April madness

Why???

Script Frenzy: 100 pages of screenplay in the 30 days of April. Or, in Eliza's case, a 50,000-word novel in the 30 days of April. That's 3.3 pages of screenplay or 1,667 words of novel per day. It can be done, people. It has been done and it shall be done, and it is a fantastically productive way to pass time, but MAN is it tough!

For my part, I'm attempting to write 100 pages worth of comedy sketches. Or sketches, anyway. I'm on track page-wise, but I refuse to vouch for the quality of the product. That's not what it's about, after all. Screenplays can be punched up later, real jokes can be added, endings can be re-written - the important thing is to push through this month and experience the creative breakthroughs that inevitably happen if you just keep writing.

If for some reason this sounds like fun to you, it's not too late to start! This is my third Script Frenzy, and I've done the National Novel Writing Month a couple of times, too, and each time I've hit the goal without writing every single day. Sure, it makes a few other days just a tiny bit more difficult, but it all evened out in the end.

Regardless, if we seem a bit quieter than usual this month, Script Frenzy/NaNoWriMo might be the reason.
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Nature Week, part 1

It's Nature Week here in the Pacific Bureau of the UGC, and you know what that means: boring photos from an experience that only one person could ever find interesting! Woooo!

Our first installment is from Griffith Park, the 4,210-acre park right smack in the middle of Los Angeles. How could this possibly qualify? Read on...



Coyote. That's how. It was just meant to be a workout excursion, but as I was pulling into the parking lot I saw this:
Ok, so maybe it's just a dog. A dog with really big coyote ears. A dog with really big coyote ears and a coyote face. Sure! Why not? After all, it was hanging out in a dog park area, and people in this city do tend to own all manner of crazy designer breeds. Maybe it...

AAAAAAAAAAUGH! WOLF!! Do you see that tail?! What the hell is that thing?? Do we have wolverines here? WTF! Definitely a coyote. Crazytalk.

Ok, so with my car parked a safe 10,000 miles away from the carnivorous wildlife, I headed up a nicely-groomed trail and encountered this warning sign:

Oh great! Two more lethal types of wild animal to worry about! I thought I was going on a hike, but maybe now I'll just run for my life. That sounds like a good cardio workout.

But there were no mountain lions or rattlesnakes on the main trail, so my pulse stayed disappointingly low and I started to get bored of the nicely-groomed and rather flat path. As I rounded a corner, though, I saw a promising side trail that only looked like a Fairly Bad Idea.


Sure, it looks a little tough, what with the lack of switchbacks and all, but I do love scrambling up a hill, and this one might be just the antidote I needed on this otherwise-boring walk. Who knows, maybe there will even be something with fangs up there, but at like a safe distance so it's roller-coaster scary, not mugger scary. That would be awesome! Sign me up.

Of course, then I went a little farther along the path and the Fairly Bad Idea started looking a bit more like a garden variety Bad Idea.

Delightful.

See, when it comes to this sort of thing, I'll almost always go for a Fairly Bad Idea, but I'm only about 50% with regular Bad Ideas. Sure, I have health insurance now, but I wasn't getting good cell phone reception up there in the hills and there really weren't very many other hikers out and about at that hour in the middle of the week. And then I got even closer, and the Bad Idea turned out to be a Really Bad Idea.


And while there's still a half a chance I'll go for a Bad Idea, I will not go for a Really Bad Idea, unless for some reason I have a choice between a Really Bad Idea and, say, a mountain lion that's threatening me with a rattlesnake while a coyote waits to tag in to the fight. Not cool, guys, not cool. That path looks an awful lot like it actually just goes straight up the side of the hill, and when I finally got to the bottom of that death path, it was confirmed.

The so-called path looked more like an erosion problem that happened to have a few footprints in it, and while I might have been able to scramble up it (if chased by three unruly carnivores), getting back down again would have been a whole other problem. And you know what I have to say to that? Something unprintable, that's what.

So instead, I turned around and headed over to a different part of the park, and did some Fairly Bad Idea climbing to get up to the highest point in the park, Mt. Hollywood (elev. 1625 feet). Now THAT will get the blood moving! It wasn't exactly a clear day in Los Angeles, but I still got a pleasant view of the Griffith Observatory and downtown.


