Right On!!!

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The whole point of me coming to LA was to pursue acting and writing. However, mundane stuff like sorting out a visa, finding a job, finding somewhere to live, buying a bucket and other daily occurrences make it hard to solely concentrate on these two things.

For example, today has been spent going to the DMV to try and register the bucket. The dirty waddling b*****d who sold it to me gave me his solemn word, swore on his mother’s grave in fact, that it would cost me a maximum of $40 to register the truck. MAXIMUM, tops, at the very most 40 dollars to transfer it to my name, was what he said. So seeing as its a nice day, and the fact its daytime and the Bucket is a night owl, I decide to walk, just in case. Google Maps informs me its a 26 minute walk away, give or take a minute. About 20 minutes into the walk I realize that I forgot my wallet in my house, good work by me. I decide to plough on, Ill at least find out what I need to do to register it and get an estimate for the price.

I get there at about 4.58 and it closes at 5. There are still about 50 people here. So, I get my ticket number 591, and wait, seeing 541 being served next. It was a good estimate by me. So wait and wait, finally get to the desk with my pink slip, ask the lady if she could check how much I have to pay to register it. She checks the computer and tells me eight sixty seven. For one dumb stupid moment I think, Jesus, that’s brilliant, only 8 dollars and 67 cent, thats unreal. This look must have beamed across my face as she then says “Thats 8 hundred and 67 dollars, not 8 dollars…”. Apparently the truck had not been registered since 2003 so it owed penalties. The dirty lying waddling b*****d. Walking home I’m not too pissed off, gut feeling was something was up with the whole affair, only 400 dollars but still, the fact of getting mugged was the worst part. I haven’t felt mugged like that since my buddy sold me a guitar for €100 and it was worth half of that max. And it broke a string first time I strummed it.

Then a song comes on my iPod, Atlas by Battles.
This is some song to pump you up before going out at night or clubbing. Not so good when you realize you have just been done even more than you thought. So Im power walking home, swinging the arms, song blaring, Ill get that b*****d somehow, it takes me about 14 minutes home, Google Maps should have considered the circumstances! I then remember his number was in the ad for the truck. Go home, borrow my roommate’s phone, ring the prick. It rings twice and is followed by the delightful message “Sorry, this number is no longer in service”. It even repeated it in Spanish for me to rub it in. Surely I dialed the wrong number, try again, the dirty waddling b*****d. After that I’ve more or less given up on him. I might ask about his status when I call out to the golf club about caddying but as it stands I have 4 ads on Craigslist to sell it and a week or two grace to drive around in it.

So these annoying little everyday occurrences distract highly from the acting and writing. In fairness I had no acting classes scheduled for today so not too bad. I was, however, planning on writing but it never happened. Life got in the way.

My whole approach to writing was this. I watched a load of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Loved them. Started to write down everyday stories that happened to me and around me and wove them together to come out with about eight episodes of my own for a sitcom I wrote. So sent them in to RTE, got a bit of good feedback, bluffed my way through a few stages, but at the end of the day I was someone with no experience and was applying to write and produce(and star)in my own sitcom. At least thats what I told myself was why they didnt take it further, obviously nothing to do with the quality, obviously, ha. TG4 and BBC both gave good feedback but ended in the same result. I didn’t really have any gauge to use for standard of writing as I have had never done it before and wasn’t really in that environment spending 5 or 6 years in college.

So, I decided the best place to go was LA to learn the business. Luckily enough for me, a writer lives in the place directly across from me. Im not fully sure what he’s written but my roommates told me a few feature films and working on a reality show now thats being developed. So, he called in earlier and told me ways to try and break into the writing business.

Firstly he told me keep the sitcom episodes, they could be the stuff to get the big break in a few years. The key is to get in the door as a writer’s assistant. There you can sit around the writer’s table, then after a while start throwing out your own ideas, if they’re liked you get bumped up and pretty soon you’re a writer on the Office(it was on t.v at the time). He told me he knows of plenty of writers who broke in this way, some even ended up playing parts on the shows. The way in, one of them anyways, is to write an episode for an existing show. So, he took the Office as an example, as I was watching it, and said try to write an episode for that. I’ve been given a script for the Office before and it was brilliant, so well written. It’ll make you laugh out loud just reading it. And the reason its so good is that you can visualize the characters in your head already, as opposed to someone reading a script from a complete unknown with characters they’ve never seen on screen trying to imagine anything. I presume if you give them a work of brilliance its a different story but until that happens, writing an episode of the Office or some other show seems the best way in. Good to know at least.

