I got all mushy about those darn kids. A great story to be shared.
Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field:
The mayor of Clarkston, Georgia needs a flogging and a wake-up call to the real world. But he may change his ways yet...
I don't want to jump the gun, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't get jobs for which I auditioned last week. Had initial meet and greet on Tuesday for a TV hosting gig that would shoot in 13 locations globally, to raise awareness on green-friendly travelling. Won them over with my involvement in Gawad Kalinga, my experience in the Philippines, and of course, my charming demeanor :P. Got the call-back on Wednesday.
The call-back was supposed to be an on-your-feet type of audition in front of the camera. Learn material about a specific location from information they provided, introduce the location with poise and grace, and a little hook, then mock-interview an expert on the green, tourist spot.
On the interview, I over- and under-prepared. I over-prepared a written introduction, trying to remember verbatim what I wrote, without allowing for flubs and winging it. Result, I choked on the intro, after putting tons of pressure on myself to get it right. After three or so takes, I streamlined it, then went into the mock-interview. That part went great, showing them that I did all the research, and was able to ask informative questions to a local expert - the local expert being one of their producers who had traveled to the pre-determined location.
After the interview, I segwayed beautifully into the next imaginary segment. Smooth and controlled. I wish they could have overlooked the intro, I just happened to be the first auditioner of the day, and I was a bit cold. My fault, of couse. Plus, in my experience, when taping in the field or on location, you always screw up, and it's okay. You tape it again, and they edit it later. My problem is that I didn't laugh it off. I looked stressed.
Oh well. Past is past, and at least the casting director saw me. I got this one through my agent, that my lovely wife helped me to acquire.
Second audition was on Frieday, for a commercial spokesperson of a cable company. I was on camera for a big casting director here in New York, and that made me happy. I've been working with this manager, and he got me the audition. Another acquisition through the Julie.
I'm just happy that I've been auditioning regularly in 2007. It feels good and I know this will be a good year for the both of us.
As far as the prior-mentioned choke... I just started thinking about all the good that this potential gig could do for our life. The travel, the money, starting a family, a step up in my career by acquiring more for my hosting reel. Audition techniques are exactly what I learned at the Academy, and I guess I didn't warm-up or go through relaxation enough. Instead of focusing on the material, I was focusing on the irrelevant personal, that should be wiped away to neutral before I get started in front of the camera.
Live and learn, and next time I'll do better. Plus, the more I audition, the easier it gets. You get to the point where you don't care or expect if anything is going to happen, then you become fearless, because you have no expected consequences. Usually that happens when you audition a lot. It's a don't-care, I-own-the-room attitude that gets you jobs, which has gotten me jobs in the past, and will get me them this year.
I predict fortune's favor for the Filipino flava.
Today, I sit atop the investment bank again, assisting executive bankers, answering phones, reserving cars, printing documents, and eating my homemade lunch at my desk. At least Julie is here today too. There's comfort in shared banking experiences.
I'm still waiting to hear about my potential promotion at the computer store.
I feel like I'm waiting for things to happen that depend on other people. That means I need to make something happen this week. There's my goal.
Also, I've been remembering my dreams a lot lately. I wake up, break them down, analyze the symbols, apply them to my life, and the cycle continues daily. That means I'm in touch with my inner self. That's new-agey talke for I understand what I'm feeling on a daily basis. Good for me. I think I went several months without remembering my dreams.
I'm back, baby! Back to sleep. Back to work. Back to the gym :)
From high atop the 42nd floor, I am filling in for another actor. These quotes in no way reflect the views or positions of this blogger. However, they were stolen honestly from the non-private walls of a cube. There are more quotes, but I'd rather not relay what the Goddess has to say.
But these are semi-worthy or worthy for you and me.
The Actor's Vow"He that respects himself is safe from others." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." -Saint Francis
"Whenever you see darkness / there is extraordinary opportunity / for the light to burn / brighter." -Bono
I will take my rightful place on the stage and I will be
myself.
I am not a cosmic orphan.
I have no reason to be timid.
I will respond as I feel; awkwardly, vulgarly, But respond.
I will have my throat open.
I will have my heart open.
I will be vulnerable.
I may have anything or everything the world has to offer, but the thing I need most, and want most, is to be myself.
I will admit rejection, admit pain, admit frustration, admit even pettiness, admit shame, admit outrage, admit anything and everything that happens to me.
The best and most human parts of me are those I have inhabited and hidden from the world.
I will work on it.
I will raise my voice.
I will be heard. -Elia Kazan
Our Deepest Fear
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Is is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you. We are meant to shine, as children do. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us ; it's in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other s permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson, 1992
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and
those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
That's enough for today. Must leave!
Had an audition today. One of those one-liner, lottery calls that could be won by anybody, but is basically up to the way you look and not the way you deliver the one line. Auditions like these do not bother me if I don't get it, until and unless I get past the first round into the call back, and that's when the skills, hopefully, come in. I got skills.
I'm, also, happy to report that this is my second audition in the New Year. Double the amount of commercial auditions I've had in the second half of '06. I'd like to call that progress. This will continue. I have confidence in the fishing-net, talent-recruitment style of the manager I'm using, taking in many headshots/resumes and pushing them out in large numbers, hoping one of them bites. It's the numbers game. Cold calling. Cold calling. The ABC's. "Always be closing." Yes, I quote Mamet.
