Tee Hee.

This is Smelly (Melly, Melissa!).  She was my very first college roommate.  She's currently on an adventure of her own; road tripping from Seattle to Mesquite, NV and was lovely enough to stop by my new habitat for conversation and camaraderie.

Funny how I feel like I can say anything to her, mostly because she's lived with me?  Smelly was the roommate everyone wished for when they got their housing assignments, but no one got.  Everyone else's roomies actually smelled.  Mine was steak sauce.

True Loaf.

This is how Kirsten and I feel about each other, in cheese terms.  

Abrupt, Yet so Poignant.

I took this picture so that I could take it to court in case I got a parking ticket (I've already been bestowed with one, forty seven dollars should go to a trapeze class, thankyouverymuch).  I kept it to share because it's kinda funny.  Kudos to whomever came up with the usage of DEAD.  How many other four letter words can be used to imply no wattage?  I can't think of any.

There is Beauty.

LA actually has a lot of sweet spots, if you can delve past the urban sprawl.  Please feast your eyes on a few that I have stumbled upon in these last 8 weeks.

1. Street performers in Venice Beach.  The boardwalk is famous for a reason.  Nevermind the puke and pot shops.
2. Hollywood sign from the Griffith Observatory.  I love a huge park in the middle of a city.  You know, like that other one.
3. Skate park in Santa Monica
4. View from Runyon Canyon, a real quick hike to sweet city views.
5. View from top of a parking garage at Paramount Studios, where I shoot Glee.  H-wood sign in the distance.
6. Pepperdine University in Malibu.  Good thing I didn't go like I wanted to; would have gotten absolutely nothing done.

Namaste, I'm not Staying.

About a year ago, I fell in love with yoga.

I love how it makes my body feel,
        I love how it has changed my strength,
                  I love how it requires no gear,
                              I love that it meets me wherever I am that day.

I have a yoga studio in every city that I have lived in since that I love.

My favorite is hot vinyasa.  They also call this power yoga, but the key is to do it in a room heated to at least 90 degrees, and the hotter the better.  Your muscles warm and just melt into submission.  I can always reach farther, hold longer, stand taller in the heat, it's so intoxicating.

Since moving to LA, I have been searching for a hot vinyasa studio.  This should not be challenging, since this city is known for being a raw foodie, composting, alternative medicine, incest burning, eco-friendly, sitar strumming town of hippie dippies, right?

blurgh.

I cannot, for the life of me, find the combination of hot+vinyasa here.  It's exasperating.

My closest next option is Bikram Yoga, which is a series of 26 poses, done in a room heated to 102-108 degrees.  Bikram Choundry, the founder, patented this series after rehabilitating himself using them.  You would think that the experience can't be too different from my beloved vinyasa, but alas I HATE IT. 

These are the Top Ten reasons why:

(other than the fact that it makes me look like this)

1.  They make it as least serene as possible.  Bright lights, no music, no soft voices.

2.  The instructors basically shout out a script to you.  I could probably recite it.  Despite this being a town full of actors, these Bikram instructors could really use a lesson in vocal variation.  They all say "lock your knee, lock your knee, LOCK YOUR KNEE" in the exact same tone.

3. It's so rules-y.  You get yelled at for drinking water within the first 25 minutes.  You get yelled at for going to the bathroom.  You get yelled at for wiping your sweat.  I even got yelled at for doing savasana wrong.  IT"S CALLED DEAD MAN'S POSE.  As long as I don't move, I'm doing it right.  Lay off!

4.  The studio reeks like sweaty balls.  The ceiling tiles are molding, and some genius thought it would be acceptable to have people sweating profusely while doing yoga in a carpeted room.  MRSA, anyone?

5.  You have to deal with men in speedos pouring sweat in a full circumference around their yoga mats.  This is including but not limited to men with long hair whom then whip it out of their faces, thus throwing their sweat all over innocent bystanders.

6. There's no flow.  Vinyasa is all about one movement flowing into another, and the sequences move beautifully.  Bikram is holding one pose, and then holding another.  A lot of set up and tear down.  Feels tedious.

7.  The instructors stand in the front of the room on an apple box, if you will, watching your every move, ready to call you out for being wrong.  They don't model the poses for newcomers, they just yell out your name when you aren't doing a pose like they think you should be able to.  I've actually had an instructor tell me "you look stronger than that, move farther!"

8. I hate the idea that Bikram patented yoga poses.  It seems so unholy to me.  Now, in order to use the term, any yoga studio must pay a huge franchise fee in order to teach the 26 poses.

9.  Damnit, Bikram is expensive.  A single class here costs $19, more than any other yoga class I have taken.  Apparently, only the rich are privileged to be hollered at to bend farther while bending over so far as to be able to breast-feed from themselves.

10.  It's the same every time.  I like the possibility of doing crow pose, head stands, dolphin stands, plow pose, and everything in between.  If variety is the spice of life, then Bikram is the vanilla of yoga.  Hum.

 I always feel so anxious to bolt out of there as soon as class is over, cutting short my savasana at the end due to childish frustration.  I mumble 'namaste' in unison with the rest and leap up to get my crap and get the hell outta there.

So why do I pay absurd amounts of money for this torture?  Well, I can now do camel pose without wanting to barf.  That's something, right?

A Practical Dilemma in Morality.