Thats the easy part over with, finding out what to do. Now all I need is an episode to pop into my head. I just have to get that dirty waddling b*****d out of there first.

Song of the day, which came on my iPod after Battles, was The World At Large by Modest Mouse, good to chill you out, era shur didn’t we have a great lunch together on Saturday after all, ha.

After watching that video I just saw Things I Don’t Remember by Ugly Casanova, pretty class.

Transformer

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We’ve all been there before. You go out, have a few drinks, meet a truck, its dark in the club, the truck looks well. Then you wake up the next morning, paint and make-up scrawled all over the place, fake tan all over your sheets, rust everywhere, this was not the same Love Truck as last night. The Bucket in full effect.The Bucket

Here are a few photos of my street and area I live in too, Sunset…

Bought A Bucket, Lost A Phone, Brought Back From The Edge…

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This past weekend has been eventful to say the least. This post has nothing at all to do with acting, purely the randomness of LA. If I was writing about 5 hours ago I would say it has been pretty horrific. However, now that my hangover is almost gone it doesn’t seem as bad.. Ill start first with me buying a bucket.

Ever since I arrived back in Emerica I’ve been on Craigslist hunting for a cheap bargain car. I was going to buy one in San Francisco and drive down to LA  then. However, I was told a cheap as funk car would have bob hope of making it that distance. Anyways, get down here, worst city in the world for no car, check out a few on Craigslist. All dodgy to say the least. Ill write more on Craigslist some other time. So, saw this ad on Craigslist…http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/cto/1053632122.html. Cheap as funk, runs, pick-up trucks look cool, what could be wrong for that price. The guy selling the truck said he’d drive up to me if I would drive him back, no problem, sure.

So he arrives up on Saturday about 11. I go outside my door to see that the Mexican painters are blocking the parking entrance again. No, no, that was actually my potential bucket. I knew from the photos it wasn’t the prettiest of buckets, and for some reason it is very photogenic, but in the daylight it is pretty, pretty, pretty ugly. It is a lovely shades of several whites. The paint job was hand painted, I could literally see the brush strokes covering over stuff. So the guy gets out of the truck when he sees me and starts to waddle over to me. I immediately thought it was the oddest walk Ive ever seen and forgot about the bucket. So he introduces himself, small talk on, whatever. If you want a mental image of what he looks like think the pilot dude in Lost.

He then starts to tell me absolutely everything about the truck. Everything. Little does he know that I know absolutely nothing about the inside or mechanics of any motorized vehicle. Nothing whatsoever. I am a fan of Top Gear and all but mostly for the humour. I feel like a mechanic when I manage to fill up the water for wind wipers without doing damage. So he starts to tell me about fuses, sparks, carburetors(needed spell check for that, ha), starters, belts, tubes, pistons, horses, cows(seriously, he told me he moved a cow for someone once with the truck), bangs and pops. Going on and on. All the time I was just thinking, why was he waddling when he got out of the truck, it was weird. So I interrupt after a lengthy period of him showing me the engine, say will we take it for a drive. Inside is even funnier, dash is bust up, the driver’s door doesn’t always open so you must open the window to open it or get in passenger’s side. It was also nice of him to clean it a bit before showing me. There’s peanut butter jars on the floor, piles of Coke bottles, a few brushes in the back, a weird looking cooler and numerous other delightful items. Straight away I noticed the smell, it was mank. Thankfully that turned out to be his feet and not the truck. There was also no A/C, which is magnificent in LA. So we go for a drive around my neighborhood, get looks from the dudes walking their poodles, waves from the Mexicans working, truck runs fine, it drives.

