Lots has happened since I posted on Friday.  I didn’t win the Primal Iron Chef contest.  Sigh.  But that means I have a post that just needs some editing and then it can be posted here.  So win! (Always embrace your bright side/silver linings).

Class was good on Friday, but I threw my partner a bit of a curve ball and that messed with her.  It was silly of me to have thrown what I threw at her with such little notice.  So our exercise suffered.  That said, it was still a respectable exercise so I’m not going to stress about it.  After all, the whole point of class is learning and I definitely learned.

Before class on Friday I met up with my Aunt L and my cousin E for a picnic and LACMA visit (in honor of my birthday – I love spreading the birthday celebrating out for weeks!).  It was a yummy picnic and I really enjoyed my first visit to LACMA.  Due to various time constraints, it wasn’t a long visit so I have lots of the museum waiting for exploration.  But I did get a chance to check out their newest building and the special exhibits they have in there right now.  It was only open to members and my aunt is member so we all got in!

The highlight of the weekend was the Saturday night whirlwind of checking out the newly reformed Ghost of the Robot (wait, what??!??) on their “This Night Only Tour”. Which turned out to be surprisingly pleasant.  E and I did a relatively lengthy write up (bullet points) on it and posted it to facebook. So look there if you care.  And after taking a couple of minutes to say hi to James (Marsters – better known as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) afterwards we ran off to catch the incomparable Phil X with his band The Drills.  This meant we drove from Santa Monica to the ass-end of Burbank at 11 o’clock on a Saturday night.  Thankfully that went relatively smoothly and we found the place without difficulty.  As per Los Angeles (and possibly all small venues everywhere) tradition they were running late.  The really excellent part of this is that we got to see all of the 5th & Birmingham set which was a lovely discovery of rock’n alternative country – I am still in love with the first song they performed.

So, it was nearly 2 am by the time The Drills closed the place down.  The acoustics were excellent and with the exception of the really drunk asshat who nearly dropped a full beer on me (it only splashed on to one of my toes, but ewww!) it was an awesome show.  Of course, we waited around to chat with Phil which meant that it was closing in on 3 am before we left.  We were adventurous and now know how to get to the cantina using our preferred backstreets and this is important as we are anticipating future gigs here.  Lights on the stage and acoustics that allow you to hear things!  Oh and there is no cover.  If they don’t hurry up and post a new date soon I’m gonna start a petition.

So, yesterday (Sunday) was spent recuperating and recounting the tales of the first part of the night.  Not to mention E had large collection of videos to post.  About half of which she posted before she even attempted sleep.  She hasn’t slept much in the past 48 hours.  Part of that is my fault for engaging her in epic conversation threads on facebook and else where (and speaking of facebook, random tangent… apparently everyone and their mother loves “The Social Network”). I do not apologize on account of finding it all very amusing and knowing full well that she could have left all of the conversations at any moment.  I am unrepentant.

So today we recorded our latest A Squeevening With (on account of the unexpected delight of the reformed GotR).  This involved the usual levels of silliness and a fair share of technical difficulties. We appear to once again have a three parter on our hands, but hey, it’s our thing and we can do what ever we want with it.  The really exciting bit is that this will be the debut of our custom intro music created for us by one Michael D. Henry.  A big thanks to Mike, he is an awesome musician and we’re especially happy to call him friend.

And now I have more prep to do for class tomorrow…

The point is HOT!  And not the good kind of hot.  As in “check out that hottie over there!” hot.  No, the point is, we ran our AC unit all day on Monday and thanks to less than ideal airflow my room was still overly warm.  And for those of you who don’t know me, I don’t like the heat.  I would like the heat to go away.  I tend to feel useless in the heat.  So, you see, getting two blog posts out of me that morning was half a miracle and probably only possible because I wrote them in the AM before the heat really started in ernest.  Although, it was already hot on account of the previous two days of heat wave.  And apparently between the knocking out two posts in one day and all that excess heat in the world I was done with posting for the rest of the week even though I have things to write/post about.  But enough about the misery of heat and it’s impact on me/this blog.  On to more interesting things…

Things like class on Tuesday… Remember last Friday?  With the very successful ass kicking exercise?  Yeah, well Tuesday was the one step back to Friday’s two steps forward.  It was a good exercise.  I had all lots of room to be more specific with my superlative activity (but I had tweaked it to be better than what I had originally planned on doing – I am at least paying some attention!).  And for some reason my specific relationship wasn’t particularly strong the first go round.  But hey, it was a learning experience and that is what I am there for.  Yay for learning!

