at the best western and walked into the lobby, three women in black yoga pants with long, combed hair strolled out, so i knew i was in the right place. it was then that the first moment of 'i'm a dork' sunk into my stomach. the notice said to wear workout clothes, so i wore shorts and a t-shirt because that's what i wear every morning to death boot camp. but when i saw the other women, i knew i should have at least attempted to look cool. (it's that horrible feeling we've all had - when you leave your house you feel really good about what you're wearing, but then after three hours in the car, no sleep, and a moment of clarity in the lobby of a best western, you realize that your legs are not tone nor tan and the red dots from either mosquitoes or razor burn can be seen by all.)

a young gangly guy gave me a form to fill out and for a moment i was the only one there. then a middle aged woman came in who seemed more my speed. she had real workout clothes on and her hair in a cap and messy ponytail. but then she took off her sunglasses and i saw that she had a black eye, and the only explanation was that she got it 'on vacation' (?).

and then the actress came in. (one of the most painful things in life is actors at an audition). she had on more jewelry than i've ever worn in my life, with her long hair flowing, and showed way too much excitement for filling out forms.

we were then told to gather our things and when i stood up, black-eye asked, 'so, you like zumba?' i stared blankly. 'do you zumba?' she said again. i looked down at my clothes to see what my style might indicate (nothin). 'i don't think so,' i said meekly. on our way across the parking lot, she said that it was why she was there - for the new zumba ad (still no idea).

the three of us walked into the room where a young director and a camera guy sat behind a table and looked through headshots.

'hi ladies,' the director said. we put our bags down and she went up to black-eye and asked how the surgeries were going (not sure if the surgeries happened on this violent vacation or after). and then we were told to stand in a diagonal and say our name, agent, age, and something interesting about ourselves (i.hate.this.crap.). 'carol, let's start with you.' i looked at the other women and turned back to the director. 'me?' i said. 'yes, carol go ahead.' 'i'm laura.' 'oh, sorry. for some reason i want to call you carol.'

after slating, the director asked us to turn to the right, and then turn again to face the back wall, which, quite expectantly, confused the living crap out of me. i did a 360 and turned completely around and then realized the actress and black-eye were correctly facing the back wall, so i quickly turned and i'm soooo sure no one noticed. once we got all the way around, the director asked if we all knew what zumba was. the actress and black-eye chimed in that they loved it and of course knew what it was. 'i've heard of it,' i said, referencing my conversation with black-eye moments before. the director explained that zumba was 'like traditional workouts, like jumping jacks and toe touches, but with a latin influence. yeah?' 'sure,' i said. 'great, i'm gonna play this music for 45 seconds and let's see what you got.' (what i heard was, 'when you hear music, please go bat-shit crazy.')

the actress and black-eye started with jumping jacks and seemed to know what was going on, so i started with jumping jacks too... and then something happened. i became completely unaware of time and space (and purpose of being there). maybe my brain took a nap. i'm not sure. but for some reason, i chose this moment in my life - this arbitrary moment at an audition for a curves commercial in a best western in nashville, tn - to absolutely go for broke. i danced, moved, jumped, spun, might have done the charleston, and kicked more than would ever be necessary.

then the music stopped.

the director went to the camera guy, 'did we get carol - i mean, laura?' she turned to me, 'you went a bit outside the frame...well, more than a bit. i tried to gesture to you to move back, but you were in your own world.' i didn't really have a response to this. they quieted and watched the footage, 'hmmmm, no that works. great. thanks ladies. we'll let you know by thursday.' (i do not expect to hear from them.)

and that was it.

all in all, about twelve minutes of my life and hours of driving down the proverbial tube.

so, i turned around and headed home.

contact me please!!!

i've always naively believed that one had to pursue a job - search for openings, contact employers for potential positions, and just keep pounding the pavement, as it were. turns out, it's much simpler...

I NEED A MODELING JOB!!!

I NEED A MODELING JOB ASAP!!
ONE THAT PAYS GOOD, ONE THATS IN XXXXXX.

CONTACT ME PLEASE!!!

Compensation: $80 an hour or higher

i'm rewriting my cover letter.

FUN!

below is a list of some charming craigslist ad titles i've come across:

unearthy woman

Ever wanted to be an astronaut?

FUN! Part Time. "work"

Guitarist's Wet Dream

British Mary Poppins Nanny Needed!

Eye Blinking Response to Noises/Thought Inhibition

Online Forensic Psychology Research Participants Needed, Money Prizes

Are you afraid of snakes?

Farmyard Animal Keeper

Morpheus?

Are you a lady with Class and Moxie?

"DID YOU SAY PAN OR PAM?" Entry Level Sales & Marketing

FACES WITH TATTOOS

Bird Sitter Wanted - Your Home

Chuck Norris Doesn't Save the Environment...