We pull up outside my house again. There is no way I am buying the truck even though I kind of told the guy on the phone if he drove up and it went well I would. He seems to have thought it went swimmingly well. I make up some spoof that I forgot my phone inside, Ill be back out in two minutes. So I ring my cousin and my friend, ask their opinion if I should buy a truck they have never seen for $500. I know its cheap and not much but when you’re paying 1200 bones the same day for rent and still no joy with a job, it seems more. Anyways, I wanted them both to say dont do it but both say go for it. I decide then I definitely wont so. I think the fact that I was seeing the truck alongside all the Porsches, BMWs and Escalades around my house didn’t help matters. I go back out to the guy to break the bad news. He is just sitting on the back of the truck, happy as larry. I tell him its not for me, I need the A/C, from Ireland, we only have rain and leprechauns there, the joke does not go down well. Neither does the fact I dont want to buy it. He is almost in tears. He had just told a guy that morning it was sold, now he’d have to hope he didnt buy something else. Then he gets really emotional, the reason he is selling is because he must get some hip operation and wont be able to get back into the truck as its too high off the ground. He also couldn’t work with his hip so needed the money. I felt bad thinking he waddled then. His sob story/haggling skills worked. I tell him I really need the A/C but Id give him $300 for it. We agree on $400. I immediately regret it. Then he tells me where he lives, about an hour away. The job. Then I really, really regret it. Here’s the bucket…

The BucketThe Love Truck

So we drive out to his house. All the way he talks and talks, while I give him a few yeah, yeahs, nods of the head and struggle to cope with no A/C stuck in traffic. Its a killer. Somewhere I hear the talk of how he’s a caddy. I spiel him my bit about me caddying for years, throw in a bit of spoof about caddying for Tiger Woods, Michael Douglas etc. He’s loving all this, tells me he’d hook me up with the starter, get me a job, happy days, the truck could pay its way already. He then almost crashes with excitement when I tell him my handicap is 7(spoof). Gets onto the starter on the phone to tell him he’s a great Irish caddy for him. The starter tells him to give me his number and I’ll be in after meeting him. I’m pumped, the Big Lebowski-esque dude with the truck has hooked me up. He gives me the digits, log them in my phone. Now we’re great friends, he’s hungry, I’m hungry, the truck needs oil, we’ll go to the shop on the way and get food and oil. I end up spending a few hours with him, munching a horrible sandwich from some place he highly recommended, while he tells me about these chicks he almost got before, it was a great story. So we go to his house, do the paper work, hand over the cash, I have his number if any problems, I have the starter’s number for the job, I’m sorted. Im on my own in this beast on the freeway on the way home, pumped. My windows are down, the radio, which is stuck on one station I think, is pumping out some Akon song out of my one working speaker, the truck seems to run, who cares if its horrific looking. I had a great day with the Dude. No parking by my house when I get back so parked a good 25 minute walk away, LA parking is pretty shocking I found out but I wouldn’t let that ruin my day.

So that night I decide to go out to celebrate. Send around a few texts to my vast network of friends here, about 10 texts Id say, ha. Get an offer to go to that club that I was in where I ended up at that party in the hills, I’m in like flynn. So pre-boozing on, the more drink I have the better I feel about the truck. At least no more walking. I can now call out to people. No more $100 on taxis. Wuu duu. 

I get a cab to the club and on the way I forgot I never did my trick to get on the guestlist, balls. Ill use the old bluffy mac technique. So, spot a dude with a clipboard, he wants to know where Im from with the accent, do I follow Rangers or Celtic, turn up the Irishness a notch, backfires, his buddy is Demarcus Beasley so cant let me in now kind of small talk, joke here, joke there, sound guy and I finally get in. Horse us over your number there boss and he says he’ll hook me up from now on if I support Rangers, he worked a few different clubs, happy days. The night is a drunken blur from there on in. I have one photo in my camera of this Swedish dude who was dressed even more over the top than Boy George, feathers in the hair, weird as funk, unreal on the harmonica while I sang freestyle along, and was friends with a few tasty Swedish girls. I ended up at a party deep in the slums of the Hollywood this time, right on Hollywood Blvd but dodgy enough. I had to leave as well early as I was goosed drunk. 