My schedule is strange this week, as I await my promotion at the computer store, and raise, hopefully, and I am working last minute at the investment bank. To protect the innocent, I use not names of fame and grandeur.
Last night, I finally watched Syriana, and this geo-political drama, so much more common these days, was a maze of characters, implications, story lines, and Big Oil politics, making me eager to torture a Texas or Saudi oil exec in Guantanamo and coerce them with electrodes, beyond borders in Afghanistan, to lighten their lobby on the Hill, and create more Hydrogen and hybrid research in the U.S. If Big Brother's contradictions of Constitutional law can continue, than I can follow their lead and whip up a terrorist spy, and when it hits the media feed, deny all knowledge of the terrorist, and blame the former spy for their unsponsored acts, because I didn't know anything about it, and I'll support only moral and just spies who torture under our very own borders. Yeah, that's right.
Good movie. I want to re-watch for the details I missed. Complex, inter-woven, mult-POV, fragmented stories seem to be the way to tell geo-political dramas lately. Let's thank Tarantino for the trend, which has been embraced from TV to film - Heroes, Lost, Babel, Traffic, Pulp Fiction, though most of these aren't geo-political; geo-comic-book-ensemble, maybe.
That's it. Back to work, salads, and fried chicken.
One last thought before I nosh - I admire the man behind the drama, and winner of Oscar for his role in the film. George Clooney gives all us aging actors (I'm not too age-d yet) hope that it can still happen later in life. The fame and fortune are not my desired ends as much as the ability to always work as an actor in relevant stories. That's all I really want. The money part is secondary. Not only that, to be able to write and direct those stories too, like the man Clooney, wouldn't be so bad either. Oh yes, it will happen. Unlike the aforementioned oilmen, I would not like an enduring torturous process to get there. Although an enduring process is a reward in itself. Thanks be to time and the Universe, minus torture.
My cousin has recently returned from living abroad in Japan, for only a two week stay here in the New Jersey/New York area, and I am brought back to my return from the Philippines back in Dec. '01-Jan.'02. When I was in the Philippines, I felt like I was in it, connected, on the verge of something purposeful, and that I had life by the benwah's. I had recently appeared on a national talk show there, and people were recognizing me on the street, albeit sparsely. But as I entered JFK airport, waiting to get my passport checked, a group of three Filipina girls stopped me and said, "weren't you on the show, 'Mel & Jay'?"
That 'flip'ped me out... yeah, you like that? I can say flip because I am half of one, but Michael Richards, you cannot. So, as all of that was going for me, I returned home to a flag-filled America. The woman checking passports was a large African-American lady, and I hadn't seen black people for five months, so I wanted to give her a hug. The Philippines is very monochromatic, which is why I stand out as a mestizo (mixed), and why I loved returning to my wounded city of diversity, ingenuity, determination and courage.
It was a painful time in the nation, and I just wanted to get re-acquainted with what had happened while I was away. I felt guilt that I wasn't there. Guilt that I wasn't at home to experience it with our country, but I knew I had to continue with what I was doing over in the P.I. (Philippine Islands).
I bonded with family through our Holiday traditional stay in New Jersey. I walked the circumference of Ground Zero alone, to see it for myself. I cried again. I came back to my aunt, uncle and cousin's Jersey home, and I just remember not being able to get warm. My body was acclimated to the tropical heat of the Philippines, and returning in winter, I couldn't find a jacket that kept the heat in me. While I slept in the day and stayed up all night, adjusting to the time difference, I wrapped myself in blankets, caught up on TV, movies and music and reconnected with friends and family.
I felt in between. I didn't belong here at home because I had no purpose here. My purpose was far away, though when I was there, it felt so purposeless compared to what was going on in the world at the time. A week after 9/11, I performed in a semi-slapstick, definitely schticky, play with an all Filipino cast, about a Filipina who returns from the States to her humble hood of Tondo (a very bad neighborhood), and comedy ensues. For high school kids. I had to do a terrible filipino accent, because I didn't know how to do it at the time, in front of high school kids, in a large school auditorium, all the way on the other side of the world, while the ground was still smoking back home. It just felt wrong.
Three months later though, the need to return to a time zone 13 hours ahead still tugged at me finishing what I started was the goal. I would be on TV again, as a VJ/TV host, and I really went for it. And it happened. The energy was in my hands then, and everything that I set out to do over there, came to fruition.
Maybe now, I'm displaced again. Far out in the wilds of Brooklyn, and it's time to harness the energy once again. I really want it this year. And although I'm five, jeez, five years older, I know that within me, I have the power to manifest what I want, without.
It was only a matter of time, and with the emotional foundation of my wife and family, I am ready to place myself in a state where I grab benwah's again and start making them jingle.
My cousin is figuring it out as we await dry-rub BBQ ribs tonight, and he will. To stay or to go. And when he goes, he'll ask himself again. But where he is now, although physically in his childhood house in New Jersey, he is far away, and he will come to the answers, ponder where he is, in mind, and find his way home.