Wednesday was spent trying to be productive while still hiding from the lingering heat (I did manage to get out and mail the cell phone I’ve been meaning to send to my sister for the past two and half weeks!  She’ll be so happy.) and culminated in a call from my mother.  She was calling from the hospital to let me know what was going on with my grandmother.  *Gulp*  We only just lost grandpa back in June.  This has been a hard year.  I am not ready for more death in my family (who is, right?).  Thankfully, while not exactly encouraging the prognosis is reasonably good and I’m hoping that a doctor who knows her better (her doctor) will actually have a more encouraging out look.  But who knows.  For now, what we know is that she as ovarian cancer and a large tumor that is pressing against her internal organs.  Due to her age and Alzheimer’s, she probably isn’t a good candidate for surgery.  However this cancer does tend to respond well to low level chemotherapy.  So, we await further diagnosis and such like.  Please send her some love and prayers, they will be welcome and appreciated.

And plunging onward (wiping away the tears – she’s my last living grandparent…).

What was I saying about onward?  Oh yes, plunging.

Yesterday was the first day of the week that temps were mostly decent.  And while I had gone out in pursuit of supplies late the night before, I had refrained from actually putting my “Primal Iron Chef” plans into motion until our apartment had another night to cool off.  This led to me actually relocating to a friend’s apartment/kitchen.  It’s a nice kitchen.  Much more spacious than my own.  And prettier.  I have to say, I wish I had used that aspect of it more, but it would have required more straightening and meddling with someone else’s kitchen than I was going to do at that time.  Not that the people in question give their kitchen much of work out, but still.  (No I am not plotting future take overs of this kitchen.  I pinky swear.)

So where was I?  Oh yes, concocting coconut primal dishes for the chance to win a VitaMix (wish me luck guys!).  I settled into the kitchen quickly and began what ended up being a very long process for putting together my two dishes.  This was not exactly by design & was entirely unnecessary, but I am just fine with how it all went down.  Thankfully it wasn’t totally down to the wire and I got my entry in with almost an hour to spare.  I am not going to rehash what I wrote up for the contest here.  I will either link to it if it gets posted over at marksdailyapple.com or post it in its entirety here in a few days.  And I will include an epilog!

So here it is, Friday morning again.  And I am starting to feel mostly human again.  The temps are at least bearable and my leg is mostly not gimpy (this has not been my month for walking.  I have joked a lot about working on impediments early – which is something we will be learning in class – but I really would rather not have the assistance on that one).   I’m seriously obsessing about my Primal Iron Chef entry.  The Primal Blueprint Challenge has been fun by the way.  Lots of fun contests and ideas and inspiration.  Now if only I would stop hurting myself so that I can get back to actually being able to exercise and such!

Yup, Friday morning and today holds lots of promise.  My aunt (and possibly/probably my uncle and their two kids) will be meeting me at the tar pits and for a picnic and taking me to LACMA in honor of my birthday.  This is reminding me a bit of last Friday.  When E’s family (mom and her mom’s cousin) was in town and E took me/us whale watching.  Which was entirely awesome, by the way, and will be getting it’s own post just as soon as I sit down, write it & steal video/photos of the event from E.  I’m hoping that picnic/museum visit is lovely and that I skip the injuring myself but do manage the kick butt in class thing again….

I’ll let you know.

On Sunday, after the world had cooled off to some semblance of a reasonable temperature I made E drive me to Larchmont so that I could pick up a small celebratory treat in the form of a cupcake!  It was my birthday after all.  Which was actually quite a lovely day despite the mitigating factors.  Talked to my family on the phone.  Got lots of love from friends and family on facebook (love you guys!!!) and just enjoyed relaxing.  I’m saving more active celebrations for when I can walk again and the world outside my apartment is not doing it’s best impression of a furnace.