So woke up this morning with the immediate feeling of…”Balls, somethings wrong”. Did the phone, wallet, passport check, no phone. Its early too so Im still half drunk and cant function. Gutted about my phone. I remembered using it in the cab on the way home so must have left it thrown on the seat. It was an absolutely useless phone, no reception in my house except one corner of one room but it had all my Emericano numbers. Including the numbers of the guy who was getting me the caddy job, the guy who sold me the bucket, the bouncer dude who said he’d sort me out getting in places, and one of Boy George’s tasty Swedish friends. I was gutted, stumbling around my room looking for it, barely able to open my eyes still goosed, see a note that the tv and internet is out as the bill wasn’t paid on time. Some funking great way to start the day. No phone, no internet to find where was near to buy a new one and no tv to cure my half drunk state. It was then I realised I had to move my truck closer to my house from where I parked it the night before or it might be towed. 

So walked to the truck, no matter what the weather was like I was going to be annoyed, it was roasting beyond belief, parched and pissed off by the time I get to the truck. The key almost snaps when I forget the door doesn’t open sometimes(always) from the driver’s side. Get in, like a sweat box, looks even worse than it did yesterday. So, I start her up, nada. Turn the key again, nothing. It doesn’t even really annoy me. Im still thinking about my phone too much. It was as if I knew it was horrific anyways so it not starting put my mind at ease. I tried again and it kicked into life, feebly. So I drive down the street to do a u-turn, thankfully on not the busiest road I live by but still a lot of cars. As I turn the bucket cuts out. Fully. And its a big bucket, so Im blocking my side of the road and a good bit of the other side. Cars are waiting for me. It starts again, I drive another foot as fast as I can and it cuts out again. So now Im blocking all the road somehow. Cars are building up, people shouting, Im shouting back saying its not my truck, its my friend’s, Im only moving it for him! My head is on the steering wheel, really thinking about my phone and not caring about the truck, the lack of A/C has begun to get at me again and is making my hangover even more enjoyable. I was half thinking of getting out and leaving it. Finally it starts and I tear down the road, park it up, get out, grab my laptop and go to the nearest coffee shop with wireless internet. Straight onto Craigslist, put up an ad for a great pick-up truck for sale, only $800, great deal!

I Google phone shops near me too and find one close by. There’s no way Im risking driving the bucket again so walk to the phone shop. Its down the street from me, right in the middle of ‘boys’ town as its called. So Im walking and walking, seems to be way longer than the 14 minutes Google Maps said it’d take. I cant check how long its been either as I usually use the clock on my phone to check the time. So I just keep on walking, not paying much attention, noticing how most gay guys have way better posture than usual, its weird, ha, and still no sign of the phone shop. So I give up, cross the road to get another coffee for the way back and walk home. Its then when I have walked close to my street that I come across the phone shop Im looking for. I was on the wrong side of the road all along, ape. I go in, ask for their cheapest phone and the guy in the store tells me he has just sold the last prepaid phone they had in stock that day, more back in Wednesday. I’ve given up at this stage, has to be a joke, most annoying day I’ve had in a while.

So I get home and remember that I was asked to play a soccer match at 7 downtown in LA somewhere. I had agreed to go the day before, seeing as I had the truck and could get there. I didn’t have the guy’s number anymore to ring and cancel and wanted to play again with them so decided to take the plunge and give the bucket one last go. My neighbor gave me her wireless password so I was back online, my day was turning around, found the directions, headed off with my bucket.

It seems the Bucket is a night person like myself. There was some difference. After only 2 attempts it started and then roared its way through LA! It was a beast on the road, again Akon pumping out my one speaker(they seem to have 3 songs on loop, Akon, T.I & Rihanna and some other song that sounds the exact same). It was on the drive that I remembered the guy had given me the name of the golf club where he caddied, I could just show up and ask for the starter! The night was beating down the disastrous day! I have seen more of LA in that one round trip to the pitch as well than the whole rest of the 5 weeks I’ve been here. The Bucket was growing on me.

