8-05: Broke, Don't Do Shit

Hey errybody, I'm writing this post now.

This has been a very weird weekend for me.
I have been, by night mainly, doing the remount of this one-act show that I did a couple weekends ago. It's part of this festival at this local NoHo (North Ho-ville) theatre called Eclectic Theatre. They're all really cool peoples. I found the job through my regular audition source, and it was a lot of fun. Anyway, in the festival, there are 3 one-acts every weekend and the audience votes for which one is their favorite. That "favorite" moves onto the final round, which was this weekend. Now, if you're a fan of deductive reasoning, but now you will hopefully have figured out that the show I was in won our weekend, and so it got to go back up again. Which was awesome. I got to play a hyper-aggressive 8-12 (let's say 9) year old boy who's participating in a water balloon fight. It was a good time, especially because we had the gimmick of running offstage, getting soaked, and then coming back on. That's always fun.

So I was mostly just doing my show every night, and then this Sunday matinee, this weekend. But I worked a little as well. But in between was just kind of an awkward, sleepy, funky, haze. I'm going through another one of those phases where I don't really know what to do with my free time, only this time it's because I don't really feel like doing anything. I think I may have slid into another minor little funkeroo, just for this weekend (hopefully), because I'm...well, incredibly broke right now.
Had to get my roommate to really help me out with the rent this month (thanks again, Ali!) and something about not having the means to buy things when I need them really makes me feel all self-conscious and weird.
I think I get this way when I either:
A. Don't have money
B. Don't have a place to live
C. Don't have transportation

And now that I look at it all listed out like that, it would appear that I enjoy being an independent, adult person, and freak out whenever one of my "necessities" are thrown into jeopardy. Especially when I'm relying heavily on someone to supply me with either: housing, transportion, food, etc. I just feel like I'm putting upon them so much that I feel like a dirty hobo. Which I mean, don't get me wrong, I am. But I don't like to flaunt it like those other hobos.

As I'm sure my mom will most likely say upon reading this, "You'd be not go into a downwards spiral every time you don't have that much money or you're going to be depressed a LOT in your acting career". Which isn't without truth.

Now I can't get a new job until I get back from my family trip to Japan because nowhere will they hire me when I tell them, "Oh by the way, I'm going out of town for a week next week, so training is going to have to um, you know, wait." So that kind of blows, because I could really use a new job asap. I like Pinkberry now. I know many of you may say, "But JAYME, you're Facebook info says that you're 'slowly dying on the inside' at Pinkberry?!? EXPLAIN YOURSELF." I hear you, Screamy Joe.
I like my co-workers a lot more and even certain customers are rays of sunshine in my dreary, perfect life. But I just need more money. We hired two new people and the hours are like...ZLOOP. So you know what that means.
...Right?
Time for a new, better paying job!
Come on, keep up!

I'm feeling very restless and transitory right now, kind of like a bear whose gone into hibernation to wait out the winter, where the winter is this weird two week period where I can't make any advances in my career. I don't know if you noticed, but I don't like being stagnant. Dead in the water, and such. Maybe a bear isn't the right metaphor. Maybe the metaphor I'm looking for is actually a...metapod?
That's right, taking it back to the URL, baby!
For those of you who don't know, a metapod is a cocoon Pokemon who is a bad-ass cocoon. He lies dormant until he evolves into the Butterfree (which by the way, should totally be the name of the new blog I start once I become a mega movie star, because how awesome would that be). So maybe I'm just really channeling the metapod right now, awaiting my metamorphosis.

On an unrelated note, I'm reading Stephen King's book, On Writing, right now.
It's terrifying! His scariest yet!
So maybe his words will inspire me to put out more words into the universe.
Only thyme will tell.
...
It's a very potent spice.

A Busyful Mind

Hello again, world. My name is Jayme.
Just in case you have forgotten since last time.
I don't know why you would have. It's right up there at the top of the page.

I have many things on my mind currently. Some of them are old issues that I was really feeling passionate about weeks ago, so the fire inside me to speak about them may be out, and some of them are current musings on stuff brought on by alcohol.