I took the opportunity to watch a couple of movies (what else was I really going to do?).  Love Story – a classic I had never watched before.  And The Matrix.  Yeah, I like odd couplings  I also watched Sweeny Todd for the first time on Saturday.  So I’ve had a fun filmic weekend.  And I enjoyed all three of the movies I picked for it, so yay me!  It was really interesting watching The Matrix again, especially considering how long it had been since I’d seen it.  I remember the impact it had eleven years ago.  And I can still see it today.  Although those Nokia phones look huge now.  And oh dear god…. is that a CRT!??!!  It’s amazing how the world changes.

Anyway, my birthday was lovely and I’m considering mainlining thai iced teas as clearly it’s the only reasonable way to deal with the fact that the predicted high for today is upwards of 103 and we’re well on our way.

Not particularly related to acting, but it’s such an important message for a group of people who need it.

I’ve loved Dan Savage for years.  His advice column Savage Love is an awesome read and his contribution to the amazing This American Life live broadcast was so beautiful and touching.  I’m so grateful that there are people like Dan Savage out there doing these things.  I find it very inspirational.  Enjoy and please share!

Turns out that while I was out doing my acting thing E was busy picking up a pair of Roborovski hamsters.  Which happen to be the tiniest most adorable hamsters you have ever laid eyes on.  They are also hyper-active and suck at climbing.  They have been in this house for approximately 19 hours (give or take) and they have been on their wheel for 18.5 of those hours.  And while they do trade off which one is running on the wheel a bit, they also spend a good deal of that time running the wheel together.  And mind you, on the rare occasion that one of them is not on the wheel, that hamster is not resting.  Oh no.  The one that is not on the wheel is running around like a mad thing.

And thus the tradition of crazy animals in our house continues.  Which reminds me, I don’t think I ever posted about my crazy beta….

But enough about critters for now.  Acting!  Or in my case “pacting”.  One of the things our teachers at the studio like to say to us on a regular basis is “Acting is doing, it is not passive, if it was it would be called pacting.”  And my major note for the night was that I had a passivity in me.  Which is definitely an obstacle that I am working on and was more pronounced in my work last night on account of a number of factors.  My choice of activity was detrimental to action and I needed to really deepen my emotional relationship to the circumstances that we (my partner and I) had written.  Overall, we had a good understanding of the new work and properly setting it up.  I did make one mistake in choosing my circumstances that I should have caught, but this is a learning experience and I got lots of notes to help me for next time.

Last night was a challenge on many levels.  It was the first night of a new structure.  My partner and I ended up being first on account of neither of us getting worked up about putting our names on the list and someone else doing it for us (presumably to prevent us from putting ourselves at the end of the list and thereby bumping everyone else forward a spot).  And we had a substitute teacher who is particularly passionate and strong in how she gives notes.  Which isn’t to say that our regular teachers are not passionate and strong, but that they see us much more frequently and have a better idea of how far we’ve come.  Which definitely changes how they deliver the notes.  It fascinating and wonderful to have these influxes of new perspective.  And I am grateful for the challenges as they give me more to grow from.

So instead of being useful I am going to post links to things:

Wookiee The Chew by James Hance (I can haz now please!)

the most adorable owl in a hat you will ever see (it’s a cunning hat at that).

the latest XKCD makes me happy – it’s an inside joke

and for anyone who enjoys cars or crazy british guys: Top Gear

The more committed you are to the principles the more quick and dramatic your results will be, but every small step counts and beating yourself up for your mistakes tends to do more harm than good.  It’s your journey do it for yourself and enjoy every bit of it.

I made that up the other day and I like it.  It was an entry for a contest over on marksdailyapple.com which is currently hosting a lovely challenge complete with fun contests.  I encourage you to check it out.