So, I get to the pitch, and its in the middle of skyscrapers and the heart of downtown, coolest surroundings ever, its class. The team is a mix of Americans, few English guys and a Eastern European here and there. So bit of small talk before the match getting introduced to the players, one guy shouts over “Hey Irish, I hear you were a drunk f**ker last night”. I thought he was just using the generic all Irish get drunk card so gave him a nod and agreed. He then tells me his buddy works the door of the club I was in…the bouncer dude who gave me his number and said he would hook me up! Highly, highly random but he is next to him tying his boots, laughs at me and fills in a few blanks for me. It was weird in a city so big to think of the possibility that the same guy would be in the random soccer team that I end up playing for, but LA is nuts so thought nothing of it. Play the game and even though Im hungover to funk and playing in boots 2 sizes too small for me, I play well. They’re happy out, the English guy in charge asks me if  I want to play 5-a-side with him and his buddies on Tuesday. I say sure no problem, where. Out in Beverly Hills, he’s living in his friend’s house and the friend had a pitch built in the back garden for them to play soccer. As you do. Im wondering what friend would do that, random enough. So he casually mentions he lives with Robbie Williams. Who? Oh, right, him. See you Tuesday. LA is random to say the least.

So the night was turning out to be better than the day. I walk back to the parking lot to see the Bucket, chilling. Starts right up first time this time around, just like the ad said it would! My windows are down driving home, still hot at night, T.I and Rihanna are strutting their stuff on the speaker,  I think its a Bose speaker, when these two girls pull up next to me in traffic. “Oh my god I love that song, what station is it on?” I make up some spoof 101.4 kgb all night long station I think. “Oh my god I love your truck too, so retro, is that the loooove truck?” I was going to say, no, its The Bucket, but the lights went green. These didn’t seem like the girls who could do sarcasm or know what it was, but either way I drove off loving the Love Truck. Thank funk it didnt cut out at the lights as I drove off! The Bucket by day, the Love Truck at night. 

An apt song for today would be Sunshine by Atmosphere. And a cool funking song is Aint No Other Way by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. I think I was trying to sing that last night while the Swedish dude did a jig on the harmonica.

Where Does A Gay Horse Live?

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When I decided to move to LA, I wanted to live right in the heart of everything, be at the core of LA, right in the hub, the epicenter, walk out my door and everything is just there…you get the idea. What I had no idea about was the fact that there is no centre to LA. Everything is a complete sprawl. Its the strangest city ever in so far that there are millions and millions living here and yet nowhere is ever, ever busy. The bare minimum of people are on the streets, I have yet to see one footpath crowded. When you ask people where downtown is they just point south and say down there somewhere, mumbling into the distance. Its weird, the public transportation is horrific beyond belief, you’d be better off getting a bus to a cottage in the furthest corner of West Kerry than you would have a hope of getting to somewhere specific in LA.

I started to look up apartments and rooms to rent on Craigslist. I texted a few people I knew living in LA asking where was good to live. The majority of replies (majority being 4, ha) gave me about 7 different areas which was no help whatsoever. Its like me telling them live in Munster, Ulster or Leinster if they wanted to move to Ireland. I texted the fifth person after I had found two places which looked promising. One was an apartment in West Hollywood, close to everything, bars, clubs, shops, gym, cinema etc. The other was an apartment in North Hollywood, looked nicer and had a pool included but wasn’t within walking distance or as close to all of the above. I thought, living in a big city, I want to be within walking distance of everything. No use living in the suburbs. The girl texted me back with a reply along the lines of “Oh, definitely West Hollywood for you, you’d love it there”. So, took the advice, moved into West Hollywood.

The place where I am living is class. Spanish style townhouse, two story, enclosed gated place, courtyard outside, right between Santa Monica Blvd and Sunset Blvd, the best area if you say it to people like this. The rent is steep as steep can be but I thought it’d be worth it to live in the best area etc. Plus I would be living with a model, always tough, ha.

What I did not get, and hardly ever do, was the supposedly very evident use of sarcasm that the minority text had sent me. The reason that this area is so safe, so friendly, so nice and so that, is because it is so, so, SO gay. I kind of wondered why there were so many rainbow flags when I used to walk about. I kind of wondered why guys who were out walking their little dogs were always looking at me dead in the eye with a pleasant smile. I kind of wondered why it was that so many guys were holding hands when I went to the shop. I kind of  know why now. 

On the plus side, there are ridiculously hot women living in the area too. Unfortunately they do not seem to be out walking around as much. Unfortunately they are not the ones always talking to me. Unfortunately.

