I'm sure you are wondering why a guy who spent so much time blogging his adventures in Japan has paused his blogging while readjusting and adventuring back into a New York way of life, and the truth is I've been adjusting.
And for all my brain has been able to accomplish in the last two weeks (which wasn't much), I haven't felt much like writing at the end of these long, early-morning days.
Take last week for example.
I auditioned every single day (except Tuesday because I left my cell alarm on vibrate) and therefore left the house by 7:30 AM, if not earlier. I often was out all day with a side trip home for a break, and Monday and Tuesday I had late night affairs that didn't get me home until 1 or 2. And jet lag has left my bedtime at a respectable 10 PM the past two weeks. I'm not sure I'm auditioning particularly well, but at least I'm there.
I did have a good audition for a couple of agents on Monday night, but I haven't heard anything yet. At least it felt good, right?
I then worked 30 hours for a special event over the course of Friday morning through Sunday at noon, and each morning progressively got earlier until Sunday's wake up call of 4 AM.
So I'm brain dead.
And when audition calls are run like LA/reality TV/open call auditions (I'm talking to you, Debbie Allen) with a lack of understanding and complete disrespect for union rules, including telling union members they should leave their union so the producers can operate the calls the way they want to, I don't have much energy to be witty at the end of the day.
TV on the couch time sounds much better.
Especially now that DVR is back in my life!
But I'm present now. And after a week of jet lag and spring hibernation, and a super-productive audition/working/unpacking week, I'm ready for a week with a little less crazy.
Which is why I'm so thankful I have two afternoon singing appointments in a little bit and already had a most excellent tapper call that was short, simple, concise, yet with the perfect amount of challenge and technique required courtesy of Christopher Gatelli. It was so pleasant to be in a room with 20 men who could all actually tap well, and then, rather than watching each person to see if he could tap, I was enjoying watching each person to see how he could tap. His style. His sounds. His sense of rhythm.
It really was a beautiful thing.
And to have a cold, windy weekend that has turned into a cool, sunny and gorgeous spring day, well... I couldn't be more content.
This makes being home feel easy. And right.
Not those crazy SoyJoy-grabbing nut cases yesterday.
I'm unpacked, but I still have a lot of decorating and planning of our living space to do. For now, I'm here.
Showing posts with label crazy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crazy. Show all posts
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
And You Thought Jet Lag Was Bad...
I have seen the dark side of the human soul.
The animalistic scavenger within us all.
It makes me so ready to jump on a plane back to Japan.
____________________
I was doing pretty well with culture shock. It took a week, at least, but I was adjusting well. I'm on an early schedule because of my busy week, but I'm getting plenty of rest. My back hurts 'cause my mattress sucks, but that's my own fault.
And I've adjusted to the food, sort of. My stomach doesn't hurt, but I can still taste all the chemicals in our food and water.
But two weeks could not prepare me for what I witnessed today.
Sometimes I work special events for a marketing firm, doing whatever staff position they seem to think best for the day or weekend. In this case, I was working a 3-day weekend event that welcomed women from all over the world for a special celebration of O! Magazine.
Now you would assume that since people go gaga over Oprah and most of this convention was about "living your best life" with some help from her usual friends, that people would be generally positive and kind and generous. And they were.
For the most part.
They were ecstatic on Friday as we checked them in. And they were soaking up the information at the Javits and enjoying the gifts and give-aways on Saturday, even if they weren't always so patient or courteous when waiting in line.
But standing in Times Square today giving people free snack bars, of which we had plenty (somewhere near 20,000, not to mention 2 or 3 times that many in the production tent), literally turned into a manic free-for-all. And I get it. *SOME* of those people just walked two miles. Very few, in fact, but maybe they were hungry.
It's not like the walk was a marathon.
When people are not even patient enough to share free samples with their neighbor without resorting to jaws-of-life grips on an energy bar, it's just disgusting.
But nothing was worse than the woman who felt she had every right to not only come behind the table, inside the tent to where I was working, but then take a cardboard box (that turned out to be empty), take my personal samples from other tents that were stored next to my own personal belongings, and stuff the empty box with my baked goods and try to claim them as her own.
Worse yet, when I told her she wasn't allowed back there nor was she allowed to take a box, I discovered my property in her box and kindly told her she wasn't allowed to take from our stock or our personal belongings hidden under the tablecloth.
(May I remind you that there were about 100 people vying for snack bars and literally tearing them out of my partner's arms at this point -- in short, we were swamped).
I may have made a slight mistake by taking the boxes back from her, but as soon as she lost her temper, I "gave her back" the cupcakes she had stolen so deliberately and ruthlessly from me and told her to have a nice day and not worry about it.
But this poor, sad woman, who seems to have dealt with much pain in her life, felt she should accuse me of stealing her cupcakes (that were mine, I remind you, but I had given up claim long ago) and ruining Mother's Day for her.
At this point, nothing had really gotten out of control, but her guilty conscience wasn't done yet.
She then insisted to speak to my manager, who attempted to calm the woman and clearly had my back, and she continually threatened to involve the police. Which, in the event they had come over, wouldn't have really mattered since I had been visited by all the Times Square police earlier that morning and had generously given them many free samples to stave off the cold. They mostly likely would have been on my side.
She continued to claim that I had been rude to her and wouldn't apologize and had stolen her belongings, when, in fact, she had stolen mine and had come very close to stealing some of my important personal belongings. In short, she finally gave up her claims, because I ignored her and continued to work at staving off the herd of starving elephantine vultures waiting impatiently, but only after 10 minutes of loudly claiming I had stolen her cupcakes.
Seriously. This was over cupcakes. That weren't that good.
