Technical glitches

My computer died....turns out the hard drive needs to be replaced. Okey-doke. Of course, I'm thankful that I've been dutifully paying every month each installment on my card, so I was able to order a 'new' (read refurbished) drive that'll come in a couple of days.

Now to find the money to make up for this latest expense.

Speaking of which...

Went to an audition today. It was pretty interesting. I had to improv with another actor, which was fun, except that the guy was clueless on direction. He was told by the director that he had to play the gullible goof that gets 'talked' into offing his roommate by his roommate's girlfriend who is scheming to get her hands on her boyfriend's money. He totally flipped it and made it that he already knew the deal and was like, okay, we gotta figure out a way to get this guy's money.

So that kind of crashed and burned. The second scenario was me playing the cop and him being the junkie who found a gun but ended up selling it for dope but is telling me he 'forgot' where the gun is. So I have to interrogate him. That went a LOT better.

So I think, believe it or not, that the guy will be called back. What was interesting was what came up because of it. The guy had ... some body issues. Odor, exactly. How do you work with someone who obviously needs some cleaning up and some good oral hygiene to boot?

I wonder how other actors deal with someone who isn't at their 'freshest' or 'best'. How do they get around it or how do they work with it. My choice was to ignore it and get through the audition/improv session. It was about ten minutes long. Then we were done, we shook the director's hand, and we went out the door to get our pictures taken and sign off on a release form. The office was pleasant enough to look at, looked like a converted space from a former apartment. Outside these buildings the midtown west have a lot of character but inside they are destroyed by lots of those fake walls. I thought, this stairwell could have been replaced with something nicer and more in character with the building and the fake walls could have been just...painted something dark because it just did not reflect its outer packaging. Am I making sense? Drywall, yes.

In any case, I got to drop off my headshot to both the director and the director's partner, and I didn't have to memorize a monologue which was nice. I also didn't have to deal with an early morning call at the crack of you gotta be kidding me because I had come back from out of town and was not going to make an early morning call for anybody.

I had to cancel another gig simply because I couldn't make it back for a 5:30 call, and I'm not regretting the decision. Sometimes a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do.

What was interesting was after the audition, I was feeling good, light. Enjoying the walk in the sun back towards the train station. And a man, a Hasidic older man, walked by me and greeted me good morning. I smiled and said good morning. Beautiful day, he said. I agreed. We talked a little bit as we headed down the avenue. We parted at Times Square and we say good day to each other. It was a pleasant, lovely little New York moment. That's why I love New York.

Lovely warm day. My little container herbal garden is already sprouting seedlings of sage, lemon, sweet and thai basil, and lavender. Not bad.

Got a headsup for a potential two day gig. Psyched!