Back to this being a great area close to everything. Close to everything means there are plenty of gyms nearby. Plenty of shops around too to buy food. Cinema is close. Bars and clubs are close. Everything is close. If you have a car. If you don’t, then you’re fucked. I have been walking along a few times, listening to my iPod when all of a sudden I’ve noticed that I stopped for some reason. My feet have given up on me a few times after literally walking for hours. Oh, there’s an Irish bar down the street, try there for a job. One hour walk there, about an hour and a half walk back, and no job later, plus in the roasting heat, I started to think I shouldn’t have sold the car I bought up in San Francisco. There has been days when my roommates were busy so I said I’d go food shopping on my own and walk back. Worst call ever. A 45 minute walk with four full bags of shopping, my pants falling down thanks to dodgy belt, and the sun blaring down on my milk, is not fun. Although after the 3rd or 4th time you get used to it.

I can hear you say, why not get cabs you funking ape? I spent over $100 one night getting a cab to a bar, then a cab to a club, then a cab home. That really does make the night even better. I have also gotten stung sharing a $70 cab with someone to be told “Oh I only have my credit card, Ill get you back. Ill get the $9 slab of beer shur, Ill pay you back next time.” Nice one, you prick, ha! I decided after those two incidents I would only get a taxi when absolutely necessary from there on in.

All in all though, I can’t complain about where I live. Housemates are cool, savage area, its a good place so far as well to name drip drop. While buying a George Foreman one day early in my trip in a shop relatively close to my house, I had the last George Foreman taken out of my hands and given to Isla Fisher by the dope of a shop assistant. Cheers boss. Outside my front door this week I was on the phone when I noticed a lady walking her dog across the road with the nicest, best looking set of fake…teeth I have ever seen. The actor David Spade was coming out of my building and sat next to me on the step admiring her teeth as well. I played it cool, told him I hadn’t noticed them, too busy looking at the dog, ha. I was in a restaurant at the top of my street and Rihanna was chilling at the table next to me. She poured her heart about Chris Brown to me, the bastard. Paying all this money for rent I cant afford is made worthwhile for these encounters. Well worth it. Surely they think we’re friends now too? Although, thinking about it, the two girls probably think I’m gay if I’m in this area and the actor dude was probably cracking onto me. The job!

Listen to all this album, it is funking rocking, a bucket load of songs mixed together…Feed The Animals by Girl Talk. In Step is class but so are all of them!

Surely Just Like Entourage?

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The whole point of this blog was to document what it is like to head to LA and try to start acting from scratch more or less. And to eventually win an Oscar at the end of the day. So far the blog have been side tracked with stories of the lunacy of LA, and I am sure there will be many more to follow.

My thoughts on what would happen to LA when I arrived were this…show up, do a few acting classes, get spotted, audition, land a few roles and be on the merry road to the Oscars. Surely that easy. In fact, almost too easy.

So far my road has been anything but merry and is instead like a country lane leading into a field. It is way way way different than I naively thought.

Firstly, there’s the issues of head shots. Photos of your head. Normal photos wont work. It has to be head shots. Which are brutal. Posing for a camera a foot away from your head and smiling like an ape. Sounds like a good laugh. Costs a couple hundred dollars to get get done. Good duck.

Then there’s getting a SAG card if you ever do want to get work. Which are either gotten through sheer luck of someone taking a punt on you(usually because they want to sleep with you) or through earning credits through doing lots of crap work on set. And the worse thing is that its vicious to even get this kind of crap work. And to make things even worse, if you ever do get enough credits to be eligible for a SAG card, you must pay a couple of grand to get it!!! No one once mentioned any of this to me!

I have decided to ignore the head shots and the issue of gaining credits for the SAG card(this is related to the fact I have no car yet which is the biggest mistake ever in LA). I have instead decided to go along the sure fire road of hoping someone will want to sleep with me and take a punt to get me a role somewhere, somehow – and not in porn.

If you were to Google acting classes LA, the worst and most expensive classes seem to be top of the list and thus very confusing. Its only when you get to LA and ask around to people who have half a clue do you get an idea of which classes would suit you best. Luckily I live with a girl who is a model/actress so she’s far more in the know than me and has been going to audit classes with me that her agent recommended. The majority of classes are expensive as funk to take. One that I was close to committing to before I arrived in LA was the Acting Corps, which is 990 dollar bills a month. Thank funk I pulled out. Of the class.