I’ve spent the better part of today trying to get the muscles in my lower back to relax.  It has meant little by way of getting anything done and almost caused me to wimp out on class tonight.  I am really glad I went.  Granted, it may not have been the best choice for my back, but that’s almost certainly short term/temporary.  And being in class was definitely helpful and fun.  Even if moving around hurt.  At least I was there.

On Sunday I took my first pole dancing class.  For fun and fitness (& definitely not for meretricious reasons), if you must know.  And I have discovered muscles in my arms that I previously would have denied the existence of.  They are not strong muscles at this point in time, but they do exist.  Something they felt the need to remind me of for the couple of days.  No more denials for them.  It was fun and there was a short down pour while I was on my way there.  Rain and pole dancing!   Then it was home for cleaning and plotting before heading off to rehearse.

Rehearsal!!!  Sunday was a very important day in class because it was the first day of performing our scenes.  So I went over to my partner’s house and we got right to it.  Going in we knew that we would be doing the scene sitting down and that our teacher would be encouraging us to run our lines quickly.  This is so that we don’t slow down, draw out words and pause, dramatically, to act out our point.  Knowing this we rehearsed this way.  And the exciting discovery for me was that when we pushed ourselves to go quickly with the lines the emotions just came.  It was pretty nifty.  I also remembered that we needed to be clear on what our character’s relationship to each other is.  So we both got clear on that.  By the time we had to leave we had a solid connection to our relationship, our emotions in the scene, and our lines down pat.

Thankfully the freeways were kind to us, but we ended up parked very far from the studio so, we were almost late despite the power walking (and I was in heels!).  We had some else sign us up on the board, but we still ended up being the second to last to go.  Which was actually kind of hard.  I don’t normally mind going late in class, but we were both itching to get up.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we both really enjoy our scene and we wanted to get up and perform it.  It was interesting to watch the other scenes though.  These scenes have all been picked for their dramatic content, so of course there was quite the gamut of emotions being run.  It was fun to see how my classmates had been cast and to watch them get coached in these roles.

I took a lot of notes about how the scenes have been broken down.  Each scene has an official breakdown at the studio.  This way the teachers have a sheet with the official break down for each scene that they then coach the students off of.  Feeding us the bits of the breakdown that we have earned and helping us to hit the targets for the scene.  I’m going to comb through all the bits and pieces I wrote down and put together a cheat sheet for doing breakdowns the way these scenes have been broken down.  Although, at this time my cheat sheet will be incomplete because we haven’t earned all the info on the sheets yet.  Yay for works in progress!

Speaking of… so, we finally got up and performed our scene!  And it was awesome.  I believe we turned in the best performance of the night.  We really connected to our emotions and each other.  Charley (our teacher) only gave us one major note and that was to deepen our emotional connection.  He did help me with clarifying what my opinion is about one particular thing mentioned in the script and exactly how to dress for the scene.  I had toyed with going more strongly in the direction he nudged me in, but hadn’t quite gone that far.  Did I mention how much fun this was?  Cause, it’s really fun!

I guess that wraps up Sunday (I mean, hiked most of the way back to my car -still in heels- but thankfully got a ride for part of the way, and drove home etc etc, but you can fill that stuff in for yourself).  Monday started off with me getting up early because I wasn’t sure when Tim Brownson would be calling me for coaching call.  It turned out he was calling me at the later time, which is pretty much what I had expected.  But I sure as hell was not going to sleep through our call.  So, I got up early and did chores and otherwise made a productive stab at starting my day.  Which meant that I was rolling along pretty well by the time I got on Skype with Tim.  We checked in and I bragged about how well my partner and I had done.   And we went over how well I had done on the two weeks fitness training thing I did.  And then I had to fess up about how I haven’t been exercising so much since it wrapped.  (Good news, I found another fitness product in need of testimonials, so I have another month of trainer/bootcamp starting next week!!).

After confessing about how I lack commitment to exercise when it’s just me by myself, we talked about what exercise really means to me and how to use anchors to motivate myself.  I then committed to workout four times a week (oh thank goodness for that boot camp coming!  and my pole dancing classes!!).  So, I’ve started off a little slow on this, but I have done small workouts on Monday & Tuesday.  Maybe I’ll count them as one workout.  It’s a good start, I’ll have to expand on it though.