First of all, I should probably tell you that I made the most amazing dinner tonight. A portobello mushroom and provolone burger (don't get too excited, I bought them at Ralph's) with sliced mozzarella, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Along with a side of mashed potatoes that I...wait for it...MADE FROM SCRATCH. Now this may not seem like a big deal to some of you. Maybe you've helped Grandma in the kitchen every Thanksgiving until she died, but guess what I DIDN'T so suck it. I've never made mashed potatoes from scratch before. But I looked at the contents of my fridge, I said, "I'm hungry", and I decided that mashed potatoes were on the menu. It took some finagling and lots of garlic chopping and some mashing, but it was finally done and they tasted pretty damn good. Lots of red pepper flakes, garlic (duh, I already said that), salt, pepper, mexican cheese, and sour cream. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Good thing I made so much that I'll have leftovers for the rest of time. Cause that's exactly how long I want to eat them.
And eating them conjured up such pleasant memories of my first Helen Hayes Awards, in which I was nominated, and they had a mashed potato bar pre-show. It. Was. Mouthgasmic.
Ugh. Yum. Yup, it took me right back to that night.

And I devoured all these yummy big boy treats while drinking a beer and watching episode 8 of Freaks and Geeks, a great show that everybody in the world seems to have seen and says its pretty good, so I'm finally checking it out. In this episode, the main male lead (pretty much), Sam, at one point says, "I've already got two friends. How many more friends does a guy need?!" While endearing and funny because of how naive it sounds, it really made me miss the days of being a kid. Back in the days of elementary/middle school when sometimes, you really only had one or two friends. And every day afterschool it wasn't a question of "who am I going to hang out with?" it was more, "I wonder what we're going to do today." And when the answer was: hang out at someone's house for 3/4/5 hours playing some dumb board game while trying to figure out what you're going to do. And that you only had those two friends (give or take a friend and a half or two)! I think I'm really nostalgic...or maybe just mournfully envious, of people who have a really tight clique of friends that they've been with forever. I feel like I'm naturally predisposed to just making lots of surface level friends rather than a few really good ones, who I know backwards and forwards and can share anything with. And I'm not talking about girl friends or friends who are girls. I mean like a close-knit group of GUY friends. I don't know what it was, something about that line just made me feel all, "awww. Friends." I don't know, maybe I'm crazy and aren't seeing things as they are. But there are certain people that I want to just get to know better and hang out with, but I repel from them for whatever reason. Whether I'm too scared that I'll fuck it up or whether I'm afraid they won't like me or whether I'm afraid they'll just make me feel like shit. I don't consciously think or feel these things, they just seem to be quietly poisoning me and my friendships from my subconscious out.

Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, I'm getting tired of writing and I am looking forward to this next beer, so I'll try and keep this next talking point short-ish, if I can help it.
I had a thought the other day that I adhere too strongly to rules. I'm a perfectionist about some things in my life, and in those things, I do, I follow the rules WAY too closely. I'm a good boy. I don't really break the rules. But when it comes to things that I don't care about, I'm fucking James Dean. And it occurred to me the other day that...I've got to stop following the rules. Isn't there something out there that says, "Learn all the rules so you can break them"? Well, I've learned the rules, and I'm starting to think I need to say fuck it to the rules and just be myself. We as a species are attracted to unpredictable things. Things that are exciting because almost ANYTHING could happen around them. And it's similar in acting too. The actors who are the most interesting to watch are the ones who follow impulses night after night and don't deliver lines the same exact way every single show. I don't know if this theory I'm cooking up really applies to acting, but either way, I think I want to stop following rules, whether socially implied or directly given, more and start just doing what I feel like doing. As long as what I feel like doing doesn't hurt anybody or suck, I should be fine and dandy, right?
I'm a badass now. Get used to it.
Well, I mean I was before too, you just didn't notice because you were too DUMB.
Booya. That's the new badass Jayme. Like it? Don't care. Didn't ask if you did.
Well okay I did. But you know what else I did. TELL YOU TO SHUT UP.
When did I do that, you ask yourself, dumbly. Right now.
Shut up, silent reader!

Just kidding, I love you, SR.
Be my friend?

DOUBLE JUST KIDDING. FUCK YOU, SR. That's a dumb abbreviation, anyway!
Who gave you it, YOUR MAMMY?!
Alright, this has gone on long enough and I'm sure it is not as amusing to read as it is to write. And that last bit got a little racially charged, so it's best to nip that in the bud before it grows into a tall, mighty Racist Redwood Tree. Or "Native American"-wood Tree, as they would have you call it.

Alright then. That was stupid. Haha
Goodnight Cleveland!
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