Its easy to get to try a few different classes, or audit them, for free with a bit of spoof. They must be getting stung by the big R as well so seem to be lowering prices and trying harder to get people to enroll. Add in a spoof Irish line here and there, visa issues, must make sure this is the right class, could I try one or two more for free and you’re laughing. 

The first class we went to was highly recommended. This guy Aaron Speiser seems to have worked with a lot of top actors – Will Smith and Gerard Butler – on recent films they did. However, the worst thing about his class was that he would tell you this at every opportunity he could. Which was every time he spoke. So if a student did a scene then waited to be critiqued, or ask a question, the teacher would start by saying…”You know, Will Smith asked me the exact same thing on the last movie he did, and I told him…”. This is cool to hear the first or second time as a newcomer, but every single sentence starts like that it just loses its appeal and gets to be pointless. It was the master class apparently as well, some of the actors were very good, some were brutal. There was one guy in particular who was horrendous, and every time he was told stop for being so bad, he would reply “I have been classically trained in the Observatory in Florida, I know what I’m doing”. Every time. Eventually, in fairness, the teacher said back “So you’ve been taught to be shit?” Ha, shut the dope up fairly quickly. 

The next couple of classes I went to audit were good enough, some savage actors in some of them, one guy and a girl did a scene that made a few people cry, it was weird enough, I thought they were doing a comedy scene myself, ha. The class I went to yesterday then was beyond a joke. The worst kind of people were in the class. The really annoying, hyper, doing accents all the time, half talking, half singing when chatting amongst themselves, disillusioned kind of people. The sort that will probably end up on cruise ships doing pantomime, like the majority of people in Ireland I knew growing up who wanted to act.

So anyways, its a roasting day in LA. I made the mistake of wearing a blue t shirt and walking to the studio, which is a good 30 minute walk away. I walk in to this small enough studio with no windows, absolutely roasting in there. Im feeling dizzy from the heat, sweat pouring off me, this annoying apes bouncing up to me, the girl in charge asks if Ill do a scene with them. Its my first time ever doing a scene, usually I have just observed. No real way of saying no, so I’m in. Not prepared for it, sweating like a whure and the thought of doing a scene with the two people I’m paired with is making it even worse. We’re given 5 minutes to prepare for a scene from god only knows what movie, I presume it was some crap movie anyways. The 3 characters are a coke head, and two prostitutes. I try to play one of the prostitutes but get the coke head role instead. I have very few lines, mostly actions in the background, suits me fine. My role was this more or less…come into the apartment, find my bag of coke, act jittery, get irritated that I cant find a dollar bill to roll up, get pissed off with the girls over the argument they are having, and then say my big line. Not too bad.

So I enter the room, at this stage the sweat is bucketing, between the room being like a sauna, my first go at up in front of everyone and remembering my few lines. After a few seconds its brilliant, only the heat is killing me, some buzz though. I have the coke head role down – cold sweats, jittery from it being my initial role, not remembering where they said the bag of coke would be(I keep looking under the wrong part of the couch) – it actually seems to look like Im acting well, ha. Anyways, scene progresses, they say the majority of the lines and  I finish with my “Shut up and find me a fucking dollar”. The teacher gives me great credit, asks half jokingly if I am a coke head, ha, then thinks the weird voice I used to say my lines was great. I don’t think she really gathered that was my accent. It was actually savage doing it, once you get over the first hump. The rest of the class is crap though, boring scenes, way too hot, almost falling asleep.

Thankfully this morning I went to the best class yet that I have audited. No bullshit like a lot of the others, all geared towards them not only training you for film and tv work but also trying to get you an agent and a manager, in order to land a few auditions to see if you can actually do it. Plus its close to my house. They seem to be impressed with my classical training in the Laboratory back in Ireland too!!!

Two great songs I stumbled upon in my iPod today are Dance, Dance, Dance by Lykke Li, funky chilled, and Yours to Keep (Annie Remix) by Teddybear is funking savage, more pumparuu.

A Hippy, A Blood and A Leprechaun Walk Into A Bar…

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I’ve been suffering from a hangover since a day of boozing on Saturday so have been unable to function, never mind type a coherent sentence. It was a highly bizarre and unfulfilled day which threatened to be good but never fully blossomed.