Then we talked money and the business of earning it.  We hashed out some good ideas for me to play with and he pointed out a few things that were good for me to hear.  And I made a commitment to putting together a couple of websites in two weeks (as in I have to get them done in that time).  It’s all part of a bigger plan that I will reveal more of soon (I’m still working out the details).  Anyway, it was fun and as always really helpful to chat with Tim.  I’m so grateful to have him coaching me!

Oh goodness, I’ve barely started on Monday and it’s 11:56pm already.  It’s going to be Thursday before I even finish this…  (would you believe I got called verbose today?)  And now my friends are interrupting me with one of the strange and disturbing things that can only be found on the internet.  Which means I need to make a decision… see, I have an early morning and lots to do tomorrow.  And sleep would be a good thing.  A very good thing.  Right.  Well then, consider this a teaser.  More to come soon.  And then even more after that.  Night!

This is okay.  In fact, it’s a good thing.  Tearing down those walls (blocks, obstacles, or whatever you choose to call them) is all part of the creative growth process.  So I say bring it on!  Give me my next wall, or at least some challenge to help me grow.  I think that’s what the scenes are for…

We were originally told we would be doing the scenes for the first time on Tuesday, but last night they told us it would actually be Sunday.  As in tomorrow.  I am so glad that I find memorization easy.

But getting back to last night in class…  I got to work twice because one the attached students (it’s this thing where they are taking the class, but they’re special cause they can’t always be there so they have to either work before class or after class – among other things) asked me to be her partner for the night.  The person she normally works with was not available.  I ended up playing both sides of the activity last night, which was nice because it was the last night for that exercise and with Sharon, who only sees us once a week.  I was strong both times out and was particularly pleased with my emotional journey durning my second time up.  The key will be to bring that level of emotional connection to the scene work we are going to be doing for the next six classes.  I’ll keep you posted.

Brief round up of things in motion.  April was dominated by heavy emotional blah.  But there were a number of highlights – E’s epic birthday for one.  I also (as previously mentioned) earned free life coaching from the awesome Tim Brownson.   And at the end of the month I started a six week intensive at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown studio in Santa Monica.  I also was selected for a fitness bootcamp/infomercial thing.  Which meant spending two weeks eating really healthy and spending an hour in a group training session with a personal trainer M-F for two weeks.  I rocked that and am working to integrate what I learned from it into my life.  It was a great start to healthier, fitter me.

And oh my six week intensive!  Wow.  We meet three nights a week for a “three” hour class.  I don’t think I’ve spent less than four hours in class.  Tomorrow will mark the end of week four.  And I am delighted with how much progress I’ve made.  The last few classes I’ve managed to connect very well with the emotional side of things.  And I’ve been coming up with creative circumstances and set dressings.  Which is both fun and helpful.  This all has me excited and feeling very positive about the evaluation we’ll be doing come next Tuesday.

The evaluation is where they either invite me back to continue the training or not.  We just found out a bit more about this process on Tues.  It sounds pretty straight forward, both of our teachers do a little write up about us and gives it to the office staff.  One of the staff sits down with us, reads what has been written about us and we go from there.  The significance of being invited back rests in the studio’s strict Meisner program.  While modified to meet California’s regulations, the program is carefully crafted to replicate Meisner’s two year teaching program.  This first six weeks is designed to give actors a solid foundation they can take out and use in the business.  It is also roughly the equivalent of about a third of Meisner’s first year program.  If you get asked back, the remainder of the first year is covered in another six months.  Class meets only twice a week, rather than the three times a week we’ve been doing for the intensive, but not much else changes – we just go deeper.

After that there is the second year.  Don’t know much about it yet.  My understanding is that it takes about nine months.  And I will cross that bridge when I get to it.  Meanwhile, I have a scene to nail.  Further improvements to my exercise habits to incorporate and a couple of coaching sessions to write up (and a couple more to put to good use!)