Must Love Dogs!! [for gayle]

good times.

school marm day 2

I cried last night.

I looked over the pages in the teacher's manual and tried to figure out how to break down the day and teach the kids about writing and grammar and be interesting and teach enough that would be an entire week's worth of work and give homework and know what i was talking about. but really, i have no idea.

teaching terrifies me. and last week and even leading up to today, i still road the magic coattails of this 'anne of green gables' idea. i loved telling people i taught in a one-room schoolhouse across the street from the amish. it seemed so strange and new and odd and old-fashioned that i never really acknowledged the reality of it...until last night. (the reality that i will never be miss stacey. i will never be anne. i am at best catherine brook, and really, i don't even know if i can live up to being 'an old gooseberry.')

i sat on my bed and cried. i stared at these books and pages and realized that i have no idea how to teach. i mean, really, i am rarely grammatically correct (the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is this blog). i cried and wondered how i agreed to spend seven hours every thursday teaching and who knows how many hours through the week preparing for class. i still don't know how to put together a lesson plan, for pete's sake. and all this for very little (if any) money. i love this family so when i think about the lack of money, the ol' catholic poverty vow screeches from my insides that i should never turn down helping others. it's good, giving work. and i'm just a modern-day selfish scrooge mcduck who's after one thing - money. so how could i live with myself if i told this family that i couldn't do it?

so this morning, driving through the smaller and smaller towns, passing grain fields and silos, in my half consciousness, i wished to run off the road. i wished for a deer to dart out and careen into my car. i wished for an oncoming truck to cause me to fly into a ditch. i didn't mean to wish for great harm to myself or anyone else, i simply wished for a good excuse not to have to go through with today.

but luckily, my wishes weren't granted.

i pulled into the driveway and was once again greeted by randolph, the goose. i got out my books and purse and J came out of the house and told me i could go on into the schoolhouse. so i wrote words on the board: originality, active voice, etc. who knows. i got caught up in the way the chalk felt in my hand and i really wanted to stave off the beginning of class.

but class began and J, R, and K came in. it's funny to start a class with people i know. it seems so casual and we joke around and then finally, i'm the one in charge (yeah, me...crazy) and they sit at their desks and i ask how their homework went. they had to write an essay about a time when they learned from a mistake - or something like that. not sure. and as i talked to J and R about their essays, i asked K to read her book ('the lion, the witch and the wardrobe') and write down any sentence that she loved - any word that caught her eye. seriously, i have no idea what i'm doing, but last time she colored for the first hour of class.

J and R read their essays. R's was about being late to a fiddle contest and J wrote about plowing corn with his father (you get the picture). i asked them to pick out three sentences that showed off their own voice - three sentences that they were most proud of because of the language they used, the imagery, but that still sounded like them. and then i asked them to pick out three sentences that anyone could write - sentences that weren't particular and didn't have any interesting element. and i asked them to take the plain sentences and rewrite them to such a crazy, extreme over-dramatic version of it, it would be ridiculous. and they did. they wrote hilarious sentences. seriously, hilarious. and from those, i asked them to pick out a phrase, an image, a word that they could keep that would make the plain sentence a little more their own.

and then we had to go into the boring subject of colons and semi-colons and ellipses and parentheticals and shit that i really don't know about (again, point made clear by this very website).

while J and R did some exercises, i worked with K on the sentences she picked out. she's so smart and creative and goofy, but terrified of making a mistake. absolutely terrified. and when i sit beside her and she has to pause before she spells something, i can see her shake. i can see the tears almost spring to her eyes. but then she gets it. so, today, i introduced her to a new best friend - a dictionary. i told her to never be intimidated by a word she wanted to use, because her imagination simply ran a bit faster than her spelling - and pretty soon it would all come together.

of course, i have a great difficulty actually putting thoughts into words, especially when i'm teaching or relaying information, so what the kids probably heard all day was, 'you know, um, like when you write - um, cause, you know?'

[and at some point in class, R asked if i had ever seen the film 'high noon.' i replied that of course i'd seen the film because i love gary cooper and they all three stared at me in disbelief and R asked, 'you know who gary cooper is?' she's 13. it was a very strange backwards moment.]

but i think today was a good day. maybe. my stomach doesn't feel as horrible as it did with my anxiety last night and i felt a bit more in control.

let's see how the next week goes.

,pretty smart

i mean, it's not like i'm proud of everything on my resume either, but that's usually not what i lead with...

thats the only thing!