As with 99% of my “friends” here, I know them from meeting them once or twice or through someone else. It was a day and night filled with different scenarios with a few different friends here. Like any normal day, I went to meet a hippy chick about an interesting offer she proposed…I could have use of her BMW in return for doing handy jobs around her house. My roommates warned me in advance about what the handy jobs might be but being a trustful guy, I went along to see what was on offer. After listening to her stories of trips to India to meet her spiritual leader and how he visits her in LA through visions, I was convinced this was a sure fire legit deal. When I told her my stories of growing up on a leprechaun farm back home and how my own pet leprechaun, Timmy O’ Toole, also visited me through visions, she felt we had connected enough to go ahead with the deal. The handy jobs turned out to be change one light bulb and then help her drink two bottles of wine. It was win-win all round.

I had made prior arrangements with two other friends, in this case, one person I had never met before and another I could not remember meeting the week before. One was a girl who invited me to her birthday party after apparently meeting her in some club. The guy who was to go with me was a friend of a friend at home and used to work in the Classic. I had strong ties to both. When the hippy chick started to ask me if I dressed up as a leprechaun, and when the drink ran out, I decided it was best if I departed for a while, it was still 5 in the afternoon.

Anyways, the dude comes to my house about 6 – Hows it going, you know X, yeah, I know X too, he’s some wanker, yeah, prick, come on we go boozing. So we head out to the address the girl gave me for her party. Eventually find the area, pull in to some liquor store to get a bottle of booze for the party. Even though I’m after a fair bit of wine I notice a few dodgy looks being thrown our way but think nothing of it. Find the street where the party is on. The guy tells me there is no way in hell he is getting out of the car here or letting me out, we’re in the heart of Bloods territory, was I winding him up. I’m completely clueless, ring the chick to see if it was spoof or not. No one can understand my accent on the phone over here so its a pointless conversation of me shouting questions at her in an Irish accent, then trying an American one, ending up joyless and with no answer every time. It happens with every American person I talk to on the phone her, great laugh. Some car drives up slowly next to us, revs up and does a little hop on its wheels. Whatever it was, we were gone, no party, no chilling with the Bloods. Good start to the night.

So we drive back to my house, drink some of the vodka, head to a dive bar about a twenty minute walk from my house. Night is spiraling downhill fast. I’m sobering up and getting tired. Im getting texts from the hippy saying she’s at a party where they are meditating and listening to the sitar if I wanted to come, bring Timmy too! Didn’t sound too great so ploughed onto the bar. We get there, full of dudes, happy days. Scatterings of chicks, some big Italian guy keeps coming up to me asking me for speed, he’ll pay top dollar, wont believe me when I tell him Im not into drugs. Time to hit the vodka red bulls to save the night if possible and give me a needed kick.

Eventually a girl comes up to me and my buddy, sound looking to say the least, especially for LA. I tell her she looks great for 37. She gets highly offended, tells me she’s only 25. I ask politely how she cant take that as a compliment, I was saying she looked young for an older woman, surely that is a plus. Still not going down well with her and her friends. So I tell her other friend she looks great for a Mum, tells me she has no kids, I ask why wont she take the positive that if she was a Mum she look good after it. They are not getting the humor, we have to make a hasty exit.

So we go back to the house, finish the bottle of vodka, the guy is plastered, I tell him he can sleep in my room, Im staying up boozing with my roommates. It all gets a bit hazy then. I decide I should ring my sister and wish her a happy birthday, about 4 in the morning here but a good time back home to call. So I get a cab to the shop to buy a phone card. I then tell the cab man to just drive around while I make the call, a $20 phone card lasts for a long, long, long cab ride. Especially when you’re a tad drunk that you cant dial the international code never mind the rest of the digits. So after racking up $50 on the meter the cab man says he’s bringing me home, he’s had enough of me fumbling with the phone.

So back to the house, everyone is passed out, early morning stuff. I go upstairs, the dude is panned out on the side of the bed. Its then I see he has pissed himself. The job. At least it was all over him and some rug from downstairs but still. A great way to end an unfulfilled day. I’ve great friends over here really.