That's it for today, folks. Tune in tomorrow for more wilderness adventures and close encounters with (far less scary) wildlife!
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I finally broke down.

Kids, I've been out of work since November 1st. For anyone counting, that's just over four full months. I'm literally bouncing off walls at this point (from boredom, and from the extra energy I've gotten from my recent return to the world of exercise). Sure, I'm doing my volunteer work and I'm going to auditions and I'm seeking out reasonably-priced entertainment, but it's just not cutting it. Much as the thought of cubicles and taupe gives me hives, I really, truly, desperately need to get back into the world of the working. I want to be a taxpayer. I'm even getting all nostalgic for mandatory Sensitivity Training sessions.

So I did it. Yesterday I went to a temp agency and got all signed up again (disappointingly, no typing test!), and this morning at 8am I dutifully called in available. Sure, I have an audition this afternoon, but I figured (accurately) that it wouldn't end up being an issue, and besides, I wanted to make a nice impression on my first day on their temp list. Also, at 8am, I wasn't thinking clearly enough to say anything beyond "available." And then I went back to sleep. Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays...
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Dispatches from La-La-Land

I do apologize for my absence. It seems that in trying to keep busy, I've somehow managed to keep too busy, which is truly an odd phenomenon for someone in a position such as mine. And what on earth have I been up to? What could possibly be sapping so much of my day that I have found it difficult to scrape together a few minutes to write a blog post?

Several things. First, volunteering. Now, this hasn't been taking up vast swaths of time, but it has been rewarding in its own way. At first it seemed odd that whilst looking for someone to pay me to work, I should work for free, but now it seems odd that the notion ever seemed odd. After all, these organizations need people with spare time to help them out, and I have spare time and want something useful to do, so why on earth not go for it? I'll admit that it was suggested to me several times before I took action, and that it was an Obama commercial that finally got me off the couch and over to the computer, but all's well that ends well. If you're interested, I've found VolunteerMatch to be extremely helpful. So far I've gone on a bird count with the Audubon Society and started a community outreach research project for the National MS Society. More to come...

Second, and more selfish and time-consuming (but marginally more lucrative): auditioning. I'd say acting, but I really have been focusing more on the audition part of the equation. I used to be a working actor (with a day job), and I did go to drama school, but since moving to LA I've done nothing of the sort. Now that I have all this time during the day, though, I figured I might as well see what's out there for me in this field. It fits nicely into my "no stone unturned" approach to job-searching, and in addition to being an enormous source of entertainment for me, it has already yielded a couple of paying gigs! Nothing that'll pay the rent, but it'll keep me online for a month or two.

Looking through audition listings, I've noticed a few things. First, people are seriously creepy. Seriously. Creepy. I stay well away from those auditions. Second, there is no shortage of demand for "hot," "sensual," or "sexy" women for whom there will be "nudity and sexuality required" in audition listings, but I have my doubts as to whether there are actual, funded projects behind many of them. Third, if you have a truly bizarre talent, someone out there will put you on TV or in a movie, but probably only once, so don't count on it being your meal ticket forever. (This also includes unique physical traits - I just saw a listing that had as a postscript "Weird hair is helpful.") And finally, there are a disturbingly-large number of audition listings that specifically mention "must be good at facial expressions." That's verbatim. Now, I know that Botox is beyond popular here, but has it actually managed to annihilate all expression from 99% of actors' faces? Or do these casting directors know that 99% of "actors" here have no idea what they're doing and can't even pull faces? Or is that line just The Mark Of The Amateur? I do not yet know the answer to this question, because most listings that have that caveat also have multiple spelling errors, and I refuse to even make contact with people who can't be bothered to run a quick spell-check.

Despite all of this, I am persisting, and I am learning from each audition and each gig (thusfar I have been paid to be an audience member, an extra in a commercial, and a hair model for one of those books you see at the salon), and most importantly, it's still really amusing for me. When I get jaded I'll stop, but for now, it's all good.
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New Zealand scares me

Following close on the heels of yesterday's mysterious job title posting, we have this one, care of New Zealand's official government list of highly-skilled immigrants currently needed:

Agricultural and Horticultural Mobile Plant Operator

They have plants that move?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
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