I have recently been made aware that Los Angeles is the homeless capital of the United States. It wasn't in the news, I didn't read it in LA Weekly, no article posted on my homepage CNN.com.

I learned about it the old fashioned way.  By looking out my car window.

Is everyone as bothered to the core when they drive by the homeless as I am?  My gut falls to my knees, my blood pressure skyrockets, and my palms sweat like brewskis in the South. I can palpate their desperation, and the glimmer of hope as a car approaches.

I always consider reaching in my wallet.  But then I chicken out, recalling all of those 20/20 episodes I have seen revealing lazy impostors with cardboard signs, or flighty girls like myself whose faces get blown off by violent criminals as soon as they roll down their windows.

oh, you don't recall that episode?  I may have exaggerated slightly....

nonetheless, I would be completely willing to spare any and all change I have to the less fortunate if there wasn't the constant undertone of bodily threat/carjack. Most of the time I consider just cracking my window to just throw the money at them, so that they don't need to come close to my car, or even shove it out of my sunroof.

....but what kind of an asshole throws money at homeless people?!  It would seem like I did it just to watch them scramble for it.

That is not the godly way to think.  The godly way would be to offer yourself as a target, and hope that your compassion and faith serve as a testimony.

I'm not there yet.  I give, but in courage-less ways.  I just still don't know how to hang out with my fears.

My Poopsie is so precious. 

When One Loiters about Paramount Studios....

Character playing.

Make no mistake, I am no Tom Hanks.  But I like sitting on his Forrest Gump bench.

Along with Gleeking....

Sooo I had a week of self misery around the first week of my arrival here.

My job is just not cutting it for me.  Being stuck inside for long hours, dealing with political nonsense while trying to provide care to patients, doing bullshit paperwork that serves no purpose but to create an ever growing paper trail, having to act like a professional while dressing like a homeless person..... I was over it.  I just plain have lost the excitement and challenge of my career.  I felt complacent.

I was feeling so melodramatic that, I swear, I was having moments of shortness of breath.  Like I said, dramatic.  Pathetic.  The list goes on and on.

I'm just overwhelmingly encased in the letdown of my circumstance.  I am twenty four, and I have always thought that I would be so much cooler by now.  I had always wanted to see so much more, know so much more, do so much more by the time I was this age.  Instead of nursing being an asset to my aspirations, I am starting to feel like I have outgrown it, and it might just be holding me back now.

I kept thinking about my friends at The Buried Life, and being insanely envious of their ability to take what the want from life, and make sure they exhaust all the vitality they have.  I want their situation so bad I can taste it.  So, one day, while completely self loathing and pitiful, rocking babies in the NICU, I sat on a chair feeding a patient and thinking.

what was it that i wanted to be before i was taught what limitations are?

There is a book that I have in my garage from when I was a kid.  It's a Dr Suess book called "My Book About Me", and its pages are filled with descriptive blanks, for kids to fill out information about themselves, their likes, dislikes, etc.  I can see the career page clear as day.  It reads:

When I grow up, I want to be a _________________.  

There is no single occupation written neatly in my slot.  Instead, I wrote across it, over, and under the blank.  I filled it with every occupation I could think of, erasing and rewriting numerous times because I just could not, as an eight year old, limit myself to just one occupation.

That eight year old didn't get over it.

PS. interesting anecdote:  the first item listed? actress.

In this place...

It's no exaggeration when they say that anything can happen.  About nine days into my contract here in LA, my new travel nurse friend Kristina asks if I want to go out to some bar in Melrose with her.  Sure, I say, what's the occasion?  Apparently a friend of her friend was having a birthday and she was making and an appearance because she's new in town and wanted to make friends.  Sounds like run of the mill social sitch, right?

No such thing in LA.  In LA, you go to birthday parties of casting directors.  Casting directors who are friends with other casting directors, whom may or may not be the recipient of your gin-laced confession that entertainment was your childhood fantasy and that you tried to move to New York both for the culture shock and the possibility of acting school, which seemed easy enough to hide from your friends and family until you figured out if you had any talent beyond the lead in your fifth grade production of Alice in Wonderland.  Which, of course, you had never said out loud to anyone until just then.

If he's an ass, he can laugh at you and tell you that the industry isn't hiring oompa loompas at the moment, which is what you would expect.  OOOOOR if he's a really good guy and will henceforth become a friend of yours, he will just say "Hey, why don't you go be a background actor for me?  You can try it out, see how you like being on set, and then go from there."

huh.  mmmmk.  "and what show is it that you cast for, good sir?"

right.

Friends and family, I am coming out of the show biz closet.  I am that girl, whom cannot see a great movie or theatre production without losing sleep at night, thinking, "Damn, I could do that." Previously, I had kept this all to myself, being too afraid of an industry so wrapped up in appearance and status.  I know I'm not Lucy Liu.  However, I'm also not that ugly asian girl you know, and even she has gained some notoriety in this looks obsessed part of the world.  Well, the time has come to chase another fear, and this time it's not as simple as jumping out of an airplane.  I have also come to the conclusion that I am no longer keeping secrets about my fantasies and wants, because you never know who might be able to help you, and my short time here has proven that stories are made from a series of human connections.

So I have been working as a background actor on Glee for the past six weeks.  I love being on set, I love learning the lingo, and I love soaking in everything I can about this industry.

I am registered with two casting agencies.  I have plans for acting school.  Commence the quarter life crisis.