Had this semi-crazy (she did pay to attend the event, so I won't call her full-tilt-Times-Square-homeless crazy) woman succeeded in calling over the police in the middle of this event, she would have taken up some vital service worker's time over cupcakes when they should be watching out for Oprah and J-Hud.
Oh. And those car bombs we seem to be on alert for.
What a sorry state we've come to as a culture.
In Japan, where the mentality is that everyone waits and everyone gets a turn, people would have kindly taken one snack bar and been on their way. And we would have been able to donate 10,000 bars to a shelter, instead of watching the souvenir store behind us make off with 30 boxes or so to resell at considerable mark-up.
And I just became disgusted. By the end of the day, when we were literally giving away 12 count boxes to each passerby, I couldn't even speak. I was a cardboard-cutting machine, wearing my backpack because I couldn't trust anyone not to ransack anything and everything.
I was shocked when nice women from the Midwest would ask to sample just one. It was refreshing and honest and amazing.
And the cupcake guys even replaced my stolen cupcake, without me having to say a word.
So today I honor those mothers who taught their children patience and kindness. I'm sure my own mother put up with much more than 2 hours of manic-madness to feed, clothe, and raise me, and I'm very thankful for her love.
And I hope that woman today can find a mother figure soon, one who will teach her when a cupcake is just a cupcake.
The animalistic scavenger within us all.
It makes me so ready to jump on a plane back to Japan.
____________________
I was doing pretty well with culture shock. It took a week, at least, but I was adjusting well. I'm on an early schedule because of my busy week, but I'm getting plenty of rest. My back hurts 'cause my mattress sucks, but that's my own fault.
And I've adjusted to the food, sort of. My stomach doesn't hurt, but I can still taste all the chemicals in our food and water.
But two weeks could not prepare me for what I witnessed today.
Sometimes I work special events for a marketing firm, doing whatever staff position they seem to think best for the day or weekend. In this case, I was working a 3-day weekend event that welcomed women from all over the world for a special celebration of O! Magazine.
Now you would assume that since people go gaga over Oprah and most of this convention was about "living your best life" with some help from her usual friends, that people would be generally positive and kind and generous. And they were.
For the most part.
They were ecstatic on Friday as we checked them in. And they were soaking up the information at the Javits and enjoying the gifts and give-aways on Saturday, even if they weren't always so patient or courteous when waiting in line.
But standing in Times Square today giving people free snack bars, of which we had plenty (somewhere near 20,000, not to mention 2 or 3 times that many in the production tent), literally turned into a manic free-for-all. And I get it. *SOME* of those people just walked two miles. Very few, in fact, but maybe they were hungry.
It's not like the walk was a marathon.
When people are not even patient enough to share free samples with their neighbor without resorting to jaws-of-life grips on an energy bar, it's just disgusting.
But nothing was worse than the woman who felt she had every right to not only come behind the table, inside the tent to where I was working, but then take a cardboard box (that turned out to be empty), take my personal samples from other tents that were stored next to my own personal belongings, and stuff the empty box with my baked goods and try to claim them as her own.
Worse yet, when I told her she wasn't allowed back there nor was she allowed to take a box, I discovered my property in her box and kindly told her she wasn't allowed to take from our stock or our personal belongings hidden under the tablecloth.
(May I remind you that there were about 100 people vying for snack bars and literally tearing them out of my partner's arms at this point -- in short, we were swamped).
I may have made a slight mistake by taking the boxes back from her, but as soon as she lost her temper, I "gave her back" the cupcakes she had stolen so deliberately and ruthlessly from me and told her to have a nice day and not worry about it.
But this poor, sad woman, who seems to have dealt with much pain in her life, felt she should accuse me of stealing her cupcakes (that were mine, I remind you, but I had given up claim long ago) and ruining Mother's Day for her.
At this point, nothing had really gotten out of control, but her guilty conscience wasn't done yet.
She then insisted to speak to my manager, who attempted to calm the woman and clearly had my back, and she continually threatened to involve the police. Which, in the event they had come over, wouldn't have really mattered since I had been visited by all the Times Square police earlier that morning and had generously given them many free samples to stave off the cold. They mostly likely would have been on my side.
She continued to claim that I had been rude to her and wouldn't apologize and had stolen her belongings, when, in fact, she had stolen mine and had come very close to stealing some of my important personal belongings. In short, she finally gave up her claims, because I ignored her and continued to work at staving off the herd of starving elephantine vultures waiting impatiently, but only after 10 minutes of loudly claiming I had stolen her cupcakes.
Seriously. This was over cupcakes. That weren't that good.
Had this semi-crazy (she did pay to attend the event, so I won't call her full-tilt-Times-Square-homeless crazy) woman succeeded in calling over the police in the middle of this event, she would have taken up some vital service worker's time over cupcakes when they should be watching out for Oprah and J-Hud.
Oh. And those car bombs we seem to be on alert for.
What a sorry state we've come to as a culture.
In Japan, where the mentality is that everyone waits and everyone gets a turn, people would have kindly taken one snack bar and been on their way. And we would have been able to donate 10,000 bars to a shelter, instead of watching the souvenir store behind us make off with 30 boxes or so to resell at considerable mark-up.
And I just became disgusted. By the end of the day, when we were literally giving away 12 count boxes to each passerby, I couldn't even speak. I was a cardboard-cutting machine, wearing my backpack because I couldn't trust anyone not to ransack anything and everything.
I was shocked when nice women from the Midwest would ask to sample just one. It was refreshing and honest and amazing.
And the cupcake guys even replaced my stolen cupcake, without me having to say a word.
So today I honor those mothers who taught their children patience and kindness. I'm sure my own mother put up with much more than 2 hours of manic-madness to feed, clothe, and raise me, and I'm very thankful for her love.
And I hope that woman today can find a mother figure soon, one who will teach her when a cupcake is just a cupcake.
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