I can work up to 16 a day most honest person reliable ,pretty smart its I just have a felony.

i think part of the problem may be, well, that the ad is where one might search for employment... not employees. other than that, it's catchy, honest, and hints at a little intrigue.

just rude

passive...and aggressive?

why

post jobs, if you dont intend on writing back.

its just rude.

norma rae and karen silkwood would be proud of your fight, young man. proud.

school marm day 1

i met with V, the mother of the kids, last week at a mcdonald's across from a technical college. she gave me the teacher manuals and we discussed how to best work with each child. then this past week i proceeded to go apeshit crazy trying to prepare for class.

i headed out at 8 this morning. i got turned around because i couldn't find the actual back road, but i still arrived fifteen minutes early. no one was around except for a goose in the driveway hovering around my car. i knocked on the door and K answered - she and her sister were still getting dressed. she told me i could go to the schoolhouse where V was, so i headed over (about twenty feet) and balanced on the planks above the mud, passed a bucket of dried, rotten apples with tons - tons - of butterflies flying over and landing on, and opened the wobbly door.

V was straightening up the room (this is a one room schoolhouse). i helped her, folded up the fabric and patterns that were about, and got my stuff together.

they have three school desks that face a small chalkboard on the wall between two huge portraits of washington and lincoln. the room is a pretty big size, but feels smaller because everything is packed in - a piano, three bookshelves, a church pew (where i sat to teach), a standup bass on it side (borrowed from a friend), maps of the us, a globe, a manual pencil sharpener that doesn't work so they had to bring in the other manual pencil sharpener from the house, books and books and books and extra chairs, and a radio with quiet classical music playing.

after getting some things put away and other things merely moved, it was time to start. it was just plain overwhelming and anxiety making and terrifying - maybe because V wanted to sit in and watch. but i love the kids so i tried my best to tell them about writing and english and all the rules and telling a story and finding your own voice. and hopefully i didn't sound crazy. and then we got down to work.

i started with the older two, R and J, and we reviewed capitalization and punctuation. this is where i feel like maybe i shouldn't be a teacher because when i looked over everything last night i thought that it was really dumb that they even have a chapter like this because, really, ain't it obvious, but then i remember that i'm not 12. so i read from the book and tried to use examples i thought of, but then read some more and just felt like i had no idea what i was talking about even though i did, but i didn't want to accidentally give them little hints that were completely wrong. but V was in the room when i had to remind the kids to always capitalize the Lord. )we talked about god at the mcdonald's and i've always known the family was religious and i'm fine with that and i'm fine with teaching them however the parents feel they should be taught as long as they are learning the grammatical rules and whatnot. and i grew up catholic and will always be catholic for the most part (it's my default religion), and i'm fine with christianity, but i have a lot of trouble saying things like 'god' and 'lord' and 'jesus' and making them sound like i'm not being ironic. but i think i did okay.)

after reviewing caps, i gave them some questions to go through. they went to work and i reviewed more of the book and K sat at her desk and drew a flower in her notebook. she's 9 and usually just soaks in what's going on with her brother and sister and then gets one on one time. i thought i had an hour and a half to get it all done, but then V kept coming in to tell me we had more time, so it turned out i had two and a half hours so i just kept babbling and trying to give them work and not ruin their brains. i realized that i need to parse out the day a bit better - give R and J some review exercises while i work with K and then go back to R and J. who knows. i don't know how the other marms do it.

and then they gave me lunch.

i told V about the crazy ass job thing going on and said i would try to figure something out, and i really hope i can. hopefully i'll be able to still get up there on a weekly basis and accomplish something with them.

post script: last week when i met with V she told me that she didn't know how much they could pay, if anything. i know they're poor. they live on a self-sustaining farm afterall, but this is such a rare and interesting opportunity and i love these kids, that i thought it would be worth it. and when i got in my car, folded up on my dash, was twenty dollars.

odd jobs 101

so today i woke up and attended 'boot camp.' it's a fun (not really) way to work out early early in the morning and i completely regret it until the end of the hour.

i got home and realized i had to watch two more films for the local film festival, of which i am a judge - somehow this shit happens to me.

but today is a day when i babysit for my friends and their beautiful little newborn. she's really perfect and i just sit on their sofa and hold her when she sleeps so they can work on their laptops and i watch television, or the television is on, and today i had the hardest time staying awake.

and now i'm trying to get stuff together to be a school marm tomorrow. i've procrastinated to the bitter end, which is hilarious, and now i have to figure out how to make copies before i head to their place at 830 in the a. m.

-but i just typed and printed work from the workbook...yes, i did. i typed it because they only have a workbook for the teacher (that's me) and not the one for the students - hence typing and copies. but i'm excited and terrified because i also have to tell them of the potential crazy that's going on with maybe a new job or maybe a new blip in the history of my life. who knows. but i want to tell them and have the tension start as soon as possible.

but to add to all the fun, a director i worked with in march on the alligator picture show called me last night and asked if i could go out to the owner of the alligator's trailer and record him saying a line that was messed up in the original audio - which means that i will have to scrub down afterwards because the place makes me feel crazy creepy crawly...but not because of the alligator. it might be the dust or the cats or the porn. one can't say.

and my brain is about to explode.